Mac OS X 10.4.3 Released

parry writes "Software Update just delivered the Mac OS X 10.4.3 update to my PowerBook. Key changes include improved responsiveness when searching in Spotlight, Safari now passes the Acid2 test, better performance for MS-DOS formatted volumes and numerous bug fixes."

Comments

What will it be for early downloaders...

[xactuary]

Trick or Treat?

Re:What will it be for early downloaders...

[Uart]

OSX updates are usually pretty solid. I haven't installed this one yet, but I will before I go to bed (and therefore don't have to stop everything to reboot. I am always VERY confident to install Apple updates -- I personally haven't experienced any problems, except with Safari when it was still "beta" and that hardly counts.

Yeah, there is a chance that this update will wreak havoc, but considering how responsible Apple is about these sorts of things, I can't imagine that it would.

Re:What will it be for early downloaders...

[domefreak]

I am always VERY confident to install Apple updates...

I administer an office of 15 macs, and I mostly share your confidence in installing Apple updates. I do, however, remember setting up a 15" Al p'book, and running software update on it right after I plugged it in. It updated from 10.3.x to 10.3.(x+1) (perhaps it was 10.3.4 or something - i don't recall) and promptly refused to restart.

My local Mac store (where I had just purchased it) informed me that OS version didn't work well on that model, so I re-installed from the system DVD and started again--fortunately there was nothing installed on it yet--and all was fine. This is the exception to hundreds of updates, however, and seems quite different than the experience that some Windows-using friends must have had to believe that one should never update the OS from the one that comes installed, 'cause it's just asking for trouble.

Re:What will it be for early downloaders...

[Onan]

Unfortunately there are more than a few stories about OS X updates that broke peoples machines around the internet.

I actually think that "few" is a pretty good characterization of the number of complaints I've heard about machines broken by osx updates. Not "none", but "few" seems fair. (Especially complaints that are consistent across multiple people, rather than just correlation-without-causation instances of that reboot just being the time that somebody's hard drive or power supply didn't come back up and so on.)

The only two that I remember are a version of--I think--10.2.8 that broke ethernet interfaces on one non-current model of powermac, and a recent 10.4 update that broke fat applications (which mostly don't exist yet). I may very well be forgetting a couple, but twoish instances of very limited breakage in the span of every osx update ever released does strike me as "few".

To directly answer your query, I've never personally had an OS X update go bad on me, but a data set of one is no data set at all.

Certainly true. Unfortunately, the more common data set is "all the people that had problems and complained", which of course isn't any more useful for predicting failure rates.

So while yes, there have been complaints in the past, my best judgement still leads me to happily installing updates as soon as they're available, rather than waiting for other people to guinea pig them. Neither I nor anyone I know directly have had any cause to regret this yet.

I guess this puts me with the grandparent, sans jest.

Re:What will it be for early downloaders...

[HTH NE1]

That still was not as bad as an earlier version which would overwrite the partition map of random Firewire drives on launch of Final Cut Pro. An OS update fixed that (10.0 to 10.1 or 10.1 to 10.2--this was also when FCP would run on a non-AGP Mac without modification).

My guess was it was attempting to communicate with every Firewire device to query if it was a capture device and for drives the query was written atop the start of the disk. After it ate my drive the 5th time I disconnected all Firewire drives and it would run non-destructively.

Yes, it is snappier!

[Anonymous Coward]

... even my old Dell inspiron running Win XP is snappier now that 10.4.3 is out!

Re:Yes, it is snappier!

[Johnathon_Dough]

I had the same problem on my wife's ibook, so i disabled dashboard and spotlight (she used neither) and it got a whole lot better.

to disable spotlight try spotless

and instructions on disabling dashboard.

Re:Yes, it is snappier!

[Mononoke]

Clean off your desktop.

Seriously.

