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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.'"
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.
installed a couple of hours ago, and everything's working great
The CB App. What's your 20?
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300 376
And I must say, it was painful beta on this one
...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.
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
According to Blizzard, the 10.3.7 update helps, but a forthcoming WoW patch will make it run even better.
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.
Install Saft for type ahead find and other nifty stuff.
Because Mac OS X uses I/O Kit.
English is easier said than done.
OS X has its own style of drivers, completely different than any other operating system. It uses c++ to code their IOKit drivers, which make it easy to program, but not portable at all.
Yeah SP2's failure rate - where by failure rate I mean turn computer into an unusable state requiring a fresh reinstall - seems to be about 1%. As for breaking specific applications I would say around 5% of people have problems. This is all based on experience working tech desk at an ISP and being a computer tech for the univeristy library.
;) but, seriously, I wish that company would get sucked into an enormous black hole and never ever ever return.
Of course, it could be worse. I love SP2 for the fact that as soon as somebody installs it I can immediately shut off Norton "Internet Security" also known as Norton never works right, Norton constantly breaks itself on updates, Norton randomly decides to block port 80 and 25, and - oh by the way - Norton doesn't offer tech support so have fun supporting our product ISPs!
Not that I hate Norton or anything
I have screen spanning doctor running on 10.3.7 and it works fine.
This sounds promising:
Before you run softwareupdate from the CLI, run this:
$ export COMMAND_LINE_INSTALL=1
The Quicktime dialogue box will be blocked.
Any of us Mac geeks here could go on for hours responding to your post (and undoubtedly somebody's writing up a 6,000 word post as I type this), but I'll answer it this way:
I'm an old school Mac user (print shop graphics since '88) and when OS X hit the scene, I was really looking forward to living my life at the command line, becoming an über hacker, since all my years of troubleshooting skills would need to be relearned. Only problem is, there's nothing to do.
Sure, in the early days (10.0.4) I was using unsupported machines (603 and 604e clones with G3 upgrades) so some trickery (thank you, Ryan Rempel!) was required to get it to install. But once installed (and I've since moved to a G4 tower), there's just nothing to do. It really is true: everything Just Works(TM), which in my case, has been something of a disappointment.
I've seen one kernel panic in the past two years, and that happened at the end of the install process for one of the 10.3 point upgrades. The machine booted fine after that, so I don't even really count it. I spend at least as much time using XP at work as I do using this thing at home, and even though my well specced office PC has ~5 times the clock speed, my Mac is *much* harder to bog down or destabilize.
Also, OpenOffice has been surprisingly good since I started using it recently. In addition to that, I recommend two additional apps for a new Mac user: A $25 app called Little Snitch for more fine grained control over IPFW, and a freeware app called Desktop Manager that gives you a totally freaking awesome virtual desktop implementation with mind bending eye candy.
In a way, it was actually easier ten years ago to convince people... all you had to do was point out that Macs cost four times as much, but we still bought 'em. Now that they're comparably priced, that argument doesn't work anymore. Ain't that a bitch? Well, no. Otherwise I'd still be using my old dual 604e tower.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
1% failure rate is impressive. I've had 4 machines that I was hoping SP2 would "fix" and didn't help at all. And several machines that were broken after SP2. In the old days a good rule of thumb was that windows 98 would self destruct after a few years. Now a good rule of thumb is Win XP will self destruct with the first teenager that browses the internet with it.
OS X just works. (Almost - I've seen occasional issues with the CUPS subsystem in older releases that needed either a reboot or a manual daemon restart to fix. But almost.)
Ease of connecting wifi is one example. To get this powerbook to connect to a netgear AP with WPA was trivial. It just worked. Trying the same connection from an XP laptop was a nightmare of driver upgrades and obscure hex strings.
The GUI isn't perfect, but it's better than Windows, KDE or Gnome, IMO. (Even if you prefer KDE or Gnome you'll probably still consider the GUI quite workable).
And it's a BSD box under the covers, with a decent X server, and lots of (good) development software bundled with the system.
The downside is that while the software that's available tends to be really good there isn't quite the vast range of software you'll see under windows (particularly games).
I've had two major hardware failures on my powerbook (both fairly normal laptoppy failures - HD started getting flaky and the smart charge circuit in the battery went bad). My laptop gets around 12x7 usage, so no big surprise. Under the AppleCare contract, though, they fixed 'em both (HD was out to be repaired for 4 or 5 days, battery was a no questions swap in the store). That's about the same failure rate I've seen with Dell and Sony laptops - but trying to get Dell or Sony to support them (or even sell spare parts) was an exercise in futility.
So, while it's not as Truly Perfect as the Apple True Believers will try and tell you, it is a damn fine system. I have a range of systems that I use (Windows, Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac) but both the laptop and my main desktop are Macs by choice.
Buy a 2nd hand G3 imac on ebay.
You'll get decent performance for not much money.
I have discovered a wonderful
ATI does most certainly write their own drivers. Apple handles any integrated card drivers because, well, they are Apple built OEM cards. My Powerbook cannot use the ATI drivers because my card is an Apple onboard ATI card. My G3 tower could use the ATI drivers because it used a ATI PCI card. (Both my Apple supplied Rage 128 and my aftermarket Radeon 7000 took ATI drivers). Nvidia also wrote their OS X drivers as far as I'm aware, although I'm sure they work very closely with APple.
It is fixed. Not only did it browse perfectly through my Active Directory domain to my XP SP2 shared printer, but then it actually installed updated CUPS drivers when I selected the printer. And the Word doc I printed from my Mac off my Active Directory shared home folder worked beautifully. Who says you can't integrate a Mac into a Windows network??
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.
Alternatively you can edit your Slashdot preferences to only view stories on the subjects you like.
Let's see.
PC - $
Win2K - $$
OS X - $
VMware - $$$$
Holy trustfund baby, it appears someone's out of touch with the economic situation.
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.
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.
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.