Apple releases Mac OS X 10.5.4

Run your software update.

http://www.macworld.com/article/134227/2008/06/osx.html?t=101

 

Installed fine, ~50 Mb download. So far no issues, but didn't notice any improvement yet either.
a

 

I'll hold off for a bit.

10.5.3 is working fine for me, and last time I updated I ended up having to get a new logic board :s
I don't need anything in .4, so I'm not in a rush.

 

Installed smoothly, didn't break anything I have tried yet but can't really see any improvements either. Then again, maybe its not the kind of update that is meant to be in your face, more backborn orientated fixes I guess. Reckon it might be mainly a preparation update for iTunes 7.7, iPhone 2.0 firmware, appstore et al so not really expecting much just yet.

 

Seems to be a small dot dot release for once.

 

Damnit. I just did a software update like 4 hours ago.

 

Time to run it again.

 

Thanks for the info.

 

So far so good. They also released a new firmware for Airport Base Stations and Time Capsules and a security update for Tiger.

 

I installed on it and it requires a restart, I did it. So far so good, can not see a major improvement.

Sorry to hear that!

 

The time gap between 10.5.3 and 10.5.4 was short! My guess is this is an emergency patch against the new Mac trojans

 

As someone already mentioned, it probably includes updates for Mobile Me too.

 

I'm finding a significant amount of speediness in expose and virtual desktop on my macs after the installation of 10.5.4.

 

Works fine so far on the MBP, downloading now on my iBook G4.

 

yeah i second that. when i first got my mac and leopard, the expose feature was a little bit finicky. now its very very smooth.

 

I've always updated and never had any problems what so ever.

I don't feel much of a difference now with .4 though...

 

Wow, Apple really did fix the freezing bug they listed as resolved to developers.

All of the little things that made OS X lockup before don't any more. Amazing.

We'll see how long this continues though.

Excuse me while I go laugh in the face of everyone who told me my freezing problem was a hardware issue and NOT because of OS X being buggy.

 

Good for you mate!

 

I did just notice that Coverflow is God awfully slow now though. It's not "lagging" as most people improperly use the term to describe things. It's just that the frame-rate is ridiculously low now. Was always silky smooth on Tiger any time and on Leopard as long as it wasn't full screen. (and in XP) but not now. Annoying.

I guess thats the trade-off for finally having OS X stable.

 

yeah there is definitely something wrong with coverflow view in finder, the frame rate is definitely off, and when you re-size a coverflow Finder window you get very jerky slow results.

www.apple.com/feedback

please, many people should report this if you are having the issue.

update, it looks to be an issue with how the window is actually updating the selection when scrolling through in coverflow mode, but either way, there are serious issues when resizing a coverflow window, please post back your results if they are similar.

EDIT: it looks like it may just be the Cache of icons rebuilding itself, as performance of Coverflow view has pretty quickly gone back to its normal speedy self. however, resizing a coverflow window remains quite choppy. Either way though, the framerate still remains very poor, and actually, the previews of the files look absolutely terrible. People should definitely report this one.

 

I'm 3rd-ing (is that a word) the coverflow framerate issue, guess I'lll have to hang on as Circa says to see if it speeds up. Expose is no smoother for me either. Can those who have experienced expose improvements please post their specs just in case its only on certain laptop/desktop models that it improves. I'm on a 2.2 C2D MBP Santa 2 GB 128mb 8600.

SauronMOS, congrats on finally getting the freeze sorted although I can't believe that a problem could exist with OSX (sarcasm), how long did that take now for Apple to resolve.

 

i have no problems with expose at all, and never had problems with Finder at all, it kind of seems like the Dock is a little less responsive as well.

 

Haha, of course! Nothing could ever be wrong with OS X

I was playing with Front Row today and notice that the random album artwork still floats by just fine on that. Smooth as silk. So are the animations in Front Row. So it seems to be an iTunes issue that will hopefully be resolved in a few days with iTunes 7.7? Since the word on the street is that we'll see it released alongside the new iPhone and for the app store and all of that.

OS X no longer has issues with optical audio output causing freezing either.

So finally, it seems as if I can say OS X is stable! Amazing.

Now the only problem I have left is that OS X still can't manage external monitors right. Why can't I disable the built-in monitor and only use external without having to first connect and external mouse and keyboard, sleep the system by closing the lid, then wake it up with the external devices? Oh and PLEASE Apple, please bring proper external monitor resolution support. Why can't I pick 1280x720 or 1366x768 on my HDTV? Windows properly detects it as 1280x720 and I can put in the custom resolution of 1366x768.

Edit: forgot to add that Expose and the "Genie Effect" for minimizing windows both are finally as smooth as they were in Tiger.

