Mac OS X 10.5.3; AT&T iPhone hotspot access; Vista sales accelerating?

[AppleInsider]

Apple on Wednesday broadened the testing focus for developers evaluating the next update to Leopard. Meanwhile, AT&T has officially announced free WiFi Hotspot access for iPhone plan holders; iPhone Software v2.0 will deliver limited YouTube support within Safari; and Vista has passed the 140 million sales mark.

Mac OS X 10.5.3 build 9D29

For the first time in nearly a month, Apple has added to the focus areas of Mac OS X 10.5.3 while issuing a new pre-release build of the operating system update.

According to people familiar with the matter, Mac OS X 10.5.3 build 9D29 released privately on Wednesday saw 802.1X and Sync Services technologies tacked on to a list of areas in which developers should focus their evaluation efforts.

The new build also delivered four new fixes, including one to Leopard's Animation technology and another to its Sync Services engine. It arrives just two days after the last external seed, build 9D27.

17,000 Wi-Fi hotspots for AT&T iPhone customers

AT&T on Wednesday made an update to its iPhoneCenter website noting that all of its iPhone call plans now include access to more than 17,000 Wi-Fi hotspots, including all U.S. company operated Starbucks locations equipped with a the WiFi technology.



The service, which prompts iPhone owners for their phone number prior to activation, was reported last week to have also cropped up at certain Barnes & Noble bookstores that feature AT&T WiFi.

iPhone's Safari to render embedded YouTube videos

In a brief posting, BGR reports that the latest beta of iPhone Software v2.0 puts to work a previously noted YouTube plugin for the mobile version of Safari that will rendered YouTube movies embedded in webpages. Clicking on the movies, however, still defaults playback to the handset's proprietary YouTube application and does not playback video in the browser.

Microsoft's Vista hits 140M milestone

Speaking at a European news conference Thursday, Microsoft chair Bill Gates noted that sales of Windows Vista have reached 140 million copies worldwide. The update is the first since the company crossed the 100 million mark at the start of the new year. This demonstrates that Vista continues to sell at a "very rapid" rate, he said.

If measured between January and April, the number represents about 10 million copies of Vista sold per month in the first four months of 2008 and signals a slight increase in the sales rate for the operating system, which averaged at just over 9 million copies sold per month in 2007. However, the sales rate is half that of the software's initial pace in the first two months of its launch, when it sold as many as 20 million copies per month to cater to early demand.


Apple has not provided an update on sales of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard since announcing sales of more than 2 million copies during its first weekend on the market this past October.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[zinfella]

Leopard will be a year old before they get the bugs out of it, at this rate. It looks like another iPhone release has taken away the OS technology force, once again. :o(

[eAi]

They were still getting bugs out of Tiger after Leopard shipped, I don't see why Leopard would be any different. Microsoft have only just released XP SP3 over a year after Vista shipped (and 7 years after XP shipped)...

[reciprocity]

Why in the world would AT&T Wireless design a login page specifically for iPhone users that asks them to "Click Here to Continue"? What bad form.

At least this looks like it should be functional. I can't stand their MMS viewer implementation: why can't they build a link that includes the appropriate filename and password in it when you receive an MMS so you don't have to manually re-type them into their (rarely functioning) ViewMyMessage site?

[Foo2]

I bought 4 of those Vista copies and hardly ever use them. Ugh, Vista is painful. I've bought almost no commercial Windows software since. Leopard is an entirely different animal. Use it all the time and bought lots of Apple and 3rd party Mac software.

[thefunky_monkey]

I like the idea of playing youtube content embedded in websites, as lots of video found on websites is hosted by youtube.

This will give a sort of psudo-flash feel to the web, only where youtube is concerned however. It will be very much like BBC iPlayer was, but sadly only for a short time.