I had been watching Activity Monitor, and an app called WindowServer was taking vast amounts of CPU, especially during startup of other apps (things would bounce 'forever' in the doc before opening.) It wasn't a pre-binding problem either. I finally thought I might clean off my computer's desktop (there were about 340 items there, as it's both my default download folder and the place I drag images and clippings to from Safari.) I simply dragged everything into a folder that I created on the desktop, restarted for luck, and all the snappiness was back.

WindowServer is behaving itself now, and everything loading quicker and working more as expected. I don't know exactly what WindowServer does, but I do know it hates a 'dirty desktop.'

Re:Yes, it is snappier!

[skinfitz]

Windows runs faster with a clean desktop too. They must have copied that from Microsoft...

Re:Yes, it is snappier!

[nine-times]

there were about 340 items there, as it's both my default download folder and the place I drag images and clippings to from Safari.

Holy crap. 340 files on your desktop?

I've been in IT for a while, and this seems to be a particular neurosis or Mac users. Inexperienced Windows users will throw everything on their desktop, but with Mac users, even many of the experienced ones do it. Everything is on their desktop, or just on the hard drive (by which I mean, not sorted at all, but in the root directory), and they never close their applications. I really don't get it. Maybe it's a hold-over from the old pre-OSX days, before Macs had a proper file structure?

Anyway, before people jump on me for being a troll, I'm a Mac user. I really like OSX a lot. I have an iPod, 2 powerbooks, and a Mac mini. But geeze, man, OSX gives you a whole home directory with a nice little Desktop/Documents/Pictures/Music breakdown-- learn to use it...

Re:Yes, it is snappier!

[derflammenhund]

Macs did have a proper file structure before OS X: it was whatever you wanted it to be. Personally, I stuck to the Applications/Documents format Apple presented me with on our first mac back in 1995. I still use this format, but the OS let you create as many subfolders wherever you wanted, so whatever organization scheme worked best for you was the one you used. Unfortunately, with OS X, and especially with the removal of things like Favorites-as-a-default, the HD icon is the only folder you see on the desktop at startup, so it's probably quite a bit more compelling to put things in there if you don't "know any better."

I'd guess there's some compulsion to try to simply drag files to My Computer on windows machines for some people.

As a more stereotypical guess, mac people tend to have relied on visual layouts in folders to deal with filesystem issues, so those people like to see all of their files in one view. A professor I have to deal with during the course of my job is like this; he has 400 files on his desktop, and then on top of that he keeps nested folder after nested folder of files for his class presentations on his drive. I have no clue whatsoever how he gets anything done, especially as one of his main subfolders is labled with his name.

Ugh.

Re:Yes, it is snappier!

[porcupine8]

Part of the problem is that Safari's default download folder is the desktop - and every time you open a PDF it downloads it there. It's easy to accumulate tons and tons of PDFs on your desktop if you don't clean it up regularly. And Firefox is no better, because if you choose "Open with Preview" instead of "Save to..." it saves it to the desktop as well - even though if you had saved it, you could have chosen a location.

Re:Yes, it is snappier!

[Hes Nikke]

WindowServer is responsible for handling moving windows, drawing the frames of windows, hidding and unhiding them and the like. It doesn't handle the desktop and drawing the items on it, Finder does that.

Yes and no. WindowServer, or to be more specific, the Quartz Compositor (itself a part of the WindowServer process) is also responsible for compositing all the windows into one image to send to your graphics card. While the Finder draws the items that reside on the desktop, it sends them to WindowServer to composite the images of each item onto the desktop. one. item. at. a time.*

By having 300 items on the desktop, WindowServer now has 300 MORE things to composite (yes, even if it most of them are covered by a fully opaque window) it's going to start using more CPU time.

*With Quartz Extreme, and Quartz 2D Extreme, some (but not all!) of this work is pushed onto the graphics card. It still takes CPU horsepower to put the data into a graphics card friendly format. [details]

Re:Yes, it is snappier!

[nine-times]

Well, as far as this temporary directory that you're suggesting, there is an internet cache, and that's where most things go so long as they're viewable in Safari. The only occasional exception to this, AFAIK, is PDFs, and I believe that it's just a bug due to the fact that Safari used to be unable to open PDFs in the browser.

