Mac OS X 10.3.8 to improve stability

Wow that's crazy. Anyway that kind of worries me because 10.3.7 is nice and stable. Grrrr I remember 10.2.8. With much malice.

I would imagine maybe this could be to perhaps suport...new hardware coming next week?

10.2.7 Stable? Never. I have felt more like a Windows user since i upgraded than i ever did on previous versions of 10.3.

The majority of problems have to do with sleeping and my second monitor but there are others.

We assume you mean 10.3.7 because if not, that could be your problem.

Anyway, stop by the Apple Discussion boards and you should find plenty of helpful people that will help you resolve your sleeping and monitor issues.

Yes, i did mean 10.3.7 (almost wrote 2.7 again there).

I guess i should stop by the boards over at apple when i get a chance. I basically figured a workaround that takes about 3 minutes sometimes but for now it works.

I'm not a math genius (well, maybe I am), but I think Mac OS X 10.3.8 will be the eighth service and maintenance release for Panther, not the seventh. Or am I missing something obvious?

I was thinking that too but i have only owned an apple since 10.3.3 so i don;t know if 10.3.1 was considered the first release or what.

Yes, it will be the 8th unless they skipped something in the middle.

The original DVD release was 10.3.0.

There's a thread over at the MacNN forums talking about Safari 1.3, and if it is going to come out, what are the chances it would with this next update, 10.3.8? I mean, it makes sense to me. For what that's worth.

Well, it may or may not come out, it all depends on (a) how stable it is (and not just taking some people's word for it that its "stable" because it doesn't crash their porn sites) and (b) how much it screws up other software (esp. that which relies on webCore).

Plus, keep in mind that its Apple's call. That's why software tends to have NDAs on them, so a bunch of people don't think that some company's holding back for some trivial reason (which in truth might be a good reason, but no one knows what it is) and then all you hear is "waaah! why doesn't Apple release Safari 1.3. Its great and stable and works!"

Well, I'd have known that without any sources since, according to the respective KB articles, almost all MacOS X Updates "deliver improved graphics performance along with several fixes that will improve the overall stability"...

I don't think Safari 1.3 will be released until 2.0 is released for Tiger.

Let's see now. 10.3.7 is nice and stable. NO, it's not stable. 10.2.8 was a nightmare. No it wasn't. 10.3.5 was the "worst update ever" (from an Apple Discussions thread). 10.3.6 was a "disaster" (from MacFixit).

When will it finally sink in to people that problems with updates are mostly due to individual system quirks, corruption, etc., than the update itself?

Can I be the first person to admit that I can't see any differences between patches?

Absolutely.

There is a nice ongoing thread, that recently turned
toward statistics.

Let's examine: 10 people do an update and the OS becomes
jerky afterward. 1.000.000 people do an update and the OS
runs flawless. 10 people do post in Computer savvy boards,
say, AI genius board, "latest update sucks my HD off. Bad apple bad".
1.000.000 people do enjoy the great update, which improved
everything significantly.

It's all about perception, especially public perception. IF you ask me.

Thank you for doing so, because I felt the same way!

Same here. I rarely spot a new feature, in a program or OS update unless I read it from the updates page or someone points it out here...

And Vox, I couldn't agree more.

Not always. Sometimes there are problems with the updaters from Apple even if you have no third party hardware or software.

I upgraded a stock Tangerine iBook by formatting the drive and installing MacOS X 10.3.0 Panther from the original CDs. Let me repeat, this was a pure, clean machine. I restarted and the machine ran fine. I installed no other software or hardware. I ran no applications. I changed no settings.

I then immediately ran Apple's Software Update and let it install what was suggested which included the Combo update to MacOS X 10.3.7. At the end of the update the machine rebooted and the hard drive was no longer functional, mountable or even visible using the Disk Utilities. I can hear the hard drive spinning and it sounds normal. But there is no access happening and it is not available. Disk Utilities does not recognize the hard drive's existance. I have reset PRAM, NVRAM (Open Firmware), PMU, etc, etc. Still no hard drive. There is no individual system quirk here and I started with a working machine.

The Combo 10.3.7 update destroyed my previously working clean stock Apple computer.

