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Apple Offers Mac OS X 10.3.7 Update
An anonymous reader writes "MacNN reports: 'Apple has released Mac OS X 10.3.7 via the Software Update utility. Key enhancements include improved AFP support for saving documents with long file names, improved OpenGL technology and updated ATI and NVIDIA graphics drivers, improved FireWire device compatibility, updated Preview application, and improved compatibility for third party applications. The 10.3.7 update is recommended for all users of Mac OS X 10.3 'Panther.' It also includes all previous standalone security updates.'"
Holy sh..
I just upgraded and I got a 2.2 times OpenGL speedup.
Wow, Letter
I know they had disabled hardware acceleration for Mac's because of issues with the graphics drives. I wonder if these improvements will allow them to turn the acceleration back on. My 12" powerbook would sure appreciate it.
-or so you'd think
Oh no, this is going to take forever for PearPC to install.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Here's hoping it will fix the MIDI issues that occurred with Reason and 10.3.6. It's getting very frustrating to have to troubleshoot this stuff all the time with the Audio MIDI Setup Utility.
Any word on if Safari has been updated to support type-ahead-find yet? I won't be updating until I hear some Reason users speak up, and this is a sweet feature that should be in Safari by now.
They've been available for more than 24 hours, although we know most people won't install them.
World of Warcraft. One game is the focus of most of the updates to graphics drivers. Shocking, eh? Makes you wonder, who wanted the patches more? Blizzard, the user base, or Apples lab full of level 40 somethin' developers?
"Life's funny sometimes." "And sometimes it isn't." --Cat's Cradle
Mod parent up?
Slow news day, I guess...
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
According to this note, the ATI and NVIDIA updates in 10.3.7 are good news for laptop owners because they reduce power consumption, thus improving battery life.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
So these new patches can join the scores of others which remain uninstalled on at least 99% of all Microsoft Windows-based systems. Hooray for Luser exploits. They keep teh intarweb fun!
After all, we've all heard the horror stories about windows users who installed the windows update only to have lots of software break.
;-)
Surely apple will be similar?
installed a couple of hours ago, and everything's working great
The CB App. What's your 20?
Such as this issue with 10.3.6 having Firewire problems and DVD Player issues has been fixed or not. I'm going to wait a while and see what comes up at MacFixit.com and then decide if I want to upgrade.
I am a FreeBSD admin who is due a new laptop.
I have been watching apple for some time and reading user posts about their experiences.
I had my little sister buy an iBook and she loves it. Of course the first thing I do is teach her how to use a terminal with simple commands via aim, (which she says, is better on MacOS).
Anyway, it sure looks like I will be getting one mainly because of the shared code with BSD. Seeing such a nice clean update/README was refreshing. I simply cannot wait to use tip on a iBook.
later
Calculator is still being goofy. It won't draw the calculator itself if you have speak button pressed enabled, you have to disable it, then restart calculator for it to work. This is just my experience. YMMV.
I hate sigs.
but doesn't that sound a bit like the press release they issued for the launch of the last update. Not to bag on them too much. 10.3.7 is good software. I've used the dev edition for a little while now (thanks to a good friend). It runs much faster than the previous version I had (original Panther). The speed increase of Open GL is extremely noticeable. Other than that, I haven't noticed much else.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300 376
And I must say, it was painful beta on this one
I suggest you install Microsoft Windows immediately!
HAHAHAHAHA! Just kidding. An abacus would be better.
...works like a charm. Last tim I installed an update, the whole system got b0rked due to an error in writing to /etc/ttys The file got a byte sum of zero, and the logon window hanged upon next reboot.
No such thing this time, and I think. I feel. I believe that the system is a bit, just a tiny bit snappier in writing to the screen. I'm on a newish Powerbook.
...here's a stupid question. Let's hope for a smart answer: If the kernel of Mac OS X (and +) is *nix style, then why can't we use their drivers for the Nvidia and ATI cards?
[Insert enlightenment here]
...M$ Windows users! Just because they make up the vast bulk of internet users -- and are the principal sufferers of avoidable security issues -- is no reason to encourage them to install silly things like critical security patches!