For files not viewable in Safari, however, Apple faces a dilemma. Do you allow people to open them, supposedly without saving them, and have people wondering where those files went? Or do you risk "downloading" files (download in quotes, because of course you're downloading either way) that the user won't really want.

I think Apple is doing it the better way. It diminishes the risk of losing data. For example, Microsoft's e-mail products (and IE) will offer to open files (in the case of e-mail, attachments) "where they are", and not "save" them. The file goes into some temporary directory, the user edits it, saves it, closes it, and... whoops, where'd it go? It didn't overwrite the original file, wherever that is, but you saved it, so you'd expect it's safe, somewhere. So where'd it go?

Sometimes it's just gone. Sometimes it's still on the hard drive, but it's in a hidden temp directory where normal users will never find it. In any case, for most people, the data is as good as gone.

Therefore, I say anything that's being opened in an external viewer (and therefore potentially an editor) should be saved somewhere. If you ask me, the browser shouldn't even open external editors. Anything that can't be opened in the browser should only be allowed to be saved.

Re:Yes, it is snappier!

[Van Halen]

Wow, there's a whole application to make a simple edit to a config file? Sheesh. I'm sure it's good for typical command-line-fearing Apple users, but this is Slashdot. Just edit /etc/hostconfig and change SPOTLIGHT=-YES- to SPOTLIGHT=-NO-. Heck, it even says that right on the Spotless download page.

Re:Yes, it is snappier!

[porcupine8]

due to the fact that Safari used to be unable to open PDFs in the browser.

Now THIS is what they REALLY need to fix. *sigh*

As for the rest, I sometimes forget about the need to idiot-proof (or at least, newbie-proof) things. I think the ideal solution would go something like this:

- You click a file that opens in an external program, like preview or WMP.
- You get a dialog box where the choices are "Save to..." and "Open and Store a copy in *path of temp directory*" (The temp directory shouldn't be as well-hidden as the Windows ones are. Something at the top of your home directory, for instance.
- Somehow, the computer won't let any program but Safari (perhaps this would be editable to add other web browsers) save to that directory, so if you try to save the file, it automatically makes you "Save As" and pick somewhere else to save it. I have no idea how feasible this is, but I said "ideal," now didn't I?
- Temp directory is automatically cleared out at a user-defined time or space interval (a month, or when it reaches 100 MB, for example)

Seems to work fine...

[knightinshiningarmor]

I installed it a few hours ago and everything seems about right. The only problem I've had so far is in starting up Safari:

Safari 2.0.2 (v416.12) has not been tested with the plugin PithHelmet 2.6.1 (v70). As a precaution, it has not been loaded. Please contact the plugin developer for further information.

Any ideas on getting this working?

Re:Seems to work fine...

[mmmgood]

I replaced PithHelmet with SafariBlock a while back. It's more like Firefox's AdBlock.

Re:Shnappy Shnappy

[ScottAuth]

Actually, yes... [osx86project.org].

Anyone with iTunes 5 done the OSX upgrade yet?

[artifex2004]

If you have, did it stealth update to iTunes 6?
I don't want 6, yet.

Re:Anyone with iTunes 5 done the OSX upgrade yet?

[pomo monster]

I'd be surprised if it did, since the update is delivered as a single package and there's no changes listed for iTunes, hence no reason to include it in the package. In any event, couldn't you just right-click iTunes.app and make a backup archive?

Re:Anyone with iTunes 5 done the OSX upgrade yet?

[artifex2004]

yes it seemed to. not sure what the change is....

What do you mean? Does it come up as iTunes 6? If so, you should be able to get videos from the iTunes store.

Re:Anyone with iTunes 5 done the OSX upgrade yet?

[pomo monster]

If you archive iTunes.app before updating, you can always restore it later. Let us know how it goes... I'd be pretty disappointed in Apple if they'd go behind your back like that, updating iTunes without your knowledge. I can't remember that they've ever done it before--but that doesn't mean they haven't, or won't.

