Apple seeds first Mac OS X 10.6.5 build to developers

Sounds good. Thanks.

Hope they rake a long look at Mail. It worked great for me on gmail for months, then one day poof, couldn't find the surfer. Troubleshot it for a while, couldn't fix it, switched to ThunderBird. Miss Mail though.

Must be a limited audience for this release. Haven't seen the notice yet.

-Chris

I wonder if OpenGL support has been upgraded.



I would post your issue and attempted resolutions in detail at the MacOSXhints forums. It's a great place for resolving most issues.

OSX seems so stable to me right now. I'd appreciate a new release of iLife and iWork - just bought a new iMac 21" i3. I couldn't hold-out anymore in waiting for those next releases.

We haven't had a separate security updates for quite some time even though I hear of many exploits coming out of recent hacking events. It would be more comforting if Apple released security updates more frequently than OSX builds to put its users (like me) at ease. Lord knows the hackers are finding the holes so maybe Apple should hire these people to harden the OS.

Sweet - I hope they fix the X11 bugs. Can't run 11gR2 netmgr without xQuartx.

I hope it fixed my SMB windows sharing...ever since 10.6.3 it's been on and off...

The "Finder View Search Prefs" will ever be "fixed" ?

You know, like it used to be in 10.4 or 10.5

Could order the "results" by "size" - remember ?

Or even search selected Disc/Drives and ONLY those

Etc etc

Is a "hack" I found, somewhere, that allows altering via Terminal, or something - sorry forget now what it was, but found it and did it, so able to "work around"

But is not very "elegant" nor "simple" when we have to resort to "hacks" to do something in OSX that used to be automatic, dig ?

.

Ergo ... hope others will also keep Apple's feet to the fire to "fix" this

Thanks, BC

.

I hope the latest track pad update gets some fine tuning. I've noticed lately that track pad behaviour can be a bit glitchy. I really like the new scrolling behaviour on my MBP so I'm not going back.

Driver improvements for the GPU on the early 2008 MBP would be welcomed too.

In any event SL has been pretty darn good for me.


Dave

From some I've the reports I've seen, Apple at the urging of Valve and others is really starting to get serious about their OpenGL implementation. With the drivers in development some willing to break the NDA have reported scores up to 3 times higher in OpenGL Viewer and significantly higher game performance on all cards.

Let's hope they fixed this, that, maybe this and hopefully that as well. Their wireless SMB transfers suck. Browsing SMB file shares is dog slow as well. Been that way since day 1 of snow leopard's release.

I'm starting to think they have given up on Quicktime development entirely.

Here we are 4 or five revisions in from the buggy, kludgy mess that was released as "Quicktime X" and still it's a "work in progress" lacking some of the most basic features and capabilities of the original Quicktime and still with a few entirely new problems of it's own.

I know it only came out with Snow Leopard, but it's a core OS component. You'd think it would be working a lot better by now.

The point upgrades seem to not do much but they do effect the feel I think, the stability. I have been using OS since 10.1 and by the time you get in to the later point updates (e.g. .9) the OS feels a lot more rock solid than the .0 did.

Any chance you could elaborate on the problems you're seeing with Quicktime X? I've been thinking of buying the Pro licence, mostly to allow me to convert movies to a format useable by my Apple TV and iPad.

If you see issues with Quicktime, would you say they would adversely effect what I'm trying to do, and would you have any other recommendations in it's place?

Thanks.

I haven't used the Quicktime player much, but I was astonished to see that apparently you can't make a selection in a clip under Quicktime X, to crop or copy. Fortunately, when QTX was introduced, I heeded others' advice and rescued Quicktime Player 7 from my install discs.

Without going into too much detail, the issue is that the new version that shipped with Snow Leopard (Quicktime X), doesn't have some of the most basic features the old version (Quicktime 7) does.

They are supposed to be adding these features to Quicktime X, but they simply haven't done anything. There are also a few things in Quicktime X that are completely unfinished. There are no preferences for instance, and the "recently viewed" list cannot be disabled. There is also no cut and paste and a bunch of other things that are probably too minor to get into.

Quicktime 7 (the old version) is an optional install on Snow Leopard so if you have your install discs you can install it, or possibly download it from Apple. Whatever you do, don't waste the money on upgrading to "Pro." the new version doesn't have to be registered to work, and the old version only needs an install code which should be easy to find in lots of places, since it's been around for years.

