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OS X Operating Systems Businesses Upgrades Apple

Mac OS X 10.3.6 Update Available 126

Posted by pudge from the what-he-said dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Apple has released the Mac OS X 10.3.6 update via Software Update as well as their downloads page. List of improvements is available. In short, the improvements are in remote file server issues (AFP, NFS, SMB/CIFS), OpenGL, ATi and NVidia drivers, Safari, Calculator, DVD Player, Image Capture, and also previous stand-alone Security Updates. Hurry up and get the update! ... and tell us if I should go to get it, too. ;)" A Mac OS X Server update is available as well.
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Mac OS X 10.3.6 Update Available More

Mac OS X 10.3.6 Update Available

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  • Updates (Score:5, Funny)

    by blueday4 ( 569939 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @12:28PM (#10742077) Homepage
    Hoorah, a calculator update..
    • Now 2+2 = 4 instead of 3.999999999999999974

      boooo ;P
      • This isnt informative. It was supposed to be the long-standing joke about the Intel Pentuim adding bug..

        On that joke, the CPU was bugged, not the program. And it put out something like 3.9999(lots of nines)74 or something.

      • Re:Updates (Score:3, Informative)

        by jrockway ( 229604 ) *
        I think you mean 2.0 + 2.0, because 2+2 is never going to be floating point. Two completely different operations as far as the computer is concerned.
        • as far as the c compiler is concerned you mean. there's no way to assume that j. random calculator app does everything as an int where possible.

      • Re:Updates (Score:3, Interesting)

        by (startx) ( 37027 )
        Close actually. Now 9533.24-.1=9533.14, rather than 9533.1399999999

        linky [mikeindustries.com]

    • Re:Updates (Score:5, Informative)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @01:49PM (#10742516) Journal
      And you still can't enter numbers in number bases other than decimal. You can set the display mode to hex, binary, or octal, but the input is still decimal. Makes it completely useless for doing any kind of calculation in other number bases.
      • I like Calculator+ [netfirms.com].

      • Re:Updates (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Trurl's Machine ( 651488 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @05:37PM (#10743428) Journal
        ...completely useless...

        A practical solution would be, of course, something from the incredibly rich selection [versiontracker.com] of free alternative calculators. However, the inner nerd in me jumped on the "completely useless" part of your post. First of all, Calculator.app accepts input from standard clipboard ("command-v" for paste), so you can use any hex->dec converter, even something from equally rich selection of Unix CLI tools. Calculator.app is also AppleScriptable, so you can write yourself a simple script (and if you need hex, oct and bin - or for that matter, even know what it means - you obviously can write a simple AppleScript) to automate the conversion. Since Apple, in its infinite wisdom, has chosen NOT to include built-in conversion to AppleScript, you can use something from the not-that-rich-but-still-useful selection [macscripter.net] of hex/dec add-ons to AppleScript.

        Having said all that, I agree with you that no hex input in Calculator.app is just plainly stupid, just had to let my inner nerd go, otherwise he would harrass me for ages whispering dirty things about Natalie Portman to my inner ear when I try to concentrate.
      • Use dc. It's included with OSX and is a great calculator.

        > 2 2+p
        16 i 10 o 3 * p
        > C
        • Fucking slashdot. :)

          Anyway, it's just a RPN calculator. 2 2 + adds two and two and pushes four. p displays whatever's on top of the stack. [number] i sets the input radix, [number] o sets the output radix (remember that base 16 is "10" in base 16 :)

          That should help you. man dc for more details.

      • Uninformed opinion is right (Score:5, Informative)

        by SkiifGeek ( 702936 ) <info@beREDHATskerming.com minus distro> on Saturday November 06, 2004 @08:29PM (#10744301) Homepage Journal

        As per your sig, your opinion is uninformed.

        Right / Control click on the calculator.app -> show package contents.