Re:Anyone with iTunes 5 done the OSX upgrade yet?

[itwerx]

I'm new to Apple and their package updating scheme, so I'm worried the update might change other dependencies or my ability to update it back to 6, later.

There speaks a Windows refugee... :)
      Fear not! A - the iTunes updates are always separate, so if it shows up in the list just deselect it and B - it is just an app, so if you make an archive of whatever you've got then if you did accidentally grab 6 by mistake just delete that, un-archive and you're good to go!

Re:Anyone with iTunes 5 done the OSX upgrade yet?

[artifex2004]

Okay, the update worked fine. No need to pull out the archive. That was my first time using the contextual archive feature, too. Every day I am finding or being shown more cool stuff with this OS.

Re:Anyone with iTunes 5 done the OSX upgrade yet?

[ldd23]

I've still got iTunes 4.9, and the 10.4.3 update left it alone.

No need to worry about stealth iTunes update.

Non-iMacs using Front Row beware

[rshane]

Although I've had no problems with Front Row since I upgraded my Mini, there have been several reports of Front Row failing to work for those not using iMacs (shame on you, pirates! ;)) after this upgrade. Use at your own risk.

RE: getting PithHelmet to work

[KURAAKU Deibiddo]

here is probably the easiest way, since I don't know if you're using Apple's Finder or not. Path Finder (which I use instead of Apple's Finder) allows you to look at the contents of a package or app, which would be easier for this edit if you want to use the GUI all the way.

first of all, you may want to make sure you have version 2.6.1 of Pith Helmet (the latest version). then open the Terminal. paste or type this line, all on one line:

open "/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins/PithHelmet.bundle/Contents/Info.plist"

(this will open the file you need to edit in the Property List Editor.)

click the triangles to expand "Root", then "SIMBLTargetApplications", and then "0".

Change "MaxBundleVersion" to "416".

it should look like this.

then hit Cmd-S to save, Cmd-Q to quit, and you're all set to use Pith Helmet. i've tested it for a bit, and so far it works perfectly.

let me know if you have any questions.

NOTE: If you didn't install the Developer Tools

[KURAAKU Deibiddo]

someone brought it to my attention to that you will only have the Property List Editor if you installed the Developer Tools. not to worry, if you don't have it. all you need to do is use TextEdit (or BBedit if you have it). the command for that looks like this (again, all one line):

open -a "TextEdit" "/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins/PithHelmet.bundle/Contents/Info.plist"

about two-thirds of the way down, you want to change this bit:

<key>MaxBundleVersion</key>
<string>412</string>

to:

<key>MaxBundleVersion</key>
<string>416</string>

it should look like this (with the changed line highlighted in green.

again, save and quit and you should be all set. apologies for forgetting that Property List Editor requires the Developer Tools to be installed in the first post.

One small change

[Matthias Wiesmann]

I installed it nothing seems to have been broken on my powerbook.

One interesting thing I noticed is in the Finder's preview pane for applications. It basically lists the architectures the application is built for, the information does not appear in the 'get information' window. At this point in time, only the developers tool include the intel binaries. Maybe it was there before, but I did not notice it.

Re:Quartz 2D Extreme disabled?

[TheRaven64]

You are being confused, I think, by the fact that three technologies have very similar names.

Quartz 2D (often just Quartz) is the 2D rendering system used on OS X. It uses a display list format that has a 1:1 mapping with PDF display lists, allowing resolution-independent UI elements to be drawn.

Quartz Extreme was the hardware accelerated compositing system introduced with (I think) Jagwyre. Each window in Quartz 2D is rendered to a buffer. Originally, these were then composited in software. With QE, they were rendered to OpenGL textures and then composited in hardware. This allowed things like translucent windows to be drawn quickly, and made effects like Exposé possible.

Quartz 2D Extreme moves a lot of the things in Quartz 2D into hardware. For example, each character in a font is rendered into an OpenGL buffer with Q2DE, and then composited in the window by the GPU. This makes text rendering much faster with Q2DE (assuming that the GPU is fast enough).

