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Mac OS X 10.4.1 Is Out

MrBadbar writes "Software Update just informed me that an update to Mac OS X (10.4.1) is now available. The updates include mail, address book, dashboard widgets, Safari, iLife, and other miscellaneous fixes. At this rate, it's only about 18 more weeks until 10.5."

39 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. A couple of notes by daveschroeder · · Score: 5, Insightful
    First of all, Mac OS X 10.4 has been complete since March 28. So while it wasn't released until April 29, Mac OS X 10.4.1 has been in development for over six weeks.

    Second, Mac OS X 10.4.1 completely fixes the the widget auto-installation issue by adding widgets to the items that Safari prompts for before a download is complete. You will now receive a notice:

    "(file) is an application. Are you sure you want to download the application (file)?"

    ...including when Safari is in its default state, i.e., "Open 'safe' files after downloading" is enabled. This issue is now completely mitigated, as no item can be downloaded or installed without the user's express knowledge and permission. Therefore, this issue is now closed.

    1. Re:A couple of notes by jdb8167 · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Mac OS X 10.4.1 completely fixes the the widget auto-installation issue

      I can confirm this. I would disagree on the "completely" but it is certainly good enough for now. It would be better if you couldn't override existing widgets and even better if Apple supplied an advanced button that allowed me to control the sandbox that is built in to Dashboard. As it stands now, Apple has a working sandbox with various levels of security which is completely useless because it isn't exposed to the end user. What is the point of having a AllowFullAccess boolean if the developer can add it without any controls by the user?

      Also, do you know if this fixes the 1GB sparse image problem? I see a HFS resource fork issue vaguely mentioned in the developer release notes but I have no idea if that is the sparse image problem or not.

  2. Stability Issues by moosesocks · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've experienced quite a few stability issues since upgrading to Tiger, all of which have required me to manually reboot. Hopefully this update will fix whatever that is.

    Additionally, Tiger occasionally turns off the function and volume keys on certain powerbooks. This has been confirmed by several users and does not appear to be fixed in the update.

    Sigh.......

    --
    -- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
  3. Re:Installed fine here... by bobinabottle · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Interestingly enough, this happened to me also in my 3yr old powerbook. When I installed Tiger i zeroed the disk before hand and after installation and so forth the hard disk drive would make these crunching and clicking noises. I'd had a few minor problems prior to this and it was zeroing the disk that put it over the edge.

    I ended up replacing the hard disk myself (warranty expired long time ago) and I was amazed at how the computer was even still booting off that disk - when I took it out and shook it i could hear parts floating around in there like the disk heads were literally hanging off.

    Note that this really doesn't have anything to do with tiger - its a hardware failure (if your problem is the one I was having).

  4. GPGMail 1.1 no longer tiger compatible by artoffacts · · Score: 2, Informative

    The gpgmail 1.1 bundle seems to have broken under 10.4.1. It was working nicely under 10.4.

    ~/Library/Mail/Bundles/

    seems to have been renamed to:

    ~/Library/Mail/Bundles (Disabled)/

    A warning dialog box is displayed notifying you that the bundle is no longer supported the first time you start up Mail under 10.4.1

    1. Re:GPGMail 1.1 no longer tiger compatible by Gogo+Dodo · · Score: 3, Informative
      The disabling of Mail bundles is documented in the release notes under the Mail and Address Book section:

      Resolves a potential issue in which Mail could unexpectedly quit, stop responding, or fail to import your previous emails if third-party software were installed in a ~/Library/Mail/Bundles or /Library/Mail/Bundles--this update prevents previously-installed plug-ins from loading. (Click here for more information.)

    2. Re:GPGMail 1.1 no longer tiger compatible by eske · · Score: 2, Informative

      plz go to the gpgmail homepage http://www.sente.ch/software/GPGMail/English.lproj /GPGMail.html
      or just do this:
      (from homepage)
      GPGMail & 10.4.1
      MacOS X 10.4.1 will automatically disable all Mail bundles when encountering them the first time. To re-enable GPGMail (which works fine with 10.4.1), you need to:

      * Quit Mail
      * In Finder, rename folder $HOME/Library/Mail/Bundles (Disabled) back to $HOME/Library/Mail/Bundles.
      * In Terminal, type:

      defaults write com.apple.mail EnableBundles 1
      defaults write com.apple.mail BundleCompatibilityVersion 2

      * Relaunch Mail

      --
      What rimes on recursion What rimes on recursion What rimes on recursion What rimes on recursion
  5. Re:Mail Imap is signicantly faster. by bobinabottle · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Speaking of mail..