Shame on you, and I hope that -1, Offtopic stings like a sonofabitch!
Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't enjoy seeing Apple updates..I do! But, erm..is this truly front page material?
shame on us / for all we have done / and all we ever were / just zeroes and ones
Holy shit, 26.4 MB for the delta update from 10.3.6 to 10.3.7? What crack are they smoking?
Now I don't need to format my external drives myself.
With performance increases like this, OSX seems to just be getting better - good work Apple.
-Mike
Apple's release notes say to disconnect firewire drives prior to installing.
From the notes:
If you have a third-party FireWire hard drive connected, turn it off and disconnect it before installing this update. Reconnect it and turn it back on after installation is complete and you've restarted.
SteveM
I just updated to 10.3.7. I did run Cinebench but I don't think that is an accurate method of bench testing.
I ran UT 2004 on my DP 2.5 G5 w/ 6800 Nvidia. WOW. Its like playing on "slomo 2" without using the cheat. Much faster. FPS averaging around 110 with everthing turned on to max.
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
However, new Windows exploits and yet another Windows patch/update are hardly news anymore.
this is my sig
because of a stupid file incomplete load which was trashing the login window software.
:-(
I lost alot of my data when it wiped out the user area. (It wouldn't re-install properly.
I'm glad they got over that...
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
My server and desktop are both running FreeBSD 5.3-STABLE. I bought a 12" iBook in June and I absolutally love it. Go for it!
The ones from Apple tend to be minor bug fixes and even improvements in the way things work.
The ones from MS tend to be way overdue security fixes that arrive late, are quite monolithic, break shit and generally a hassle to clean up after. Hmmm, sounds like "Steve Ballmer, party guest from hell".
Halleluiah.
Either that or you can get a "slick" mac and install linux on it. Not to mention 'OS X' is built on BSD, so you don't necessarily have to only use Mac apps. I think people have to realize that 'OS X' is just a pretty interface built for a pre-existing BSD sub-system (granted, with a few proprietary tweaks).
You, don't even own one, so how the hell could you even talk about how good or bad they are? People get screwed by all companies, all the time. Some screw more than others, and in different ways. You just sound like a Linux fan-boy that doesn't like accepting the fact that there are other viable alternatives to Linux. Your entire thread is nothing more than a childish, stupid, rant. And you deserve a negative karma score.
*shakes fist*
You did know you could install linux on a PPC, didn't you? Or did that just slip your mind when you got so excited whilst describing Steve's penis?
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
I love it when people are surprised when an update works.
The whole system "got b0rked" probably because you a)didn't check the disk b)had disk errors c)didn't have journaling turned on.
I support 100+ macintoshes, and when I check the system disk first (using Diskwarrior off an external drive) and repair permissions, I have yet to have anything more dramatic than the installer not complete the install requiring a second application before rebooting the system. That happened...get ready...ONCE. We have everything from Clamshell iBooks to G3's to Dualie G5s; you name it, we've got it.
Diskwarrior is excellent insurance, and one can make a boot CD/DVD or use an iPod for booting. Wait about one day to see if there's any major problems with the update or it gets pulled. Run the checks before any update, and boom, you're good.
Please help metamoderate.
Yea its just a slow day I guess. Things like this should be left to news sites like macrumors.com
I too would like to see that SMB bug resolved. Has this been addressed in 10.3.7?
Then they go and for some reason disable that (it was the number 1 most useful 'upgrade' in Panther), to what was there before: you'd see the computer on the network, and you'd have to mount any folder you want to access...it's really annoying. They have that in the Tiger beta...hope they keep it.
IT is FREE is why. Steve Jobs just gave mac zealots a holiday bonus.
The XP patches were available then, but the 2K and NT ones weren't released until a few hours later for some reason.
I've got a new iMac and can say that the scrolling in Safari is great now. It was very choppy before.
Anybody know if it breaks the iBook/iMac screen spanning hack (http://www.rutemoeller.com/mp/ibook/ibook_e.html) ? I'm guessing it doesn't, but one never knows...
