Mac OS X 10.2.2 Update Available

Fork420 writes "Apple has released the 10.2.2 update. According to Apple: The 10.2.2 Update delivers enhanced functionality and improved reliability for the following applications and technologies: Address Book, iChat, IP Firewall, Mail, Print Center, Rendezvous, Sherlock and Windows file service discovery. The update also includes the updated services previously delivered in Security Update 2002-09-20. For detailed information on this Update, please visit http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n107140 (when this story was posted, this link was not yet working) Enjoy..."

Comments

Improved Find function?

[ku hand luke]

"- Improves the Find function of the Finder by no longer finding items in invisible folders." I hope this doesn't break the runaround I use on my brother's iPod: In Jag, I open his iPod on the desktop and do a search in that finder window for any .mp3 and voila!, all files available for drag and drop. We'll see soon enough...

One Problem:

[Anonymous Coward]

Journalling will be great. especially on the disk servers with 480GB worth of storage. But what the Xserves are missing is raid 5. I was pretty upset when I discovered that they only came with raid1 and raid0.

the missing raid mode is worse than it seems. The mac xserves come with 4 big IDE disks. If you want to you want the Xserve to play nice in a unix environment then its a good idea to format the disks UFS. (you dont have to, NFS works fine with HFS+, but you risk screwing yourself with the file name case insensitivity of the mac. A rare event since most people dont have important files that differ in name only in their case but it's lurking.

But wait! you cant format the whole thing UFS becausesome of the mac apps break unless they are on HFS+. So this means you need to format atleast one of the disks HFS for the OS and apps. that leaves three disks. But in RAID 1, you cant use an odd number of disks. So that leaves two disks for raid 1 UFS.

Thus the best you can do is 120GB HFS+ Raid 1 and 120GB UFS Raid 1. So out of four disks the most you can get is 120GB UFS redundant storage. Ah you say, why not just make a small HFS+ partition and let the rest be UFS. Well apple does not yet support partitioning a disk with different File systems. Thus you cant split the disk into UFS and HFS+ partitions.

Two companies are promised a partionalble raid 5 system (Xraid and NXraid) but both suddenly announced delayed shippments. My guess is they are trying to incoporate this new journaling system.

I spoke to apple about this several times. It was hinted to me to keep watching because big things were coming. I suspect these are the Journalling FS and and an outboard mass storage disk sytem. but that's a conjecture.

That's the bad news. The good news is that these Xserves are otherwise a very good deal. The throughput is better than comparably priced linux systems. Also they occupy only 1U but hold 480GB of hot swapable storage. Yes there are some NAS systems that are 1U but they are about 10 X slower in throughput, not to mention that they dont support as many services as the macs (LDAP, NFS, SAMBA, SSH, SCP, FTP, MAIL server, RSYNC,NET info, Net boot ...). The macs have dual Gig-E too. ANd in a very nice move Apple will sell you a spare parts kit with everyhing you are likely to need to fix a deadXSERVE in the field. Plus 24hour tech support.

the other nice thing about the Xserve is the construction. In addition to tool-free hot swap drives, the entire chasis slides out to the front revealing everything with no screws to undo or panels to remove. It's a clever design lacking the usual add-on slider rails of your gneric linux boxes. There's even a firewire port on the front for quick access. Another nice feature is that you dont need a terminal to set them up, they will auotmatically find the administration computer on any DNS system. And if you need to have a terminal attached, you can buy a UPS based KVM switch rather then the usual clumsy Video/mouse/keyboard KVMs.

Anyhow the bottom line is this as soon as a partionalble journaled raid 5 system is avaliable the Xserves will be one of the least expensivie full featured HIGH QUALITY 1U half terrabyte disk servers you can own. (note I said High quality). I just wish they would hurry up since I have two of these cooling their heels waiting for raid 5.