    Mail.app now doesn't support the httpmail plugin.

    Again.

    Just after it was updated.

    How annoying.

  6. Re:SMB no change by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Did you fill out a bug report. This is a big issue and I put in a bug report about it. If more people place in a bug report about it maybe they can fix it quicker. For the short term I am using NFS to connect to the files I need but I really need SMB soon. Lucally for me I don't need my Mac to get my work done. But it makes it a lot more efficient when I have it.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  7. Re:Differences! by GaryPatterson · · Score: 2

    So you think there should be no troubleshooting notes for users having difficulty?

    Look on the Windows Update site and you'll find plenty of troubleshooting info there too. In fact, a cursory glance shows me that there are whole forums devoted to helping people whose Windows Update doesn't "just work."

    I run Software Update and it works fine for me. I don't need the troubleshooting notes.

    I've run Windows Update and it's been fine too.

    Perhaps this is one of those things caused by just not understanding how to use a Mac. You don't seem to know much about them.

  8. Re:What's new video-wise? by bitpart · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nope. Still not enabled, as the Quartz Debug Tools menu shows: you still need to manually enable it.

  9. Right on schedule... by jht · · Score: 4, Informative

    Since Tiger wend GM at the end of March, it's been a month and a half for bug fixing, with the last two-plus weeks of that period essentially the public beta of the OS.

    I've already installed it on my PowerBook, and after a few days' time I'll see if it's the update that makes it worth recommending for most of my clients to start their testing. Usually, it seems to take Apple a couple more point releases to really get the major kinks out, so I'm expecting Tiger to hit its stride around mid-summer.

    For those of you unfamiliar with Apple release cycles - expect to see a point release like this every 4-6 weeks initially, followed by a cutback to every couple of months later on. Security updates are typically released on a separate basis, about once per month, and will be available for Panther as well for the foreseeable future. Even 10.2 still gets some security fixes now and then. And there will be occasional updates to the iApps and other stuff that are done separately.

    There's also a few Safari bugs that snuck in late in the cycle that haven't been addressed yet - Safari is unchanged in 10.4.1.

    --
    -- Josh Turiel
    "2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
  10. No, not quite... by daveschroeder · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "They" (Apple) weren't supposed to fix anything having to do with VPN clients in 10.4.1.

    Making VPN clients work with 10.4.x is completely up to the vendors, and all vendors have had all the information and everything they have fundamentally needed, from a developer standpoint, to make their clients work with Tiger since *last June*.

    There is absolutely no reason all of the VPN client vendors shouldn't have had their clients out on April 29 alongside Tiger. Any feigned surprise on their part, or finger pointing at Apple, is completely bullshit. Yes, Tiger changed how things work which "broke" the old clients. But they've also had almost a year to fix it.

    1. Re:No, not quite... by McBainLives · · Score: 3, Informative

      Cisco released an update (4.6.03.0160) on 5/13, but be aware that it's for single-processor configs only. Check out http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/ 12696 for some initial reactions.

      --
      I came, I saw, I left. It looked better in the brochure.
  11. Problems with third-party plug-ins (bundles) by bitpart · · Score: 4, Informative

    According to the Knowledge Base about the update, all previously-installled third-party Mail.app plug-ins will not load. I assume that means that you just need to reinstall them.

  12. GPG Bundle remains broken by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Even if you reinstall after the upgrade.

    I have a PowerBook 1.5GHz with 2GB RAM, and under 10.4 the internal drive and both firewire disks (one a FW400, the other a FW800) would spin perpetually, my load average went from the normal .4 or so, to an AVERAGE of 2, and the temperature inside the box was hovering at 140 degrees.

    All of this has been corrected in 10.4.1 (for me). Load average is back down to .2 to .4, the process table is still full of these:

    483 mdimport 0.0% 0:03.16 4 67 65 1.83M 7.40M 4.72M 41.8M

    but it's no longer grinding all the disks into oblivion.

    I can also reboot now. Since 10.4 I could not shutdown or reboot, had to open terminal and reboot manually.