        Under resources are a number of folders ending in .calcview. Drag them into the PlugIns folder and, voila, you now have a 2D Graphing calculator, a fully blown Hexadecimal calculator, and so on, available through the View menu in Calculator.

        If it still doesn't rock your boat, there are plenty of valid third party calculator applications, such as GeekCalc, WCalc and a host of others.

      • bc from the command line gets you a cacl/reverse polish notation calculator is dc.

        hint type quit the exit the calculators..

        man bc or man dc for instructions

    • Safari has been crashing a LOT more since this update.
    • And the EE button (to write numbers such as 1.0e+39) is still gone. I haven't seen it since 10.2. In its place, there is a random number generator.

  • Woah (Score:3, Funny)

    by ravenspear ( 756059 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @12:30PM (#10742087)
    tell us if I should go to get it, too.

    I wouldn't want to be the submitter's psychiatrist.

    • Re:Woah (Score:2, Funny)

      by Smurf ( 7981 )
      tell us if I should go to get it, too.

      I wouldn't want to be the submitter's psychiatrist.

      Are you kidding? I would LOVE to be his psychiatrist!! Think of all those years of expensive therapy!
    • its usual mac geek tactic :) They don't get update and wait for other users get it.

      If they don't see couple of guys saying "my mac won't boot anymore", they download.

      Kinda mouse thing ;)

  • I updated my Powerbook (Score:3, Funny)

    by teamhasnoi ( 554944 ) <teamhasnoi@yahoo. c o m> on Saturday November 06, 2004 @12:35PM (#10742102) Journal
    this one was so good, my PC feels snappier!

  • I got it (Score:4, Informative)

    by CtrlPhreak ( 226872 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @12:48PM (#10742140) Homepage
    Installed it on my tibook. Don't see any problems, no major differences. Haven't heard of any other problems from any of the major sources. Don't see why you shouldn't get it.

    But updates to calculator? It's a calculator, shouldn't they have at least this program perfect by now?

    • Re:I got it (Score:2, Informative)

      by toolio ( 232349 )
      Actually I think they broke it.

      None of the views except the Basic one work. They just show brushed metal.

      • Re:I got it (Score:3, Informative)

        by Polo ( 30659 ) *

        Actually, it works fine.

        Both basic and advanced views display
        just fine.
      • The Basic and Advanced views work for me, but the Expression Sheet, Graphing and Hexidecimal views show just brushed metal.

        I'm almost entirely sure these last three views are not normally available, but some people (myself included) turned them on by moving them from the Calculator.app/Contents/Resources folder to the Calculator.app/Contents/PlugIns folder.

        Unfortunately, deleting the old Expression Sheet, Graphing and Hexidecimal views in the PlugIns folder and replacing them with the new ones in the Reso

        • Re:Some of us had more than three views (Score:5, Informative)

          by Smurf ( 7981 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @04:13PM (#10743097)
          ... but some people (myself included) turned them on by moving them from the Calculator.app/Contents/Resources folder to the Calculator.app/Contents/PlugIns folder.

          It was easier to select "Get info" for the Calculator icon, and set all the checkboxes in the Plug-ins section.

          I'm sorry to learn that the special views got broken. Some of them are rather useful.
        • ...so who wants to zip up their calculator and post it somewhere on the internet for everyone? For everyone who was stupid enough to turn on the other views in 10.3.5?

          (Like me?)

          ~jeff
    • Especially when some of us are paying a cool hundred a year for it... Oh wait, I forgot tax! Anyway, email is down for many, and not the first time this year... I've organized a group to complain about it here: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/dotmacstinks / [yahoo.com]
    • I got it and now iChat seems to be broken. Has anyone else seen this. iChat will not even start up. It just bounces and quits.

      Has anyone else seen this?

  • Mac OS X 10.3.6 Update Available (Score:5, Funny)

    by skinfitz ( 564041 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @12:51PM (#10742157) Journal
    Yes we know. See, we have this thing called "Software Update" that jumps up and down like a little yapper dog whenever there is an update available.