[lkrupp]

Originally Posted by zinfella

Leopard will be a year old before they get the bugs out of it, at this rate. It looks like another iPhone release has taken away the OS technology force, once again. :o(

Oh for Pete's sake, get a clue. Leopard 10.5.2 is extremely stable for the vast majority of users with little or no deal-killing issues. The inclination to blame everything on OS bugs is just a cop-out for not dealing with system corruption and crappy third party ad-ons.

[federmoose]

Originally Posted by Foo2

I bought 4 of those Vista copies and hardly ever use them. Ugh, Vista is painful. I've bought almost no commercial Windows software since. Leopard is an entirely different animal. Use it all the time and bought lots of Apple and 3rd party Mac software.

ouch. my sympathies extend! and I thought XP Pro cost a lot of money!!

[solipsism]

-YouTube-
That is good to hear. There was a clever JS code that would replace the Flash viewer on YouTube.com with a Quicktime video that was usually higher quality that could be saved locally. It worked for about a week before it was made ineffective. So if that can be done with JS, it's about time we can get embedded YouTube videos in webpages.

Originally Posted by eAi

They were still getting bugs out of Tiger after Leopard shipped, I don't see why Leopard would be any different. Microsoft have only just released XP SP3 over a year after Vista shipped (and 7 years after XP shipped)...

Hear! Hear!

Originally Posted by reciprocity

Why in the world would AT&T Wireless design a login page specifically for iPhone users that asks them to "Click Here to Continue"? What bad form.

It is bad form and it's gone. They need a better system anyway to keep the User Agent spoofers out.

[federmoose]

Originally Posted by lkrupp

Oh for Pete's sake, get a clue. Leopard 10.5.2 is extremely stable for the vast majority of users with little or no deal-killing issues. The inclination to blame everything on OS bugs is just a cop-out for not dealing with system corruption and crappy third party ad-ons.

Only issue that makes me want to kill apple right now is Front Row, which freezes up nearly every time I play music on it. Aside from that, 10.5.2 was an incredible release. Not sure where the other 200+ code corrections are coming from, but looks like 10.5.3 will be incredibly stable.

[GQB]

Originally Posted by zinfella

Leopard will be a year old before they get the bugs out of it, at this rate. It looks like another iPhone release has taken away the OS technology force, once again. :o(

Are you under the impression that any OS is ever bug free?
There will always be updates, fixes and patches released until 10.6, at which point its rinse and repeat.

The OS team isn't 2 guys who have to multi-task between OS X and iPhone dev.

[8CoreWhore]

I'm still having issues where my MBP aircard is scanning even though I'm already connected. Printing over wifi is broken ever since 10.5.2. So... looking forward to .3

[VinitaBoy]

Originally Posted by federmoose

Only issue that makes me want to kill apple right now is Front Row, which freezes up nearly every time I play music on it. Aside from that, 10.5.2 was an incredible release. Not sure where the other 200+ code corrections are coming from, but looks like 10.5.3 will be incredibly stable.

Federmoose, I USED to have the same kind of problem with Front Row on my 20" iSight iMac (PPC) . . . until I obtained a copy of DiskWarrior and ran the machine through its battery of tests/directory rebuild. (My problem got so bad that I couldn't even do a re-install of the app 1.3.1 because my iMac--supposedly--had no IR receiver! What?! It did the night before!)

Well, and with that said, few minor irregularities showed themselves during the DIskWarrior run, including a Volume Header Information flaw that DW repaired successfully.

And now--and ever since--absolutely no problems with Front Row! NONE, and it's been well over four months now. If you don't have a copy of DW, GETCHA ONE!

[jbelkin]

They are two different markets. Each Leopard sale was initially $129 in revenue and now between $1,200-$1,400 in revenue (along with a hardware sale, of course) while most Vista sales are @$50 for each OEM copy ... meaning, of course that each 60-70 sales of Vista are required to match 1 sale of Leopard in revenue - again, not better or worse but DIFFERENT. Vista is the "included" OS when you buy a $399 PC, nothing more, nothing less - MS' problem is getting someone to value their OS as worth more in revenue & mindset other than, "I'll take it if it's included." How many of MS' 600 million XP users are willingly paying $200 for the upgrade? That is the only apples to apples comparison (in mre ways than one).

