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OS X Operating Systems Businesses Apple

Mac OS X 10.3.8 Out, Security Update Released 166

Posted by timothy from the dot-dot-dot dept.
Richard_at_work writes "Get it while its hot, or -- if you are less brave -- wait and see if there are any issues. From the download page, the two top points of this update are 'improved OpenGL technology and updated ATI and NVIDIA graphics drivers' and 'improved file sharing and directory services for mixed Mac and PC networks'. More information."
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Mac OS X 10.3.8 Out, Security Update Released More

Mac OS X 10.3.8 Out, Security Update Released

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  • No need to fear. (Score:2, Informative)

    by trudyscousin ( 258684 )
    Downloaded via Software Update and running great on my dual G5 box. Works great.

    • also running great on my G3 iBook 700Mhz.
      • ditto on my pbg4 1.5ghz .. though i can't honestly say i see any graphics improvements, i guess i should go find something to 'test' it out with, heh heh ...
      • Also working great on my Yosemite 350mhz.
        • How os x run on those older mac's? I've never tried it on anything slower than a g4 450.
          • I'm actually quite surprised by its performance in X.3. It performs just like it did when I first got the machine in '99 running OS9. The eye-candy is all there, and simple tasks run really well. It does suffer quite a bit though when trying to use hardware acceleration for anything. The ATi Rage 128 just doesn't cut it for OS X. It never did.

            Expose exposing the desktop with two windows open gets probably 1-2 frames per second. When I press F11, I see 1 or 2 frames before the windows disappear. :-(
            • Try hitting F11 while holding down shift, and see if you get more frames per second.

              Warning: Don't do this when you have lots of windows...

              • That actually works pretty well for F11. Not so great for F9 or F10. I think that the gray-out effect and resizing the windows on the fly are hardly supported by the Rage 128. When I click the minimize button to shrink the window, I get the same problem of low frame rates. It's just my video card. Thanks for the shift tip. :-)

                But it's too bad that my Voodoo3 card is going unused. :-(

    • Be careful (Score:5, Funny)

      by commodoresloat ( 172735 ) on Wednesday February 09, 2005 @10:50PM (#11625786)
      I installed it via Software Update during a dinner party and my kitchen caught fire. The dinner guests just grinned nervously as the blaze spread to the dining room and consumed them.

      Other than that, it seems to be running fine.

      • I've been trying to copy a 17MB file since I installed it at 9:00 last night, and it still hasn't finished copying 12 hours later.

        Plus it made the second button and scrollwheel fall off my mouse!

        • You've got a mouse? You're lucky! When I was a lad, we had to make do with an Apple ][ with half a byte of RAM -- [SHUTS UP AS THE REST OF /. SETS UPON HIM WITH STAVES]

  • Uh oh (Score:3, Informative)

    by MrAndrews ( 456547 ) <mcm@NOSpaM.1889.ca> on Wednesday February 09, 2005 @07:57PM (#11624396) Homepage
    Don't know if it's just me, but my wife's dual-USB iBook stopped booting after we installed this one. It just spins the loader on startup and never gets to the login screen. Yeep!

    Works fine on my Al pBook, tho.
    • Hmm. Removed the LaCie pocketdrive from the iBook and it worked fine. Not sure if it only happens on startup. Yeep. Stupid technology.
    • If you have a screwy laptop, pack it up and drive to the nearest Apple store (Assuming one is nearby.) and see if you can get some bored sales nerd to fix it.

  • Although point releases... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Goalie_Ca ( 584234 ) on Wednesday February 09, 2005 @07:58PM (#11624402)
    Although point releases are small and often have stuff i'll never use, i still get excited. Could it be i'm a mac zealot? maybe....

    Now time to install new opengl drivers so i can play gltron in class on my ibook with .05% speed increase. Much more fun that fourier transforms.
    • Addresses an issue in which a PowerBook G4 computer would, on rare occasion, wake from sleep with a black screen and not respond to any keyboard, mouse, or trackpad input.

      I'm glad they fixed this one. I've been burned by this more than a few times. Once I lost an entire Pages document because I closed my Powerbook when I went to make a sandwich.

  • Early adopter and cautious observer (Score:5, Funny)

    by wazzzup ( 172351 ) <astromacNO@SPAMfastmail.fm> on Wednesday February 09, 2005 @08:01PM (#11624429)
    I'm an early adopter because I initiate the download and install as soon as it came up in Software Update.