Apple never advertised Q2DE. It was mentioned at the WWDC, but that is a developers conference - and developers can enable it for testing purposes. They advertise Quartz 2D and Quartz Extreme, because these are shipping features.

Re:Quartz 2D Extreme Disabled?

[avalys]

Quartz 2D Extreme is a developers-only feature that could be enabled for testing in previous versions of Tiger. It was never enabled by default, you had to run a special application to enable it. And it was always buggy.

This is not the same thing as Quartz or Quartz 2D - those are still enabled. There is a post a few above yours that explains the difference more fully.

mail.app snafu?

[FFFish]

In Mail, I can not access the "advanced" panel of Junk Mail Preferences; nor can I edit the rules listed in the Pref Pane. :-(

Re:mail.app snafu?

[FFFish]

Turns out that MailActOn or MailTags was at fault! Problem solved.

Re:Shnappy Shnappy

[cpt kangarooski]

He is incorrect, as downloading is capable of being copyright infringement, which can rise to the level of a crime in the United States. But you're incorrect too. You can't use a stolen property law as a substitute for a copyright law; this was settled decades ago by the Supreme Court.

I Broke Safari's ACID2 Support

[nuxx]

By visiting the ACID2 test and then scrolling downward in Safari using my Apple Mighty Mouse I'm able to break the ACID2 test rendering. Here is a screenshot of it. The face breaks and the better part of it scrolls across the page. I don't think this is the expected behavior, but I guess I may be wrong?

Re:I Broke Safari's ACID2 Support

[Yaztromo]

Perhaps not. Part of the Acid2 test is to test various positioning mechanisms. Some are static, some are more relative. It may just be that the elements which were left behind were the static elements.

AFAIK, Acid2 isn't really designed with scrolling in mind. I'm surprised you're able to scroll the page at all.

Yaz.

Re:I Broke Safari's ACID2 Support

[leuffi]

This is strange. I have iScroll2 and if I go to http://www.webstandards.org/act/acid2/test.html directly I can't scroll, but if I follow the link to it from http://www.webstandards.org/act/acid2/ I can scroll and things break. Note that this before taking the test, if I take the test if works as expected.

Re:I Broke Safari's ACID2 Support

[Blue Lozenge]

From the explanation of how Acid2 works: http://www.webstandards.org/act/acid2/guide.html

In the markup, the row is represented by a p element which is fixed to the window rather than the scrollable canvas. If the Acid2 page is scrolled, the scalp will stay fixed in place, becoming unstuck from the rest of the face, which will scroll.

Re:Is MacGPG OK with the update?

[kybred]

I just ran Software Update and then tried Mail with v1.1 of GPGMail; it seems to work just fine.

kybred

Bugfixes are nice

[Toothpick]

10.4.3 fixes the annoying bug that prevents X11 windows from raising to the top when switching apps. Dashboard is noticeably snappier.

But hey, I've only been a Mac owner for three weeks. The Finder still drives me batty.

Re:Shnappy Shnappy

[cpt kangarooski]

Wrong.

Copyright infringement is the infringement of any of the exclusive rights of the copyright holder, per 17 USC 501. One of the exclusive rights is the right to reproduce the work in copies, per 106(1). As it happens, the courts have generally considered the reproduction of works into RAM, hard drives, etc. to qualify, and to be infringing. The MAI and Intellectual Reserve cases are examples of this.

This is too well settled for you to be able to truthfully dispute it. You can argue that it's dumb, but that doesn't mean that it's not the current law.

The only question left is whether it is criminal copyright infringement, which is a subset of copyright infringement generally. Per 506(a), copyright infringement of the reproduction sort is criminal if it is willful and either a) is for the purpose of commercial advantage or private financial gain, or b) involves the reproduction during any 180 day period of works with a total retail value of over $1000.

