OS X :: Latest 10.6.2 Beta Packs Fixes For VMWare/iMacs/Apple TV
Nov 4, 2009
Apple has released a new beta of the Mac OS X 10.6.2 update with fixes for various performance issues dealing with AirPort, graphics drivers, and Apple TV, among others.
Those familiar with the build, titled 10C540 have said that it contains fixes for AirPort performance issues on the newly released iMacs and also resolves a problem which arose when plugging and unplugging a system to an Apple TV. A VMWare fix is also included, presumably for the newly released Fusion version 3.0.
The new build also fixes reported panic issues with USB, Apple Filing Protocol, and some video cards.
In the 10.6.2 update, Apple plans on fixing and tweaking nearly 150 OS X components.
Some components slated for fixes include: AppleBacklight, Battery Menu, Dictionary, Expose, FileSync, Family Controls, Fonts, Front Row, HFS, Inkwell, iPhoto, MobileMe, OpenCL, Parental Controls, QuickTime, Screen Sharing, Spell Checker, Spotlight, Time Machine, and USB.
Mac OS X 10.6.2 is expected to be released sometime in November and will reportedly be around 480 MB in size.[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]
Apple on Tuesday afternoon pushed out another private beta of Mac OS X 10.6.3, asking its developer community to test font compatibility and stability alongside a handful of other components that have been in need of evaluation for the past several weeks.
Those other components include iCal, QuickTime and graphics drivers, according to people familiar with the beta software. The last private beta, distributed March 5th and labeled build 10D567, also listed those components as focus areas, in addition to Rosetta and third party printer drivers.
When it's released later this month, Mac OS X 10.6.3 will bundle an update to QuickTime X that improves security and compatibility while also enhancing overall reliability of the media software.
The Snow Leopard update will also include tweaks that enhance the performance of Apple's 64-bit Logic pro audio suite and deliver better compatibility with third-party printers and OpenGL-grounded applications.
Other fixes baked into the release target issues with mail messages displaying the incorrect background color and problems copying files to a shared Windows volume.
The latest beta carries build number 10D571 and weighs in around 700MB.[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]
This will outline a simple and easy method to install the windows 7 build 7000 to a boot camp partition, using only vmware fusion 2. This is novel because it can be accomplished without a superdrive and without burning a dvd.
1. Use boot camp assistant to make a windows partition. 2. Mount the windows .iso file in fusion and set the bios (F2 during virtual machine boot) to boot from the virtual dvd-drive. 3. Run the windows install 4. When windows wants to restart the first time, shutdown the virtual machine. 5. Reboot the mac and boot the windows partition, boot camp style.
Snow Leopard's abandonment of Creator Code metadata, used to open a file with its creating application, has some users are worried that Apple has killed off a core Mac-centric feature. Instead, Apple has invented a superior alternative for the old Creator Code in order to support a variety of new features. Here's why, and what the new Uniform Type Identifiers offer. What is a Creator Code?
Back in the early 80s, Apple developed a variety of unique conventions to make the Macintosh intuitively easy to use, almost to a magical extent. One example pertains to invisible file metadata that helped the system identify documents using Type and Creator Codes. Each file was tagged with both a Type and a Creator, allowing the system to distinguish between applications that could open a file and the default application that should open the file. The Finder could also use this invisibly associated file metadata to present custom file icons for different files of the same type but created by different applications, such as two JPEGs, one saved by Graphic Converter and the other by Photoshop..............
Apple on Wednesday afternoon issued a number of updates, addressing high processor usage and other glitches in its 27-inch iMac, as well as various security updates for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.
27-inch iMac updates
Two updates released Wednesday address issues with the 27-inch big screen iMac, released in October 2009.
"27-inch iMac EFI FW Update 1.0" is recommended for all systems with quad-core Intel Core i5 and Core i7 processors. The update resolves an issue that caused high processor utilization when playing audio through the headphone output, and fixes a problem that prevented the display backlight from turning on after powering on the iMac.
