Mac OS X 10.5.2 Update Brings Welcome Fixes

jetpack writes to make sure we're aware that Apple's OS X 10.5.2 update is available and that it contains plenty of improvements and fixes that users have been asking for. Macworld enumerates some of the big ones, saying that the update "shows Apple listens to users" (sometimes). A couple of the new features simply restore Tiger (10.4) capabilities that Leopard (10.5) had inexplicably withdrawn. You can now shut off the much-maligned transparency of the menu bar, and organize your Dock stacks hierarchically and display them as folders. And Apple has provided welcome access to common Time Machine functions in the menu bar.

Comments

AEBS backups

[sam.thorogood]

You can't back up to drives plugged into an Airport Extreme, though, even though the much-toted Time Capsule will apparently be able to (In their defence, this could come with an update before the Time Capsule actually ships).

Re:AEBS backups

[tgd]

No, but at least AirDisk drives work correctly again, at a usable performance.

10.5.2 is what 10.5 should've been in Apple didn't rush it at the expense of QA.

Re:AEBS backups

[Muzzarelli]

Tried doing an initial time machine backup to a directly connected drive, then moving the drive to the AEBS? Works for me.

Re:AEBS backups

[appleguru]

You have two options... (Though only the first will help you with backing up to an airdisk)

1) defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

2) Buy leopard server ;-)

Re:AEBS backups

[0100010001010011]

I believe the functionality has been there since 10.5.

I have an external drive hooked up to my debian box (Formatted HFS+, RW). I have it shared via SMB as smb://debian.local/TimeMachine.

After running the command on my machine to backup to 'unauthorized' shares and enabling time machine on the drive, time machine works great.

I hadn't planned on this when I started, but time machine knows that it's a network drive and will mount it in the background to do the backup. Even if I've rebooted, taken my computer out for a while, etc. As soon as I come back the Time Machine drive will mount and start the backup.

The only thing 10.5.2 added was a fancy new icon for it.

Re:AEBS backups

[nsayer]

The reason that it's "unauthorized" is because beta testers discovered problems with data corruption.

It'd suck to need to restore from your backups only to discover that they were pooched.

Re:AEBS backups

[Just Some Guy]

Will Time Machine do differential backups now?

Well, it has been for the last two months and I doubt they disabled it.

Just compare how long Vista has been out with how long Leoptard has been out, and it becomes even more apparent which company released a functioning product, and which one required a desperate emergency update.

You're 100% correct. Leopard is down to the point that they're fixing cosmetic issues that customers complained about, while Vista still isn't sure if you can listen to an MP3 while downloading from a local fileserver. That desperate emergency update, aka SP1, is about a year long in coming. It must irk MS to no end that Leopard just needs the final spit and polish while Vista languishes.

Typed on Linux. I don't really care one way or the other, but there's no way you can say that Leopard is as troubled as Vista.

Re:AEBS backups

[sjf]

>> Will Time Machine do differential backups now?
>Well, it has been for the last two months and I doubt they disabled it.

If the unit of back up is the entire file system, then you are of course correct. I suspect the parent poster was looking for differences within files...that is, only backing up the 'diff' between two files, not the entire file when it changes.

I doubt we'll see this until zfs.

Re:AEBS backups

[osu-neko]

Rush? Leopard was originally targeted for June '07. They did anything but rush, but you've got to ship at some point and users are always a bit better at finding bugs.

Huh? What does the original target date have to do with it?

Whether it was released early, on time, or late is one fact. Whether it was rushed or released when good and ready is another fact. Whether it was shipped in a Monday or a Friday or some other day is a third fact. Despite the fact that all there of these facts are related to time and the release date, they're pretty much independent of one another. Knowing the release date will tell you the third, knowing also the original target date will tell you the first, but neither tells you anything at all about the second, since the second fact has nothing to do with either the first or the third.

Re:AEBS backups

[MemoryDragon]

Dont tell me, I have been using leopard for a while and have vista on my side on my working notebook. Leopard, almost no problems except cosmetic ones. Vista, WLAN often refuses to connect to already registered networks. The harddrive thrashes my disk almost 10 minutes after booting, the problem is known you can find lots of references on the web, but no definitive solution. (And yes even indexing is off on my machine) The entire configuration is a mess, ok this is cosmetic, but severe enough that it takes me often 10 minutes to find something. The entire configuration has become way worse than KDE ever was and definitely is not in the same league as Apples easy configuration! Once I play a video locally file transfer rate over the network goes down the drain! (Thank you DRM!) UAC is not a pain I see it as necessary, again 2 blue screens in the last weeks, Leopard has yet to fail on me. One update introduced a deadlock in some applications for an entire month until the next update cycle. But to give Vista one credit, the 3d desktop is as slow as apples, the only system which shows that a 3d desktop can be fast currently is Linux. Ubuntus 3d Desktop flies on my machine compared to those two systems. Or in other words at least Vista allows you to turn the dreaded thing off!

Re:AEBS backups

[jchillerup]

1a) Wait. 1b) When your drive is full, watch the fireworks. TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes does NOT work correctly and is NOT supported (hence the "Unsupported"...)

Re:AEBS backups

[NMerriam]

I suspect this is not fixed, but I don't know. Anyone?