"White" MacBook 2.16GHz C2D, 2.5GB of RAM, SuperDrive, GMA 950 blah blah blah.

One last thing.. when is Apple going to bring back live previews!? Why even take that out?

 

honestly, as far as i can tell, all the cover flow animations in itunes and the finder are faster and smoother than before...

i have the 2.4ghz core 2 duo, 256 mb 8600m gt...

i even tried to resize the cover flow windows and it stayed strong... maybe im lucky.

still, before 10.5.3, it wasa little offf.

 

No problems here, no speed noticing either.

And the hack to make Diablo 2 work still works.

 

you know what, i really think it is just the windows building the icon cache causing any strange behavior, honestly, false alarm.

i was playing around with my applications folder, which has a huge amount of icons obviously, so updating is a little slow until all icons are ready to go.

as far as Sauron saying OS X is FINALLY stable. . .

. . .please.

 

Eh....what. Its wasn't stable for him before and now it is, ya know, hence the comment. And it was clearly down to OSX causing the instability as it was cured by the update. If your OS was going gaga I doubt you would be happy, not after paying Apple prices for it and getting no satisfaction. If it doesn't work and is not stable then thats the sad reality of it, pure and simple. OSX may be more stable than most Windows installs for most people most of the time but a generalisation does not encompass all users, thats why we have updates such as this. I'm just glad for him that he can enjoy his lappy now after having such a hard time with it.

I just wonder how the musicians who were having horrendous problems under 10.5.3 are getting on, if their lot has gotten any better. Anyone out there who had issues in 10.5.3 getting a better run of it on .4, especially the muso's amongst us?

 

Thanks for bringing some sense into this thread

I am quite enjoying my MacBook now that I can finally use it without having to worry about anything. If all continues to go well I might just sell off my HP notebook and build a nice desktop for gaming/HTPC. Keep the MacBook as a portable.

It also just dawned on me to check Coverflow in Finder.

Cloverflow in Finder is nice and smooth no matter the size. Only in iTunes is it not smooth. Seems to be just a problem with iTunes and this update.

But I can certainly live with that in iTunes seeing as how I don't use it in iTunes, my iPhone, or my iPod nano. Hopefully iTunes 7.7 will fix it.

 

doesn't work is a completely relative term, learn that and save yoruself a lot of time, I say OS X has been perfectly stable for quite some time. Having certain parts not function correctly for certain users under certain circumstances at certain times, hardly means something is unstable.

 

coverflow is just as stable in iTunes as it is in Finder.

you most likely could have completely enjoyed using your MacBook if you weren't hunting for every possible bug.

 

If you can learn to read a post before commenting against it that would save you a lot of time. I don't like your tone and I find it insulting. The 1st line of my previous post reads thus

"Eh....what. Its wasn't stable for him before and now it is, ya know, hence the comment."

The use of the word 'him' states that the position is clearly an experience felt by SauronMOS and therefore relative to his position. Furthermore an unstable OS cannot be used for important tasks as the risk of users losing important data or the disruption of work etc and will normally deem the OS to be unusable due to unreliability. If you had read SauronMOS's additions to previous threads you may have understood his position, you did after all comment on those threads dismissing him and his issues.


Your statement that
"I say OS X has been perfectly stable for quite some time. Having certain parts not function correctly for certain users under certain circumstances at certain times, hardly means something is unstable."

is professing a relative position as all users on this forum are inclined to do, being laptop owners and users with their own perspectives and personal experiences. Please do not talk about relative positions unless you have read the post properly or understand where people are coming from in expressing their opinions on this forum.

P.S: I will not be badgered into not expressing my opinion on this forum under any circumstances, whether it is liked or not by certain individuals.

 

circa, you definitely go too far at defending OS X from "attacks". Every little negative (truthful) thing said about OS X brings you out of the bushes in full attack mode defending OS X as if it were a life and death situation. It's getting a little ridiculous.

OS X has problems. It's not perfect. Deal with it.

Jurisprudence already took care of this, but I have to throw in my 2 cents.

OS X has been "perfectly stable" for you. Not everyone shares the same experience. In fact, two people could have the exact same hardware configuration and software configuration and have two different experiences. That's just how computing currently is. It's how it has been for quite some time.

Two people can have a similar experience and view it differently. For example, I have a friend with a MBP and he has had similar issues like mine. However he still loved OS X. Where me, I had the problems and I couldn't help but think about the cost of the system, the hardware I got for the price, and the relative trouble.

I also want to add that my problems did not have any "special circumstances". OS X would just crash at random. I could be viewing a webpage (like cnn) or just emptying the trash of nothing but jpgs, or trying to burn a DVD. There was nothing special about what I did.