Private financial gain is defined in 101 to include the "receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works." That's what the NET Act added, to cover warez trading. Presumably it isn't applicable for a mere downloader. Of course, making a copy through downloading, where you anticipate someone will return the favor by making a copy of something for you would qualify. Uploading without any receipt or expectation of receipt would not. So it's more complicated than whether data went up or down, as you seemed to think.

In any case, if the retail value of the downloaded work -- or all the downloads over the last 180 days, as your typical downloader probably downloads a lot -- is over $1000, then it is irrelevant whether or not he planned to trade warez. He's a criminal infringer anyway, if he infringed willfully.

You really ought to try reading the statutes instead of relying on just the laws that tweak them, or more likely, the sort of gossip and hearsay that most people on the net seem to believe in.

Re:Shnappy Shnappy

[QuantumG]

Thanks for agreeing with me. If you just download a file without uploading anything you cannot be prosecuted under the NET Act and therefore are not in violation of criminal copyright law. As this is the most extreme criminal copyright law in the world I stand by my original statement. Oh, and what we were talking about was the x86 edition of Mac OS X. This currently has no retail value as it is not available for sale.

Crash/Quartz 2D Extreme?

[tgv]

My dual 2.5GHz G5 crashed after upgrading. Second time around, it booted well. Perhaps it was due to the fact that I had Q2DE turned on...

iChat encryption - but fist you have to pay tax

[Ragetech]

I got excited about iChat encryption - it'll help it move up to some of the requirements companies have for video conferencing software. But then I got this:

      "You need to sign up for a .Mac account to enable iChat encryption."

What the Frell? I have to pay the .Mac tax to get a feature on the core OS? For shame, Apple... for shame.

Additionally, I had a major issue when I upgraded, and I wasn't alone according to the discussions on the Apple support site. All my firewire devices freaked out and wouldn't come online. Not my LaCie, not my EyeTV.

I rebooted once, after the initial 10.4.3 reboot load, and everything started behaving. But now I'm a bit scared to reboot again.

RageTech

Re:iChat encryption - but fist you have to pay tax

[(startx)]

You you bothered to click "Learn More" it would have brought you to the .Mac welcome page, where it explains you can now get .Mac IM accounts for free. Yes, it kinda sucks you can't use encryption on Jabber or AIM right now, but they aren't charging you to use .Mac IM.

Re:iChat encryption - but fist you have to pay tax

[(startx)]

Found it. From http://www.mac.com/1/mac_faq.html

Q: Can I continue to use my .Mac Mail address as an AIM or iChat screen name after my .Mac trial or paid account has expired? Yes. Your screen name will remain valid.

WARNING!!! 10.4.3 render iBook G4 not bootable!!!!

[carboncopy79]

Updated two machines simultaneously. PowerMac G5 1.8GHz single processor and iBook G4 1GHz.

The PowerMac G5 was sent for reboot after finish updating. While iBook was sent to shutdown after update completed.

Now, iBook G4 is spinning wheel at grey apple. The longest I waited was about 15 minutes before hard shutdown. I have put it into Target Disk Mode to be Verified by PowerMac G5, the filesystem is not corrupted.

I can hear the harddisk clicking in iBook which makes me salivate (I don't know why). Might have to reinstall Mac Os X Tiger. That means a chance to install some Linux on it first.

So, be warned. I'll wait for 30 minutes of spinning wheel to see whether that make any difference.

Re:WARNING!!! 10.4.3 render iBook G4 not bootable!

[carboncopy79]

Looks like I am not the only one.

Insight from ArsTechnica on this.

[interactive_civilian]

From the ArsTechnica Mac.Ach 10.4.3 thread:

Posted by MightySpoon:

Quote:why has apple dropped the development of Q2DX in tiger?

To avoid potential lawsuits from Vanilla Ice.

(Say Quartz Two Dee Extreme out loud and then try not to shoot yourself in your face. You can't do it.)

The truth hurts, doesn't it? ;p

First reboot WILL BE LONG !!!

[dmdimon]

First reboot after this update WILL BE LONG.