It's not broken, so don't ever expect it to be "fixed". When designing the backup system, they chose to use fewer real-time computing resources so that it was essentially invisible to the users (and thus wouldn't get turned off by everyone for "slowing down the computer") and make restoration trivially simple and fast, at the expense of disk space. You can disagree with their choices, but they're the same tradeoffs every backup system designer has to make.

I use rdiff-backup for some of my data where frequent small updates of large files are an issue, but I'm under no illusions that running a CPU at 100% for 30 minutes for every backup would be acceptable out-of-the-box behavior for most consumers. It especially wouldn't be acceptable to spend days or weeks calculating deltas when restoring a hard drive full of files that have been modified over the course of months or years.

It's a lot easier and cheaper to add disk space than processing power, as much as I'd love to see deltas offered I think I would have made the same choices Apple did if I were in charge of designing TM.

Re:AEBS backups

[gnasher719]

And it was an *ADVERTISED FEATURE* of Leopard and the AEBS until *poof* it wasn't... Yeah, an "advertised feature" that wasn't "advertised" to anyone who wasn't under NDA.

Re:AEBS backups

[jellomizer]

I am not sure if you are either a New Mac User who has gotten your first Mac Within 2 years or you just tend to forget quickly...
Every New Major version of OS X comes with a bunch glitches which they slowly but shirley fix in time. It happened in 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4 and 10.5 there are new features that pop in that people don't quite like that get adjusted, there is some odd combination that doesn't seem to work just right. and by 10.x.4 or so. things run so smoothly that you begin to forget the pain you once had, and By the time of the next version you are on 10,.x.10 or so. Where everything is rock solid. Then you get a New version 10.x+1 and it is full of these little glitches again, normally annoying but rarely a huge show stopper.
You are under the impression that Any Software Company with deep pockets can produce a bug free system, which is wrong. I could write a complex program and debug it and check it for a huge amount of time much longer then miss a simple bug. For example I was making a type ahead dropdown box in HTML/Javascript for an intranet app. I have tested and tested it it was perfect. Then when it went to testing it came right back saying the drop down box disappeared when ever someone scrolled down. What happened when I was testing it I always used the mouse scroll wheel to scroll down the list while other people just clicked the scroll bar to drag it down and caused a lost focus on my control, causing the menu box to go away. The fix was easy but the issue was I never though of testing it that way because I do things a particular way consistently. So does Apple, and the Beta Testers... So they could have worked out all the issues they have found then on Day one of the release someone just did that one thing they never expected.

Re:AEBS backups

[IsThisNickTaken]

Time Machine is meant to fill up. It will start dropping off the oldest backups after it fills. When I first installed Leopard, I had a 160 GB external drive free so I used that for my initial Time Machine testing. Since I was using ~ 110 GBs of my MBP's hard drive it didn't take too long to fill up the Time Machine volume. I would get a warning message telling me that the drive was full, but it kept chugging along.

I agree with your second point, which is why I have since upgraded to a larger drive for Time Machine.

Re:AEBS backups

[wodgy7]

You can get around this by periodically running "hdiutil compact" on the backup disk image. This reclaims deleted space properly and allows you to use TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes safely.

Re:AEBS backups

[Buran]

You have to be under NDA to read a public website? Read this link -- it was on Apple's own website!

AppleInsider | Apple yanks wireless backup from Leopard last minute

I guess now you'll want to scream "illegal" when people pass along something they read on the front page of the paper.

Troll thread

[Anonymous Coward]

All trolls please post here please so its easier to mod us all down.

Re:Troll thread

[SuperRenaissanceMan]

Jets suck, Yankees suck, Knicks suck... Krypton sucks... Apple sucks...

Does it fix...

[Anonymous Coward]

...the fact that it's still the evil seed of Satan Jobs?

Re:Does it fix...

[MacColossus]

Unfortunately no. It doesn't fix the fact the Linux kernel is the evil seed of Linus Torvalds or that Windows is the evil seed of Gates and Monkey boy Ballmer either. I guess Apple can't fix anything.

Without reading the reversion list

[Scareduck]

... would it be possible for Apple to realize who their customers are and restore the ability to do two-way copying of MP3 (non-AAC, really) songs in iTunes? That got yanked a while ago, and it's an irritating functionality loss. There are alternatives (hat tip: MacWorld), but Apple's customer control tactics are almost as bad as the record companies'.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[singularity]

Wow, that took some research to figure out what in the world you were talking about.

You do not want "two-way copying of MP3 (non-AAC, really) songs in iTunes", you are talking about bidirectional iPod syncing in iTunes. That is to say if there is a song on an iPod that is not in the iTunes Library, iTunes would copy the song from the iPod onto the computer.

That got yanked a while ago, and it's an irritating functionality loss.

Huh? I still have my (still functional) 2nd. Generation iPod. I have been syncing iPods with iTunes for a long time and I can assure you that "feature" was never in iTunes.

Apple has to walk a fine line with the recording industry, and cannot do anything too blatant to piss off the record labels.

Having my friend walk over with his 160GB iPod and give me his entire music collection, facilitated by Apple themselves? Yeah, I can see some issues with that.