The 2.1MB update is available for download from Apple. It requires Mac OS X 10.6.3 or later.
"27-inch iMac SMC Firmware Update 1.0" fixes Target Display Mode compatibility issues on the 27-inch desktop iMac. The 397KB update also requires Mac OS X 10.6.3 or later.
Apple this month continues to plug away on a small but significant update to its fledgeling Safari web browser, most recently making improvements to the application's handling of web forms and faulty Javascripts.
The cross-platform browser update presently dubbed Safari 3.1 was first made available to the company's developer community last month. Since then, only one external revision has been spotted, arriving last week in the form of three distinct distributions.
A public beta for versions of the Windows operating system carried build number 31A15 and weighed in at 18.5MB, while versions for Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard arrived as builds 8S3021 and 9B4021, weighing in at 48.6MB and 38.9MB, respectively.
In a set of release notes reported to have accompanied the latest distributions, Apple advocated "significant performance, stability, and compatibility improvements" over the builds released just three weeks earlier.
Specifically, the company said Safari 3.1 accepts large amounts of text pastes into forms much faster than its predecessor and that the browser now logs all nasty and unsafe Javascripts to a system log file for later review. In addition, a pesky bug that prevented earlier builds for uploading photos via web forms to online auction sites has also been fixed.
The Mac maker offered no update on the browser's more compelling enhancements, which include support for downloadable web fonts, HTML5 video and audio tags, CSS transitions and animations, and a new SQL storage API.
Improvements to Javascript performance are also a significant focus of the upcoming release, which uses an unreleased version of Apple's Webkit frame work that has proven to be up to 2.5 times as fast in Javascript operations than that of the current version included with the existing Safari 3.0.4 software. [ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]
As expected, Apple overnight equipped its vast developer community with a new build of its upcoming Snow Leopard operating system that includes significant changes, such as a redesigned QuickTime Player.
People familiar with the matter confirm the build number to indeed be 10A286, as was predicted by AppleInsider in a software-related news roundup published earlier in the week.
Among the changes developers will see in the latest beta is a completely redesigned QuickTime Player -- believed to be QuickTime X Player -- which sports "a new minimal user interface*focused predominately on playback," those people say.
Also widely distributed outside Apple's walls for the first time is a new Cocoa-based Mac OS X desktop envoirnment featuring updated info windows and contextual menus.
Those people familiar with the software say Apple informed developers about a dozen significant issues which are still plaguing Mac OS X 10.6, and which will need to be ironed out before the software can transition closer to a final candidate stage. Several months of work are believed to remain.
Build 10A286 arrives about four weeks after Apple equipped its developers with build 10A261. Around that time it was reported that Snow Leopard would include Core Location and Multi-Touch frameworks for third-party developers, and also deliver more intuitive printer driver delivery.
Specific to the 10A261 build were a handful of visual tweaks, such as a Put Back option in the Finder and the ability to drill down into stacks via a new grid-view interface, each of which were documented in a series of screenshots.[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]
This is a odd question, but are Intel macs louder than previous macs? I just recieved an Intel iMac as a replacement for my dead iMac G5 and both myself and my family has noticed a loud sound (Sounds like a needle playing on an old record player) which is coming from the iMac. My first iMac was very quiet, however when I start using the new iMac this odd sound keeps happening. Is this normal? I am just worried that this scratching sound might by evidence of something breaking down. Also the sound is a lot louder when under Windows XP.
PS: the sound is loud enough to be picked up on the internal microphone, however I don't know how to link the file to Macrumors.
I found this article below when searching on iMac i7 info.We took delivery of the brand spankin' new 27" i7 iMac last week and connected it immediately to our Final Share SAN in about 5 minutes for video editing. Quick tests showed the SAN was connected and working fine.Then today I started really editing on it and I'm dropping frames every 10 to 30 seconds. Now it appears the ethernet controller that is in the new Mac cannot support the speeds necessary to edit video via the SAN. Our 2 year old iMacs can, but the brand spanking new, most powerful iMac cannot.I'm at a loss as to how Apple can improve every aspect of this machine, including the absolutely stunning 27" LED backlit display, but then cut back on something as simple as an Ethernet Controller that should be designed to work with today's equipment running high speed internet instead of stepping backwards to the speed of older model PowerMac machines.