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
How did you know that I was able to post my message using only the finder? I thought my mojo was secret!
The CB App. What's your 20?
...this update seeks to destory?
-Sean
I like Preview, it seems to be much more lightweight than the Acrobat reader, but the PDF display, while good most of the time, was a bit suspect on occaision. Hopefully they fixed most of the problems and I can finally get rid of the adobe bloatware....
Monstar L
I started the installation and went to do some shopping (xmas) to come back and have a dialog on the screen asking me to quit iCal before it could get updated. D'oh! That was prior to installing and "optimizing" (wtf?) the big update. I know that it's ok because I didn't have to restart everything but... Would have it be nice if the installer had asked me AHEAD prior to download to quit iCal instead of waiting the middle of the installation? Doing installs of Quicktime brings up the same stupid dialog (update to pro.) Why does Apple assume that users keep their eyes on the screen during install at all time? A better way would be to answer all questions for every single update upfront then go with the install.
IT is FREE is why
.......etc etc...
So? 10.3.1, 10.3.2, 10.3.3, 10.3.4, 10.3.5, and 10.3.6 were free also. Even all the security patches and iApp updates were free.
Same goes for 10.2.1, 10.2.2, 10.2.3, 10.2.4, 10.2.5, 10.2.6,
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
Just upgraded, it's still working fine for me ( 1ghz eMac ).
I wonder if it's just me, but the system feels significantly snappier ;)
Using this on a cable modem with Apple AIrPort Extrememe Base Station, 10.3.7 is much improved! No more annoying refreshes required!
So far, it's a great update!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Well, it's true - that's why ;)
Guess there going to make us pay for that with tiger..
Its been out like 3 months on the PC side...
Sigh...
Whilst I, like others, question the need for this to be the stuff of the front page, I am grateful for the notification and can now report back post-install.
:)
I can't quite put my finger on it, but I'm pretty sure I can detect a speed increase, definitely for UI responsiveness - I've got an 800 MHz iBook G3 and a 400 Mhz iMac G3 here, and both seem to have gained a certain je ne sais quoi from the update, the iMac especially.
Thank you once again, Apple, for a free speedup to my ageing iMac. It is much appreciated!
iqu
(Seriously, it is commendable, the work that seems to go into these releases. Each point release is bringing genuine improvements, such that it is quite a shock to go back to a mint 10.3 install or suchlike. This is an area where Apple really excels - making even relative relics like my iMac more usable with every new update.)
...will it fix my battery? After installing 10.3.5, my battery took a huge hit. Lasted about five minutes. Then came 10.3.6. Increased to maybe 20 minutes, where it stays now. Just yesterday I did a clean install on the OS, so I've got no idle bullplop in the background.
:-D
And, yay. World of Warcraft!
Informatus Technologicus
Considering that most users don't download the update over a broadband connection, I would think that it's a good idea that they are not asked to quit programs until after the download. What if you want to do some work in the background while the download goes? If the user must quit all apps before downloading, they essentially give up their computer for the entire download+install time, rather than just the install time. I could see some kind of option to enable what you want, but I definitely don't think it should be the default behavior.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
This isn't flamebait, but an honest question.
.ogg files (not without tweaking anyhow). That Appleworks doesn't cut it for me (I need feature that aren't available with it) and since I'm not about to pay a kazillion $ to MS to use Office, I'll have to install OpenOffice. And I could go on... So I'm getting stuff like an .ogg player, OpenOffice, Firefox, etc... which I could all get on Linux (or even Windows). So, tell me, what's so great about OS X? There must be something I'm missing... I'm *this* close to buying an Apple notebook because everyone saying they're great, but I have this nagging doubt that it's not all it's claimed to be.
I'm thinking of buying an 12" iBook or PowerBook to replace my old computer. Now, there are a few things that bother me physically about them (they're big and heavy (twice as much as my Lifebook P2040), the battery life isn't really good and there's a blasted trackpad instead of a trackpoint)...
