Mac OS X 10.3.6 Update Available

An anonymous reader writes "Apple has released the Mac OS X 10.3.6 update via Software Update as well as their downloads page. List of improvements is available. In short, the improvements are in remote file server issues (AFP, NFS, SMB/CIFS), OpenGL, ATi and NVidia drivers, Safari, Calculator, DVD Player, Image Capture, and also previous stand-alone Security Updates. Hurry up and get the update! ... and tell us if I should go to get it, too. ;)" A Mac OS X Server update is available as well.

Comments

I got it

[CtrlPhreak]

Installed it on my tibook. Don't see any problems, no major differences. Haven't heard of any other problems from any of the major sources. Don't see why you shouldn't get it.

But updates to calculator? It's a calculator, shouldn't they have at least this program perfect by now?

Maintenance

[xpccx]

I found this link to be very helpful for regular maintenance as well as a simple TODO list before each incremental OS upgrade. It covers:

• Repairing priviledges
• Repairing the disk
• Forcing periodic maintenance
• Updating the prebinding

Re:Updates

[TheRaven64]

And you still can't enter numbers in number bases other than decimal. You can set the display mode to hex, binary, or octal, but the input is still decimal. Makes it completely useless for doing any kind of calculation in other number bases.

Some of us had more than three views

[tinpan]

The Basic and Advanced views work for me, but the Expression Sheet, Graphing and Hexidecimal views show just brushed metal.

I'm almost entirely sure these last three views are not normally available, but some people (myself included) turned them on by moving them from the Calculator.app/Contents/Resources folder to the Calculator.app/Contents/PlugIns folder.

Unfortunately, deleting the old Expression Sheet, Graphing and Hexidecimal views in the PlugIns folder and replacing them with the new ones in the Resources folder does not fix these three additional views.

Oh well, it'd be nice to have them again, but I rarely used them and it's obvious that Apple didn't feel they were ready for prime-time.

Re:Some of us had more than three views

[Smurf]

... but some people (myself included) turned them on by moving them from the Calculator.app/Contents/Resources folder to the Calculator.app/Contents/PlugIns folder.

It was easier to select "Get info" for the Calculator icon, and set all the checkboxes in the Plug-ins section.

I'm sorry to learn that the special views got broken. Some of them are rather useful.

Looks OK

[displaced80]

My iMac runs as a firewall/NAT system for my WLAN, in addition to day-to-day use. Has a VNC server running over the WLAN (through an SSH tunnel, naturally), and a few Samba shares also.

Installed without a hitch, and everything's intact after the restart.

I'm yet to test a couple of things (printer, bluetooth), since I need to get a new USB cable for the Mac-to-USB Hub connection. My rabbit had a field day yesterday and gnawed the old cable. D'oh.

(it's true. Rabbits are evil. Especially red-eyed pure white albino freakazoids like mine. If she weren't so damn cute I'd have turned her into a tasty stew after I saw the damage ;))

My PowerBook crashed about half way in too

[@madeus]

I was about 50% of the way through the install when mine died (possibly during optimisation, being in the middle of the screen the relevent was obsured by the crash message).

I had left it alone and had turned my Bluetooth mouse on at that time to use the system and it died. After rebooting it said it was 10..3.6 but be sure I downloaded the install as a .dmg and installed it frmo that to be on the safe side.

Uninformed opinion is right

[SkiifGeek]

As per your sig, your opinion is uninformed.

Right / Control click on the calculator.app -> show package contents.

Under resources are a number of folders ending in .calcview. Drag them into the PlugIns folder and, voila, you now have a 2D Graphing calculator, a fully blown Hexadecimal calculator, and so on, available through the View menu in Calculator.

If it still doesn't rock your boat, there are plenty of valid third party calculator applications, such as GeekCalc, WCalc and a host of others.

Breaks a lot of Firewire drives

[anuj]

this tells of many users (myself included) whose firewire drives no longer mount. system profiler sees a device, but the drive doesn't show up in the disk utility. the drive mounts fine on an older machine, so it's not damaging to the data like the original panther release was. i guess the ball's in apple's court. ~A

Calculator 1.1 is broken

[White Manual]

Make sure you backup Calculator 1.0 before applying this update (or reinstall it from CD). This update breaks all three included plugins: Hexadecimal Calculator:

2004-11-07 09:49:20.013 Calculator[650] *** -[HexadecimalController supportsDisplayModeChanges]: selector not recognized

Graphic Calculator:

2004-11-07 09:51:16.017 Calculator[716] *** -[GraphController addView:toWindow:atPoint:]: selector not recognized

Expression Sheet Calculator:

2004-11-07 09:51:59.560 Calculator[721] *** -[ExpressionSheetController addView:toWindow:atPoint:]: selector not recognized

10.3.6 Fixed Something! (NVidia/6800)

[wildsurf]

I'm one of the lucky few who picked up the 30" Cinema Display, with the NVidia 6800 graphics card. In 10.3.5, I would get frequent kernel panics when booting, that seemed to be related to the NVidia driver. (I installed the drivers from the disk that came with the 6800).

When this happened, I would have to remove the 6800 card, plug in my old card (ATI 9600 Pro), restart (at half-resolution on the 30"), shut down, plug in the NVidia card, and restart at half-res, which would work around the kernel panic.

Now, in 10.3.6, the system automatically switches to half-res while booting, which at least prevents the kernel panic. I hope they find a better fix though.

The kicker is that the left half of my new 30" display is about 25% dimmer than the right half. :/ A bad backlight inverter, seemingly; hopefully it will be fixable because the monitor has NO DEAD PIXELS (out of over 4 million!!) One takes the good with the bad, I guess :-)