    I'm a cautious observer because by the time I'm done dowloading this 28MB behemoth on my dialup connection it will have been well tested.

  • Snappier, for sure! (Score:4, Funny)

    by patrick42 ( 212568 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMpatrickg.com> on Wednesday February 09, 2005 @08:01PM (#11624433) Homepage
    Is it just me, or does everything feel a bit snappier now! Amazing! Best update ever!
    • I find that keeping icons to a minimum on my desktop makes my computer feel snappier, and I can prove it... with science!
    • I concur. I'm running a single proc Rev. A 1.8GHz G5 here at work - and the machine does appear to feel MUCH more responsive than before. Page loading in Safari and Firefox has greatly improved, as has overall application launching times. No instabilities discovered so far, so I'm planning to update the Dualie G5 at home next.
      • I hate to be the one to break the bad news. Perhaps you should sit down, sir. There's no easy way to say this, so I'll just say it. YHBT. YHL. HAND.

        It's not that Apple hasn't made speed improvements in the past; I just enjoy irony is all.

    • Re:Snappier, for sure! (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Very funny :) You actually got an Informative mod.

      To everyone else - please note the parent should be modded FUNNY.

      He is playing off the comments that always appear when a Mac update comes out, that the system feels faster and more responsive.
      (Why do people have to be told?)
    • Well, I don't know what you feel, but Mail.app opens in 3 seconds on my G4 PB 15" vs. 10 seconds before the update. The rest feels the same.

  • Earlier Adopter (Score:4, Interesting)

    by FoolTDW ( 260652 ) on Wednesday February 09, 2005 @08:09PM (#11624524)
    Had some bluetooth problems (mouse and keyboard) on first reboot, but another reboot fixed that. Everything else seems fine. iBook G4

  • here we go (Score:1, Troll)

    by swaminstar ( 726206 )
    another 10.3.X update, time to lose the FW HDs again

  • This may fix an annoying problem... (Score:5, Informative)

    by vocaro ( 569257 ) <trevor@vocaro.com> on Wednesday February 09, 2005 @08:33PM (#11624742)

    Upgraded successfully on my G4 PowerBook. No problems so far.

    Of particular interest to me is this item in the list of enhancements:

    Addresses an issue in which a PowerBook G4 computer would, on rare occasion, wake from sleep with a black screen and not respond to any keyboard, mouse, or trackpad input.

    I've been experiencing this problem on and off ever since I switched to the Mac last April, and it bugs the heck out of me. I'll unplug my laptop from my Cinema Display, take it home, flip open the lid, and nothing happens. The computer powers on -- I can hear the fan and hard drive spinning -- and the screen is lit, but it's all black. It ignores keyboard and mouse input, and I'm forced to do a hard reboot, losing any unsaved data. (It wasn't happening all the time, but at least every three weeks or so.)

    I talked to an Apple "Genius" at an Apple Store about this wake-from-sleep problem, and he said I shouldn't let the PowerBook go to sleep. Instead, I should shut down the computer completely before unplugging it, then power it back up when I got home. Ah, what genius! Patient: "Doctor, it hurts when I move my arm like this." Doctor: "Then don't move your arm like that." Seriously, the sleep feature is vital for most laptop users, and I can't believe the solution is not to use it.

    Eventually, I discovered that if I click the Apple menu and select Sleep to do a manual sleep (as opposed to just unplugging the laptop from its display), then the frequency of the problem goes down, but it still happens. Hopefully this update will squash the bug once and for all.

    • I've seen this same behavior in my iBook G4 (12", 1Ghz). Not often or reproducible, but it IS annoying. I've been unable to find any reference to this happening to iBooks on Apple's support pages, and since they didn't recommend a fix for any of the systems they do list it as a problem for, I haven't tried to do anything about it, except increase the frequency of auto-saves in my apps.

      I hope the fix works for iBooks too. I haven't lost anything important from it yet, but it is only a matter of time.
      • I've had this happen many times and been annoyed with it. All I did was close the lid again (so that the machine would sleep) and wait another 5 seconds, open it again and it starts up perfectly. Give that a whirl next time and see if it does the trick. Cheers, 3cardtrick
        • Although it happened pretty rarely to me (maybe once every couple of weeks), that usually solved it for me when it happened, too (15" Aluminum G4). Hopefully 10.3.8 fixes it for good, though.
        • I have an 800 MHz TiBook, and this sort of thing used to happen to me occasionally after I had first purchased it. However, closing the lid and reopening it did not work, and I had to forcibly restart it. IIRC, the backlight was not coming back on, yet the display was still functioning. This has not happened to me in a very long time, though, and I figured they had already fixed the problem in an earlier release.
        • I'll second/third that suggestion, but with an extra caveat :-

          If you've got the "Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screensaver" option enabled, then when the lid opens and the sleep light goes out -- even though the backlight doesn't come on -- it seems like the laptop has woken up and the password dialog appeared, so try typing in your password and pressing enter (you'll have to get it right though ;) as you've no visual feedback). I've found this to work many times, esp. when closing
    • I similarly hope this can fix the problem you describe.