Re:One Problem:

[sesquiped]

I often name files starting with uppercase letters so they don't conflict with others for tab-completion, but that's not the important issue. The important issue is unicode. In general, it's much more difficult to do things case-insensitively when dealing with unicode, because case isn't a very well-defined concept. Sure, for English text using the Latin alphabet, it's pretty straightforward, but for other languages and other alphabets, it can get much messier, and you have situations like several consecutive characters being shortened to a single one, as part of case normalizing, or a character turning into multiple ones. So strings can even change size as part of case normalization, making the implementation of an accurate case-insensitive unicode string comparison quite a difficult and complex piece of code, and in particular, one that you don't want anywhere near your filesystem code.

Re:One Problem:

[Bronster]

Do they do _all_ possible cases? I seem to remember there are heaps of asian character sets that get rather huge - do you also do equivalence mapping between them? What about the different forms of period in each one - are they all valid for .ext extentions?

What it falls down to is that you don't want similar LOOKING characters to have different values - and you've forgotten all the accented characters, umlauts, etc - do you fold them as well?

The reason non-Unix systems that support Unicode don't chug along is that (a) they support all of Unicode and (b) they don't fold all possible cases, just the few you've mentioned above.

Re:One Problem:

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I don't buy it.

Tab completion in shells is not an issue. It works fine on HFS+, and is just as case-sensitive as always or not, depending on your shell settings.

So your beef with case-sensitivity comes down to: Unicode is hard, and because it's hard, you don't want to do it. But you don't have to do it. Apple does it for you. Apple has been doing it for a long time for you. Apple even made it work very quickly for the common case, because Apple is just hoopy.

Re:One Problem:

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't even have to go to non-Latin alphabets. If you're writing Turkish, "I" is *not* the capital of "i". So is "Ii" the same filename as "II"? Is it different if I had my system set to the Turkish locale when I created it? When I list it?

I general I think case-insensitive filenames are better, but Unicode does present some pretty ... interesting ... situations.

Re:One Problem:

[bursch-X]

There's no circumstance under which you'd want corresponding hiragana and katakana characters to be considered equal.

Huh? What about displaying Japanese file names in Dictionary order (aiueo), then of course you don't care whether it's Katakana or Hiragana, but you care whether any "nigori" are used etc. and you definitely want to to intermix the two systems. (and the same goes for the readings of the Kanji, you don't care for the Kanji used, but the Hiragana readings of them).

Re:One Problem:

[twoshortplanks]

I'm impressed a lot by your argument here, and I'm willing to say that you're right...maybe filenames should be case insensative. However, sadly in this world we're all not going to agree on things, and how much I might like to agree with you about the merits of HFS+, some people are still going to want case insensative systems.

I still argue it's a cultral thing. Many unix users would never sacrifice the ability to have case sensitive file systems as they'd die before taking functionality away from their system. You say "That you like to think of words on the computer as different than words anywhere else doesn't change the fact that this is a lousy interface decision for humans, because words are words even in a filename". However consider that to a Unix person having case insensitve files breaks their interface considerably. It's just inconsistant with every else that treats all things as strings. The -h option is not the same as the -H option. And yes, maybe this is wrong, but it's their culture that has set them up to do it.

What I'm trying to say here is that no matter what you might think of the idea being wrong, the people that use it arn't wrong themselves. They're just following a different set of guidelines. (Note, I don't mean to imply that you think they are or that you made this point...it's just a point that's worth making)

This reminds me of a debate I had about spaces in a file name. Now, I personally have no very stong feelings on the matter, but I can remember a Mac user complaining a lot about bad handling of spaces in a filename in Unix. Now, to be fair they're completely right in their opinion - unix does break horribly. What they're wrong in doing is considering that this is due to stupidity...it's not, it's a cultral thing. To the command line people a space isn't part of a file name unless it's properly escaped....it's a meta charecter that delimits the edge of commands and file names. It's a hang over from using the CLI too much...

And yes, you could consider this bad and wrong (especially in the day of the GUI,) but it's a convention that's sprung up over time...like double clicking, or anything else that you can't really draw a comparision to the real world.

Oh, and on a personal note, thanks for the debate...it's not often you get sensible replies on slashdot ;-)

Big fan of OSX, but...

[underwhelm]

I'm still waiting for VCD support. >:(

Should be good.