There are also two other reasons why it's not much of a comparison - MS counts 'shipped' and 'presumed shipped' as sold since OEM's pay them upfront per quarter guessing how many licenses they need - which MS immediately counts as 'sold' so anything that has left the factory and orim ght leave the factory is counted as sold according to MS press releases.

There is a new wrinkle in that now Ms is making OEM's count everything as a Vista sale even if people "downgrade" to XP on that order since to them, you're paying for Vista, it counts as 1 sold, who cares what you actually run ...

Just like MS says XBox is profitable this quarter, ignore the $15 BILLION the division is in the red ... for a company who sells a thing that requires accuracy to the 100th decimel point, they are pretty casual with numbers ....

[wolfneuralnet]

Not sure whether this is old news that has been surpassed by the fact that they took down the ability to log in a few days ago.

I was just at a Starbucks in Philly and tried to login - there was no iPhone option, just an ATT login for existing ATT wireless customers.

An update to this info would be appreciated! Seems to be in flux...

[Foo2]

Originally Posted by federmoose

ouch. my sympathies extend! and I thought XP Pro cost a lot of money!!

The Vistas were bought from CompUSA's going-out-of-business inventory, so the price wasn't as high as my 3(!) XP licenses. But they were Business and Ultimate editions, so I could virtualize, because Home edition was not permitted for virtualization at the time. What a complete scam the Ultimate edition is.

[jdlink]

Originally Posted by thefunky_monkey

I like the idea of playing youtube content embedded in websites, as lots of video found on websites is hosted by youtube.

This will give a sort of psudo-flash feel to the web, only where youtube is concerned however. It will be very much like BBC iPlayer was, but sadly only for a short time.

Does anyone know how AP is embedding video in their news site (www.apnews.com)? It's an iPhone only website. Click on Categories, go down to videos. It's YouTube-like but when they're done you're still in Safari.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by jdlink

Does anyone know how AP is embedding video in their news site (www.apnews.com)? It's an iPhone only website. Click on Categories, go down to videos. It's YouTube-like but when they're done you're still in Safari.

They are using embedded video source like with any Safari browser. They have done a good job in making it look very slick.

code:

---

<center>
<embed src="/media/render.htm?m=52346&width=320&crop=false"
href="http://209.126.247.99/videos/16368/url_ContentBroker.hires.3gp" width="280" height="210" type="video/x-m4v" target="myself" scale="1" />
</center>

---

If you go directly to the link above it will play in Safari as a direct QT video, or open up VLC and play it.

[SpamSandwich]

Originally Posted by VinitaBoy

Federmoose, I USED to have the same kind of problem with Front Row on my 20" iSight iMac (PPC) . . . until I obtained a copy of DiskWarrior and ran the machine through its battery of tests/directory rebuild. (My problem got so bad that I couldn't even do a re-install of the app 1.3.1 because my iMac--supposedly--had no IR receiver! What?! It did the night before!)

Well, and with that said, few minor irregularities showed themselves during the DIskWarrior run, including a Volume Header Information flaw that DW repaired successfully.

And now--and ever since--absolutely no problems with Front Row! NONE, and it's been well over four months now. If you don't have a copy of DW, GETCHA ONE!

DiskWarrior is good. Apple should simply buy them out and incorporate their basic software in the OS for self-repair.

[Hiro]

Originally Posted by wolfneuralnet

Not sure whether this is old news that has been surpassed by the fact that they took down the ability to log in a few days ago.

I was just at a Starbucks in Philly and tried to login - there was no iPhone option, just an ATT login for existing ATT wireless customers.

An update to this info would be appreciated! Seems to be in flux...

