A closer look at Apple's forthcoming Mac OS X 10.6.5 Update
Development of Apple's Mac OS X 10.6.5 Update continues to progress this week, with the company distributing new pre-release copies of software, which will soon usher in a key new feature for iOS device users while also addressing a dozen or so shortcomings in Mac OS X 10.6.4.
The latest beta of the update, labeled build 10H555, began making its way to select developers on Wednesday evening in the form of a 614MB disk image.
AirPrint
Due for a release ahead of iOS 4.2, Mac OS X 10.6.5's key focus will be interfacing with iPhones, iPod touches and iPads running the new flavor of iOS, to allow them to print wirelessly to any printer on that's connected to a Mac on the same WiFi network via Apple's new AirPrint technology (see: First Look: Apple's AirPrint).
Without Mac OS X 10.6.5, devices updated to iOS 4.2 next month will only have the option of printing to the Print Simulator (an Apple development tool) or one of three HP Photosmart printers that already include built in support for AirPrint, and don't require a Mac running 10.6.5:
HP Photosmart Premium Fax e-All-in-One Printer series - C410
HP Photosmart Premium e-All-in-One Printer series - C310
HP Photosmart Plus e-All-in-One Printer series- B210
General Stability Enhancements
In addition, the 10.6.5 Update -- which Apple will recommended for all users running earlier versions of Mac OS X Snow Leopard -- will include roughly a dozen general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of a Mac. These include:
improve reliability with Microsoft Exchange servers
resolve a delay between print jobs
address a printing issue for some HP printers connected to an Airport Extreme
resolve an issue when dragging contacts from Address Book to iCal
address an issue where dragging an item from a stack causes the Dock to not automatically hide
add SSL support for uploading files to iDisk
resolve an issue with Wikipedia information not displaying correctly in Dictionary
improve performance of MainStage on certain Mac systems
resolve spacing issues with OpenType fonts
improve reliability with some Bluetooth braille displays
resolve a VoiceOver issue when browsing some web sites with Safari 5
address stability and performance of graphics applications and games
Ongoing Testing
While the last several pre-releases of Mac OS X 10.6.5 have contained no known issues, according to documents accompanying the betas, Apple continues to request that developers focus their testing efforts around a handful of key areas, namely printing -- both traditionally and via AirPrint.
In addition, developers have been asked to test the software against any of their own applications that include 3D graphics, make use of QuickTime, or read and write from USB devices. Apple has also been tweaking the performance of Time Machine, its automated backup software, for improved reliability.
Mac OS X 10.6.5 is expected to arrive any time in the next few weeks. The last time Apple released an update to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard was back in June, when it issued Mac OS X 10.6.4 to address trackpad issues and compatibility problems with Adobe's Creative Suite 3.
The latest beta of the update, labeled build 10H555, began making its way to select developers on Wednesday evening in the form of a 614MB disk image.
AirPrint
Due for a release ahead of iOS 4.2, Mac OS X 10.6.5's key focus will be interfacing with iPhones, iPod touches and iPads running the new flavor of iOS, to allow them to print wirelessly to any printer on that's connected to a Mac on the same WiFi network via Apple's new AirPrint technology (see: First Look: Apple's AirPrint).
Without Mac OS X 10.6.5, devices updated to iOS 4.2 next month will only have the option of printing to the Print Simulator (an Apple development tool) or one of three HP Photosmart printers that already include built in support for AirPrint, and don't require a Mac running 10.6.5:
HP Photosmart Premium Fax e-All-in-One Printer series - C410
HP Photosmart Premium e-All-in-One Printer series - C310
HP Photosmart Plus e-All-in-One Printer series- B210
General Stability Enhancements
In addition, the 10.6.5 Update -- which Apple will recommended for all users running earlier versions of Mac OS X Snow Leopard -- will include roughly a dozen general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of a Mac. These include:
improve reliability with Microsoft Exchange servers
resolve a delay between print jobs
address a printing issue for some HP printers connected to an Airport Extreme
resolve an issue when dragging contacts from Address Book to iCal
address an issue where dragging an item from a stack causes the Dock to not automatically hide
add SSL support for uploading files to iDisk
resolve an issue with Wikipedia information not displaying correctly in Dictionary
improve performance of MainStage on certain Mac systems
resolve spacing issues with OpenType fonts
improve reliability with some Bluetooth braille displays
resolve a VoiceOver issue when browsing some web sites with Safari 5
address stability and performance of graphics applications and games
Ongoing Testing
While the last several pre-releases of Mac OS X 10.6.5 have contained no known issues, according to documents accompanying the betas, Apple continues to request that developers focus their testing efforts around a handful of key areas, namely printing -- both traditionally and via AirPrint.