There are plenty of very capable third-party programs out there that do exactly what you are talking about (Senuti being the big one on the Mac right now). They do what you are talking about, and Apple does not get into trouble for it. I do not see the issue here.

And please stop saying it was functionality that was dropped from iTunes. It was never there.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[shawnce]

You can however sync purchased songs in both directions since if music is purchased Apple knows what account it is associated with and will let you sync in both directions with authorized iTunes libraries (under the same account).

http://www.apple.com/support/ipod/tutorials/beyondthebasics.html

Copy your purchases to another computer
1. Connect your iPod to your computer and open iTunes.
2. Choose File > "Transfer Purchases from iPod".
3. If you need to authorize your computer to play these purchases, select Store > "Authorize Computer".

http://www.apple.com/itunes/sync/ipod.html

Sync both ways.
When you sync your iPod with iTunes, you do exactly that: Keep your iPod and your computer synchronized. That means anything you've purchased from the iTunes Store (even on the go from your iPod touch), your ratings, on-the-go playlists, and even bookmarks from podcasts and audiobooks all sync back to your Mac or PC.[1]

1. Music and media not purchased from the iTunes Store sync only one way, from your computer to your iPod. To transfer non-purchased music from computer to computer, read this tutorial.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Having my friend walk over with his 160GB iPod and give me his entire music collection, facilitated by Apple themselves? Yeah, I can see some issues with that.

As Apple have no idea whether the songs are still under copyright & what license they're under, I don't see what business Apple have in preventing you copying your data around.

The only reason Apple impose this artificial limitation on customers is at the behest of their real customers - the RIAA, et al.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[fingers1122]

There are alternatives (hat tip: MacWorld), but Apple's customer control tactics are almost as bad as the record companies'. I don't think that's entirely true. Apple in my view has done a fairly good job of satisfying the demands of the record companies with regard to content control while still allowing fairly simple exploits to its own content protection. Bottom line is Apple could not have struck the kind of deals they did without assuring the film/record companies that their content would be completely protected--an impossible guarantee, as Apple surely knows. But Apple has struck a good balance in keeping the big companies happy, creating interest from other studios, and not getting terribly in the way of user experience.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[lurch_mojoff]

True, true, true, but at the end of the day there is reality. And in reality the recording industry are like wizards - they are too powerful for their own good and very easy to anger. Look at the situation Apple are in with non-DRM'd songs on iTunes. Except for EMI, the rest of the big 4 would nearly rather put their stuff on the Pirate Bay, than allow Apple to sell it and the only reason is that they don't quite like Apple having ~75% of the online distribution market (something Apple had achieved through products and services better than everyone else's; i.e. they rightfully have that big market share). Imagine if Apple refused to cave in at RIAA's demand to disallow syncing back from an iPod - then Apple might as well close the iTunes store. This does not excuse Apple, but at least they are not doing it just to spite you or to create lock- in.

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[OOSCARR]

There is an option to avoid that. iTunes > Preferences > Advanced > General > Copy files to iTunes Music folder then adding to library (uncheck)

Re:Without reading the reversion list

[singularity]

How to use your iPod to move your music to a new computer. Instructions for moving music from computer to computer. Using an iPod.

Directions from Apple. With screenshots.

The iPod is designed to be synced with just one computer. That is the nature of the iTunes sync component and the iPod itself. I have never heard of this bidirectional sync "optional plug-in" the original poster was referring to. Also - I have been bidirectionally syncing devices (Palm, PDAs, phones, etc.) for years now, and have supported people who have done the same. One thing I have learned? Bidirectional syncing will delete information given enough information and enough time. It will break eventually. Restore from backups, erase a device, and resync. Annoying, but it is a fact of life when doing syncing. On the other hand I have never had issues with one-way syncing. So maybe Apple just made that decision to make things easier with less support needs.

So Apple gives clear directions for moving your music library from computer to computer, even using your iPod.

The only reason Apple impose this artificial limitation on customers is at the behest of their real customers - the RIAA, et al.

Yes, it is simply that black and white. A company either screws their customers or does everything for them.

Have you no idea of balance? A company says "Hey, we can do more for our customers (and therefore sell more product) if we make these small concessions to other big companies?"

For example - "Hey, if we include DRM on our music store, then get so big that we have enough power to push the distribution companies into allowing us to sell non-DRM music, that will be to the long-term benefit of our customer (with the benefit being that we will sell even MORE music."

No, according to you the company should never bend slightly, and instead should never give in, even if it is to the detriment of both the company and its customers.

Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[starglider29a]

I still double click my title bar expecting the window to vanish, leaving the title bar there, beneath my mouse, so I can say 'thanks' click click. And be back to where I was.

We were so amazed when Windows 3.0 taught us to "minimize" and still have ***another application running*** (back when DOS was neato) that we didn't ask "ok, so, why do I have to reach to the very farthest point on the screen to get my window back?"

Yes, Exposé might be a cool way around that, and some Vista maven may say 'aeroglass', but click-click... click-click is about as simple as it can possibly get. And no motion sickness!

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[evand]

If you hit F8, you get a zoomed out view of all of your desktops, with live previews of the windows on them included. You can drag and drop windows between spaces in this view, as well, if you like.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[maczealot]

Absolutely agreed. I am a huge fanboy, and even I don't give a new update this much positive spin when it has just come out.