Apple this week is reported to be testing the first internal builds of Mac OS X 10.5.8, one of the final updates, if not the last, slated for its current Leopard operating system software.News of this particular maintenance update is significant for owners of PowerPC-based Macs, given that Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard requires a Mac with an Intel processor. That means Mac OS X 10.5.8 or 10.5.9 will likely represent Apple's final push towards solidify and stabilize Leopard before shifting the majority of its resources towards the first point release of Snow Leopard, which will arrive this fall.
While the first two beta releases of Apple's Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard update signaled a focus on underlying service technologies, a third pre-release made available to developers overnight expands upon those areas to include several forward-facing apps and additional frameworks. People familiar with the beta, labeled Mac OS X 10.5.8 build 9L16, say the Mac maker has for the time being tabled its focus on components such as Bluetooth, Automator, graphics drivers, iDisk syncing, Spotlight and Sync services.
Apple on Thursday evening delivered to developers a new build of its forthcoming Snow Leopard operating system that addresses a number of outstanding bugs but also delivers a couple of interface tweaks.
"This Snow Leopard Developer Preview Update is recommended for all users running the Snow Leopard Developer Preview Build 10A394 or later," Apple said. "This update includes general operating system fixes for stability, compatibility, and security."
The new build, labeled 10A402a, weighs in at roughly 1.3GB and was distributed via Snow Leopard's Software Update mechanism. It's the second such build to arrive in that manner in as many weeks, signaling ongoing tests to the new version of the system's automatic software updater.
In their brief experiences testing the new build, people familiar with the software claim it to be more responsive overall, as Apple focuses on optimization and stability ahead of a release planned for this fall.
Additionally, developers have noticed a couple of obvious interface tweaks, the first of which has seen the Dock's contextual pop-up menus re-skinned in a charcoal motif with white text. In previous builds, these menus were know to sport the same interface as traditional Finder contextual menus, which include black text on a platinum backdrop.
Snow Leopard's new Dock contextual menus | Source: The Quantum Byte
Apple may also be fiddling with the design of other Mac OS X interface elements, such as slide knobs, which now appear to feature a deeper, more vibrant shade of blue.
At its annual developers conference last month, Apple said it plans to release Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard in September as a $29 upgrade for all owners of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.
Apple has launched its new beta V2 update of the MobileMe web-based Calendar, sending users announcements that allows them to opt into the new program, which brings shared calendaring and an iPad-like appearance.
Opting into the new beta upgrades the calendar data in a way that makes any changes connected to the new format. Users who choose to leave the beta will lose updated changes, as Apple warns in the signup process.
The new Calendar requires users to upgrade to the latest iOS 4 for iPhone and iPod touch, the latest Mac OS X 10.6.4 or the most recent MobileMe Control Panel 1.6.1 for Windows, and demands a modern web browser, minimally Safari 4, Firefox 3.6, or Internet Explore 8.
Apple also notes that the new calendar beta does not support Microsoft Outlook behind a proxy server, and does not support push updates for Windows and iPad users. The iPad will fetch new data when its Calendar is opened, while Outlook running on Windows will fetch new event data every five minutes. Other iOS devices and Mac will continue to receive push updates normally.
Users with lots of calendar data may be warned that their older data will be incrementally upgraded over the next hour.
The new MobileMe Calendar features an iPad-like slider control at the bottom for rapidly navigating to future and previous months, and a calendar and notes view that appear to be tear off pads of paper. Also like the iPad Calendar, it presents a Day summary and List view of upcoming events.
MobileMe users can opt in to the new beta by logging in and requesting an invite. The new Calendar update is the latest in an overhaul series that began with Mail. The new updates use the latest SproutCore frameworks to create a very desktop-like experience.