In addition, developers have been asked to test the software against any of their own applications that include 3D graphics, make use of QuickTime, or read and write from USB devices. Apple has also been tweaking the performance of Time Machine, its automated backup software, for improved reliability.
Mac OS X 10.6.5 is expected to arrive any time in the next few weeks. The last time Apple released an update to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard was back in June, when it issued Mac OS X 10.6.4 to address trackpad issues and compatibility problems with Adobe's Creative Suite 3.
Comments
address stability and performance of graphics applications and games
I hope this addresses the Safari / Flash screen corruption I still see fairly often. Sometimes just a Safari page will go bad and others the entire screen turns into a lovely mosaic of multi-colored garbage. Reboot makes it better. Appears to be related to the graphics switching. If I go to system prefs and turn off the graphics switcher the problem is occasionally fixed.
10.6.5 - bring it.
Does the printer have to be physically connected via USB, or can it be an airport extreme printer?
Either
The last time Apple released an update to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard was back in June, when it issued Mac OS X 10.6.4 to address trackpad issues and compatibility problems with Adobe's Creative Suite 3.
We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash.
- Steve Jobs, "Thoughts on Flash"
D'oh!
Either
Link for that?
Unless there is a firmware update to the Airport Extreme, how will it recognize the iOS device to allow printing without a connected Mac running 10.6.5 needing to be turned on.
I want to print from my iPhone to my HP 1200 attached to my Airport Extreme without needing my laptop to be awake.
Does the printer have to be physically connected via USB, or can it be an airport extreme printer?
Either way it's not the solution people wanted. Simply downloading one driver for the particular printer you have would have been a much nicer solution. Now we have to not only make sure our printer is on, but that our Mac is on, also.
Air Print to one of those new printers is very cool, but nobody wanted to have to buy a new printer to do just that.
Link for that?
Unless there is a firmware update to the Airport Extreme, how will it recognize the iOS device to allow printing without a connected Mac running 10.6.5 needing to be turned on.
I want to print from my iPhone to my HP 1200 attached to my Airport Extreme without needing my laptop to be awake.
You're shit our of luck, unfortunately. This news happened a while back. I know, it's sad you have to buy a new printer to do that. The reason is Apple doesn't want drivers on the iPad. It's definitely more bitter than sweet. I don't like drivers myself, but this is taking it a wee bit too far.
Now some Macs CAN enable these features BEFORE 10.6.5, which leads me to believe that there are GPU specific changes (and that means drivers) in the update.
I for one expect a lot of desirable graphics driver changes.
Either way it's not the solution people wanted. Simply downloading one driver for the particular printer you have would have been a much nicer solution.
Even better -- Your Mac knows what printers you use. Itunes and Mobile Me should be able to gather the info about your defined printers and automatically sync the appropriate drivers to your iPad. Apple, please be more like Apple!
For WoW, there are specific notices *in the game* that 10.6.5 is required for certain graphics effects ("pretty water"). 4.01 of WoW came out days ago - I imagine that Blizzard HAD to be in the know about 10.6.5 and it can't be long now before it drops.
Now some Macs CAN enable these features BEFORE 10.6.5, which leads me to believe that there are GPU specific changes (and that means drivers) in the update.
I for one expect a lot of desirable graphics driver changes.
