Mac OS X 10.5.3; AT&T iPhone hotspot access; Vista sales accelerating?
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.
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.
Comments
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?
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.
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. (
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.
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!!
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.
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!
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.
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.
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. (
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.
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!
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 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...
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.
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.
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.
<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.
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.
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.
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.