The third-party window shade is from Unsanity but alas does not work in 10.5

This is one of those legacy features that you'll just have to learn to live without (i.e. use Expose) similar to having to constantly turn on "Windows classic folders" and is nothing compared to some of the BASIC OS functions that need addressing:

- Open a folder in a listview should be one button (i.e. enter, which currenty goes to rename, really??) not Command-O
- Screenshotting needs to be waaaay easier (i.e. single key rather than shift-command-3 or whatever)
Etc. etc.

Sorry Apple, but I'll be waiting on installing this update as it seems little more than a few minor bug fixes (iCal? Yeah it has more problems than that)

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[pizzach]

I just don't see it happening any time soon. The problem is, with Mac OS X in this state is a boon for switchers. Things are just familiar enough to get people to switch to Mac OS X without them having to grate their brains too much. During windowshade's absence, Expose has done a fairly good job filling that space in many Mac users' hearts.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[chthonicdaemon]

Actually, I think you meant to say "they don't tell you all the things you are used to doing one way that you'll have to learn to do another way". Trust me, every person moving from Windows to Mac that I have spoken to the day they get the mac has a few things that piss them off. Number one is probably "there is no delete key". Then there's the way that compose keys work (my native language has a lot of accents, and they've learned to use ALT-137 or whatever, and it actually annoys them that they have to do ALT-e e to get the same result). In my experience, very few people actually miss cutting files, as it's not more trouble to drag them to the new location -- you have to open the new folder anyway, and Finder has those spring-loaded folders. The thing is, it gets to one when the things that you are so used to doing don't work. This doesn't mean that you can't move files away from your desktop, it just means you can't cut and paste files.

Another thing that I am only getting used to now is the whole Mac philosophy of windows not being full screen most of the time. It really does work if you give it a chance, but it is very alien to how I was used to working. So the "zoom" button, which most Windows users expect to be "maximize" doesn't work like you're used to. The point I'm trying to make here is that Apple aren't too lazy to implement all these windows-like behaviours, they really believe that their way of doing things is better. I don't really care one way or another, but I think many of the Mac ideas are pretty solid. I can tell you that I don't miss cut and paste on files at all.

Re:Does it bring back the "Windows Shade"?

[Phroggy]

- Open a folder in a listview should be one button (i.e. enter, which currenty goes to rename, really??) not Command-O
- Screenshotting needs to be waaaay easier (i.e. single key rather than shift-command-3 or whatever) Both of these go back DECADES.

Do not take away my quick renaming keystroke.

I agree that Command-O is cumbersome, but were you aware that Command-Down arrow works too? I find this easier, and it's perfectly logical if you also use Command-Up arrow frequently.

Screenshotting isn't a single button, because there are several ways to do it. They are:

• Cmd-Shift-3: take a snapshot of the entire screen and save it to a PNG file on the desktop
  
• Cmd-Shift-Ctrl-3: take a snapshot of the entire screen and copy it to the clipboard
  
• Cmd-Shift-4, then drag a box: take a snapshot of a particular area of the screen and save it to a PNG file on the desktop
  
• Cmd-Shift-Ctrl-4, then drag a box: take a snapshot of a particular area of the screen and copy it to the clipboard
  
• Cmd-Shift-4, then spacebar, then click: take a snapshot of a single window and save it to a PNG file on the desktop
  
• Cmd-Shift-Ctrl-4, then spacebar, then click: take a snapshot of a single window and copy it to the clipboard
  
• Open /Utilities/Grab for additional options like taking a snapshot of the entire screen after a time delay and saving the result in different formats
  

I agree that these are not intuitive, but it's what we've been using for years, and I certainly don't want to dedicate any extra buttons on the keyboard to something most people never use. Besides, as someone else pointed out, you can remap a different keyboard shortcut in System Preferences if you don't like the default.

Menubar! how to make it not completely obnoxious

[acrobg]

granted I'd like the dock to look like it did in 10.4, but turning the glass effect off with the following 2 script lines: defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES killall Dock (to turn back on change YES to NO). It makes the dock be side-style while still on he bottom. If your'e lazy and have eitehr cocktail or onyx, you can do it in there with the force to side-style mode option.

Re:What about the Parental Controls/Dashboard bug?

[the_proton]

To quote the release notes:

Addresses an issue in which Dashboard widgets may no longer be accessible after switching to or from an account that has Parental Controls enabled.

right direction

[je ne sais quoi]

Sounds like this is a step in the right direction. As soon as they remove the silly rooting behavior in column view in the finder, I'll buy leopard. Funny how one of these "features" they decided to include is keeping me from buying the OS. I run a mac shop, but I just bought an additional license for 10.4 instead of 10.5 because frankly, I don't see much worth shelling out the extra dough for in leopard. (In 10.4 you can bypass the rooting behavior by making an alias for the folder.) I know how to use rsync and cron, so I don't really need time machine.... and I'm not all that interested in the new preview view for the files. It's not like I'd delete it off a computer that I just bought, but I don't see much reason to upgrade since some of the things they did are not the behavior I want.