My FPS actually dropped slightly after the 10.6.5 beta, that's on a ATI 5770 (PC one, flashed to be Mac compatible). On my Macbook with a Nvidia card I can enable the effects in 10.6.4. Though seeing how much Blizzard were harping on about the "amazing water effects", they're far from anything special. Looks worse than before to me.
Edit: Seems something broke anti-aliasing in 10.6.5 beta too, at least for WoW. It's fine in Left4Dead2.
You're shit our of luck, unfortunately. This news happened a while back. I know, it's sad you have to buy a new printer to do that. The reason is Apple doesn't want drivers on the iPad. It's definitely more bitter than sweet. I don't like drivers myself, but this is taking it a wee bit too far.
I do wonder if this is what will push the industry down the path of getting rid of drivers full-stop. It's always seemed faintly ridiculous to me that there has not been a good enough standard defined such that drivers would all be on the printer itself. Maybe this will force their hand.
I'm actually begining to think that my video card is going bad on my early 2008 MBP. On the otherhand I'm only having problems with Quicktime X and even there it is pretty random.
Even if my issue is hardware related, Quicktime X needs to support a few more codecs. The goal should be simple, to support more of the video available on the net.
Beyound that I do wish that they could get rid of some of the beach ballling effects. It is one thing for a machine to get sluggish while heavily loaded it is another thing to have sluggish menus for no reason at all on a dual core machine.
This sounds like a complaints post but really it is not that. For the most part my MBP with Snow Leopard has been the best PC I've ever used. Nothing is perfect though and the two issues above are notable.
Postscript was probably the closest we ever came to a system where only the very minimal in the way of drivers was required. I wouldn't be surpised if Apple is simply using PDF as the imaging format for AirPrint. That is PDF images are shipped off to a waiting printer. Not that I have access to the beta SDK to know.
In any event I wonder what makes those HP printers compatible.
I do wonder if this is what will push the industry down the path of getting rid of drivers full-stop. It's always seemed faintly ridiculous to me that there has not been a good enough standard defined such that drivers would all be on the printer itself. Maybe this will force their hand.
I do wonder if this is what will push the industry down the path of getting rid of drivers full-stop. It's always seemed faintly ridiculous to me that there has not been a good enough standard defined such that drivers would all be on the printer itself. Maybe this will force their hand.
You are correct: "maybe". It doesn't get around the fact that we would need to buy a whole new printer.
Even better -- Your Mac knows what printers you use. Itunes and Mobile Me should be able to gather the info about your defined printers and automatically sync the appropriate drivers to your iPad. Apple, please be more like Apple!
So now you need a Mobile Me account to print from an iPad? Bad idea.
Apple could easily get the iPad software to identify the printer, and the printer makers would write iOS software drivers that are designed to take up very little space, and the driver would auto-download when you first try to print. BUT NO, wouldn't it be easier to buy a whole new printer, after all, the last one only cost €379.
Even if Apple did support printer drivers, then everyone would complain how these printers weren't available. The fact is that the best way for printing on iOS to work is either through a print server or a direct connection via a standard. I wish they'd also support any postscript printer...but I suppose if they did that they'd have to pay a license.
For WoW, there are specific notices *in the game* that 10.6.5 is required for certain graphics effects ("pretty water"). 4.01 of WoW came out days ago - I imagine that Blizzard HAD to be in the know about 10.6.5 and it can't be long now before it drops.
Now some Macs CAN enable these features BEFORE 10.6.5, which leads me to believe that there are GPU specific changes (and that means drivers) in the update.
I for one expect a lot of desirable graphics driver changes.
Well, neither the new build or the previous release of 10.6.5 makes a jot of difference to the OpenGL engine used in WoW. Framerates take a nosedive when the new water and sunshaft engine is enabled. On the exact same hardware running Win 7 in bootcamp the framerate stays unchanged when the water and sunshafts are on.
Pretty disappointing and not a good sign for gaming on the Mac platform if the drivers perform so poorly compared to running in windows on bootcamp.