A lot of minutes on G5 2x1.8 (YMMW)
Just wait.
And after second reboot all will be ok.

There are some heavy things system doing during first reboot.
Don't shut it down or hard reset!

Re:No firewire on Blue and White or FireLynx

[squiggleslash]

He said a Blue & White G3. While the Beige G3s do not have built-in Firewire (or USB), the B&W's most certainly do. I have one sitting right next to me.

Re:WARNING!!! 10.4.3 render iBook G4 not bootable!

[coldwd]

It looks like this is not an apple issue, the user had their own version of /etc/ttys that 10.4.3 had an issue reading:

I think I found the culprit: the updated system didn't like my version of /etc/ttys (that used to work under 10.4.2). Therefore, loginwindow couldn't start. I figured that out when adding my extensions file by file...

I had /etc/ttys configured to open a LoginHook, and seems there somehow was an additional newline character.

All seems to be working fine, now. Thanks for all your suggestions.

I'd be very wary anytime I updated if I'm changing stuff in /etc. Do you have any local modifications going on that could be the cause of your issues?

Re:WARNING!!! 10.4.3 render iBook G4 not bootable!

[carboncopy79]

Please note that I did not change /etc/ttys before or after the Update.

Got my iBook revived! (my blog)

The detailed steps is in my blog, basically, what I did was, download Mac Os X Combo using a working Mac, boot dead Mac into Target Disk Mode, apply the patch using the Combo package, reboot the dead Mac.

Re:Shnappy Shnappy

[Anonymous Coward]

...but does it run on Intel?

Yes, in fact, it does. I've got a Developer Transition Kit machine and 10.4.3 was actually released a few weeks ago (Oct 13) on the ADC site.

(posting anonymously due to NDA)

Re:And the newest Finder Fukup is...

[porcupine8]

If I were the tinfoil hat sort who looks for conspiracies, I would suspect that there is a plot to force everyone to use Column view

No, if this were true, they'd make it easier to get windows to open in column view by default. I adore column view, but it's a bitch to get it by default. Sure you can tell it to "open new windows in column view" - but that only works when you actually choose "New Finder window" or hit command-N, neither of which I ever do. If you open a window by double-clicking on a folder or drive, it opens in some other view - anything but column. I finally found out on the Apple discussion forums that if you hold shift when you close a window, the next time you open that particular folder or whatever it will open in whatever view you closed it in. Which is nice, but until I've closed every folder that way I still have to change stuff back to column view a lot.

Personally, I was wondering why they gave us this great new view and then made it so incredibly hard to make Finder use it.

Safari Problem with graphics

[skinfitz]

Check this out. Google ad running down the side obscuring the text for anyone else? I've been seeing it on a lots of sites since upgrading the PB to 10.4.3. Think I'll hang on for the updated update before patching the G5.

It's not a problem with Safari...

[argent]

Google ad running down the side obscuring the text for anyone else?

Yep, and I'm not even using Safari. I just tested it, and it's doing the same thing for Safari 1.3.1 on Panther, on Camino, on Firefox/Mozilla.

Complain to the people who run the site, their HTML is broken... I suspect they only tested it on one version of Internet Explorer, ever.

Re:And the newest Finder Fukup is...

[guet]

No, if this were true, they'd make it easier to get windows to open in column view by default.

Finder > Preferences > General

Tick the box that says 'Open new windows in column view' and be happy.

Re:How is this different than 300 items in a folde

[Chuckstar]

The Desktop folder is always on screen and all items are visible. Most folders that contain 300 items only show a portion of those items at a time. If my hypothesis is correct, a folder with 300 items opened full-screen with all items showing should result in the same slowdown (or close to it -- as the desktop is a special case and might work slightly differently than a typical folder).

Re:WARNING!!! 10.4.3 render iBook G4 not bootable!

[jeffasselin]

Warning from Logic Central:

Singular events cannot be used as a basis for generalisations.

Thank you.

My iBook G4 is running very well. So far it's 50/50 and we do not have the numbers for a significant statistical analysis.