If you are an ATT iPhone subscriber you are given access to the regular ATT wifi as part of your iPhone data plan, not a special ATT wifi setup. If you are not an ATT iPhone data plan customer but have an iPhone you would be SOL.

[Hiro]

Originally Posted by SpamSandwich

DiskWarrior is good. Apple should simply buy them out and incorporate their basic software in the OS for self-repair.

I like them independent. It gives more motivation to stay on top of things and make a quality product. Inside Apple and then management can redirect resources away from the core team. Something like that would be insidious and hardly noticed until quality suffers.

[PG4G]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

According to people familiar with the matter, Mac OS X 10.5.3 build 9D29 released privately on Wednesday saw 802.1X and Sync Services technologies tacked on to a list of areas in which developers should focus their evaluation efforts.

THANK GOODNESS!

My Australian college uses 802.1X WEP technology, and my Mac is woeful to say the least with the 802.1X authentication to receive the IP Address.

If Apple is targeting a bug fix here, I hope that they notice any other problems, so that even if it wasn't the original fix, they notice and rectify my issue

[halhiker]

Originally Posted by Hiro

If you are an ATT iPhone subscriber you are given access to the regular ATT wifi as part of your iPhone data plan, not a special ATT wifi setup. If you are not an ATT iPhone data plan customer but have an iPhone you would be SOL.

just was at Starbucks and I was directed to the regular ATT sign in, NO iPhone page to enter as has been previously shown. And yes, I have the ATT data plan and am a regular ATT iPhone subscriber. My guess is that while ATT has the info on their website they have not made an official announcement and have not implemented this program nationwide yet.

I have to think that ATT will put out a press release and fire up the marketing engines when this is fully rolled out.

[inkswamp]

Originally Posted by lkrupp

Oh for Pete's sake, get a clue. Leopard 10.5.2 is extremely stable for the vast majority of users with little or no deal-killing issues.

Umm... you're not using Macs bound to Active Directory, are you?

It used to work beautifully in Tiger and it's largely broken in Leopard. Until that's fixed, nobody where I work can upgrade from Tiger. Apple's been sitting on their thumb on that one and yes, it's definitely a "deal-killing issue."

[MartiNZ]

It is good that it seems they are trying to recover the situation after a few dud updates - 10.5.2 broke a few things as did the Leopard Graphics Update (Excel lockups for one), and then the Boot Camp update was released and that made at least Vista 32 less reliable (brought it down to Leopard's level) with wake from sleep issues and sound issues.

However, I find it annoying that Apple feels the need to package 250+ bug fixes before they release any of them to us - and most annoying that they are now widening the tester focus again, now, in May, when the update was reportedly imminent in early March.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by MartiNZ

However, I find it annoying that Apple feels the need to package 250+ bug fixes before they release any of them to us - and most annoying that they are now widening the tester focus again, now, in May, when the update was reportedly imminent in early March.

We get OS X point updates every few months. That is pretty damn good. Windows XP is just getting SP3 after 7 years.

[Foo2]

Originally Posted by MartiNZ

... and most annoying that they are now widening the tester focus again, now, in May, when the update was reportedly imminent in early March.

Don't give us that! Absolutely nothing was imminent in March. Just because you read some scuzzy, click-through-whore-of-a-blog that claimed a release was imminent when not even a single beta had been seeded to developers.

[Foo2]

Originally Posted by solipsism

Windows XP is just getting SP3 after 7 years.

That's because of the superior XP design.

[zinfella]

Originally Posted by SpamSandwich

DiskWarrior is good. Apple should simply buy them out and incorporate their basic software in the OS for self-repair.

That would mean that they would have to quit using Prosoft's Drive Genius at all of the Apple Genius Bars, and other places where Apple fixes drive issues. But wait!Prosoft software has issues under Leopard, now doesn't it. Next week will be a month since Prosoft said that 10.5. 3 was imminent, fixing those issues. I don't think it's Prosoft holding things up!

