Briefly: Hazmat scare at Apple; Mac OS X 10.5.7; iPhone 3.0 beta 5

[AppleInsider]

A building on Apple's Cupertino campus was evacuated Wednesday when an envelope containing a suspicious white powder was discovered. Meanwhile, the company has pushed out new betas of Mac OS X 10.5.7, iTunes 8.2, and iPhone Software 3.0.

Apple hazmat scare

The Santa Clara County fire department arrived at Apple's Building 4 on De Anza Boulevard at about 3:30 p.m. Wednesday dressed in hazmat gear after they were called to the scene following the discovery of a suspicious envelope, reports the San Jose Mercury News.

An employee reportedly found the envelope, which contained an unknown white powder, in the Apple cafeteria. Preliminary test turned up no signs that the substance was hazardous but it was taken to a Santa Clara County lab for further evaluation.

Mac OS X 10.5.7 Update

Apple on Monday began distributing Mac OS X 10.5.7 build 9J60 on its internal network and subsequently made the pre-release software available for broader testing on Tuesday.

This sixtieth build of the Leopard operating system update corrected just one additional issue with a programming method that lets developers import the contents of a URL to their applications. Again, the lone issue with the software is incompatibility with the current public beta of Safari 4.0.

Mac OS X 10.5.7 includes well over 100 bug fixes, and AppleInsider has also recently learned that it will address issues with certain prior-generation Mac Pros and the ATI Radeon 4870 graphics card required for compatibility with Apple's new 24-inch LED Cinema Display.

Reportedly, the company prematurely marketed this graphics card to certain Mac Pro owners before appropriate software support was ready, which caused issues with iPhoto, VMWare Fusion, and putting the systems to sleep. Apple support representatives have apologized to affected customers and informed them that Mac OS X 10.5.7 will address the issue.

These support representatives further informed these customers last Friday that Mac OS X 10.5.7 would arrive "very shortly" or "within about a week."

iPhone OS 3.0 beta 5

Meanwhile, Apple on Wednesday evening released to iPhone developers iPhone Software 3.0 beta 5 build 7A312g, which was accompanied by iPhone SDK beta 5 build 9M2735 and iTunes 8.2 beta 10.

No major changes have turned up in any of the new betas, though a person familiar with beta 5 of iPhone Software 3.0 says the option to turn MMS messaging on or off -- which never worked to begin with -- is disabled in the distribution and that the tethering solution detailed on some iPhone hacking blogs no longer works.

Xsan

Apple also recently issued build 9M1041 of its Xsan networked file system. The release focuses on compatibility with the upcoming release of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[valeri]

is it possible that they will add Safari 4 support at the last moment, eg. by releasing the final version of it? Or we'll have to choose between S4 beta and 10.5.7 update? I got used to S4...

[bslaght]

Originally Posted by italiankid

RUMOR: 10.5.7 should be out after Snow Leopard...

IMO Apple is making 10.5.7 perfect for what? All of three months before people update to SNOW?

Apple should have made the fixes earlier in on the OS and make minor changes as the updates come to an end.

The OS should have been more flawless at 10.5.2 and not 10.5.7.

I understand its for the people who don't want to update to SNOW, but for the most part, most people will update and it would have been nice to enjoy and more stable OS from Apple earlier on!

Stop yer jibber-jabba..... Microsoft should have released a stable OS before any of its updates and SP's. There will always be bugs and patches to fix them.... in any OS.

you sound sooo silly..."Apple why are you bothering to fix Leopard, when Snow Leopard will be out soon???" um because Apple is committed to a good customer experience?? Honestly....just stop posting, it's embarrassing.

[iCarbon]

I just want to know how long before they figure out that the white powder is someone's non-sugar sweetener.

The down side of a terrorized populace is the propensity to overreact to small things.

white powder in a cafeteria, I wonder what it could possibly be?

[iCarbon]

So I wanted to get this into AI, and this is the most recent relevant thread:

I just got off the phone with Apple support to complain about my ongoing problems with the graphics out from my 15" macbook pro (unibody) via a dual-link dvi into a 30" monitor. It tends to flash, go fuzzy, gain translucent grey snow and become unreadable about every 5 minutes (sleep or unplug/replug of the monitor fixes this temporarily).