[dsanfte]

Many of us have been waiting awhile for this release. Certainly I have. Perhaps this new software will solve the stability issues many users were having with the older version.

Re:What happened to the old Slashdot?

[Wyatt Earp]

Yep.

Back in the day, the only time you'd see an Apple on the front of /. is when they came out with hardware or sued someone.

Now I'm getting my update news here. Scary.

Re:Mac OSX

[phillymjs]

browsing with one mouse button in IE was driving me fucking nuts

Okay, Mr. Power-User, then cough up $20 or whatever for a mouse with the number of buttons you need. For the millionth fucking time.

I always thought that it was just an old joke/troll but seriously, why?

The one-button mouse is designed to have a very clear function, so when Grandma tries to use her new iMac, she doesn't get confused. Apple performed usability testing when they were developing the Mac, to find the optimal number of buttons for the uninitiated user. The results of their testing: one. Any more than that confused people.

You might say, "Well, that was twenty years ago, surely people are more clued in now!"

Wrong. If I had a buck for every exchange like this I've been a part of in even the last two years, I could retire to my own private island:

Me: "Sure, I can help you with that. I need you to right-click on [icon] and select 'Properties.'"
Client: "I clicked on it, but it just went dark. Where is this 'properties' thing?"
Me: "Did you right-click on it, or just click on it?"
Client: "What do you mean, 'right-click?'"
Me: "Right-click, as in, click the right mouse button."
Client (incredulously): "You mean, it does something different???"

My point: Some people STILL find multiple mouse buttons confusing. Since Apple is marketing in large part to people who are confused/frustrated/confounded by Windows, it makes sense to include an unambiguous mouse.

Most people who want a mouse with more functionality either right from the start or after they get up to speed with the Mac will purchse one, and put the Apple one in a drawer somewhere. Those who don't post on /., bitching about how a multi-button mouse still isn't included with Macs.

~Philly

W00t!

[Squidgee]

Haha, I'm so excited. I can get a real JFS (No, Suzy, Window's JFS isn't a -true- JFS; it doesn't let you repair any changes).

Now to wait until all 24.4megs download on my horrid connection (24.0kbps right now!). Wow, I think the download status bar just twitched!

Re:Mac OSX

[dhovis]

Im too poor to be a macphile but seriously, browsing with one mouse button in IE was driving me fucking nuts. It took me a minute to find the button that was going to give me a context menu. Sigh. I always thought that it was just an old joke/troll but seriously, why?

Very simple... To prevent poor programming. Contextual menus should speed access to features, but is should not be the only way to access a feature. If you force developers to consider single button mice, then they must provide all options in the regular menus, as well as contextual menus.

There are plenty of people in this world that I would not want to have to explain the difference between a right/middle/left click.

Microsoft Powerpoint X makes this mistake on MacOS X. If you want to group objects together, the only way to do it (unless you customize your menus) is to use context menus.

performance

[linuxpng]

I know apple clearly states that you are going to take a 10 to 15 percent disk performance hit when enabling the journal. I'm not sure about everyone else, but with the update and the journal everything seems even faster than 10.2.1. Anyone have similar experiences? I'm launching apps and just generally messing around. I've noticed that photoshop 7 loads in about 7 seconds as opposed to the 13 that it used to as well. Could be imagining it...

Re:ip firewall

[commodoresloat]

My thoughts exactly. But I think ipfw is turned off by default, however no network services are turned on by default so it's not that insecure. You can enable/disable all this stuff including the firewall from the System Preferences under sharing. And if you want to watch your system log (tail -f var/log/system.log) in the terminal you watch ipfw deny connections in the log (at least that's what I assume those entries mean). It's kind of frightening how many attempts there are to access a networked computer on any given day....

Journaling?

[Mister Black]

What does journaling do for me? For average usage (email, web, etc) do I need it? Should I use it on my internal drives? FireWire drives?

Re:Mac OSX

[Tokerat]

A little known feature of Mac OS X is the Full Keyboard Access function - it's in the System Preferences, Keyboard pane, under the "Full Keyboard Access" tab.