Apple on Tuesday announced a public beta of Safari 4, a new version of its share-gaining web browser that packs a powerful new JavaScript engine and support for the latest web standards. Dubbed "Nitro," the engine in Safari 4 is said to run JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3. Other new features include Top Sites, for a visual preview of frequently visited pages; Full History Search, to search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages; Cover Flow, to easily flip through web history or bookmarks; and Tabs on Top, to make tabbed browsing easier and more intuitive. "Apple created Safari to bring innovation, speed and open standards back into web browsers, and today it takes another big step forward," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "Safari 4 is the fastest and most efficient browser for Mac and Windows, with great integration of HTML 5 and CSS 3 web standards that enables the next generation of interactive web applications."
Performance In terms of performance, Apple claims Safari 4's new Nitro JavaScript engine executes JavaScript up to 30 times faster than Microsoft's IE 7 and more than three times faster than Firefox 3. It's also said to load HTML web pages three times faster than IE 7 and almost three times faster than Firefox 3. Safari 4 also represents the latest chapter in Apple's efforts to maintain its leadership role in defining and implementing web standards, with built in support for HTML 5 and CSS 3 -- two technologies critical in supporting an entirely new class of web applications that feature rich media, graphics and fonts. Safari 4 Beta tracks the sites you browse and ranks your favorites, presenting up to 24 thumbnails on a single page.
Specifically, the Cupertino-based company said the new browser includes HTML 5 support for offline technologies so web-based applications can store information locally without an Internet connection. A recent technology demonstration by Google highlighted the advantages this technology when it showed off a version of Gmail running offline on the iPhone's mobile version of Safari, which already includes support for some HTML 5 standards. Apple also said that Safari 4 is the first browser to support advanced CSS Effects that enable highly polished web graphics using reflections, gradients and precision masks. Similarly, it's said to be the first browser to pass the Web Standards Project's Acid3 test, which examines how well a browser adheres to CSS, JavaScript, XML and SVG web standards that are specifically designed for dynamic web applications.
Cover Flow offers a highly visual way of reviewing your site history and bookmarked sites, presenting full-page previews. Safari for Mac, Windows, iPhone and iPod touch are all built on Apple's WebKit, which the company has billed the "world's fastest and most advanced browser engine." Apple developed WebKit as an open source project to create the world's best browser engine and to advance the adoption of modern web standards. Most recently, WebKit led the introduction of HTML 5 and CSS 3 web standards and is known for its fast, modern code-base. Some of the industry's newest browsers are based on WebKit including Google Chrome, the Google Android browser, the Nokia Series 60 browser and Palm webOS. Safari 4 relocates the tab bar to the top of the browser window to provide "more room for you to enjoy the sites you're reading".
New features Safari 4 also includes a handful of new user interface features, including: Top Sites, a display of frequently visited pages in a wall of previews so users can jump to their favorite sites with a single click; Full History Search, where users search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages to easily return to sites they've seen before; Cover Flow, to make searching web history or bookmarks "as fun and easy as paging through album art in iTunes;" Tabs on Top, for better tabbed browsing with easy drag-and-drop tab management tools and an intuitive button for opening new ones; Smart Address Field, that automatically completes web addresses by displaying an easy-to-read list of suggestions from Top Sites, bookmarks and browsing history; Smart Search Field, where users fine-tune searches with recommendations from Google Suggest or a list of recent searches; Full Page Zoom, for a closer look at any website without degrading the quality of the site's layout and text; built-in web developer tools to debug, tweak and optimize a website for peak performance and compatibility; and a new Windows-native look in Safari for Windows, that uses standard Windows font rendering and native title bar, borders and toolbars so Safari fits the look and feel of other Windows XP and Windows Vista applications. In total, Apple claims over 150 features in Safari 4. The public beta is available for download here. [ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]
I know developer previews have at least one specific goal at giving third party devs early access so they can get a sense of new APIs and start updating/creating apps, but they also serve for bug reporting. Do you think Apple should open up OS X beta testing to a larger community of users?