  • ok but.. (Score:2, Informative)

    by nmec ( 810091 )
    downloaded and installed OK. But the screen went all funny about 60-70% into disk optimization, weird vertical lines and funky colours. Hit the powerdown and restarted, started up fine and says its running 10.3.6. Otherwise everything looks good

    • Re:ok but.. (Score:2, Informative)

      by Petrochard ( 733921 )
      Do you have an iBook? You might have the "logic board syndrome." Check out the Apple Support site for more details. The fix is free and Apple takes care of everything, I had the same problem a couple of months ago.
      • yeah, forgot to post specs.
        iBook G4
        40GB
        933hz 256RAM

        I'll check it out, cheers

        • Re:ok but.. (Score:2, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward
          933hz 256RAM

          Well, I can see your problem right there. You're not smart enough to own a computer.

    • My PowerBook crashed about half way in too (Score:4, Informative)

      by @madeus ( 24818 ) <slashdot_24818@mac.com> on Saturday November 06, 2004 @05:16PM (#10743344)
      I was about 50% of the way through the install when mine died (possibly during optimisation, being in the middle of the screen the relevent was obsured by the crash message).

      I had left it alone and had turned my Bluetooth mouse on at that time to use the system and it died. After rebooting it said it was 10..3.6 but be sure I downloaded the install as a .dmg and installed it frmo that to be on the safe side.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Maintenance (Score:5, Informative)

    by xpccx ( 247431 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @01:32PM (#10742412)
    I found this [macdevcenter.com] link to be very helpful for regular maintenance as well as a simple TODO list before each incremental OS upgrade. It covers:
    • Repairing priviledges
    • Repairing the disk
    • Forcing periodic maintenance
    • Updating the prebinding

    • Re:Maintenance (Score:2, Informative)

      by Ilgaz ( 86384 )
      I would say couple of things.

      Forcing maintanance is not good. Get Anacron instead
      http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/uni x_open_so urce/anacron.html

      Also I would reset PRAM after every system update.
      • Forcing maintanance is not good.

        Uh, why? The OS does it itself anyways in the middle of the night; if the computer isn't on at that time the maintence tasks should be done at another time. Rescheduling them or doing it yourself achieves the same goal...

        • Sorry, I mean weekly and monthly maintanance.

          Its a waste of time to force them. Saw lots of mac users doing it daily.

          That 'Anacron' I referenced does it when machine is available. Especially good for laptops.

    • Re:Maintenance (Score:2, Informative)

      by sinclair44 ( 728189 )

      That article has mostly very good advice. However, the bit about prebinding is idiotic. OS X (10.2 and up) automatically updates the prebinding of any program that on the fly which needs to be updated when that program is launched. And all versions of OS X go through and redo prebinding on everything after major updates and installs anyways.

      The rest of it is a very good routine to follow before an update however, and periodically if there hasn't been an update in a while.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Maintenance (Score:3, Informative)

      by geoffspear ( 692508 )
      Repair Permissions has broken postfix every time I've run it (apparently, it has a different opinion about what the permissions on postfix's files should be than postfix itself does, and since postfix refuses to run without its permissions set properly, this is a problem.) It could just be my 2 machines that it's broken on, but I wouldn't count on it.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @01:45PM (#10742490)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • It's not a bug, it's a feature.

      Now...imagine a Beowolf cluster of those and you have *viola* Windows XP with Dufus Pack 2!

    • Dude, this update includes 10% more Jobs Reality Distortion Field so not only can you divide by zero; you can even get the square root of -1. It still doesn't change the number of mouse buttons though; we have to wait for 10.3.7 for that.

  • Crashed on install... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Lame Lane ( 784728 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @01:53PM (#10742532)
    ... maybe I shouldn't have launched Halo while it was optimizing. A reboot did the trick. No problems since.