BUT! I could overlook all that, because I'd really like a computer that Just Works(TM). I love tweaking things in Linux (I run gentoo to give you an idea), but my life is catching up to me now and I find I don't have the time I used to to play with my computer (without doing anything "productive" done).
Now, I'm asking Apple fans (and detractors too) here: is OS X really *that* great, as I heard? Does it really Just Works(TM)? I'm asking because I've nearly went and bought my new Apple laptop, but then discovered that iTunes doesn't play
Right, wrong? I'd really appreciate your thoughts on this one...
I've been having nothing but problems with my firewire buner, and internal factory installed DVDrom ever since the 10.3.4 update. The internal drive only recognized disks about 5% of the time, and the drawer would eject at random, sometimes constantly, some times not for an hour.
Since the 10.3.7 update, I have a 100% read rate, I've tried 30 disks, DVD's and CD's.
They can't even count in Roman numerals, so how can they fix bugs and make improvements?
Oh well, what the hell...
This thing is a DOOZY I updated and the bloody thing broke OSeX's boot partition. Caveate Emptor!
I've noticed this:
Enter 87.68. Subtract 6.1, then subtract 23.43, then subtract 3.16, then subtract 4.99, then subtract 50.
On my G4 Cube, Calculator gives me a result of 7.1054273576e-15. The correct answer is zero.
Strange?
Saw a Porsche this morning with the numberplate "IXXI"
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Has anyone else noticed a colour shift after an awake from screensaver? I'm finding that sometimes there's a shift to a bluer hue. Turning the screensaver on and off sometimes resets it back to the normal colour balance. If this were on a CRT I would say that there's something wrong with the blue gun, but this is on the LCD of an iBook G4.
Strange. Could it be something with the video drivers?
Someone should mod parent up.
I am a recent Mac convert for my work development environment and my wife's home general computer - I've made the switch and could only be very little happier.
However, parent's viewpoint is valid and shouldn't be discounted just because it's not pro-Apple.
DVD Player STILL isn't working!!!
Thankfully the fine folks on the VCL project know what they're doing.
(Everything else seems pretty much the same, although the OS doesn't hog quite as much CPU as it used to...)
I've been bitching about the scrolling since OS X was release. Looks like this release finally fixed my concerns. On my iBook 800mhz G3 scrolling is sweet. So, for you lucky G5 types, you should be all set. Nice.
Could this be the answer to the World's energy needs? Imagine cities powered by software upgrades...
Can Microsoft match that?
What is the inverse of the Matrix?
Zero, smartass fuckhead.
Can someone please try the "top" command and tell me if it works. This update seemed to have "broken" top for me.
The new drivers in 10.3.7 aren't enough to improve WoW performance, the other key component is an update from Blizzard to re-enable certain hardware rendering features. Then we can finally get the performance boosts that were promised.
I'm downloading it now, but haven't installed it yet. Already I can tell that my TiBook is becoming... SNAPPIER!
Let's play Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I'll be Pestilence.
what's so funny?
A decibel - a RELATIONSHIP between two values of POWER http://arts.ucsc.edu/EMS/Music/tech_background/TE-
I think you're experiencing a combinaton of the placebo effect and/or dumb luck. To me. 10.3 feels exactly the same as 10.3.5 and so fouth. But your 128 MB of RAM may have something to do with it. Maybe 10.3.7 consumes slightly less RAM, just enough for it to make a difference on your machine.
I personally wouldn't run Mac OS X without 384 MB. That's where it really shines.
But I will tell you that I have indeed experienced major performance boosts from OS X Public Beta -> 10.0 -> 10.1 -> 10.2 -) 10.3. From the "reviews" of leaked developer builds of 10.4, it sounds like there are even more performance boosts to be had in Tiger. But I do think there'll come a point in a year or two, maybe even as soon as 10.5, where G3 users willl start to see performance turn the other direction.