Fortunately I have a backup of the data and have moved that to a new machine. The iBook awaits my futher administrations when I have the time to waste on it. It has already occupied more than a day and a half of my time. Taking apart these particular computers is a trip. I will try that drive in another machine and see if I can revive it. I'll also try another drive in that machine.

Sometime Apple screws up. 10.2.8 was an excellent example. My one experience with 10.3.7 seems to be another example. This is why I wait to try new updaters and when I do I do it on one machine that is backedup.

I've been working with and programming Mac's since the original 128 and with Apple's computers before that to the original Apple I. I know what I'm doing, apparently the updater didn't.

I'll wait and see what 10.3.8 is like and not upgrade any other machines to 10.3.7. On the other hand, 10.3.5 is running fine for me. 10.3.7 works for some people. Stick with what ever works for you. But be paranoid - when in doubt, backup carefully... I'm always in doubt.

-Walter

Has anybody tried it (10.3.8) yet?

Where can I find it? It doesnt show up anywhere at apple.com

The better question might be why has Apple neglected the development of Safari so?

Haven't checked the KHTML et al bug logs, have you? Apple has done an impressive job of bug stomping at the lower layers. Just because they haven't been adding a lot of features at the top levels doesn't mean that they're ignoring it. Sheesh.

well, coming from someone who a.) knows what he's doing and b.) follows all the standard safety precautions when updating and c.) has reinstalled more computers than he cares to think about, both 10.3.6 and 10.3.7 have had some really odd issues. almost all of them seem to be font and internet based, but beyond that i haven't been able to pin down the culprits by name. the super-slow page load times, the disappearing safari cursor, dropped fonts in PDFs, etc. making the issues even more fun is that they are intermittent and not always the same across machines.

and just scanning through the posts on macfixit.com, everyone has their own special voodoo to fix the problems -- one person fixes permissions, another deletes a .plist, another does both, another toggles a feature elsewhere on and off, etc., etc.

edit: by the way, before anyone thinks i am laying all of the blame at apple's doorstep, i also want to say that part of the font blame i think needs to be shoulder by adobe, whose apps use their own fonts folders in the system outside apple's design, as well as .fnt files that always seem to get corrupted.

Sheesh yourself.

Apple has ignored it for a very long time in failing to bring about changes which are of use to the end user.

"Bug stomping" as you put it should be a given. It is hardly praiseworthy.

I wish MS would have this idea about Office. Bug stomping as a priority over features is ALWAYS a good thing.

When I installed 10.3.7 on my daughter's iBook,
afterwards the computer died on every boot.

I used the "press T during init to turn the computer
into a firewire drive", and copied the files to my wife's
emac, reinstalled, and reapplied the update, with
no problems afterwards.

The firewire trick was the final straw that made me
want to convert to the mac myself. If that was
a windows pc, the data would be gone forever.

Not true at all. Get a Linux LiveCD, boot from it, let it recognize your NTFS or FAT32 partition, and your data is there.

The only catch is, Windows doesn't refuse to boot after updates. It sucks as a system overall, but I've upgraded at least 20 systems from SP1 to SP2 and none refused to boot. They all booted fine and behaved perfectly fine.

Whereas with OS X, some updates tend to break things more than they fix. But I said some, not all. And I still dislike Windows, and like OS X, but lets give credit where its due.

And yet it is hardly 'ignored', now is it? What do you want, a new geegaw or bullet point on a feature list a week? Look to MS in that case, I'll take stability over new whizbang features any day. Make it rock solid before you start adding additional layers of crap on top. That's just good common sense, and good software engineering practice.

Fxing bugs is definitely 'of use to the end user'. I guarantee you most people appreciate the reduced bugs. If that's not high on your priority list, well, that's your business, but I utterly disagree.

If they did better work in the first place and released bug fixes in a timely manner it would not be such an issue. Safari lacks basic functionality of other browsers.

I completely disagree with your short sighted analysis.

Then use another browser. Done.

Konqueror in KDE 3.3 seems to be far more stable and less bug-ridden than Safari, even though Safari is based on Konqueror. I think it was KDE 3.1 when Apple decided to use Konqueror as the base for its Safari browser.

