As more builds for the 10.5.3 update for Mac OS X are seeded to developers (the latest is Build 9D34, released today) for final testing, the closer this thing comes to pop up via Software Update. And it seems to be a big one, with over 200 fixes (and some performance tweaks to the kernel - always appreciated) and likely to weigh in between 300mb to half a gig.

About time. Can’t let Psystar be the one to fix Leopard.

The last big update (10.5.2) was released in February. According to developers, this new one will focus on Time Machine and Back To My Mac, and on a great number of built-in features like Spaces, Installer, Mail and a lot of others. Granted, most of them have already been distributed piecemeal via smaller updates on many successive Tuesdays since Feb, but the whole shebang, along with the newest stuff, is coming out in Leopard 10.5.3.

I daresay it might pop-out before or just after Steve’s WWDC keynote early June, and it might have some goodies in it that would tie-in with whatever new stuff he’ll be announcing then. Oooh.

Psystar, that maker of those uber-controversial Mac clones, has created something else we never thought would see the light of day: Mac OS X Service Pack 1. Well, sorta.

Aside from its brazen hardware cloning, it installs Leopard onto these Frankenstein machines, in direct violation of provisions of the Leopard EULA that forbid 3rd party sales and installs of the operating system. Not cowed in the slightest by Steve & His Legal Eagles, now it even has the cheek to actually improve on Leopard by fixing some inherent problems in the OS, including glitches in Time Machine, Keyboard Viewer and various other niggles.

Beginning this Monday the various patches, bug fixes and workarounds will come preinstalled in shipping units, but existing users can download the bunch, which constitutes what is essentially Service Pack 1, from the Psystar website. Some fixes are specific to their hardware, like one that repairs conflicts between Apple’s Airport Extreme router and the Realtek network card that ships with the Psystar boxes, while some actually improve on Leopard, like support for new versions of Java and adding international standards for networked devices.

Oooh. Now we’ve seen everything. Whoever these guys are, they’ve got big ones, don’t they?

In the meantime, we wonder why Apple hasn’t lowered the boom on these cheeky bashi-bazouks. It’s gonna be fun when it finally happens, that’s for sure.

(Via InformationWeek)

You guys might remember a post I did a week ago about Apple updating an update a week after it was first released (if you don’t remember, it’s here), and downplaying the fact that it did?

Using the wise old tactic of not calling attention to a mistake by not mentioning it in case no one really caught it in the first place, Apple just went ahead and fixed Security Update 2007-009 and quietly re-issued the corrected update, which was V.1.1, a week later.

If you want to know, what actually happened was that a number of users reported that Safari crashed when visiting certain websites after the patch was installed. Apple said,

Security Update 2007-009 v1.1 addresses an issue introduced in Security Update 2007-009 that may cause Safari to unexpectedly quit when browsing to certain websites”

This was an across-the-board glitch, which hosed Safari on Tiger, Leopard and Windows for some users. So Apple patched the patch and sent it out again. Apple screwed up. They went and fixed it. Mystery solved.

I did a double take yesterday when Software Update pulled up Security Update 2007-009 for me to install on my desktop Mac in the house.

Huh? Didn’t I do this already last week? But I figured, doodling around regularly with different Macs at home and in the office, I must’ve forgotten to update this particular one. Not likely, but possible given the current state of my memory. So ran it, and it installed.

But still, it bugged me so I checked around.

Apparently, I wasn’t paying attention again. It was Security Update 2007-009, but to be more precise, it was Security Update 2007-009 Version 1.1. Huh?

It looks like the first one, but Apple still hasn’t said why it was compelled to release this second version one week after it released the first.

V1.1 has new versions of Core Foundation, CUPS, Flash Player Plug-in, Launch Services, perl, python, Quick Look, ruby, Safari, Samba, Shockwave Plug-in and Spin Tracer. But if it was significantly different, why not just call it Security Update 2007-010? What was wrong with 009?

I started looking around for entries in the Support pages of Apple for info on the first release of the update, and all I got was a slew of Page Not Founds. Seems they took everything about V1.0 down. Hmm. My spidey-sense is tingling vaguely.

Could be nothing of course, but let’s wait for more news to surface.

The Security Update released the other day has its good and bad side, users report.

Good news first: apparently the keyboard glitch that plagues MacBook and MacBook Pro users who’ve upgraded to Leopard where keyboards freeze for up to over a minute when using Carbon apps has been solved with the Security Update.

Bad news: under special circumstances, the new Security Update can cause crashes in Safari. Changes made to address security issues in the app inadvertently crash Apple’s own browser, particularly in handling frames. The Mac Observer’s coding expert, Steven Swift observes the problem -

The error happens when the user tries to submit a form to another target frame or window. Safari stops that, and, in fact, crashes. The idea is to keep any malicious hacker from, for example, trying to load code into a hidden window.

The problem seems to be specific to Safari, and does not affect other browsers like Firefox and Omniweb.