If you're a student, the $950 iBook 12" is a really good deal. You get a compact little notebook, 1.2 GHz G4, CDRW/DVD-ROM combo drive, about 4 - 6 hours of battery life (5 hours real-world), and plenty of I/O options. The GPU is only a Radeon 9200, but it's still vastly better than having onboard "integrated" graphics that eat CPU and RAM bandwidth. Plus the Radeon 9200 is actually slightly faster than the crap FX5200 in the 12" PowerBook that costs more! The iBook is small, but thick enough to survive backpack life at 1.3 inches.
PowerBook hardware is very sturdy and very classy, but you'll pay out the nose for what's essentially only 0.3 GHz faster and Radeon 9700 GPU.
Anyway, getting back to OS X... I think it's a great OS and I love my iBook, but I still use and enjoy WinXP as well. They are different worlds, but the variety is nice. OS X has a great X11 environment if you so desire and the bundled developer tools and sample code are very handy. There are plenty of Mac sites and even a few that sell games too. Apple's online store is actually a good place to browse some of the more popular commerical apps, I think they try to maintain stock of 100 of the top selling Mac apps. They don't tend to sell the less popular, but still cool fringe apps, so you'll have to hit up some other resellers (like MacWarehouse or MacMall or Amazon) for those.
http://www.versiontracker.com
http://www.macsurfer.com
Both very handy sites.
I used Linux for a long time, and currently have to use Windows at work.
I finally got the PC gaming monkey off my back a few years ago, and bought a Powerbook - since then I bought a G5.
For what you are talking about, tired of tweaking stuff and want something that works a little more straightforwardly, OS X is fantastic.
I don't know if you've ever used Cygwin on Windows, but OS X is nothing like that - because it's really UNIX through and through. It's just not X-Windows (though that is an option, as you can install an X-server for free). The Terminal is a real first-class citizen in this OS, you can interact with running programs, drag stuff back and forth from the Finder, and generally have a shell that feels like it belongs with the OS even more than XTerm (and far more than a Cygwin shell).
It also comes with many common things you use, like Apache and SSH and CUPS and so on. Even better is that means these are kept up to date for you! I used to use debian and run regular updates against a security patching site, but here it's done for you very nicely, and in a reasonable timeframe (usually not quite as fast as the patches are ready, but still pretty fast).
If you want OpenOffice try NeoOfficeJ, which I use (even though I also bought Office). By default the menus will be fixed in the window (not the Mac Way) but you can get a patch to fix that. NeoOfficeJ requires no X server.
Also there is possibly the option of Abiword, which I think can also read/write Word documents. Or, possibly you can use TextEdit (built in) to read and write simple Word documents - the next version (Panther) will support tables which is really the only reason I do not use it myself for most WYSIWYG text editing.
I also love the dock. Some people don't seem to like it, and if you have problems with it there are many extensions you can use to work in other ways... but I greatly prefer the dynamic nature of the dock (it holds the things I am interested in running that day, like a palette of applications for the work at hand).
It's also very refined, there are just a lot of little touches that make it very easy to use in day-to-day operations.
I would go for it. Even if the experiment fails, an iBook has a pretty high resale value!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Though I would not be too surprised to see it come out for Panther in a patch about the same time.
That to me is the only downside of developing Java on the Mac, though if it really matters you could always get a dev subscription and get early access.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't know if that helped the poster, but it certainly helped me. I've been wondering what kind of hardware is good enough for running OS X on, since my budget's a bit limited, and your comments about the 4 year old machince make me feel better. I'm definitely going to look more into the used market now, though with the student discount I may just pick up a new iBook.
One thing: Perhaps it's because you've been on Macs for a while, but if you know what you're doing with a computer, spyware/malware/etc. are nothing to worry about. Even my friend who certainly doesn't "know" about computers but employs a bit of common sense has managed to stay clean.
I mean I have 2 Macs, and I check apple.slashdot.org all the time... but is this seriously something to post to the front page? I mean really?
Macs rule and all that, but even I can accept that a minor sytem update would be a pretty slow news day...
The beta have been circulating in bittorrent networks for a few weeks. I always wonder how they get it. Or it is a thing which is done purposefully by Apple Computers.