From that point on, Konqueror has gotten much much more stable adding a lot of features and improving on existing ones.

On top of web browser, it also serves as a file manager, a universal viewing application for documents, and a canvas for different KDE components like KIO slaves to the KPart object interface.

Not everyone wants that many features in one application, but somehow, Konqueror feels much more stable on my Debian box than Safari in my Mac OS X 10.3.7 box.

I guess they're working on Safari 2 more than on fixing bugs on the existing one. Which is fine, I guess.

Sure, there are features that I would like to have added to Safari, BUT good development means you stabilize the existing product before you start adding features. Apple has done an excellent job of this overall. I would rather see Safari, Mail, OSX, hardware get stabilized and working smoothly before they start adding features.

On the opposing claw we have MicroShrink's example - featureitis galore, program bloat, hogging of reasources and bugs & security holes be damned. With Windoze the atititude is "why bother fixing what we're going to abandon!"

Apple does a much better job which is why I prefer to use the Mac.

If you want a supported alternate browser to Safari then use Firefox. If you have problem with Safari then try this.
Safari on Tiger seems very stable but so does Firefox.

Dobby.

Safari is *not* based on Konqueror (thankfully!), it is based on the same rendering engine (KHTML) as Konqueror.


Can't stand Konqueror myself, but it does have a lot of fans.

Actually, sound design practice is to integrate the concept so that it is not a patchwork of band aid tack ons.

Safari has had as many, if not more, bugs and stability problems from the outset as any other browser. There has been a rather surprising lack of testing on obvious things such as how Safari works on the Apple website...which it did not do at all well when first released.

Is it getting better? Yes, but ever so slowly.

Then I guess MyIE2 is very different from IE because they "only" use the same rendering engine (thankfully!). Safari is based on Konqueror so much so that Apple decided to release its enhancements back to the Konqueror.


Here's what Jobs said himself when he announced Safari:








To each his own I guess.

Last time I looked at MyIE2, it looked very different than IE and had such features as tabs, which IE clearly does not have.

I am not sure the point you're trying to make here...

Just because it has tabs doesn't mean its different from IE. It uses the same base. The same engine. It has a couple more features but its like a little child of IE.

I think my point is that Safari is based on Konqueror (the project that created KHTML). Remember that Konqueror is a component of KDE, not just a browser.

I don't see your point though. Its like saying Mac OS X is not based on *BSD because OS X has a different UI and some other features *BSD does not have.

Steve Jobs says himself that half of Safari's code comes from an open source project. Maybe you know something Steve Jobs doesn't. Anyway.

Just because two apps use the same set of shared libraries (in this case KHTML), it does not mean that one app is based on the other. Of course there are going to be similar interface code, but that's where the similarity ends.

MyIE2 is obviously not based on a single line of IE code for the simple reason that nobody other than MS has access to the IE code.

They don't use 'a set of shared libraries'. HALF (1/2) of Safari's code comes from Konqueror. Even Jobs says that.

Half the code is a bit more than just shared libraries, methinks.

But anyway, its clear we are not gonna agree so the best thing would be to stop this conversation.

Thanks.

Sorry, Gene, but you're wrong on this one.

Safari uses the WebCore and WebFoundation frameworks. *THOSE* are essentially Obj-C API wrapped ports of KHTML, et al... the rendering engine of Konqueror, with some other stuff added in. Those frameworks are about 1/2 of the code in Safari, the rest is the UI that is all 100% Konqueror free.

You can use those frameworks too, if you like. Omnigroup does for OmniWeb.

So. The rendering engine in Safari is based heavily on (basically *is*) the rendering engine from Konqueror, but the derivation stops there. The rest of the app is Apple's.

Also, in the process of improving the K* libraries, Apple made sure to retain diff-patches along the way. The day Safari was released, the 'poor' KHTML team alone was *bombarded* with a few hundred bug fixes and improvements, all ready to be incorporated into the main project. (One of KHTML leads said he'd never seen Changelog carpet bombing before... and he was grateful for it.)

So in that sense, Konqueror is 'based on' Apple's changes...