Well, in the past they've told me that they are aware and investigating. Today I was told that "according to engineering, they're hoping that the update slated for the next week or two should fix this" Which means to me two things:
1) Apple is directly indicating that the update will be here shortly
and
2) The expected fixes for graphic cards will (hopefully) encompass existing issues with macbook pro's (as well as the other reported fixes for mac pro's)

[Virgil-TB2]

Originally Posted by italiankid

RUMOR: 10.5.7 should be out after Snow Leopard...

IMO Apple is making 10.5.7 perfect for what? All of three months before people update to SNOW?

Apple should have made the fixes earlier in on the OS and make minor changes as the updates come to an end.

The OS should have been more flawless at 10.5.2 and not 10.5.7.

I understand its for the people who don't want to update to SNOW, but for the most part, most people will update and it would have been nice to enjoy and more stable OS from Apple earlier on!

WTF?

This is an idiotic rant, even for you.

[solipsism]

I do like the tether option, I haven't even heard of any major performance, stability or feature gains, and my device runs well on Beta 4 so I'll pass on this one.

Originally Posted by italiankid

RUMOR: 10.5.7 should be out after Snow Leopard...

10.5.8 will be out before or around Snow Leopard is released this fall.

The OS should have been more flawless at 10.5.2 and not 10.5.7.

Great logic!

[Cubert]

Originally Posted by valeri

is it possible that they will add Safari 4 support at the last moment, eg. by releasing the final version of it? Or we'll have to choose between S4 beta and 10.5.7 update? I got used to S4...

My guess is that we will see a new Safari beta at the time of the release or a little before.

[Cubert]

Originally Posted by italiankid

RUMOR: 10.5.7 should be out after Snow Leopard...

IMO Apple is making 10.5.7 perfect for what? All of three months before people update to SNOW?

Apple should have made the fixes earlier in on the OS and make minor changes as the updates come to an end.

The OS should have been more flawless at 10.5.2 and not 10.5.7.

I understand its for the people who don't want to update to SNOW, but for the most part, most people will update and it would have been nice to enjoy and more stable OS from Apple earlier on!

I find it hard to believe that Apple will let 3-4 months go by without another update (August or September SL release time frame).

They continue to update 10.5 because of us PPC users who won't be able to go to SL.

[Cubert]

Originally Posted by iCarbon

I just want to know how long before they figure out that the white powder is someone's non-sugar sweetener.

The down side of a terrorized populace is the propensity to overreact to small things.

white powder in a cafeteria, I wonder what it could possibly be?

I confess - it was mine. Now my weekend is ruined. Gotta go back to my dealer.

[macFanDave]

White powder in Apple's cafeteria?

How did Steve Ballmer's snortable Levitra get there?

[jamesbull]

I can CONFIRM that MMS and tethering still works for Canadian (Rogers) iPhone users. Nice...

[akf2000]

Originally Posted by jamesbull

I can CONFIRM that MMS and tethering still works for Canadian (Rogers) iPhone users. Nice...

Anything you notice about b5? snappier?

[Johnny Mozzarella]

Originally Posted by iCarbon

I just want to know how long before they figure out that the white powder is someone's non-sugar sweetener.

The down side of a terrorized populace is the propensity to overreact to small things.

white powder in a cafeteria, I wonder what it could possibly be?

Sweet n' Low laced with Anthrax
Flour laced with Anthrax
Cocaine laced with Anthrax
Anthrax laced with Sweet n' Low

[lilgto64]

Originally Posted by Cubert

I find it hard to believe that Apple will let 3-4 months go by without another update (August or September SL release time frame).

They continue to update 10.5 because of us PPC users who won't be able to go to SL.

There is also something to be said for incorporating fixes and such from the new version into the old version as well so that on the one hand more of your user base can pick up at least some of the enhancements and so that you don't have too big a back lash of why wasn't such and such feature included in the last update.