Re:right direction

[ToastyKen]

I'm assuming he means that if you put, say, your Documents folders in the Dock, and you open it in column view, you can't scroll left to its parent. The Documents folder becomes the "root" of the column view, forcing you to find your home directory somewhere else if you want to get to something else in your home directory.

Re:right direction

[Spheniscus]

You can navigate to the parent folder at lest four different ways:

1. Command-click (or right click) on the folder name in the title of the window.
2. Press command-up (or select Go/Enclosing Folder from the menu)
3. Turn on the Path Bar (view / show path bar)
4. Customize the toolbar and add the path button to the toolbar

MIA: Tiger's split Terminal window

[tomRakewell]

I had just discovered the awesome 'split' feature in Tiger's Terminal about two months ago. Click on the icon in the upper right portion of the terminal window, and a bar appears. You can drag the bar to split your terminal in two. The upper portion is the scrollback, and shows your terminal history. The bottom portion is your 'live' terminal. It's awesome, and it saves me from having to open two different terminals in many cases!

Of course, after upgrading to Leopard, this innovative feature has been removed! I couldn't believe it!

Now I'm back to opening up two Terminal windows... :(

Re:MIA: Tiger's split Terminal window

[BlacKat]

Just copy Terminal.app from Tiger and run it on Leopard.

Trust me, it works great, especially in conjunction with Visor, which provides a "Quake like" terminal window that pops down from the top of the screen.

Re:MIA: Tiger's split Terminal window

[AntEater]

"Now I'm back to opening up two Terminal windows..."

You have a couple of other options. Leopard's Terminal lets you use tabs. That's not quite as nice but it saves you some screen real estate. Another option (my favourite) is to use GNU Screen in a single terminal. This gives you multiple tabs and the ability to split the screen in two (or more) windows within the terminal and use those windows for any combination of terminal sessions you want. Ten or fifteen minutes of learning gives you an incredibly useful tool at your disposal. Screen is included with OS X and most Linux distributions.

The best way to describe this update

[jht]

This is like SP1 in Windows land. Basically, 10.5 is the GM, 10.5.1 is where they fix other things that emerged in the several weeks between GM and public availability (along with a couple of critical bugs that turn up in the first few days of wider public release), and then 10.5.2 is the first release based on public feedback and issues. That's also part of why this version enables you to turn off the menubar translucency (and makes the menus themselves more opaque) - users hated it so Apple tweaked things for them.

Windows is freakin' huge - hence the year to Vista SP1 - but Microsoft's releases also go much wider, have more hardware to test with, and have more public pre-release cycles as well. So it takes them a year to do a service pack, where Apple only takes about 3-4 months.

Pre-emptive Feature deprecation as a good strategy

[goombah99]

IN general apple tends to remove old features/ ports/ connectors when it adds replacements or equalivalents. Apple is a first mover in many areas: parallel ports? ADB, Floppy disks, ....
Then it adds them back if there are howls.

It's a good strategy in many ways. First, it allows one to keep the idea that there is one-primary-way-for-novices-to-do-something on most mac. When you go to another mac, it behaves the same. (e.g. Life is a box of chocolates with linux. when you sit down at someone elses terminal, focus might follow the mouse, it might auto-raise, god knows what happens when you launch emacs (xterm or text, context colored or not, etc...) Uniformity is viewed as good mac land because ultimately by not having to think too much or memorize short cuts you can just focus on getting the job done and the computer is more appliance like than tweaker box like. It's not that you can't customize a mac, it's just stupid to try in general.

It also allows them to introduce new lower level mechanism that break old higher level mechanisms. Such as the clean/dirty file tracking used for Time Machine.

I don't know why they deprecated your MP3 file moving. My guess however it was the opposite intent. they were trying to put in speed bumps--apples view of the best DRM seems to be to simply use invoconvience rather than prohibition when they can. I rather like that approach philosophically.

Re:Any New drivers in it for hardware that is not

[Christopher Rogers]

Once you install 10.5.2 another update becomes available that updates various video drivers. Some animations seem "snappier" now, particularly Expose and Spaces.

How about fixing Finder?

[argent]

* Restore the ability to have folders remember their views.
* Run each Finder window in a separate process, so it doesn't lock everything up when one window gets busy. Particularly when hitting network shares.
* Restore the pre OSX "staggered" icon layout option.
* Give us an option to completely eliminate the sidebar without having to go back to "spacial" windows.
* Move the "FTP" support from Finder to Safari, so we don't have the overhead and security issues of file-system-like operations when accessing remote high-latency servers.
* Bring back the Shelf from NeXTSTeP.
* Add "Cut" as well as "Copy". There's a "Cut" option in the edit menu but it's always greyed out. If there's some obscure option key that will enable this, well...
* Make it OBVIOUS when there's an option/command click 'advanced' operation, instead of making us guess. And that goes for the rest of the software on the Mac.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[amake]

* Restore the ability to have folders remember their views.

You can still make them remember views by clicking the checkbox in the View Options (Command-J) window. I agree that this is annoying.

* Run each Finder window in a separate process, so it doesn't lock everything up when one window gets busy. Particularly when hitting network shares.

You mean break the entire application model that Mac OS has used since forever, which is that each window is not its own process? How about just making the Finder more multithreaded, which they've been doing fairly well. I haven't had the Finder in Leopard hang on me relating to network shares.

