Apple rapidly seeding Mac OS X 10.5.3 test builds

[AppleInsider]

The next security and maintenance release for Apple's Leopard operating system could arrive sooner than later if the company maintains its current cadence, which has seen two successive pre-release builds land in the hands of developers in just five days.

On the heels of the first external test build labeled Mac OS X 10.5.3 build 9D10 and released privately late last week, the Mac maker on Tuesday followed up with build 9D11, which adds nearly 20 more fixes and code corrections, bringing the new total expected with software's release to nearly 100.

Among the most recent improvements, according to people familiar with the ongoing testing process, are fixes to AirPort connection issues and problems with the MacBook Air's sleep functionality.

Other fresh fixes target Time Machine, Spaces layering and preferences, graphics corruption, display issues within Mail.app, Back to My Mac communication issues, and Automator quirks when interacting with Mail.app.

As was the case with Friday's pre-release distribution, Apple reportedly asked that its developer community focus their ongoing testing efforts on two dozen core system components. These include, but are not limited to, AirPort, AppleScript, Audio, Dashboard, Directory Services, Dock, DVD Player, Finder, Graphics, Installer, Printing, and VoiceOver.

Mac OS X 10.5.3 Update, which currently weighs in at a hefty 410+ MB in Delta form and 530+ MB in Combo form, will mark the third update to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard since the software made its official debut in late October.

While those people familiar with the ongoing testing process have been unable to provide a target release date, it's presume the update is being groomed for distribution sometime in April or May.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

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[bobertoq]

This is good! 10.5.3 is gonna be another HUGE update just like 10.5.2 huh?

edit:
i got first :-o

[bugsnw]

It's fast becoming apparent that the broadband infrastructure needs to be beefed up. 530+ MB is getting up there. I have fiber optic to the home for fast DSL, but I'm lucky as I live in one of the few areas in WA where it's available.

I'm looking forward to the Airport fixes and Back-to-my-mac improvements.

[lantzn]

Originally Posted by bugsnw

It's fast becoming apparent that the broadband infrastructure needs to be beefed up. 530+ MB is getting up there. I have fiber optic to the home for fast DSL, but I'm lucky as I live in one of the few areas in WA where it's available.

I'm looking forward to the Airport fixes and Back-to-my-mac improvements.

Hey Bugs you must be in Seattle. You're blessed. I live 1 mile from Shelton and it took forever to get any broadband. I finally just upgraded to 7 mbps DSL. They SLOWLY offered DSL upgrades with small increments at a time over the past few years. I still don't even have cable offered at my place. I work in Olympia and have a T1 line so it was a painful process waiting. Now with 7 mbps I feel like I'm in Heaven with my N extreme and Apple TV.

[trogg]

Originally Posted by bugsnw

It's fast becoming apparent that the broadband infrastructure needs to be beefed up. 530+ MB is getting up there.

I think the idea is that in the future we will be expected to head over to an Akamaized Starbucks and shop at iTunes while we sip coffee and wait for our updates to be downloaded.

[ruel24]

I thought the majority of "bugs" were in Redmond, WA...

Anyway, one thing to notice: Yeah, Leopard came out with a few bugs, but see how fast Apple's on the fixes? I know people get a little anxious, but think about the poor souls waiting on Vista SP1... It hasn't even been 6 months and lots of stuff fixed and updated.

[Brown Noise]

I really love the way that Apple fixes their software so frequently. Other people might find this annoying, but I would rather have a working OS than waiting a year and a half for a service pack.

Did anyone notice the "Spaces layering and preferences" being included in the list? I REALLY hope that this means they're adding a function to have a different desktop picture for a different space. I've been hoping this would be added since 10.5 came out. Apple did listen to pleas for stacks and the dock in the last update so I'll keep my fingers crossed.

[mrsteveman1]

Vista SP1 didn't actually fix a lot of the most annoying stuff.

I do like Apples update model better, with well defined versioning, with Windows its just "you have all the most recent updates, right?".

[ouragan]

The Penryn iMacs are coming. Witness the renewed efforts to publish Mac OS X, version 10.5.3.

For newbies, Apple needs to publish additional Mac OS X code every time it wants to introduce a new computer model.

[Brown Noise]

Originally Posted by mrsteveman1

Vista SP1 didn't actually fix a lot of the most annoying stuff.

I do like Apples update model better, with well defined versioning, with Windows its just "you have all the most recent updates, right?".

Yeah I realized that it didn't. I'm using Vista on my bootcamp partition (as i was one that assumed I had to get vista to run future programs) and i waited a long time to be able to use my flash drives with the system.

Extremely crippling and annoying. I just want functionality.

[sc_markt]

What is there to fix? 10.5.2 so far has been flawless for me.