It's not like you just snap your fingers and things get done - writing and testing code takes time. and some of the enhancements rather than fixes may only have been dreamed up - or some shortcoming only recently identified. If there was some major flaw or promised feature in 10.5.0 that did not see daylight until 10.5.7 that might be a different story.

[solipsism]

The powder is actually a large sampling of the new SoCs created by PA Semi for the next iPhone. Each granule is a complete system reducing the iPhone's size and weight hundreds of times over.

• iPod Invisia — http://www.truveo.com/IPod-Invisa/id/1420190730
• Unaired iPhone skit — http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/leaked/th...red-321328.php

[solipsism]

The powder is actually a large sampling of the new SoCs created by PA Semi for the next iPhone. Each granule is a complete system reducing the iPhone's size and weight hundreds of times over.

• iPod Invisia — http://www.truveo.com/IPod-Invisa/id/1420190730
• Unaired iPhone skit — http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/leaked/th...red-321328.php

[Fast Fred 1]

What's all this 100 bug fixes with 10.5.7. I have late Oct. 07 iMac running 10.5.6. I have never had one problem other that the mouse ball sticking once in a while. I use Safari 3.2.1 no problems. I guess it's the newer machines.

[wizard69]

Originally Posted by italiankid

RUMOR: 10.5.7 should be out after Snow Leopard...

No it should come out when all of the targetted issues have been addressed. The whole idea of these releases is to fix things.

IMO Apple is making 10.5.7 perfect for what? All of three months before people update to SNOW?

By it's very nature software can seldom be perfect. Given the complexity in modern OSes it's a surprise that they don't have more issues.

Apple should have made the fixes earlier in on the OS and make minor changes as the updates come to an end.

You can't fix problems you don't know about. Even if you do know of an issue the fix might not be obvious. Your statement demonstrates a shallow grasp of software engineering or simply complex systems.

The OS should have been more flawless at 10.5.2 and not 10.5.7.

Heck even Apple has more or less said that they weren't happy with 10.5. Thus one of the focuses of 10.6 will be performance and stability. Even so you still have to expect issues with Snow Leopard when it is released. It's the nature of the beast.

I understand its for the people who don't want to update to SNOW, but for the most part, most people will update and it would have been nice to enjoy and more stable OS from Apple earlier on!

Well yeah and winning the lottery and retiring on a South seas island has a lot of appeal. But rational people realize that is not likely to happen. Rather what you need to consider is how many other OSes have few problems. Not problems addressed but existing known issues. In that light Mac OS/X looks pretty good. Mind you I'm a long time Linux user at home and a windows user at work, so I believe I can rightfully put Mac OS on it's platform and promote it as being very stable.

As a side note I'm comfortable with Apples release schedules for the updates as it leans towards the Linux way of doing things. That is update/release often. If they could be just a tad more agressive with security issues all would be perfect. On the other hand Apples packaging of releases into 10.5.xx distributions does mean you have a better idea of how a specific system is configured and what problems it may have. With Linux and MS figuring out the star of the system software is somewhat more difficult.

Can Apple do better? Who can't, the question is are they doing better or worst than the competition. I'd have to say their appraich is pretty good with respect to incremental updates of the OS.

Dave.

[Fast Fred 1]

Hey I just got my $250.00 Stimulus Check.

Now what? snow....iphone.....snow.....iphone......snow...... iphone....snow ......iphone....snow......iphone......gee.....

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by Fast Fred 1

Hey I just got my $250.00 Stimulus Check.

Now what? snow....iphone.....snow.....iphone......snow...... iphone....snow ......iphone....snow......iphone......gee.....

Save it and then get an iPhone this summer. What do you mean by 'snow'? What that your envelope in the Apple cafeteria?

[BuzDots]

Originally Posted by solipsism

...What do you mean by 'snow'?...

Snow................. Leopard




yeah, that's it!


maybe they let the cat outta the bag!!!!!!!!

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by BuzDots

Snow................. Leopard

HAHA I didn't even think of Snow Leopard. Never even crossed my mind. I skiing trip did cross my mind, though. Perhaps I need some rest.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by italiankid

I never mentioned Microsoft. Stop comparing the two.