    So far this update has resolved many issues I was experiencing.

    Anybody know what the deal is with Q2DE?

  13. Re:Installed fine here... by skingers6894 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I installed 10.4.1 update without incident.

    BUT I had a problem earlier with a grinding noise in the hard-disk area on my powerbook.

    Turned out to be that the hard disk was faulty.

    IDE type Hard drives have an area of space reserved for "reallocating" bad sectors. If your disk is really bad this area will fill up. When there is no more space left to reallocate to you will get a SMART error.

    Click on "About this Mac", click "more info" and select your drive from the ATA section. You will see the SMART status there.

    If you get this then you need to replace the drive.

    I ended up replacing my drive with a 7200RPM Momentus - MAN I'm happy the old one died now!

  14. Re:Wireless reception lower by kegger64 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Your signal strength isn't any lower with Tiger. The AirPort signal strength indicator has actually been retooled to show, not the signal strength, but the speed of the connection. This is a change from Panther.

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    653899 - Another prime Slashdot UID
  15. Obligatory Snappier! by pyrrhonist · · Score: 3, Funny
    Just in case nobody else posts it, here's the obligatory performance increase post:
    I just installed this update, and wow! I don't know how to describe it, but my Mac just seems much snappier! It's amazing how Apple increases the performance of the OS with every release. Thanks Apple, you rule!
    </SATIRE>
    --
    Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
  16. Re:FUD'ly AC by vought · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'll do you one better:

    1. On the Apple menu, choose Software Update
    2. If updates are available, click Install.

    Boy howdy, that Windows Update sure is easy in comparison. "You MUST install Direct X 9 separately from everything else, reboot seventy-eleven times, and dance backwards across the carpet while holding a DDR 2700 DIMM...."

  17. Has anyone else noticed. . . by dispensa · · Score: 3, Funny

    that this makes their PowerBook 17" waaaaay faster?

    Yeah, me neither. :-)

  18. Re:FUD'ly AC by GaryPatterson · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... and from VirtualPC, you have to do that while standing upside down on one hand, with Yoda on one foot banging you with a stick while you try to balance rocks with your mind. ... and then your X-Wing sinks. I hate it when that happens.

  19. Re:Installed fine here... by nacturation · · Score: 4, Funny

    IDE type Hard drives have an area of space reserved for "reallocating" bad sectors. If your disk is really bad this area will fill up.

    Right, and when it fills up, everything overflows and the loose bits sit on the bottom of the hard drive case... that's why you hear the grinding noise.

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  20. Re:SMB no change by Squozen · · Score: 3, Informative

    I can access both my Debian boxes fine from my Mac. Didn't change a thing after a clean install except specify the correct workgroup in the Directory Access app. I'm not even sure if I need to do it or not, but everything works and I'm fine with that.

    Have you checked your logs to see why Samba is failing?

  21. Re:SMB no change by jamie · · Score: 2, Informative

    Hm. Works for me. Debian stable running a stock samba, mounted in Tiger from the regular old Network pane of the Finder. Only real change I made to /etc/samba/smb.conf was to bump SO_SNDBUF and SO_RCVBUF from 4096 to 65536.

  22. Quartz 2D Extreme by Mr.+Cancelled · · Score: 4, Informative

    This update still did not enable Quartz 2D-Extreme on my system, so on a hunch, I enabled it manually, as per this hint, and wow... Really nice!

    I had temporarily enabled it under 10.4.0 via the debugging tool, but the speed difference was nowhere near what I'm getting after booting the entire OS with it enabled!

    A lot of people are reporting bugs with this being enabled, which is likely why Apple still hasn't enabled it by default. But I've had absolutely 0 bugs so far - Which to be honest has only been about 2.5 hours, but still... It's enough to at least justify trying it out IMHO. Using the hint I reference above, you ocan always "reset" it to off, if you do run into problems.

    For what it's worth, I'm going to be leaving this on unless some (any!) problems pop up tomorrow. It's very impressive! Even apps which I wouldn't think would be impacted, such as Remote Desktop (controlling an XP box from within OSX) are noticably faster.

    For the record, I'm running a dual 2Ghz w/2gb of ram, and an ATI 9600. Your mileage may vary.