My add-ons are all installed, and enabled, but most are not working. The plugins are all just gone, such as flash. I installed flash again, restarted, and it still doesn't have flash.
I don't know if this is the right place to ask this question, but today my Apple Account forced me to change my Apple ID. Just moments ago, with all my prior Apple ID info intact, I downloaded the Beta for Messages. Is that involved?
I like Safari's U.I. very much, but, everytime I load around 5 pages at the same time it starts to freeze and give me the rainbow circle on the mouse pointer. If I open the same sites with Camino everything works great and even faster than Safari.
I do not want to quite switch to Camino, because its UI is ugly, but its really superior to Safari on speed terms and has the same compatibility as Firefox, because its Gecko engine (?). I will miss Top Sites and Safari's UI so much
How your Safari works? Is it fast and freeze free?
I imported a few Russian Music CDs to iTunes and sadly a couple of them have garbled text while the others display fine. I know that garbled text happens when the computer doesn't have the language installed.
I remember a while ago I used Xslimmer and it got rid of some languages among other things. How do I go about reinstalling cyrillic languages?
I have a MacBook Pro, about two years old, with no probs up until last night when I accepted the latest Apple Update ( itunes, security, etc ). That's when all the problems started. Now I can't get into Mail or Safari, & after getting no response from either, I am having to do a "force quit" to get out of either of the applications. I am getting the same error message each time PubSubAction has quit unexpectedly. Does anyone know what this actually means? I asked the guy at the Apple Shop & he had no idea, & the other people working there had never heard of it either. It just seems very sus that as soon as I downloaded the latest updates these two apps begun having problems. Prior to my updating, I had sent off emails, done the banking online, paid bills & checked my items on eBay. Nothing terribly much & definately didn't accept any files- except the apple updates, when I rebooted, etc. Once the computer rebooted, it now takes between 5 to 10 minutes to start up. Anyway, being that I'm pretty much puter illiterate & a helpless female with these matters as well, just wondering if anyone out there ( female and male ) can offer any suggestions or advice on this problem for me please.
I have the developers iOS 6 Beta on my iPhone 4s. I need the latest iTunes 10.6.3 to sync with iTunes. I went to www.itunes.com as it told me to and I went to the downloads page. Usually you enter your email and click the download button. My problem is there is is no download button or email box! I need to download the latest iTunes and I can't. I did a software update, but it does include iTunes I tried it on Chrome, Safari, and Firefox, all coming up with the same thing. I am also using a Mac.
I have a 120GB SSD that I boot from and would preferably like to keep this as free as possible. I have all of the Jam Packs and would like to install these now but can only seem to be able to select the boot drive to install them onto.
I have 2 1tb Caviar Blacks with nothing on right now.
Do they have to go on the boot drive? They will fit if need be, I'd just prefer to keep the boot drive less cluttered.
Apple is investigating problems with its new Penryn-based Intel notebooks that cause flickering and graphics corruption during media playback and web browsing.
The two issues have been widely reported by users of the company's latest 13-inch MacBooks and 15-inch MacBook Pros, both of which began shipping in February.
In particular, users on the Apple discussion forums say (1, 2, 3, 4) that QuickTime playback of video files is routinely marred by flickering or the appearance of "washed out" graphics on their new machines.
"When I am watching the Video Tutorials for any of Apple products my QT flickers dark and light, not to the point where I can't see the video, but to the point where it is annoying," one user wrote.
"Exact same problem here," replied several others.
Meanwhile, the same batch of users are also reporting instances of graphics corruption on their machines when scrolling through Safari webpages or Mail messages -- both of which rely on Apple's Webkit framework.
"My wife has got a current gen Macbook Pro that is exhibiting a very strange behavior," one user wrote in an AppleInsider forum thread on the subject. "When she's on battery power she gets graphical glitches/tearing when scrolling in a browser."
"I have a current generation [MacBook Pro] and I have the same problem," said another. "Also when loading web pages, often with pictures, the content in the active window flickers a lot."