My post was about Leopard 10.5.x. Lets worry about Apple and not Microsoft for once.

Okay, let's due that. So why should 10.5.2 be more stable than 10.5.7? Why will 10.5.7 not be released until this Fall when the beta updates are coming so often now?

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by italiankid

I was kidding about the fall date... 10.5.7 has had over 16 betas out. Far more than any other 10.5.x releases. People need the updates for drivers etc etc and yet Apple is taking their time releasing it. IMO why make an OS rock solid for the duration of 3 mths before 75% of the customers who use Intel upgrade to Snow Leopard? Apple should have taken their time in the past to making the OS more stable and more robust when it was 10.5.2, 10.5.3 etc etc... This issues should have been addressed earlier on by better detection.

If you look at 10.5.6 and 10.5.7 there are over 200+ fixes! That's a lot.

Instead we will enjoy a more stable OS at the end of its life instead of during its life cycle.

I agree that waiting for a driver update for months is ridiculous, though Apple will release firmware revisions as stand alone updates if the need is great enough. It is unusual to have this many betas for a point update and wait this long to release it, but rest assured that the next point update will also have hundreds of issues to resolve. They cold keep refining Leopard indefinitely. I just hope they keep update Leopard at least once after SL is released as many of the higher-end PPC Macs will only just hitting their 3 year mark at that time.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by italiankid

I agree with you...

They are making 10.5.7 sound like the next OS lol

They should have 16 betas or more for 10.6 not for 10.5.7 hehe

I don't think they are making it sound like anything other than a point update. The teams working on these updates are much smaller than the teams trying to get the very complex SL up and running. They don't even a 64-bit kernel for all the Macs yet and I don't think Grand Central or OpenCL has been introduced yet, either. That is very difficult stuff, these are just tweaks in comparison. With the iPhone and SL arriving this year maybe they are really trying extra hard to perfect this update so they move some of that team over to the iPhone 3.0 and SL teams. That isn't such a bad thing.

[akf2000]

AI - the Store menu in iPhone 3.0 Beta 5 is there now, just noticed it. It has 'view account' and 'sign out' buttons.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by akf2000

AI - the Store menu in iPhone 3.0 Beta 5 is there now, just noticed it. It has 'view account' and 'sign out' buttons.

Their portal is still a work in progress. I think it's HTML without the CSS.

[bslaght]

Originally Posted by solipsism

Their portal is still a work in progress. I think it's HTML without the CSS.

I have beta 4 still and can confirm this was already in that version. Hope to put beta 5 on tonight.

[PB]

Originally Posted by solipsism

The teams working on these updates are much smaller than the teams trying to get the very complex SL up and running. They don't even a 64-bit kernel for all the Macs yet and I don't think Grand Central or OpenCL has been introduced yet, either. That is very difficult stuff, these are just tweaks in comparison.

Hm, this makes me wonder if SL will be ready for this autumn. I thought they would have been there (i.e. operational Grand Central and OpenCL) a few months ago already.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by PB

Hm, this makes me wonder if SL will be ready for this autumn. I thought they would have been there (i.e. operational Grand Central and OpenCL) a few months ago already.

Maybe it's there and since it's low-level coding there is no easy way to test for it. The comparisons I've done have me at about 10% faster on SL using the popular benchmarking apps, but they are far from being the final say on performance.

If it's already implemented I hope someone posts info on it here.

[PB]

Originally Posted by solipsism

Maybe it's there and since it's low-level coding there is no easy way to test for it.

Yes, people often seem to not well realize how deep are such changes. S. Jobs' anouncement that SL would be ready in about one year (i.e. this summer) makes you wonder if he is one of them or not.

On the other hand, I read that Windows 7 will be probably ready by this autumn, although this does not seem to be official. Apparently MS is hard trying to steal Apple's thunder but I am not sure if Apple really cares at this point. Personally I would prefer a properly working OS than a thunderous one that will wipe my hard drive while passing by.