Get a PowerBook if you can afford it. I am using an iBook now, but wish I am on a PowerBook. Downloading 26Mbyte on a dial-up connection is a pain.
I use Slackware full time on my desktop. Am waiting to switch to FreeBSD 5.3 when I have a new harddisk.
Why does Mac Os X Update for clients do not update Apache and stuff like that?
I wonder why is this so. Since ALL Mac Os X comes with Apache installed. And other server (daemons). Why do they just release those update in their Mac Os X Server Update?
I know 10.3.7 didn't include Apache update, but earlier ones certainly did.
I wonder if the graphics driver updates are in response to Carmack's comments about Mac graphics, and are a prelude to a Mac Doom 3.
For all you "My mac seems just a bit snappier" people out there, try using Cocktail once in a while to maintain your system a bit...
;-)
I think, therefore I am...I think.
The preferred implementation of OpenOffice.org for OS X is NeoOffice/J, which is basically OO.o 1.1.2, but it uses Java so that it behaves more like a native app: It does not require X11, it supports native print dialogs, native fonts, all of the OS X international text input methods, and as of recently it even puts menus in the menu bar instead of in the window. I highly recommend it.
Disable features in Panther.
Hurm, ok. Yeah I don't use AFP either, but I'm on a Win2k3 box for a server, and as I understand the difference between Win2k and Win2k3 server when it relates to trying to connect a Mac to it is nearly night and day.
Gotta love it when as-of-yet MS hasn't had a clue on how to fix any of my minor issues that all add up when connecting a Mac to their "standard" SMB implementation on their server, and Apple's theory so far appears to be "It should just work" with no better explanation than that any time I've called or posted in their forums.
The only interesting thing so far has been that myself and several others are having many of the same issues on the Mac OS 10.3.x clients(haven't installed .7 yet) trying to connect to a Linux or BSD Samba server as people have been having trying to connect to Windows 2003 server boxes using SMB shares.
Some of the problems are "random" file loss(I haven't had this one), Mac files loosing their application association because the resource thread isn't saving properly(a problem with Mac file types saving a separate Data and Resource thread instead of putting the resource data into the data thread like an NTFS data thread does), and most common of all having the resource thread not free itself after a file is closed(unless you reboot the Mac) which makes the file unable to save properly if someone else opens the file causing data loss for sure if the end user is not careful(and which ones are?).
I've also had problems with Mac clients being unable to rename container folders that they have full access to and that they created, when the PC clients can rename perfectly. The Mac clients can rename any file, just not folders. Also had many problems with PC clients being locked out of folders entirely, but with Mac clients being able to access them fine(a server reboot needed to allow PC access again).
All around this has been pretty much a nightmare, with not much fun had by me. I'm getting much closer to trying a 3rd party solution such as Thursby or eXtreme-ZIP.
Duris MUD - The best pkill MUD. Ever.
Looking at the long list of hardware issues outlined here and others noted on Mac forums the bullshit about how Macs "just work" is looking more and more dated. I use a dual 2Ghz G5 and a 1.5Ghz PowerBook but my zeal has been blunted lately the more I hear of major hardware ****-ups such as the ones fixed in this update. A mate of mine had to send 2 new G5s back to Apple before receiving a 3rd machine which eventually "just worked". Apple should stop marketing their products via hardware compatibility bullshit when there are so many graphics driver issues, FireWire problems and overheating processors.
Optimizing has nothing to do with defragmentation. All it does is update prebindings.
as an aside, HFS+ is intended to continuously defrag while writing files. it's not the same as a dedicated defrag, but it's supposed to help a bit.
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
You're lying.
Is win2k3 better? I have an MSDN subscription, and thought about bringing up a 2003 directory server, but I remember the last time I tried I ran into a bunch of Kerberos authentication problems and gave up trying to connect to the smb shares. Forget about binding the mac to AD. So I'm interested in anyone's success stories with win2k3 server. At least my win2000 server works.