* Move the "FTP" support from Finder to Safari, so we don't have the overhead and security issues of file-system-like operations when accessing remote high-latency servers.

You could just not use FTP in the Finder. There are plenty of good, free FTP clients out there, like Cyberduck.

* Bring back the Shelf from NeXTSTeP.

What? Have you ever actually used the Shelf from NeXTSTEP? I haven't, but I've never heard anyone who had anything good to say about it. I think we've moved well beyond the need for such a feature, what with Expose and all. What specific problem would you like the Shelf to solve?

* Add "Cut" as well as "Copy". There's a "Cut" option in the edit menu but it's always greyed out. If there's some obscure option key that will enable this, well...

You can't Cut files or folders because what you're expecting to happen (based probably on similar functionality in Windows or other systems) is fundamentally different from what Cut actually is. Cut (for text, the original and default context for this feature) erases the selection entirely and puts a copy in the pasteboard. The copy in the pasteboard is lost as soon as you copy or cut something else. "Cut for text" is also undoable. "Cut for files," on the other hand, does not erase the selection until you paste. It does not delete the selection in the pasteboard if you copy something else. It is sometimes undoable, but is rarely guaranteed to be so. It's also not obvious what happens if you Cut, then modify the selection, and then paste (which version is pasted, the old or the new?)In other words, you don't want Cut; you want a copy of the Windows feature that is inappropriately named Cut. Well, it's not there, and probably shouldn't be (since it hasn't been implemented "correctly" in any system I've seen). I know, I know, who cares about nit-picky crap like this? Well, Steve cares.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[edbulldog]

And while they're at it, they can return Preview the abillity to run animated gifs.

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[tooth]

* Option to turn of the 3d dock (yes, I know that are hacks to do it, but I still think apple should have had this option from day 0.)

Re:How about fixing Finder?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

* Make it OBVIOUS when there's an option/command click 'advanced' operation, instead of making us guess. And that goes for the rest of the software on the Mac.

How, exactly, do you propose doing this?

Some small visual clue - eg. a small triangle pointing down and right, which is what was used on KDE (may still be -- I haven't used KDE for a while).

Rich.

Bah

[adamruck]

I administer an apple x server at work, and I haven't been impressed.

I'm running ubuntu on a PC, so I can't use the server admin, or workgroup manager tools. Also, apple doesn't come with a standard VNC server, instead it uses VNC with some proprietary shit built in, so I had to install vine server to get a remote desktop. Of course, vine server sucks as well, because I can't get it to start on boot, without logging into the server with either the native server admin tools, or locally with a KVM. Oh wait, the X Serve doesn't play nice with a standard KVM. I have an extra mouse and keyboard setting in my rack just for the X Serve.

Once you manage to get in the damn thing, if you have any sort of complicated setup at all, you simply CAN'T DO it using the server admin tool. I've usually had to bust into the config files just like any other Unix system. Take a look at the SQL section of the Server Admin tool, its a fucking joke. Also, even if you do start to do some things by hand, shit still doesn't work right.

See one of my bug reports here.

http://macosx.com/forums/mac-os-x-server/298314-samba-shares-hfs-extended-attributes.html

The mailing list / blog / colander stuff is also less than impressive. Why the FUCK should I have to wait 15 minutes for my changes to take affect. It this 1982 or some shit? Some changes seem to take much longer than that as well. I waited a whole day for one of my groups to show up. Why is it that the "recent changes" section of each group shows group emails, even if I turn the mailing list feature off?

Oh yeah, last but not least, the server crashes. It responds to pings, still responds to local terminal input, but anything that requires authentication is dead in the water. So that leaves mail, netbios, ssh, server admin, work group manager, etc etc all dead. I think the LDAP server is crapping out, but I haven't been able to prove it yet. I've had to hard boot the server half a dozen times in the last two weeks.

My last rant. WHAT THE FUCK IS WITH THE QUICK TIME UPDATES, AND THE REQUIRED RESTARTS. Jesus christ, it's like I'm working with windows NT.

Re:Bah

[metallic]

Also, apple doesn't come with a standard VNC server, instead it uses VNC with some proprietary shit built in, so I had to install vine server to get a remote desktop. Of course, vine server sucks as well, because I can't get it to start on boot, without logging into the server with either the native server admin tools, or locally with a KVM.

You can get a standard VNC client to connect to the built-in VNC server that ships with OSX. It takes some very specific settings, but it can be done. I've done it using TightVNC and UltraVNC on Windows before I finally switched to a Mac on the client side. If you Google around a bit, you should be able to find them.

Oh wait, the X Serve doesn't play nice with a standard KVM. I have an extra mouse and keyboard setting in my rack just for the X Serve.

Are you sure your KVM is standard? I have a 16-Port KVM complete with terminal, keyboard, and trackpad that works fine with the 6 XServes in the rack as well as with the FreeBSD, Linux, and Windows boxes in the rack.

Once you manage to get in the damn thing, if you have any sort of complicated setup at all, you simply CAN'T DO it using the server admin tool. I've usually had to bust into the config files just like any other Unix system. Take a look at the SQL section of the Server Admin tool, its a fucking joke. Also, even if you do start to do some things by hand, shit still doesn't work right.