  • Diablo II issues? (Score:3, Informative)

    by manly_15 ( 447559 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @04:47PM (#10743230)
    Has anyone had major issues with Diablo 2 after this update? OpenGL because almost unusable, while software mode works fine. Repair perms had no effect, and Q3A and WarCraft III work fine. This is on a first-gen 12" PB with 640 MB of RAM. --Andrew
    • Well, I'm glad to know It's not just me, but it's discouraging in that this probably means I'll have to do some major tweaking before I can get the game to be playable again ... grr. Anyone have any possible ideas on this one?
    • Actually I just started up Diablo II yesterday for old times sake. Didn't notice any major problems on a Second-gen 12" PB with 256 MB or Ram.

  • Looks OK (Score:3, Informative)

    by displaced80 ( 660282 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @04:47PM (#10743232)
    My iMac runs as a firewall/NAT system for my WLAN, in addition to day-to-day use. Has a VNC server running over the WLAN (through an SSH tunnel, naturally), and a few Samba shares also.

    Installed without a hitch, and everything's intact after the restart.

    I'm yet to test a couple of things (printer, bluetooth), since I need to get a new USB cable for the Mac-to-USB Hub connection. My rabbit had a field day yesterday and gnawed the old cable. D'oh.

    (it's true. Rabbits are evil. Especially red-eyed pure white albino freakazoids like mine. If she weren't so damn cute I'd have turned her into a tasty stew after I saw the damage ;))

  • Breaks a lot of Firewire drives (Score:5, Informative)

    by anuj ( 78508 ) <aroraan@hot[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Saturday November 06, 2004 @10:07PM (#10744642)
    this [apple.com] tells of many users (myself included) whose firewire drives no longer mount. system profiler sees a device, but the drive doesn't show up in the disk utility. the drive mounts fine on an older machine, so it's not damaging to the data like the original panther release was. i guess the ball's in apple's court. ~A
    • Here too. The Beyond Micro enclosure with the NEC chipset (Aluminum) seems to no longer be seen, but the older 911 chipset shiny grey plastic enclosure still works.

      No data loss when I pulled the driver and moved it.

      chuck

  • Calculator 1.1 is broken (Score:3, Informative)

    by White Manual ( 584363 ) on Sunday November 07, 2004 @03:59AM (#10745572)
    Make sure you backup Calculator 1.0 before applying this update (or reinstall it from CD). This update breaks all three included plugins: Hexadecimal Calculator:
    2004-11-07 09:49:20.013 Calculator[650] *** -[HexadecimalController supportsDisplayModeChanges]: selector not recognized
    Graphic Calculator:
    2004-11-07 09:51:16.017 Calculator[716] *** -[GraphController addView:toWindow:atPoint:]: selector not recognized
    Expression Sheet Calculator:
    2004-11-07 09:51:59.560 Calculator[721] *** -[ExpressionSheetController addView:toWindow:atPoint:]: selector not recognized
  • I have not yet installed 10.3.6 for the following reasons....

    Can someone tell me if "upgrading" from 10.3.4 to 10.3.6 will break features of my Microsoft Intellimouse Optical USB driver?

    I'm presently using the Intellipoint mouse driver/application version 2.1.0

    When 10.3.5 came out, I saw posts that said something about 10.3.5 forced users to upgrade to the latest Intellipoint driver which in turn disabled multibutton/scroll wheel features which in turn encouraged the user to purchase a new MS mouse to ge
    • I have installed each incremental upgrade on my Powerbook, 10.3.5 and now 10.3.6, and the older Intellimouse drivers still work fine. I can still use the scroll wheel and the forward/back buttons on the side still work as well - and this is with an original Intellimouse Explorer V1.

      However, I discovered that 10.3.6 'breaks' the process of adding a networked printer attached to a Windows box. With 10.3.6, when you browse to add a printer via Windows Networking, nothing shows up. There are workarounds, but y
    • The following from Macfixit.com:
      Some readers have had problems with their Microsoft Intellimouse losing its settings and behaving like a standard Apple mouse.