Asside from the Ctrl-Click contexual menus, you can completely control Mac OS X from the keyboard. the default behavior is for the F-Keys (F1, F2, etc) to highlight keyboard focus on various on screen elements, including any properly API-created Aqua control.

Basically, you can run the computer almost completely without a mouse. Or CLI. With your own custom key layout if you desire. Awsome.

Oh, and my $20 Logitech Optical mouse works great with my G4. Right-click functions as-Windows-expected. Users of OS X and above also enjoy the scroll-wheel goodness, and 10.2 even introduces the "Copy & Paste Files" concept to the Mac for the first time, availible contexualy got all those adjusting Windows users.

Even better is my sister's Logitech Wireless Optical mouse, connected to her TiBook. $40 too expensive? Get the cord version. TiBooks have USB ports, you know.

More Accurately!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple gives jobs to the people who wrote the open source software, writing Mach and the BSD subsystem got Avie Tevanian a great job as did Jordan Hubbard who was one of the original free BSD founders. The corporate embrace of BSD has meant good things for the people who programed it. Apple ensentially is rewarding the people who wrote the software. Also they give out their source on many things, such as Darwin Streaming Server, Rendevous, Darwin which has its own unique ways of doing things. Also Apple has what linux and most other OS's don't have and that is modern OO frameworks that greatly aid development. Why are you so down on apple, get a life. Support everyone even MS but do it based on the quality of the product.

Re:I'll say one thing for Apple...

[geek]

They run it all over Akamais network, like their quicktime site.

NO!

[spitzak]

"Case insensitivity" is a user interface issue that should not be in the innards of the operating system. If a file system can treat a filename as a sequence of bytes that have no other meaning, then it can be written to be far more reliable, secure, and dependable, and easier to prove that there are no bugs.

For the "average user" case means nothing. Grandma picks files by clicking on the little pictures and would never notice if many files had the same name. The *ONLY* use for "case insensitive" is for CLI interfaces, and it is amazing that the same people who say "Unix sucks because of case sensitive filenames" are the same ones that say "it sucks because you have to use the CLI". Hey, if you don't need a CLI, you have eliminated the only reason for case insensitive filenames! Not only that, case insensitivity actually interferes with user-friendliness in a CLI as it makes it more difficult to do really advanced things in the user program, such as spelling correction of filenames.

Re:NO!

[overunderunderdone]

For the "average user" case means nothing. Grandma picks files by clicking on the little pictures and would never notice if many files had the same name.

Lets test your theory using the common scenario of doing tech support for Grandma over the phone:
Me: "OK, Grandma open now click on the picture of a paper that says 'read me'"
Grandma clicks on 'Read Me' - after long conversation I finally realise she opened the wrong file
Me: "No, the OTHER file that says 'read me'"
Grandma clicks on 'READ ME' - another long period of miscommunication follows
Me: "OK, Grandma open the file that says 'read me' but ignore the files 'READ ME', 'Read Me', 'READ me' and 'read ME'.
Grandma does an Ellen Feiss "hugnh???"

The obvious advantage of case insensitivity is that it is easier for humans to talk & think about what is on a computer without confusion. Even the tech savvy may have the occasional problem with distinguishing between 'Read Me' and 'Read me'.

case insensitivity actually interferes with user-friendliness in a CLI as it makes it more difficult to do really advanced things in the user program, such as spelling correction of filenames.

I don't follow you, how does it make this more difficult?

For those that don't know what Akamai is

[Sycraft-fu]

They are a company that delivers content for you. You pay them to hold your stuff. However they don't just put it in a fast datacentre, they actually have little cache engines that they give to large networks (like universities). This means that if you happen to be on one of those networks, your downloads are incredably fast.

They just did this at U of A, where I work. They shipped us 3 servers and a switch (for free) and then are helping us get them set up. The effect, when they are running, will be that any traffic bound for Akamai's network will instead get serverd from those local computers. So instead of loading down their and our internet links, they will come form a LAN connection.

Really it's a win for all involved. We are happy because it reduces our traffic at no cost to us. They are happy because it reduces the traffic on their network. Their customers are happy because it means fast data delivery to lots of people.