macOS Archive

An opinion article at APCMag: "The focus of Snow Leopard is on core upgrades, not shiny new features. A bedrock focused update that delivers a streamlined, enhanced OS X. Stability. Efficiency. A "new generation of core technologies." All this is about raising the floor on the entire system. Multi-core optimization, support for 16TB RAM (yes, Terabytes), and a language to allow developers to tap the power of the graphics processor are just a few of the key upgrades. But you can't lift the floor and let people walk around where the floor used to be all at the same time. Not without leaving holes for a potential rising damp problem further down the track."

Apple keeps on improving is Leopard operating system at a serious pace. The company released Mac OS X 10.5.4 today, with the standard blurb attached to it: "The Mac OS X 10.5.4 Update is recommended for Mac OS X 10.5, 10.5.1, 10.5.2, and 10.5.3 Leopard. It includes general operating system improvements that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac. " The update includes fixes concerning AirPort, iCal, Safari, Spaces, and Expose. Software Update will bug you with the new release, or you can just start the updater yourself.

TestMac.net has published a quick look at Mac OS X Snow Leopard. "The biggest changes are under the hood. Snow Leopard is fast. Very fast. Like, surprisingly fast. From boot times to general application usage, Snow Leopard was noticeably quicker then Leopard when using the same system. Apple and 3rd party applications alike, they all launched faster and performed smoother. I'm sure this can be attributed to the new 64-bit architecture, but its amazing how much of a difference it really is." Screenshots included.

On OSNews, we try to steer away from speaking of specific security incidents, trojans, or viruses, unless they are in one way or the other special, or very influential. Over the course of the past 12 months or so, many incidents concerning Mac security arose, but most, if not all, were lemons: they required the user to actively enter his administrator password, or to manually launch the malicious program. In my book, these cases do not constitute as serious breaches of security, and hence, OSNews ignored them. However, a new security breach has been making rounds around the internet lately, which does pose a serious breach in security.

"SproutCore, profiled earlier this week, isn't the only big news spill out from the top secret WWDC conference due to Apple's embrace of open source sharing. Another future technology featured by the Mac maker last week was LLVM, the Low Level Virtual Machine compiler infrastructure project. Like SproutCore, LLVM is neither new nor secret, but both have been hiding from attention due to a thick layer of complexity that has obscured their future potential."

RoughlyDrafted magazine has been investigating the details of Apple OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" operating system revision. Last week, they shared an article outlining "what's new in Snow Leopard. They are also outlining myths of Snow Leopard. Although very few details are available, it certainly has not resulted in a shortage of discussion of the next operating system from Cupertino.

The original rumours concerning Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard stated that it would be available only for 64bit Intel processors, leaving PowerPC G4, G5, and early Intel Macs out in the blue. While Steve Jobs' keynote and the preview pages at Apple.com did not speak of any hardware cut-offs, Gizmodo got their hands on a hardware requirements document for the Developer Preview release of Snow Leopard, and it contains bad news for PowerPC users.

Remember back in January when Sun engineer Adam Leventhal shared that Apple had "crippled" DTrace? Well, it appears that the latest point release of Leopard silently restored DTrace to full function. According to Levanthal, on 10.5.3, the output of DTrace is "exactly what one would expect". DTrace can be used right now on your updated Leopard install.

Earlier this month, we reported that The Unofficial Apple Weblog's as well as Ars Technica's sources said that Apple was working on the next version of Mac OS X, dubbed Snow Leopard. The news was that the new release wouldn't focus on new features, but on performance. During yesterday's WWDC 2008 keynote, Steve Jobs confirmed this rumour, and now Apple has published a preview page.

Crunchgear has posted pics that they believe are a real ad for the upcoming 3G iPhone, revealing the much discussed video conferencing feature many have been anticipating. Recent patents filed by Apple corroborate this evidence. In addition to showcasing a Product (RED) version, the ads also suggest the release of iChat for Windows. It also appears that the new firmware will support UMTS/HSDPA, as expected.

Apple has updated its Leopard operating system by releasing Mac OS X 10.5.3. "The Mac OS X 10.5.3 Update is recommended for Mac OS X 10.5, 10.5.1, and 10.5.2 Leopard. It includes general operating system improvements that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac."

Back in 2007 when Apple released Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, a much-heard criticism was the lack of support for Java 6. Leopard shipped with an older version of Java, 1.5, even though 1.6 had been released by Sun almost a year prior. Sun had already released Java 1.6 for Linux and Windows, but did not do so for Mac OS X, since Apple insists on developing their own version of Java, according to Sun. Now, 6 months later, Mac Java programmers can rejoice.

"The next security and maintenance release for Apple's Leopard operating system could arrive sooner than later if the company maintains its current cadence, which has seen two successive pre-release builds land in the hands of developers in just five days. On the heels of the first external test build labeled Mac OS X 10.5.3 build 9D10 and released privately late last week, the Mac maker on Tuesday followed up with build 9D11, which adds nearly 20 more fixes and code corrections, bringing the new total expected with software's release to nearly 100."

"Apple issued the first Mac OS X 10.5.3 seed (9d10) to developers yesterday. The latest update to Apple's Mac OS X Leopard addresses dozens of outstanding issues. Fixes range from Dashboard, Parental Controls, iCal Synchronization, memory leaks and stability issues. All in all, 75 distinct bug fixes are listed in the accompanying seed notes."