      One reader writes "The two side button for forward and backward for browser do not work and in the intellipoint control panel the mouse icon (on the buttons panel) has a large red X. ( Intellipoint mouse 5.0)"

      In this particular reader's case, and probably others', re-installing the Intellipoint 5.0 software can resolve the issue.
    • For all others obsessing about this problem, I've located the link to the older Intellipoint driver version 3.1. This one allows you to set scroll wheel button settings that broke in v.5.0.

      http://download.microsoft.com/download/opticalm o us eblue/Install/3.1/MacOS/EN-US/IntelliPoint3.1.OSX. sit

      Now the only reason I'm not going to upgrade to 10.3.5 is that it apparently wiped out some people's Entourage emails and contact data. Looks like I'm going to migrate to Mail before I upgrade.
  • I have no idea if this is limited to my system, nor if it is a problem with the ATI driver update or the OpenGL update, but upgrading to 10.3.6 broke the UT2k4 demo on my system. 2D stuff works fine, but the 3D intro and the in-game graphics are completely screwed up - messed up or missing polygons, screwed up lighting, etc.

    Other OpenGL apps and games display just fine, so I'm not sure exactly where the problem lies. Anybody else encountering this problem with 10.3.6?
    • UT2k4 demo works fine on my system. Dual 1.8 G5.

      Of course, I have the NVidia GeForce 5200, so you may still have an ATI driver issue, but then again maybe not. It's just the demo, reinstall and check again... you are running with the patch, right?

      See boss, someone reported a problem with the system update, I just _had_ to test UT2k4 to see if there was an OpenGL problem...
  • Software Update took care of the installation without a hitch, and since it was a micro-point release, without a price as well.

    If only 10.4 ("Tiger") would go as smoothly in both departments ...

  • 10.3.6 Fixed Something! (NVidia/6800) (Score:5, Informative)

    by wildsurf ( 535389 ) on Monday November 08, 2004 @01:47AM (#10752339) Homepage
    I'm one of the lucky few who picked up the 30" Cinema Display, with the NVidia 6800 graphics card. In 10.3.5, I would get frequent kernel panics when booting, that seemed to be related to the NVidia driver. (I installed the drivers from the disk that came with the 6800).

    When this happened, I would have to remove the 6800 card, plug in my old card (ATI 9600 Pro), restart (at half-resolution on the 30"), shut down, plug in the NVidia card, and restart at half-res, which would work around the kernel panic.

    Now, in 10.3.6, the system automatically switches to half-res while booting, which at least prevents the kernel panic. I hope they find a better fix though.

    The kicker is that the left half of my new 30" display is about 25% dimmer than the right half. :/ A bad backlight inverter, seemingly; hopefully it will be fixable because the monitor has NO DEAD PIXELS (out of over 4 million!!) One takes the good with the bad, I guess :-)
  • Hmmmm, panic'd my iBook half way through and now won't start-up. I've booted in single user mode and it looks like some of the shared libraries loginwindow uses have been trucated. Is a re-install my easiest/safest option?
    • Same thing happened to a buddy of mine. During the Drive Optimization, his g4 crashed on him, and gave a 'Truncated or Malformed' error on boot. Tried fsck from the single-user mode, but to no avail. Re-installing was his only other option.
      • I ended up re-installing, which wasn't as painfull as I'd imagined. Most of my 3rd party applications seemed to work and all my user data restored. Infact much simpler than recovering many of the other UNIX systems I manage at work (Solaris and HP-UX)
  • Installed on the following Mac:

    Dual G5 2GHz
    Single G5 1.8 GHz
    PowerBook G3

    No problems with the install. OS responsiveness has improved somewhat. Safari seems to render pages faster now too. No apps were broken as a result of the update.

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