[Cubert]

It seems to me that Leopard is about one release off of the usual stability and feature fixes that Apple releases in these early updates. In other words, 10.5.0 was like a release candidate and now 10.5.3 is more like a dot 2 update. Think back to Tiger and you'll understand what I mean.

[Bloodshotrollin'red]

Originally Posted by sc_markt

What is there to fix? 10.5.2 so far has been flawless for me.

many people had Reboot upon "Wake from Sleep" issues with latest MacPro's (needed a firmware fix but problem still exists for some) and I've had countless hangs on Wake from Sleep with my MacPro. 10.5 was the buggiest Mac OS I have seen in years. I suppose we should just suffer from iPhpwninterruptus in silence.

[TriptychHunter]

Does anyone think that this update could have anything to do with the results of the recent PWN to OWN contest? I'm sure Apple's anxious to jump on those security issues.

Check out the article at ComputerWorld here.

[hmurchison]

Originally Posted by bugsnw

It's fast becoming apparent that the broadband infrastructure needs to be beefed up. 530+ MB is getting up there. I have fiber optic to the home for fast DSL, but I'm lucky as I live in one of the few areas in WA where it's available.

I'm looking forward to the Airport fixes and Back-to-my-mac improvements.

Agreed. I"m in Bothell and thank God for Fios because the DSL I had before wasn't cutting it. Welcome Bugsnw! I've enjoyed your commentary over at Mac360. Glad to see you pop on over.

Well I'm sure OS X still has bug affecting some people so lets move forward with constant evolution.

[blandaphotography]

I would like to see uniform scroll bars across all OS X apps. I like the matte look of the bars on iTunes.

[BjK]

Blandaphotography,

I really wish you wouldn't have pointed that out. It's something I've never noticed, but now it will probably bug me every time I look at the scroll bars! X( I like the matte look better too... lick-able buttons/icons are so 2001

sc_markt,

The biggest issue that I have with leopard is airport. It disconnects often, and I've had to reenter the WEP password a few times. (After tearing apart the house looking for where I wrote it down) Hopefully this gets repaired in the next update.

[Mr Squid]

Originally Posted by Brown Noise

Did anyone notice the "Spaces layering and preferences" being included in the list? I REALLY hope that this means they're adding a function to have a different desktop picture for a different space. I've been hoping this would be added since 10.5 came out. Apple did listen to pleas for stacks and the dock in the last update so I'll keep my fingers crossed.

What Spaces really needs is to be made project oriented instead of application oriented. Windows opened in one space should stay in that space and not open in the space that the application was originally started in. The way Spaces is set up now is not very practical. Also, Apple needs to fix the bug that causes Spaces to randomly jump from one space to another when one switches applications.

[rob05au]

Try doing a hard reset of the airport base station so far this has fixed the drop out issues for me.

I also suggest to use the password as wpa2 personal as it is much stronger form of password.

[inkswamp]

Originally Posted by sc_markt

What is there to fix? 10.5.2 so far has been flawless for me.

You're joking, right?

For me, the primary areas of focus right now are the directory services that are *still* broken in Leopard. Here's what it continues to do. (Bear in mind, that this is not a matter of configuration. I have Tiger machines running with the same configs on the same network, and they do this stuff flawlessly.)

- Won't prompt users when account password is expiring. XP and Tiger do.

- Won't properly update cached password of mobile network accounts once they have been updated. XP and Tiger do.

- Can't seem to find contact lists on an LDAP server. XP and Tiger do.

Now, I can forgive this stuff in 10.5.0. I can grind my teeth and deal with it in 10.5.1. But for features that are very important in an enterprise environment to remain broken in 10.5.2 is inexcusable, especially coming from a company that is able to pay such great lip-service to those aspects of their OS.

10.5.3 damn well better fix this stuff.

[Mr Squid]

Originally Posted by sc_markt

What is there to fix? 10.5.2 so far has been flawless for me.

Wireless needs to be fixed. At present wireless is badly broken--to the point that Leopard will let me log on to about 50% of the wireless networks that I encounter. I can log onto these same networks using Tiger, but not using Leopard. Until Apple fixes this Leopard is fairly useless on a laptop.

X needs to be fixed too. X applications have been quite flaky under Leopard.

Spaces needs to be fixed so that windows stay in the space that they are opened in.

Safari is in need of decent cookie control.

[BjK]

Originally Posted by rob05au

Try doing a hard reset of the airport base station so far this has fixed the drop out issues for me.

I also suggest to use the password as wpa2 personal as it is much stronger form of password.

Yeah, tried a hard reset. It helps with the 'random' drops, but what drops the connection the most is closing the screen on my laptop. The main problem isn't the dropping, but that airport refuses to remember my preferred networks. It worked fine in Tiger, and I'm confident the settings are right, so I don't know what else to blame it on other than the OS.