That's what really sucks about OS X Server. Unless you have really basic needs that Apple envisioned, the GUI tools are useless. On top of that, you can't really customize anything that Apple has provided with the server. I tried compiling a custom PHP5 and installing the module on the stock Apache server only to have it crash Apache. I called Apple Support, and while they said it is technically possible to do what I was trying, they wouldn't provide any support for it. I ended up just compiling my own copy of Apache and PHP5 and saying to hell with the GUI tool.

On the other hand, OS X Server is awesome for managing a network of Macs. That's all about I can really recommend it for.

Re:Bah

[chrome]

*pat* *pat*

If its any consolation there are probably at least another 5 or 6 people who run OS X Server. And I'm sure they hate it just as much ...

Re:Menubar! how to make it not completely obnoxiou

[chromatic]

Mac OS X will never be ready for the desktop while it requires users to use the command-line to... oh, too easy?

Leopard Delays

[shmlco]

OS X Leopard's release was originally scheduled for the end of 2006 or early 2007. A year later, this was amended to "Spring 2007". And as of March 23rd, Leopard was still supposedly on track for a spring release. Then on April 12, just 20 days later, Apple announced that Leopard would be delayed. The reason? Apple needed to "borrow some key software engineering and QA resources" and put them to work on the iPhone in order to meet that product's promised June release.

But the revised release date for Leopard was October 26th, 119 days after the day the iPhone would ship and those "borrowed" developers could return to work on 10.5. Four months put back into the timeline, not two. And in actuality the postponement gave Apple over six more months of Leopard development time, counted from the announcement on April 12th to the revised ship date on October 26th.

Apple had only borrowed a few key people, remember? Presumably the rest weren't just sitting around waiting for the others to get back to work.

Even with the extra time, Apple didn't have enough time to fix all of the problems. So as the October release date loomed, Apple rushed one more final candidate past developers, patched and polished a few last-minute issues, determined that it was "good enough", and shipped OS X 10.5 Leopard to the public.

So short was the time frame that few outside of Apple saw the gold master. Even major software development firms like Adobe received their final copies at nearly the same time as everyone else.

Is that the profile of a company that isn't rushing a product to market? Nope, 10.5.2 is what Leopard should have been.

What's included?

[djupedal]

What's included?

This update delivers several improvements for both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs (as well as improvements provided in the Mac OS X 10.5.1 update.)

Active Directory

* Addresses issues which could hinder or prevent binding Mac OS X 10.5.x clients to Active Directory domains.

AirPort

* Improves connection reliability and stability
* Includes 802.1X improvements.
* Resolves certain kernel panics.

Back to my Mac

* Adds support for more third-party routers, as detailed in this article.

Dashboard

* Improves performance of certain Apple Dashboard widgets (such as Dictionary).
* Addresses an issue in which Dashboard widgets may no longer be accessible after switching to or from an account that has Parental Controls enabled.

Dock

* Updates Stacks with a List view option, a Folder view option, and an updated background for Grid view.

Desktop

* Addresses legibility issues with the menu bar with an option to turn off transparency in Desktop & Screen Saver preferences.
* Adjusts menus to be slightly-less translucent overall.

iCal

* Improves iCal so that it accurately reflects responses to recurring meetings.
* Addresses an issue in which a meeting may remain on the calendar after being cancelled.
* Addresses stability issues related to .Mac syncing of iCal calendars.
* Resolves an intermittent issue in which editing an event with attendees would cause the event to shrink and not register that the event was updated.

iChat

* Addresses an issue with simultaneously-logged in accounts in which iChat sounds generated from one account might be heard in another account.
* Fixes an issue in which iChat idle time is affected by Time Machine backups.
* Improves connectivity when running iChat behind a router that doesn't preserve ports.
* Enables logged chats from previous versions of iChat to open faster and more reliably.
* Addresses an issue with text chats in which users may be unable to receive messages from the sender.
* Addresses an issue that may prevent rejoining an AIM chat room without reopening iChat.
* Addresses video chat compatibility issues with AIM 6 and third-party routers.
* Fixes an issue with case-sensitivity of AIM handles.

iSync

* Adds support for Samsung D600E and D900i phones.

Finder

* Addresses an issue in which Finder could unexpectedly quit when displaying folder contents in Column view.
* Addresses an issue in which Finder could unexpectedly quit when accessing Users and Groups in a Get Info pane.
* Resolves an issue that prevented setting permissions on a folder alias.
* Resolves an issue in which the Eject command could write to a disc in the optical drive.
* Fixes an issue in which the scroll bar might disappear when deleting a file within a folder that includes files that are out of view.
* Fixes an issue in the Sharing & Permissions section of Get Info windows, in which the gear icon appears to be gray/disabled after authentication.
* Addresses an issue in which the Show Icon Preview preference might not be not sa

Don't overwrite your Leopard copy of Terminal.app

[the JoshMeister]

Great tip, but make sure that you don't overwrite your Leopard copy of Terminal. When you copy the Tiger version, be sure to rename it from "Terminal.app" to something else like "Terminal (Tiger).app". If you don't do this, you could potentially have issues with future patches that are released for Terminal (bug fixes, security updates, etc.) and the installer will naturally look for the Leopard version and might cause problems if the Tiger version was there instead.