Yes, all OSen get updates and fixes, but please tell me of another OS X version that was as plagued with issues as Leopard upon it's initial release. The tell me it wasn't because Apple used their people to get the iPhone to market, mostly the same people that would have smoothed out OS 10.5, if they would have been working on it.

[bdkennedy1]

That Vista number is so padded it's not even funny. I know not one person I'm associated with that is running Vista.

[Marvin]

Is this standalone copies of Vista or does it include bundled copies? If it includes bundled copies, companies like Dell are now charging more to buy XP so are basically forcing you to use Vista so an increase is inevitable.

[Admiralkymia]

Originally Posted by jbelkin

They are two different markets. Each Leopard sale was initially $129 in revenue and now between $1,200-$1,400 in revenue (along with a hardware sale, of course) while most Vista sales are @$50 for each OEM copy ... meaning, of course that each 60-70 sales of Vista are required to match 1 sale of Leopard in revenue - again, not better or worse but DIFFERENT. Vista is the "included" OS when you buy a $399 PC, nothing more, nothing less - MS' problem is getting someone to value their OS as worth more in revenue & mindset other than, "I'll take it if it's included." How many of MS' 600 million XP users are willingly paying $200 for the upgrade? That is the only apples to apples comparison (in mre ways than one).

There are also two other reasons why it's not much of a comparison - MS counts 'shipped' and 'presumed shipped' as sold since OEM's pay them upfront per quarter guessing how many licenses they need - which MS immediately counts as 'sold' so anything that has left the factory and orim ght leave the factory is counted as sold according to MS press releases.

There is a new wrinkle in that now Ms is making OEM's count everything as a Vista sale even if people "downgrade" to XP on that order since to them, you're paying for Vista, it counts as 1 sold, who cares what you actually run ...

Just like MS says XBox is profitable this quarter, ignore the $15 BILLION the division is in the red ... for a company who sells a thing that requires accuracy to the 100th decimel point, they are pretty casual with numbers ....

I 100% agree! Just because someone needs a new computer, and doesn't have the insight (or perhaps the funds) to buy a Mac, which happens to have Vista on it because MS stopped supporting XP, doesn't mean that they necessarily purposefully bought Vista. As was said, most people dread using it or revert back to XP. Unless of course their knowledge of computers is limited in which case it doesn't make a cotton pickn' difference what OS they just got. All they realized is click here and here and the little arrow thingy shops eBay for them. Microsoft is really getting desperate to keep their share in the OS market, which OS X and Linux is quickly starting to mop up. Most of us hated XP, until Vista came out and all of the sudden XP is heaven sent. Vista is strangely reminiscent of Windows ME. Crap, crap and more crap. BUY A MAC PEOPLE!!!

*End Soap-box Transmission*

[MartiNZ]

Originally Posted by Foo2

Don't give us that! Absolutely nothing was imminent in March. Just because you read some scuzzy, click-through-whore-of-a-blog that claimed a release was imminent when not even a single beta had been seeded to developers.

Hence the word 'reportedly'. Just like MacBooks and MacBook Pros were 'reportedly' going to be updated again two days ago. Just like a lot of stuff where we are right now. I know

With the widespread issues with 10.5.2 it really should have been earlier.

And as I was saying, XP may only have had 3 service packs in 7 years, but it has had a rather massive number of bug and other fixes in a fashion that would be preferable at this point to large, infrequent updates that break things. Here's hoping this one won't.

All this angry defence of how long it's taking is a little annoying.

[guinness]

Originally Posted by solipsism

We get OS X point updates every few months. That is pretty damn good. Windows XP is just getting SP3 after 7 years.

Except that Service Packs are typically like Apple's point updates, with all the fixes rolled into a single packpage, in contrast to using Windows Update to download every update, one by one.

Even setting up a new XP SP2 PC, will cause about 50-80 updates to be downloaded - that's where SP3 comes in. But on the same hand, MS continuously rolls out patches, whereas Apple waits until they feel like it...