      I have a Powerbook 12" 1.33 and at home I usally plugged into my Dell 19" LCD via DVI. As other reader's mentioned, when I first closed the Powerbook lid and then unplugged my DVI cable and USB cable (to my USB keyboard), when I went back to work, my keyboard will be frozen even though I can still hear the fan running. At first I suspect it was the num lock on the Powerbook keyboard, then I thought it was DoubleCommand or SideTrack kernel extension. Bu
    • I've had the problem as well, maybe twice per week. It's a bit too early to say it is fixed, but that bullet point certainly jumped out at me. It's the only reason I intalled 10.3.8 so soon.
    • I have the same problem on my desktop. I can't put it to sleep at all or it never wakes up. Luckily it's a desk top so I can use the "don't move your arm like that" solution fine. No problem on my laptop (iBook 700 white G3) but it happens consistently on the desktop (dual G4 867 mirror drive doors). Any info you find out on this please post!
    • Mine does that some times, but closing it or fiddling with the brightness controls seems to get it working. YMMV.

    • Re:This may fix an annoying problem... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I used to have troubles with this as well. Try unplugging your display before you put your powerbook into sleep. What is happening is that if you sleep the powerbook then disconnect the display, the powerbook will wake up. But since you've closed the lid, you won't know and the kernel will do a partial-shutdown after a few minutes.

      hope that helps

    • Hm, that's interesting...I've had the same thing happen to me, with about the same frequency--but I'd get a blue screen, instead of a black. It is pretty annoying; hopefully it's fixed.
    • I have experienced this as well. The solution is simple. If your powerbook displays a black screen when it comes alive from sleep, just close the lid. The computer will go back to sleep. Then open it again, and voila, problem fixed.
    • I've experienced this bug about once a month since I got my AlBook. It happens rarely, intermittently, and only when I put it to sleep while attached to an external display. Based on the comments here that sounds like the crucial factor.

      I'll definitely install 10.3.8 now. But I wonder if unplugging the DVI and doing a Detect Displays *BEFORE* sleep might be a repeatable workaround...

      FWIW, I've seen variants with either a black screen (powered off) or an empty background screen (thinks it's a secondary m

    • Oh, do I hear you loud and clear. Though i've not had that issue in awhile, I used to have it quite often on a certain 900mhz G3 iBook I had. The "geniuses" at the Valley Fair Apple Store in San Jose were ... less than helpful.

      "That piece is supposed to be there. It's not our fault."

      "But it's in the latch, and it moves around when I tilt the iBook, and it looks like someone got sloppy with a glue gun, and it was there when I bought it at this store 3 days ago."

      ... and:

      "You're a developer? Then

  • Disk Utility (Score:1, Informative)

    by madsenj37 ( 612413 )
    As always, use Disk Utility to repair permissions before and after you update. This avoids most problems.

    • Re:Disk Utility (Score:5, Informative)

      by the pickle ( 261584 ) on Wednesday February 09, 2005 @09:35PM (#11625281) Homepage
      As always, that advice is a load of horse hockey [daringfireball.net].

      p

  • Connecting to Samba a lot faster (Score:5, Informative)

    by Nice2Cats ( 557310 ) on Wednesday February 09, 2005 @09:02PM (#11625004)
    I have no idea if this is actually in the list of features, but one thing that is seriously faster on my little iBook is connecting to my Linux Samba server -- like, wham! It is just there, while before it seem to take some time before OS X made up its mind if it really wanted to reach out and touch another computer.

    So far, no (new) problems. Life is good.

  • Active Directory (Score:3, Interesting)

    by indie1982 ( 686445 ) on Wednesday February 09, 2005 @09:36PM (#11625290) Homepage
    For weeks and weeks and weeks I kept getting an "Insufficient privileges" error when trying to bind OS X clients to our domain. I just upgraded from 10.3.7 to 10.3.8 and I can now bind them to the domain!