    1. Re:Quartz 2D Extreme by Yaztromo · · Score: 5, Informative
      This update still did not enable Quartz 2D-Extreme on my system, so on a hunch, I enabled it manually, as per this hint, and wow... Really nice!

      That hint enables Q2DX the hard way. The easier way is to open a terminal and paste in the following command:

      sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver Quartz2DExtremeEnabled 1

      HTH!

      Yaz.

    2. Re:Quartz 2D Extreme by Yaztromo · · Score: 2, Informative
      Why not just go to the control panel Spotlight search and type "Enable Quartz Extreme"?

      Because:

      1. Those search terms provide no results (at least over here on 10.4.1), and
      2. There is a difference between Quartz Extreme and Quartz 2D Extreme

      Yaz.

  23. For the curious... by mithran8 · · Score: 2, Informative

    The 10.4.1 Update changes approximately 500 file system objects, not counting files modified only by prebinding.

    The summary:

    476 changes
    16 additions
    0 removals

    Detailed list of modifications is available here.

    For reference - these changes were captured by the OpenSource build of Tripwire, patched for Mac OS X. It's pretty likely that any changes captured on your system will differ in a few ways, but the basic theme should be consistent.

    Jason

    --
    An object at rest cannot be stopped!
  24. Re:FUD'ly AC by dmarcoot · · Score: 2

    and you think your a IT pro, having updating 10 windows machines, but apparently on your first OSx update you had a problem, and you then immediately post to Slashdot , but as anonymous coward and think you have any credibility in your post implying windows is systematically easier, regardless of security flaws, by posting a article for people who fucked up their installation? yeah, your Kung Foo is the best!

    your are a child updating your High school lab arent you?

  25. My biggets complaint... by dmarcoot · · Score: 3, Informative

    Spotlight re-indexes the system HD. that was a unexpected and gave me reason to go to gym while it finished. I hope future updates dont suffer the same performance hit.

  26. Re:Differences! by CoolBru · · Score: 2, Interesting

    FWIW, as easy as it is to use, I've found it's quite common to have a PC completely trashed by Windows update, particularly under Win2k. The symptom is that it deletes ALL DLLs in the system folder (first error you see is something fatal like 'ntoskrnl.dll not found'). I've had this happen on about 5 machines now, usually shortly after clean installs. There are also 2 Windows updates (853732 and 840987) that reproducibly trash Virtual PC for me. You'd have thought that MS would be able to make Windows work on the only PC they actually sell... YMMV of course.

  27. Re:SMB no change by tyagiUK · · Score: 5, Informative

    I had problems connecting to my Samba server running on Debian when I first installed 10.4.

    It appears as though 10.4 requires the password exchange to be encrypted, so in the smb.conf file:

    ; encrypt passwords = false

    (note the semi colon).

    I used to run plaintext passwords with 10.3 for some reason. I think it was because 10.3 didn't like encrypted password exchange with Samba, but I may be mistaken (poor memory).

    --
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  28. Re:What's new video-wise? by diqmay · · Score: 2, Insightful

    so could anyone explain what advantages Quartz 2D provides? is there a consice explanation someone could point me to?

    Also, what kind of hardware do you need to enjoy any Q 2D benifits?

  29. Re:Or try automatic updates. by Paradox · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The myth that Windows Auto Updates work without intervention is a beautiful and compelling story, but sadly it is just that for the vast majority of people.

    The truth is, updating your OS can be a hassle, no matter what machine you use. Apple has a fairly good track record, but that doesn't mean it's always going to be painless.

    What does DX9 do for a PC? Well, DX9 is an API that allows games to run. Wouldn't it be nice if gaming on a mac was just a reboot away?


    I guess I could own a PC for gaming, instead of for doing real work like my Mac.

    Or I could get a console and enjoy a wider selection of games, and not be pigeonholed into dozens of boring FPS rehashes (now you're in WWII! Now you're in WWII in space! Now you're in WWII in space as a SpaceNazi!) or a bunch of repetitive MMORPGS (Now you're fighting monsters for experience! Now you're doing it in space!).

    Wouldn't it be nice if the PC gaming industry could be rebooted and start producing more interesting content instead of boring rehashes of the same game over and over? How many Diablo clones, Doom Clones and Warcraft clones can you take before your gag reflex kicks in?
    --
    Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
  30. Re:I don't get it by Psykechan · · Score: 2, Funny

    Are you sure that you are using Mac OS X 10.4 and not the online retailer TigerDirect.com? Some people get those confused.