I don't usually recommend "illegal" use in this way, but it's really the only option right now since Apple hasn't added any of the old features to the new product even though they have discontinued the whole "Pro" is more features than "regular" thing with the new product. So in this case there are features you just won't see unless you have both versions and the old one is "Pro."

[QUOTE=
Apple is asking developers in particular to test iCal, Mail, printing, OpenGL 3D Graphics, QuickTime and the X Window X11 subsystems. [/QUOTE]

Mail has had this, confirmed many times, problem for the last 5 years.

The Rules window will extend off the bottom of the screen, taking the control buttons off screen, when more than 25 rules are entered.
Geniuses, Apple phone techs, Apple internet support have all repeatedly confirmed this problem. Result... this feature has been in place since 2004 and remains.

Jim

Why fix it, when it's just not an interesting problem?

Quicktime X isn't bad. I find it handles H.264 much, much better than Quicktime 7. Plus it just looks cooler. But don't get me wrong, Quicktime X isn't supposed to be a complete replacement for Quicktime 7... if you want Quicktime 7, you can still install it under Snow Leopard by installing it from the optional packages in the disc. It's now installed under Utilities in Applications, once its installed.

A new bug introduced in Mac OS 10.6.4 was that album cover art no longer shows up when using Quick Look. Annoying as hell. Hopefully this will be fixed 6.5!

Hope this will fix my Mail, it stopped displaying RSS feeds one day and I never could figure out why.

I do that all the time with QTX and it works great. There's always Handbreak too.

Yeah I do like Handbreak, but sometimes I find the results a bit unpredictable in terms of quality. It's probably something I'm doing wrong, but if the presets don't work well, I have no idea what to change to try and make it work.

I've had good results with iSquint as well, but am always on the lookout for something else to try.

QuickTime isnt just an app. In SL its the framework engine" that was developed for iOS that is now running on Mac OS X for QuickTime.app, iTunes.app and a bunch of other things that tie into it.

The app itself is simple, and likely designed that way. The changes we saw were a great thing for QT which had essentially been features and updated bolted to it since its debut in 1991. QuickTime was designed as a video player with very basic editing capabilities, and the Pro version was designed, well, for pros. These really shouldnt be part of the same app and as Apple restructured and grew after Steve came back we saw great con/prosumer video editing tools hit the Mac. Its clear they want this app to be a video player. Im sure new features will be coming, but not the prosumer level of editing we saw with QuickTime 7. That ship has sailed.

As for being buggy, Im not sure if you are referring to the app or the framework but I dont recall any bugs or crashes, expect when it was first introduced as a Beta. However, months ago I did default all my videos to open with Movist so my usage of QTX has dropped considerably. Movist is like a Mac native version of VLC without all the bugs. Talk about a crashy app.



Im with Masterz1337. Dont buy a Pro license for QuickTime 7. There are plenty old QT7 Pro licenses floating around.

On top of that, you really dont need it. You can just use QuickTime X to convert to H.264. Thats built in! And if you more complex needs there is always HandBrake which is also HW accelerated.

For simple batch files I much prefer iSquint. Set it and forget it. It will even copy to iTunes. This was free but is no longer being supported but you can freely download it from newsgroups and torrent sites. Same goes for the now defunct VisualHub by the same devs. Its more complex but offers more options. The base code for VisualHub is now part of VideoMonkey, which is also free and has setting for grabbing and/or editing the metadata.

My choices are QTX for one off conversions and cropping of videos, iSquint for batch conversions, and QT 7 Pro for drag-and-drop video stitching.

PS: You can also use YouTube to upload a private video. Let them convert to H.264 and then download it, but that is likely the slowest method and likely to lose the most quality from the lossy encoding.



Sure you can. They offered the Trim feature back in the Betas of 10.6. It works great.

So you have such sensitive material on your computer or information that could cause a scandal in the file on your computer. Or you are a pc to mac switcher carrying over the 'everyone is out to get on my computer', 'norton says I had 12765846 attempts to access my computer today!'. Relax unless you have some kind of corporate secret or national security or a scandal regarding lady gaga I seriously doubt you are in any danger. Relax for heaven's sake. That pc paranoia is boring.

Many thanks for your tips - it's always good to get the opinions of experts.......