Thus far, it appears the anomalies are the result of a software glitch rather than a flaw within hardware. Several users attempting to diagnose the problem on their own report that the issues became noticeable only after installing the Leopard Graphics update that was released alongside the recent Mac OS X 10.5.2 Update.
One user even went as far as to install a build of the still unreleased Mac OS X 10.5.3 Update -- which is said to include fixes for graphics corruption -- on his system to see if it remedied the issue. Although he claimed the upcoming update fixes the problem, another user performing the same kind of check reported that while 10.5.3 does indeed alleviate some symptoms, it "doesn't completely correct the issue."
Graphics corruption experienced on Apple's new notebook systems.
For its part, Apple over the weekend formally acknowledged the issues for the first time in an email response to one customer.
"Apple has received reports similar to the behavior you are describing and we are investigating those reports," the company said. "Further information will come in the form of a Knowledge Base article, Software Update, or Software Release."
Taken at face value, the specifications tied to Apple's most recent MacBook Air updates imply the latest pair of ultra-slim notebooks should handily outperform their predecessors, but a new report claims this notion only holds true for the slower of the two models.
Introduced earlier this month at Apple's annual developers conference, the new MacBook Airs come in two models: an entry-level $1,499 model with a 1.86GHz processor and 120GB hard drive, and a high-end version for $1,799 that sports a 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo processor and 128GB solid-state flash drive.
As part of its review of the new models published this week, Macworld compared the notebooks to their predecessors introduced last October: a 1.6GHz model with a 120GB (then priced at $1799) and a 1.86GHz version with 128GB solid-state flash drive (then priced at $2499). The results? Perplexing at best.
While the new low-end 1.86GHz model bested its 1.6GHz predecessor, outperforming it in most tests and recording a Speedmark score of 11 points higher at 156, the same couldn't be said for the new high-end 2.13GHz MacBook Air, which achieve a score of 175 -- a full 4 points lower than the previous-gen 1.86GHz model.
"What�s weird about the new high-end MacBook Air model is that although it cost dramatically less than its immediate predecessor, it was also slower than that model," wrote Macworld's editor, Jason Snell. "The late-2008 1.86GHz MacBook Air was faster than the new top-of-the-line model in 11 of our 18 tests, and as a result, the old system�s final Speedmark score was slightly higher."
Snell also reported that he saw several cases in which the new, low-end MacBook Air, with its slower Core 2 Duo chip and hard disk drive, outperform the high-end model and its sold-state flash drive. He notes that this may be the result of hard drives being known to outperform their solid state drives in certain operations, but added that the slower system also beat the faster model in some video compression and 3D rendering tests.
"We�re not quite sure why this is happening, though it�s possible that the Air�s thermal-protection systems are aggressively ratcheting down the speed of the faster, hotter processors when they�re asked to perform those tasks, slowing their performance," he wrote.
In light of these results, it's worthwhile to note that several Apple authorized resellers maintain inventory of the previous-generation 1.86GHz MacBook Air, which they're blowing out at $1,649, roughly $150 cheaper than than the new 2.13GHz model they appear to be outperforming. This includes AppleInsider sponsor MacMall, whose own back-to-school promotion offering a free Olympus Stylus 1040 10.0 Megapixel Digital Camera with Mac purchases includes the MacBook Air.
The lowest prices on current and former MacBook Airs are available every day in our Mac Price Guide. [ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]
A coworker asked me to take a look at her Macbook because after the latest Apple update, browsing Yahoo and Google have become unbearably slow. What's weird is that it's only those two websites that are slowed.
She has a 2008 Macbook with 4GB RAM running Snow Leopard
I've tried the following:Reset SafariTried other browsersCheck/repair disk permissionsReset PRAMGot a new router and cable modem from Time WarnerUpgraded RAM to 4GB (had 1GB before)
Office 2011 comes localised to 13 languages (I mean interface). I have an english one, is there a way of switching the UI language? Or buy a langPacks like they do for office for windows?