It's not so much specifically Kerebos authentication problems that you're having if I'm not mistaken. The problem involves the way that Win2k3 server attempts to digitally encrypt all SMB network traffic by default. This is a good idea in theory as it prevents packet sniffing by a physical network intruder for passwords. However, only Windows 2000 and Windows XP Pro clients currently support this authentication type.
Any other client type attempting to authenticate to the Win2k3 server will fail as it is unable to perform the proper authentication. This is true of Windows 98 clients, Linux clients connecting via SMB, and of course Mac clients connecting via SMB. In order to allow any of these non-current MS clients to connect to the Win2k3 server you need to edit the Domain group policy to disable SMB signing.
So far as I've read, currently Windows 2000 servers are working better as file and print servers and sometimes LDAP servers than Windows 2003 servers. This will likely change as Apple and MS continue to release updates to _hopefully_ actually make their products work together like they both claim that they do.
Duris MUD - The best pkill MUD. Ever.
I have installed the upgrade and all appears to be ok. However, when trying to read the hi-res Firefox ad (mentioned in a recent /. article) at http://www.mozilla.org/press/nytimes-firefox-final .pdf my preview program just consumes tons of memory and hangs. I have no idea whether it would have worked before the upgrade. Perhaps someone could try it out?
Kevin
"It's not the cough that carries you off, it's the coffin they carry you off in" O. Nash
The first round of G4 PowerBooks are using the same crappy ATO Rape Pro cards.
http://twitter.com/gr
I think s/he's referring to _la revolution_, not to ...anything else.
http://twitter.com/gr
Decided to take the jump.
I did the usual, repair permissions, run Disk Utility's Repair, disconnected the FW400 (911 Chipset) drive which I was worried about, updated, restarted, and ran permissions fix again.
No real problems so far, outside of getting the spinning beach ball at login twice. Outside of that, everything seems consistently faster. Safari loaded before it even got to its second bounce and now it absolutely screaming fast at loading.
REMEMBER TO DISCONNECT ANY AND ALL FIREWIRE DRIVES BEFORE UPDATING.
Anyways, so far, so good.
So if you are a Linux guy, OSX is a pretty good place to be. It really does "just work" the vast majority of the time. The thing is, it is not Linux. If you are going to enjoy OSX you really have to be aware that it does things differently. Some things that you know how to do on Linux will not work easily on OSX. I know lots of Linux users who have moved to OSX in the last few years, and most of them are very happy with it. The ones that have issues are the ones who want to do things the "Linux Way" but still use all the OSX features. You mentioned .ogg files, and it is a reasonable example. OSX favors mp3, AAC and a few other formats. Getting itunes to play .ogg is as simple as dropping a plugin in the appropriate folder. You can put it in your user account or the system wide plugin directory. Where people run into problems is when they have all their music sorted in a particular way, with lots of tags, and they try to use iTunes for the first time. By default, it sorts all of your music for you and rearranges things to suit it. You can keep it from doing so, but most people do not think to adjust the preferences before importing their music. This can drive some people absolutely nuts. This is a good analogy for OSX in general, if you do things the way Apple intends, things work well and easily. If you want to do things another way, well maybe it is better to stick with non-Apple-created apps.
Another thing to keep in mind is there is an application hierarchy. Not all apps are first class citizens. Cocoa apps are fully functional, Carbon apps are pretty good, and X-windows apps just feel like bad ports. Some of the best features of the OS, like system wide services, are only available for Cocoa apps and select Carbon apps. It is so amazing to be able to do spell checking and grammar checking and translations in every program with text, that it just seems so wrong when you use a program where suddenly, none of that is available.
Finally, a Linux switcher should keep in mind that if they dual boot into Windows, a good number of those programs will be unavailable. If you are a hard core gamer, or heavily reliant on some Windows program, you might want to do some research into what applications are available.
Good luck. I'm sure you can tell by your posting, but the mac community is very good about providing help and advice. If you are struggling with something forums are even more helpful than linux ones (and no one tells you to RTFM.) If my post has not put you off, go ahead any buy the laptop, you'll be amazed by just how enjoyable using OSX can be. It is just so much nicer for so many little things that you will never notice unless you really think about it.