Re:Send window to back? please?

[misleb]

Some way to manage windows from the total pool (or even better just what is in your current "Space*) instead of just switching between windows within the current app or switching between apps, would be very welcome indeed.

Re:Send window to back? please?

[theurge14]

In the meantime, the following may help you:

You can Command-drag a window by the titlebar that is not in the focus without bringing it to the front.
You can also Command-drag to resize a window that is not in the focus without bring it to the front.
You can press Command-` to cycle through all the open windows in the current application.
You can press Command-H to Hide the current window in focus.
You can press Command-M to Minimize the current window in focus.
Command-Tab will bring up a list of all open applications. You can use your mouse while holding Command-Tab to select an application to switch to, and furthermore while you have your mouse pointer over the application you can press H to Hide that particular application or Q to close that particular application.

Per Apple's Developer Connection applications do have an API in Cocoa to use methods to manipulate the Window Z-order, so I would imagine there might be some applications out there already that could perform more specifically what you're looking for.

MacBook Air USB peripherals

[nickovs]

Incidentally, 10.5.2 does contain drivers for both the USB Ethernet dongle available for the MacBook Air and also the USB-connected SuperDrive. The ethernet dongle works just fine (plugging it in prompts you to open the System Preferences to configure the new Ethernet port) but the SuperDrive does not. It seems that the SuperDrive device driver gets loaded but chooses not to fire up the rest of the Mass Storage device stack :-(

Re:MacBook Air USB peripherals

[Lucas.Langa]

I suppose you wrote this using another Mac (i.e. not MB Air). The superdrive for MacBook Air won't work with your hardware because the USB port in the MacBook Air is additionally powered.

MacBook Air USB Details

Re:Fonts fixed yet?

[vertigoCiel]

That George Ou article is worthless. He's just another flame-baiter like Dvorak, whose only purpose is to draw hits. I have yet to meet a Mac whose font rendering actually looks like Ou's "examples" - the rendering on my Macbook Pro looks tons better, and subpixel is turned on by default. Graphic and type designers make up a significant amount of the Apple user base, and if OS X's font rendering actually looked as bad as he claims, those users would be making a stink about it.

Re:Why no charge for new features?

[p0tat03]

It's all about revenue claim. After Apple got bit by the whole 802.11n driver thing, they've started claiming revenue for their laptops and iPhones in a staggered way - instead of all at once. This allows them to justify releasing significant new features on those platforms (as opposed to merely bug fixes).

My guess is that Apple never intended to release those new apps for the iTouch, and was caught off guard by all of the backlash and bad press... Unfortunately for them iPod revenue is probably claimed in entirety at sale.

Re:Fonts fixed yet?

[GaryPatterson]

Please.

George Ou is not a good person to quote as an authority on fonts. He's not a graphic designer and he happily uses the wrong information whenever it makes his point.

His examples of OS X font rendering are just poor. There's an update which shows something, but none of the images reflect the default font smoothing on OS X.

Nice troll though. You link to a Dvorak-wannabe, use his bile to spit on OS X and say how good your "humble" Linux box is. You've missed the chance to slap Windows though, so your troll is a bit weaker than it could've been.

Re:Hey !

[GaryPatterson]

Now I've not done this specifically, but I do have a Dock shortcut for an Applescript that connects to my backup drive (an AFP share). I can't find the original code I used, but you should find something at http://www.macosxhints.com/ - they've got people who actually know stuff (ie not me) there.

Have a look here or here to start with.

Good luck.

Re:I was immune :)

[Ilgaz]

I would just like to take this time to rub in the fact I never once had to see that transparent menu. At first I just thought that it might only be slightly transparent, and that the beta users were just exaggerating the problem, so I tried it with a checked background, and sure enough it was completely solid. The reflective doc was there in all it's shinyness, but no pixel were leaking through my menu bar. I don't if it was a PPC/Intel thing or if Apple just deemed my video card too pathetic to get the see-through goodness, by my Leopard install has had an opaque menu since the day I installed it.

So, neener-neener :P It is not a thing to be happy about :) It means Leopard decided your graphics card is weak to do transparent menu opengl thing. It is same deal on my Mac Mini G4 too and guess what G4 is connected to? A Plasma HDTV.

A logical explanation to transparent menu bar: Apple had reports of "screen burn" because of a white menu on top of the screen 24/7, decided to do it so as wallpaper changes hourly (generally on plasmas, good trick), the menu bar will change too.

You also notice the top menu bar is dark grey, it is the most friendly thing to Plasma and LCD if you have to display a thing 24/7.

Deal with Plasma is: It is good with moving images but if you show an image at exact location with exact colours for a long time, there is a huge possibility to get "burn in". Burn in can be recovered by full white or moving grey pattern but... If you really meet with the "real", evil burn in, there is no recovering back. No guarantee cover either.

LCD has the same problem but it must be days or weeks to occur. Also their "move image 4 pixels" trick is designed for TV station logos (see below), it is near worthless for Apple menu.

Your TV station doesn't do "colour cycle" or "slightly animated" or "almost transparent" logo for nothing, they do especially for Plasma owners so they won't be watching "same channel" in case logo burns there. :)