  31. Re:What's new video-wise? by Gulthek · · Score: 3, Informative

    Benefits of Quartz 2D extreme: speed, quality. Graphics render faster and look better especially during transformations (like the genie effect).

    Can your hardware handle it?

    Go into "About this Mac" and click "More Info"

    Select the video card for more detailed information

    Look for:

    Core Image: Supported

    Core Image-capable graphics cards include:
    ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
    ATI Radeon 9600 XT, 9800 XT, X800 XT
    nVidia GeForce FX Go 5200
    nVidia GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
    nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL, 6800 GT DDL

    Full details.

  32. Without shouting... by argent · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sorry for the shouting, but I've been watching this slow motion train wreck roll itself out for about a year, since Apple failed to properly close the design flaw underlying the "help:" hole, which is another part of the same problem I see here.

    When people are faced with dialog boxes when they do a routine operation saying "what is about to happen may be dangerous", then they pretty soon get in the habit of just clicking "yes" without thinking.

    Do you want to delete this file? (click) (oh, hell)

    Do you want to run this ActiveX control? (click) (damn)

    I spent several years supporting Windows users, and every now and then one of them would come to me and say "I just did something stupid, I got this box, and it asked if I wanted to run something, and I said yes, and now I'm infected". And I'd go clean their PC up. And some of them, a few months later, would come to me again, "I'm sorry, I did it again"...

    This was still pretty rare, for a long time, because I'd set up a policy back around 1997 that Internet Explorer and Outlook and every other application that used the MS HTML control was banned. So the only time these problems came up for many years was when someone was using IE against my instructions. A couple of years back, though, we got merged with the rest of the company and my policy was overridden by the parent's "IE only" policy. Then I started getting this regularly.

    But, most users were using other browsers, like Netscape. And Netscape (and Firefox, mostly) doesn't have any kind of "auto run" mechanism. You have to explicitly download a file and run it. I still had a few people that did that, but I never had one do it twice, and even when most users were using Netscape it was IE and Outlook where the vast majority of my virus and spyware problems came from.

    This is not a hard lesson to learn. Automatically opening safe files after you download them is dangerous. Automatically downloading them is more dangerous. Automatically downloading and installing them when they're not even "safe"? I've watched what happens when you allow that, EVEN WHEN you pop up a dialog box when you do it, and if Apple keeps this up, I'm going to have to treat Safari as the same kind of "Typhoid Mary" as Internet Explorer. It's not quite as bad, I suppose it's like going to work when you've got a contagious cold... it's still not what anyone would call appropriate behaviour.

    A previous thread on the same subject here.

    1. Re:Without shouting... by argent · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Is there really a substantive difference between downloading a file and saying "Yes, I want to run this" and downloading a file and double clicking on it?

      Yes. It's the difference between accidentally buying a pallet of junk at an auction by waving your hand at the wrong time, and buying a pallet of junk at a surplus store by pointing to it and saying "I want to buy it".

      It's hard for me to understand how you could have a powerful, flexible system that doesn't allow the user to do stuff by clicking on things.

      You'll have to explain what you're getting at here. I haven't suggested that people shouldn't be allowed to "do stuff by clicking on things". I'm saying that the browser shouldn't interpret a click in a "sandboxed" environment as a request to move an untrusted document outside that environment and open it.

      Clicking on links in a browser is something that is, normally, always a "safe" operation as far as your computer is concerned. The browser is sandboxed, as you mode from page to page the websites can sow you different serts of images and text, even quite sophisticated ones uring Flash or Java, but you can't normally have that take over your computer, any more than reading a book can make your head explode, or watching TV can set your end-tables on fire.

      And that's important, because you can't trust people on the net not to want to set your end-tables on fire or explode your head.

      So moving OUT of the "safe" environment into the "unsafe" environment should require an explicit action. If you're watching TV and someone comes to the door, you have to get up and go down to the door and let them in. You don't yell "yes, who is it" and have your house interpret that "yes" to mean "let them in".

      Well, that's what a dialog box does in this situation. It doesn't make an unsafe operation safe, it just makes it one that can happen by mistake.