Malware is on the rise on Macs and phishing affects Mac and PC users alike. I've been using Macs on and off since 1984. Macs were some of the first systems to be hit with viruses. They destroyed a lot of my software so I just to the PC in the early 90s. Been back since 2007.

Everyone has valuable information. If you don't believe so then just send me your social security number and credit card numbers along with your bank account info. You do buy stuff off the internet and do online banking right? If so, then you are a target just as much as anyone else.

There's a Mail bug in 10.6.4 where it doesn't download a complete list of MobileMe aliases for the From box in the New Message window. You have to go in to Mail Accounts and type the aliases in the Email Addresses field or it never discovers them, even though they exist, are enabled, and can be used fine in the MobileMe webapp.

Speaking of Mail
There is also an annoying bug syncing Notes between the iPhone and Mail via MobileMe. Not sure where the problem lies or how to resolve it. Notes will simply vanish seemingly randomly. Like it checks the server for changes, it says they are not the same and deletes both of them instead of keeping the one with the latest info.

With the other sync options it asks you before deleting, with this its automatic. Ive had to move to only using Note sync via iTunes. Not a deal breaker but interpretably between Apple devices, OS and apps using Apples own service should be pretty seamless and foolproof. Oh well, such is life.

Anyone experience or know of this problem? Know of a resolution?

Don't waste your money, Use Handbrake. It doesn't just do DVD discs, you can rip/convert video files too. To save you some time though, when ripping HD make sure you use Universal compression settings as the AppleTV settings have to much overhead for the AppleTV when decoding HD, SD works fine with AppleTV preset, though I find using the bitrate with multipass gets little better quality than constant quality setting.

http://handbrake.fr/

I think what he is trying to say is don't be so alarmist, connection attempts and network scans are very common place. As long as you turn your firewall on (which Apple needs to do by default!) you should be safe from casual scans. Casual scans and connection attempts are just hackers looking for easy access, like a thief canvasing a neighborhood to see who leaves their door wide open and who locks it.

Phishing and application installs are a much riskier business. Apple has tried to alleviate some of the install risk by introing features like code signing but honestly that is only so successful as the user is technical.

You can get AV software for Mac and run all kinds of link scanners or DNS scanning, but these are really no more effective than a user's awareness to the threat. Truth be told all the software in the world won't save you from stupidity.

Bottom line, if you plan on getting online then you need to understand the world that is out there, learn the risks and how to avoid them. If you don't have a clue about these things then I'm sorry but you shouldn't be on the web. It's honestly no different than going to a war zone; you can have all the gear but if you haven't a clue how to use it or what an enemy looks like then they won't save you anyway. Take the time to learn the risks and how to avoid them, if you do that it is not hard to keep safe on the web.

Apple is slacking off. A year after Snow Leopard is released we're still just on 10.6.4 and there's no mention at all of 10.7. Five years ago an entire new version of OS X would have been released in that time.

Believe me, you don't want Apple to release a new Mac OS X update just to meet some self-imposed cycle based on the Earth's traversal around the Sun.

Steve Jobs stated many years ago that as Mac OS X becomes more mature (read: conplex) the rate of new Mac OS X updates will slow. (Does someone have a link to that quote?)

Please Please fix the bug in mail that keeps me from emailing a picture and then deleting. "The operation can't be completed because the item is in use."

It's not just pictures, it's any attachments. And yes, it is quite annoying to have to quit mail before you can empty the trash. I hope they fix it.

I wasn't trying to be an alarmist. I'm just more concerned that as more and more people buy Macs the threat of malware and viruses will become greater. A good sign that things are changing for the Mac is that for years Comcast didn't offer antivirus for their Mac customers and now they do. When I asked a few years ago why they didn't offer antivirus for the Mac they said, "There are no known virus outbreaks for the Mac." What's changed.

A firewall does not guarantee protection (btw, mine was turned on automatically and I have antivirus on both of my Macs). Our office has varying levels of firewalls and we still had an outbreak on the Windows systems. Yes, it was due to stupidity but how often can you blame the user until you realize that maybe the OS vendors need to take some responsibility?

It boggles my mind how Apple can break what is basic interface functionality during an update (this isn't some obscure bug we're talking about) and then not fix it for several point releases if at all.

if this update doesn't fix the fatal crashes caused by OpenGL driver issues w/ NVidia cards, I'm gonna throw my 8-core mac pro out the window.