I don't use XP anymore though - Vista (Home Premium and Business), Windows 2003, Kubutu and Leopard. I put Vista and Leopard about on par for most things, which each having advantages in others, like OSX for photos, and for general home use, Windows for Office and Visual Studio.

But lately, I've been using Kubuntu 8.04, and happy that it's working well on my laptop, along with Win2k3 and Vista HP.

[Foo2]

Originally Posted by MartiNZ

Hence the word 'reportedly'. Just like MacBooks and MacBook Pros were 'reportedly' going to be updated again two days ago. Just like a lot of stuff where we are right now. I know

With the widespread issues with 10.5.2 it really should have been earlier.

And as I was saying, XP may only have had 3 service packs in 7 years, but it has had a rather massive number of bug and other fixes in a fashion that would be preferable at this point to large, infrequent updates that break things. Here's hoping this one won't.

All this angry defence of how long it's taking is a little annoying.

Careful what "reports" you believe. If you believe every blog, then you know iPhone production was scaled back last summer. Sorry if the rest of us weren't so gullible.

I agree it would have been nice for Leopard to have had fewer bugs upon initial release, but even now Leopard is only 5+ months old. Think back to the myriad problems Microsoft has had with its major OS releases and incremental updates. Arguably Leopard is still miles ahead for the vast majority of Apple's customers and oh, my, is it easier to use.

[MartiNZ]

Originally Posted by Foo2

Careful what "reports" you believe. If you believe every blog, then you know iPhone production was scaled back last summer. Sorry if the rest of us weren't so gullible.

I agree it would have been nice for Leopard to have had fewer bugs upon initial release, but even now Leopard is only 5+ months old. Think back to the myriad problems Microsoft has had with its major OS releases and incremental updates. Arguably Leopard is still miles ahead for the vast majority of Apple's customers and oh, my, is it easier to use.

Yes, because of course I believed it . And the iPhone hasn't even made it over here yet so I could care less about those stories.

I may have only just started using Vista, but I can say it has been an awful lot more reliable than Leopard on this machine so far ... and it is certainly not difficult to use.

Enough.

[bikerdude]

Originally Posted by MartiNZ

Hence the word 'reportedly'. Just like MacBooks and MacBook Pros were 'reportedly' going to be updated again two days ago. Just like a lot of stuff where we are right now. I know

With the widespread issues with 10.5.2 it really should have been earlier.

And as I was saying, XP may only have had 3 service packs in 7 years, but it has had a rather massive number of bug and other fixes in a fashion that would be preferable at this point to large, infrequent updates that break things. Here's hoping this one won't.

All this angry defence of how long it's taking is a little annoying.

All these angry claims that leopard was broken from the start are really annoying!

I have been using leopard since day 1 and have not had one single problem, every update has made everything better eachtime,not worse, and as I said I have not had any problems on 2 Macs.

G5 Imac from 3 years ago and brand new 20 inch iMac for work

[wheelhot]

From my preference, Vista is Windows Me II. If MSoft would just rename it as that, the IT community will be peaceful.

Yeah, I agree Vista Ultimate is a complete scam, the Dreamscene (useless but its still a feature) function has now been removed from Ultimate cause MSoft decide not to support it.

I am an Windows convert!!!! Got my MBP for a week already and its almost perfect!!!. I bring it to class everyday to record lectures and to type notes. Works like a champ.

Oh yeah what is 802.1X? I only know 802.11a/b/g/n

[mrtotes]

Originally Posted by wheelhot

Oh yeah what is 802.1X? I only know 802.11a/b/g/n

It's authentication to control access to networks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/802.1x

802.11a/b/g/n are the base-band technologies concerned with how you physically achieve a network.

[irnchriz]

Of the 140 million copies of vista sold how many were pre-installed onto PC's and how many were actual retail copies?

Also do they count the number of copies shipped on PC which are then wiped off and replaced by windows XP by the IT department?