Checked out wpa2 on wikipedia, thanks for the tip. I don't think I was in any real danger, but more security can't hurt.

[rob05au]

Does closing the laptop cause it to logout?

If so check the network prefs => advanced => Disconnect from woreless networks when logging out.

Make sure that is not ticked.

It should help with keeping it connected.

The only other thing is when the laptop sleeps the connection drops out this happened on my imac Intel also until I changed the Energy Saver settings to

Put the computer to sleep when inactive for: This will be behind the dropouts for sure as when the laptop/desktop sleeps the connection disconnects itself but should auto reconnection when waking from sleep but doesn't always do it.

[BjK]

Originally Posted by rob05au

Does closing the laptop cause it to logout?

If so check the network prefs => advanced => Disconnect from wireless networks when logging out.

Make sure that is not ticked.

I double checked, and everything was right. Tried adding a screenshot, but realized I can't make attachments. Additionally, I have my computer set to never sleep when it is plugged in. (I'm not trying to waste electricity, it's so I can do the folding@home thing.) Another oddity I should mention is that I have about 12 preferred networks, but my home network is the only one that has this problem consistently. Then again, it's also the network I use 95% of the time.

I appreciate your help, I really do, but I would feel bad hijacking the forum to sort through a problem which I strongly suspect has some deep roots. If you are familiar with this problem though, I would gladly accept any advice. It can be quite frustrating at times. I was under the vague impression that lots of people were having issues with leopard's airport utility, so I haven't investigated too deeply for a solution.

[rob05au]

I am using airport on 2 macs both desktop one an Intel and the other PPC both running 10.5.2 fully updated amd I am using an airport extreme.

It seems to me most of the problems are generally laptop sided as I have been able to fix the issues on the desktop macs.

It seems in some cases when the lid of the laptop is closed it breaks the connection prettu much regardless of settings. The drop outs also seem to affect laptops a bit more and there is no simple or temprorary fix that really works.

I am starting to wonder if it maybe hardware related with laptops in some way.

[Zoc]

Originally Posted by Mr Squid

X needs to be fixed too. X applications have been quite flaky under Leopard.

Did you try XQuartz ?

[BjK]

I am starting to wonder if it maybe hardware related with laptops in some way.

Egads, let's hope not! :) It's possible that my laptop always has disconnected this way, but with tiger I never knew it. If it did, reconnecting wasn't a problem.

From what I gather, most of the problems have been with the macbook.
Thanks again.

[Shintocam]

Originally Posted by sc_markt

What is there to fix? 10.5.2 so far has been flawless for me.

I've had a lot of problems with 10.5.2 that I never had before (ie new to 10.5.2), and several that have been there since 10.5.0 that still are not fixed.

Old ones - Spaces has many problems still (especially with Office 2008 but that may be more a problem with Microsoft I realise). Still Spaces needs work. My computer locks up a lot after being put to sleep. I'd say at least 10% of the time I need to force it down to restart it and another 10% of the time it takes me two or three attempts to wake it up (close the lid, open the lid, close the lid.....).

New problems. The main one is that ever since 10.5.2, once and a while Finder simply stops working. The icons on my desktop cannot be clicked on. I have to re-launch Finder to get it to respond. This happens probably once a day to me, and it is often but not always after the machine has been asleep.

There's more, but these are the key ones that are driving me batty.....

[PB]

Originally Posted by Zoc

Did you try XQuartz ?

I don't know about him, but I have tried it and it still needs much work.

[PB]

Originally Posted by Mr Squid

X needs to be fixed too. X applications have been quite flaky under Leopard.

Spaces needs to be fixed so that windows stay in the space that they are opened in.

Safari is in need of decent cookie control.

I agree for X11 and Spaces. Spaces behaves really strange sometimes and it really looks like something half-baked.

To add a serious flaw: DVD playback often results in kernel panics in more recent Macbooks. This must be a graphics driver issue, but it is in any case unacceptable.

[lookingglass]

No love for Active Directory or sluggish SMB mappings?

[PB]

Oh, one more affecting at least the Macbooks: when waking up the screen by hitting a key (only screen at sleep, not the computer) the mouse cursor will jump to the upper left corner. So, if you have assigned some Exposé function to this one, waking up the screen will activate it. Really annoying.

[mdriftmeyer]

Originally Posted by PB

I agree for X11 and Spaces. Spaces behaves really strange sometimes and it really looks like something half-baked.

To add a serious flaw: DVD playback often results in kernel panics in more recent Macbooks. This must be a graphics driver issue, but it is in any case unacceptable.

http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/xquartz

Make sure you have the latest X from there and file bugs as you find them