But the hard truth is this. Unitl now, Apple offered no demo of the new OS. Anyone would guess is that this is going to happen during the upcoming WWDC. For me this translates to probably no release before the end of the year.

[Stormchild]

"Mysterious white powder in an envelope" indeed. They only evacuated the people who weren't invited to the "Snow" Leopard pre-party.

[Stormchild]

Originally Posted by italiankid

RUMOR: 10.5.7 should be out after Snow Leopard...

IMO Apple is making 10.5.7 perfect for what? All of three months before people update to SNOW?

Apple should have made the fixes earlier in on the OS and make minor changes as the updates come to an end.

The OS should have been more flawless at 10.5.2 and not 10.5.7.

I understand its for the people who don't want to update to SNOW, but for the most part, most people will update and it would have been nice to enjoy and more stable OS from Apple earlier on!

You're about as sharp as a marble, eh? Maybe you should just practise bouncing this ball for awhile and see how that goes.

[justflybob]

Originally Posted by akf2000

Anything you notice about b5? snappier?

Oh God. Not the "snappier" thing again!

[Eluard]

Originally Posted by italiankid

I was kidding about the fall date... 10.5.7 has had over 16 betas out. Far more than any other 10.5.x releases. People need the updates for drivers etc etc and yet Apple is taking their time releasing it. IMO why make an OS rock solid for the duration of 3 mths before 75% of the customers who use Intel upgrade to Snow Leopard? Apple should have taken their time in the past to making the OS more stable and more robust when it was 10.5.2, 10.5.3 etc etc... This issues should have been addressed earlier on by better detection.

If you look at 10.5.6 and 10.5.7 there are over 200+ fixes! That's a lot.

Instead we will enjoy a more stable OS at the end of its life instead of during its life cycle.

Not everyone is reckless enough to jump to a new OS update at the point zero release. So leopard will still have plenty of users when the lovers of the bleeding edge are running SL through its initial fraught months. And that is how it should be: stable mature releases for the risk averse and unstable, incomplete releases for those who can afford the time.

Friday has come and gone and another rumor bites the dust. Looks like it will be next Monday or Tuesday before we have .7. I have never looked forward to a point release as much as this one. There are some serious networking issues in 10.5.6 that I will be happy to see fixed.

[kaiwai]

Originally Posted by PB

Yes, people often seem to not well realize how deep are such changes. S. Jobs' anouncement that SL would be ready in about one year (i.e. this summer) makes you wonder if he is one of them or not.

On the other hand, I read that Windows 7 will be probably ready by this autumn, although this does not seem to be official. Apparently MS is hard trying to steal Apple's thunder but I am not sure if Apple really cares at this point. Personally I would prefer a properly working OS than a thunderous one that will wipe my hard drive while passing by.

But the hard truth is this. Unitl now, Apple offered no demo of the new OS. Anyone would guess is that this is going to happen during the upcoming WWDC. For me this translates to probably no release before the end of the year.

Well, Steve did sound 'about a year' - so I'd love someone to show me where he said, "it will be ready in exactly a year".

Are there people here who don't know what 'about' actually means?

[PB]

Originally Posted by kaiwai

Well, Steve did sound 'about a year' - so I'd love someone to show me where he said, "it will be ready in exactly a year".

Are there people here who don't know what 'about' actually means?

I don't see what you do mean. I too said "about" and for me this means for that case, anything between June and August, at most September. But if what is whispered here is to be believed, then a delay would not come as a surprise. I would not even be surprised to see SL released at the beginning of the next year. I suppose though that a release date will be announced during WWDC.

[kaiwai]

Originally Posted by PB

I don't see what you do mean. I too said "about" and for me this means for that case, anything between June and August, at most September. But if what is whispered here is to be believed, then a delay would not come as a surprise. I would not even be surprised to see SL released at the beginning of the next year. I suppose though that a release date will be announced during WWDC.

Sorry, my reply was not meant to 'rebut' what you said but actually build upon it.

Personally they can take until December/January if they want. I'd sooner them get a quality product out the door rather than simply pushing to make some sort of date.