  • Safari IDN Vulnerability (Score:4, Interesting)

    by the pickle ( 261584 ) on Wednesday February 09, 2005 @09:37PM (#11625295) Homepage
    AFAIK, this still isn't fixed, probably because Apple didn't know about it in time. Can anyone who has the update confirm that Safari is still vulnerable?

    Me, I'm waiting on the new AlBook to get here. No point in updating the Ti when it's getting retired in a week.

    p

  • Okay on G5 Powermac (Score:3, Informative)

    by kitzilla ( 266382 ) <paperfrog@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Wednesday February 09, 2005 @10:29PM (#11625639) Homepage Journal
    No kinks so far after loading the update on my dual 1.8 G5 Powermac. Also seems fine on my older G3 iBook.
    • Did you notice that your fans are more likely to crank up now?

      My dual 1.8 G5 was always quiet, with the fans rarely being audible. However, after installing the update, the fans speed up with just the slightest increase in CPU activity (e.g., running my gui-driven synchronize program).

      • Hey, I haven't been on the G5 since my last post, but I did notice that 10.3.8 *does* contain a G5 fan control mod. So you may not be imagining things:

        ... Resolves an issue on certain Power Mac G5 computers where a fan cycles erratically at unexpected times, such as when Seti@home software is running.
      • A few days into the upgrade, I'm still not noticing much difference in fan speed. It think you should visit the Apple support forums, though, if you're having issues. They'll want to know about your configuration and what you're doing when the fans spin up.

        Good luck. i'll be watching to see what other users have to say.

  • WoW (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nuggetman ( 242645 ) on Wednesday February 09, 2005 @11:46PM (#11626237) Homepage
    gotta love the fact this is actually a feature of the OS update:

    Improves the performance of Blizzard World of Warcraft's "Full Screen Glow" video feature.

    • Re:WoW (Score:3, Interesting)

      by geoffspear ( 692508 ) *
      If you hadn't noticed, most of the "features" of the previous update (10.3.7) involved WoW performance tuning.

      Maybe this could help bring more game development to the Mac. Sure it's just one game they've done this for, but showing a willingness to change their OS to improve a third-party developer's game seems like it would make them attractive to other game developers, too.

  • Finder Insecure File Creation Vulnerability (Score:3, Informative)

    by Kusunose ( 768083 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @02:37AM (#11627313)
    It seems Mac OS X Finder Insecure File Creation Vulnerability [secunia.com] isn't fixed.
    The vulnerability has been confirmed in Finder version 10.3.2 on Mac OS X version 10.3.7. It's rated as 'less critical'.

  • Myst IV Revelation works (Score:3, Informative)

    by prionic6 ( 858109 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @06:52AM (#11628127)
    Myst IV crashed on 10.3.7 for me, works with 10.3.8. Cyan said it was a problem with the graphics driver.

  • Security Update (Score:4, Insightful)

    by greppling ( 601175 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @08:52AM (#11628530)
    Get it while its hot, or -- if you are less brave -- wait and see if there are any issues.

    Isn't it rather brave to wait with installing a security update...

  • Blew my vnc away (Score:2, Informative)

    by pprboy ( 203649 )
    Get a "incompatible version" error when I try to vnc back in from 2 different workstations. Guess I need to dig out the keyboard and mouse and hook the monitor back up to see what happened. Glad its only across the room.
  • One of my customers just installed it and now whenever she opens "an application" the fans go into overdrive mode.

    Not sure what exactly she means by "an application" but this should be something to watch out for for any of you with G5 iMacs.

  • Mail.app (Score:2, Insightful)

    by BazDM ( 854713 )
    Mail.app was taking up to 2m to load up, now it is back down to about 10s! So far so good. And, um, I feel a little *bigger*, but it is hot in here.

  • Insane (Score:3, Informative)

    by thatguywhoiam ( 524290 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @08:23PM (#11636735)
    So I installed it through Software Update, the usual, hit restart. (This is a new stock dual 1.8Ghz G5.) I'm sitting there waiting, and I though man I must be zoning out because I swear I didn't see a progress bar for the boot cycle there.

    So I restart again, and yes, its true - this update has increased the boot cycle on my machine to such speeds that the actual fucking progress bar is gone. The 2nd time I thought I saw a very brief flicker of the progress pane with the bar at half but it was really fast.

    My CRT monitor boots slower than my Mac. Never thought I'd see the day.

    (I even timed it. From chime to login window: 25 seconds.)

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