When 10.5.3 came out, other issues came up. For example, if I hooked my MacBook up to my HDTV and surround sound system with an optical cable while the system was ON, OS X would not shut down or eject DVDs. If I started it up with the optical cable already plugged in, everything worked fine.

I tried a fresh install of OS X and applied the 10.5.3 combo updates and that still happened and I still had random freezes.

10.5.4. came out so I did another fresh install. Guess what? Everything works as it should now (minus iTunes CoverFlow and the external display resolution).

OS X isn't perfect. You really need to admit that and stop starting arguments over it.

So you're telling me that iTunes is actually performing differently than I am seeing?

So my CoverFlow in iTunes is not choppy and slow? It's just as fast as it is in Finder?

Thanks for telling me my eyes are wrong.

I was hunting for bugs with my MacBook to make my experience more unenjoyable?

Yes, I was definitely sitting here using it all the time thinking "hmm what can I do to make it lock up today!?"

Seriously.

Exactly. Thank you.

 

I can't believe that I'm the only one who appreciates the bug-fix when switching from a Space with Finder active to another space where any other application is in the front. Switching from a Finder window in one Space to another with Safari was annoying as hell in 10.5.3 since the focus didn't switch. Now it does. Happy.

 

sorry to cause some flare ups in this discussion, I guess what I am really trying to get across is when a user does find an issue, please be fully aware that this could quite possibly be unique to your system, and post it as so, don't declare an issue as a widespread bug without knowing if that is the truth or not, you either have access to a large amount of identical systems, and have tested this.

instead of saying OS X is finally stable, just consider adding "for me" and consider it a positive. If I had had as many issues as you are claiming to have, I would have definitely looked into getting the machine replaced, and looked into seeing if a majority of systems were having these problems.

 

Well, as I explained before, the problems I had were only in OS X. Windows never had any such issues on my Mac. I could run it rock solid with no problems.

So it wasn't the hardware, it was the software.

You might also want to look at the release notes that Apple gave to developers while they were seeding the 10.5.4 builds. Freezing problems were one of the many "resolved issues" that developers were made aware of but not the public.

So apparently mine wasn't an isolated incident. And honestly, I don't blame Apple for not putting it in the public release notes. Why would you openly admit your OS had some issues crashing?

 

but it wasn't necessarily the OS alone causing the issue, there are many many variables.

it is most likely related to a combination of software, and hardware, as we have seen before, some models from certain dates have issues, while others have absolutely none, all listed as the same hardware from apple, but not necessarily the case.

it might be a good idea to start reporting issues not soley declaring an OS problem, but a problem with this hardware running this software.

glad to hear they have fixed the problems you did have, I am just saying it is more than likely not a problem everyone running the OS was having.

 

How were my issues NOT the software and due to hardware problems?

10.5.4 has fixed all instability with OS X that I had. All of it. It is completely rock solid now.

Prior to that, Windows XP and Vista had been installed via Boot Camp. While OS X had stability issues, Windows ran rock solid. If one OS runs solid while the other one doesn't, on the same hardware, that is a clear sign that the OS had issues itself. Not the hardware.

As far as software variables goes, I have the exact same software suite installed now that I did prior to 10.5.4. None of the software I use has received an update. Yet, again, no freezing or instability of any kind. None. But with 10.5.3. (especially 10.5.3) and prior versions of OS X, I had all kinds of instability problems. Yet, again, Windows ran beautifully on the same hardware on its own partition.

So yes, the issue was within OS X itself. It was an OS problem and there is no other way to spin it. The system with OS X now is rock solid and stable. The only complaints I have now are the iTunes CoverFlow issue (CoverFlow in Finder is fine) and the fact that OS X stupidly doesn't let me use an external display the way I should be able to. But as far as stability goes, it is finally there thanks to the OS update, signifying that it was, in fact, an OS problem.

 

ok, fair enough, but what makes you think everyone was having those same issues?

and I know you never said that they were, but calling it an OS problem kind of infers that it is an overall problem, which may not be true at all, that is all I am trying to get across.

I just wish people would have a little bit more positive outlook on this sort of thing, as it is very difficult work.

 

Well, saying you're having a problem with the OS doesn't mean everyone else is.

It just means you're having a problem with the OS.

I have noticed one bug with 10.5.4 that is starting to drive me insane.

For some reason the menu bar will go solid for no reason at startup.

The only way to get it to stay translucent is to check the preference to stay solid, restart, change it again, restart it again, then run Onyx and it'll stay fine for a few days or restarts. It's getting old. Its not a deal breaker but man it is definitely annoying.