I don't have time to spend on getting everything 'just right' the way I like it, if you want to do that you should install Linux and make patches for your favourite open source software. I'm more than willing to take something that works well and adapt to the software's various ideosynchracies. The Apple software like Mail.app, Safari, iTunes, iCal, XCode, Terminal etc. more than works for me, combined with a rock solid WiFi implementation (far better than Windows XP which tends to randomly drop the connection for a few seconds every now and then) this makes OS X my favourite environment to get work done in.
The interactive way to Go -- http://www.playgo.to/iwtg/en/
Upgrade to 10.3.7 yields this unhappy statistic. Elapsed time to launch mail: 10.3.6 ~20 - 30 seconds. 10.3.7 ~70 - 75 seconds. Not so snappy there. Otherwise snappier on this G4 PwrBk, 512MB.
What is it with Slashdot? You point out some blatantly misleading marketing hype and because it concerns a *nix derivative it's suddenly heresy. I'm a Mac user myself fer krissakes.
You *still* can't update a system via ssh.
What are you talking about? That's been around since at least 2002. man softwareupdate and read up on it.
SMB browsing and connecting to Windows shares works again. Was wondering what was wrong. Also, VNC now allows me to connect to windows machines. Now I can watch what accounting is doing again!
I've had this happen, on and off, in many previous versions of 10.3.x (and maybe 10.2.x too). What happens is that it activates the wrong ColorSync profile for some stupid reason. Go into System Preferences->Displays->Color and click your preferred display profile to get things back to normal.
I have had moderate success with doing a very slow battery discharge to extend the battery's life.
Set the display and hard disks to sleep as soon as possible, but tell the machine itself to never go into sleep mode. Turn the backlighting off, quit all programs, unplug it and just leave the 'book to slowly wear itself out. This may take several hours more than you think it will. After it eventually puts itself to sleep, plug it back in and charge it up. If your battery gets better, you can try it again.
There are command line tools to check your battery's status before and after this trick, but I don't have them with me. Good luck!
I just updated and it seems the redraws and scrolls are a little faster on my 1.5GHZ PowerBook. I was wondering, after chatting with a Windows developer at a local coffee shop in Seattle, was he correct in saying that Windows Longhorn will basically have a copy of the Quartz rendering engine and therefore will have all of the "eye candy" and more that Mac OS X has? He said it does, things like transparency, expose, a dashboard like side bar system and the transitions. What will Apple do next then do you think? A little off subject I know but I'd be interested in opinions.
As a long-time Macintosh user, I demand this bug be fixed, and will not be upgrading until I can be assured my mouse will not be saddled with a second button!
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
What binary configuration files are you referring to?
Every configuration file I could find that is anything different from what you'd find on any other *nix system was just a plist file, which is nothing more than an xml file.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
Well, I've seen a lot of sniping at Windows Software Updates and how they break things and stuff in here. But I gotta tell ya, before 10.3.7 my uptime was directly 1:1 related to the amount of time since the last software update. I would put the machine to sleep, wake it up... the only time I rebooted was when I installed an update that required it. That had been going on for over four months now, except for one memorable experience where I dropped the damn thing four feet onto a hard floor and it froze up on me.
After 10.3.7? Well, in the last 24 hours I've gotten three kernel panics on my 15" AlBook. All of them while the machine was left unattended, one when the screen was asleep and two when it was awake.
Argh.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
Why can't the updater just quit iCal by itself?
I hardly think that it doesn't do so because it can't, but rather because it shouldn't. Personally, I feel the installer should simply tell me to quit the apps rather than quit them for me, and it appears that Apple agrees with me.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
Apple developers get the preview builds months before the actual release. It only costs $500 to become an Apple Select member, which gives you these benefits. There are, shall we say, quite a few of us around. So it doesn't surprise me that some of them are willing to share the wealth.
Frankly, even if I were willing to break the agreement I made with Apple not to do such things, I don't like any of you enough to want to do you any favors.
Yeah, yeah, I know: you love me too.
Cheers.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.