Tag Archives: Mac OS X

By Staff | Published: November 17, 2011

Reader Q&A: When will FaceTime, iMessage and iChat merge across Mac and iOS?

Several of our followers on Twitter and Facebook have recently expressed interest in the state of Apple’s efforts to merge its various forms of messaging/chat/videoconferencing/IM functionality across its two key platforms, iOS and Mac OS X. New code spotted in iOS by third party developers may shed some light on this. Read more

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Posted in Apple Hardware, Apple Software | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Response
By Staff | Published: October 21, 2010

Macbook Air no longer ships with Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash

Early reviewers of Apple’s recently overhauled Macbook Air portable computer line have noticed that Apple no longer ships Adobe’s Flash runtime with the operating system preloaded on those machines.

While Apple has been quite vocal about their contempt for Adobe Flash, going so far as to completely exclude it from all mobile iOS devices, until now they have preinstalled the plugin on each new Mac, ensuring that webpages and all the content on them will “just work” in most cases.

Apple’s reason for excluding Flash on the new Macbook Air may have something to do with battery life; Flash is known to cause significant performance problems, and in prior Macbook Air models, Flash was frequently accused of being the root cause of overheating and sudden shutdown issues. Read more

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Posted in 3rd Party Software, Apple Software | Also tagged | 2 Responses
By Staff | Published: October 19, 2010

October 20th Apple Event preview

Steve Jobs will once again take to the stage tomorrow, Wednesday October 20th at the “Town Hall” on Apple’s Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino, California to unveil a new round of products and technology previews with his infamous headline-grabbing presentation style. What will be announced? Grapevine consensus appears to have a firm grasp of the big picture, but as to the details….

With a few notable exceptions (the small number of people working on certain projects within Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion,” internal code name ‘Barolo,’ force us to sit on details of those projects until after the Event when even if those projects aren’t mentioned during the Event, they will be known to a wider group within Infinite Loop and leaks can no longer be tied so easily to our sources), what we’ve been told by some of our oldest and most reliable contacts in Cupertino comports very closely with the grapevine’s consensus of what to expect tomorrow:

*Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion” as hinted by Apple’s logo for the Event:

Apple's Back to the Mac October 20th Apple Event logo

….Lion is a collection of long-standing projects, many of them held back from the Leopard and Snow Leopard development cycles because they were too ambitious and too out of sync with Apple’s priorities at the time to make the cut for those releases. Read more

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Posted in Apple Events, Apple Hardware, Apple Inc., Apple Software | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Responses
By Staff | Published: June 7, 2010

WWDC 2010 Preview

Today, Apple will present several new products to its third party developer community…and through the tremendous press scrunity — not to mention what Steve Jobs recently called (an undesirable) “nation of bloggers” (ahem) — by extension the larger world of its users, enthusiasts and curious potential ‘switchers.’

Some of them will be software, some will be hardware, but most if not all will likely manage to attract their own little cyclonic orbits of controversy.

Here are some of the grapevine’s expectations; stay with us over the week ahead for post-event analysis and fresh dirt on what’s next from Infinite Loop. Read more

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Posted in 3rd Party Software, App Store, Apple Events, Apple Hardware, Apple Inc., Apple Software, Articles | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
By Staff | Published: February 25, 2010

Latest Mac OS X 10.6.3 beta suggests release imminent

A new test build of Mac OS X 10.6.3 has been seeded to developers, with known issues listed as “none.” This typically means that the build is a final test seed and barring major surprises, can be expected to be released in a matter of days. Read more

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Posted in Apple Inc., Apple Software | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
By Staff | Published: July 11, 2009

Snow Leopard build 10A402 seeded to developers

Weighing it at twice the size — 1.3GB vs 655MB — of the previous 10A394 build (itself the first major post-WWDC seed update), Snow Leopard 10A402 has been seeded to developers via Software Update from within the beta-stage Mac OS X 10.6. As usual, Apple’s seed notes were short on details….but reader & source reports have already begun to reach our inboxes and the early reviews are very positive.

Snow Leopard build 10A402 was released with typically minimal fanfare or detail in the seed notes which read only: “This Snow Leopard Developer Preview Update is recommended for all users running the Snow Leopard Developer Preview Build 10A394 or later. This update includes general operating system fixes for stability, compatibility, and security.”

However, within minutes of the update being posted to Snow Leopard’s Software Update, reports began to flow in rapidly from developers and others who are running these latest Mac OS X 10.6 test builds — now in early beta phase following last month’s World Wide Developer Conference where the landmark 10A380 build, essentially a feature freeze and beginning of debugging in earnest, was released. Read more

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Posted in Apple Software | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , | 3 Responses
By Staff | Published: June 26, 2009

New Snow Leopard seed, 10A394 released via Software Update

Today Apple released Snow Leopard developer seed 10A394 through the Software Update system. This is the first Snow Leopard seed to be released in an “update” form through Software Update rather than as a complete separate build from the Apple Developer Connection website.

The download weighs in at 655MB, and requires that build 10A380 already be installed. Apple claims the new build contains the old standby of “general operating system fixes for stability, compatibility and security”, and users are reporting that the new Dock Exposé feature works now.

Rumors’ own beta/nightly-build aficionados and the usual suspects on the grapevine will be spending extensive hands-on time with Mac OS X 10.6 build 10a394 in the hours and days ahead; expect further related posts both on our web site and via our Twitter feed (@MacOSRumors) as information becomes available to us. Read more

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Posted in Apple Software | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
By Staff | Published: June 26, 2009

Safari 4 faster, more stable on Snow Leopard than 10.5.x

Though many readers have reported the problems with Safari 4.x on Leopard, few of the same issues were reproducible by testers/developers and sources who have hands-on access to the latest post-WWDC builds (10a380 and later) of Snow Leopard.

We’ve noted the considerable boost to Safari 4 performance that users of Mac OS X 10.6 build 10a380 have experienced in previous posts to our Twitter feed, and it would appear that a similar difference applies to many of the stability problems readers have been reporting with 10.5.x, even after the recent Safari 4.0.1 Update is applied.

In fact, in several cases, it would appear that v4.0.1 actually made some of these issues worse. Paradoxically, though the 4.0.1 Update package is not available for Snow Leopard (requires 10.5.7) and 10.6 is still almost three months away from release with plenty of system-level bugs left to be fixed, virtually all testers we talked to were left scratching their heads in surprise when attempts were made to reproduce the widely reported crashes/misbehavior on 10a380 or more recent builds. Read more

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Posted in Apple Software | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Responses
By Staff | Published: June 8, 2009

WWDC 2009 Preview Part 2: iPhone OS 3.0 & Snow Leopard

In the case of iPhone OS 3.0, we already have a fairly good idea of its feature set, performance, and reliability from the series of developer betas that have been released over the past several months. Although Apple has not yet made an official statement as to its final release date, there has been none of the hedging that we’ve seen with Snow Leopard; we wouldn’t be surprised to discover that some type of delay, or a “Final Beta” similar to Snow Leopard’s, will be announced today….but the most likely outcome is a release in the near term if not actually today.

Obviously, we’re very excited about that and we know all of you are as well. If we’re forced to wait for one more round of debugging to be carried out and for developers to test their apps against a set of new features, we’ll live…but many things about the dev process thus far, and the state of the mobile operating system itself, suggest that a release is imminent without significant further delay. Read more

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Posted in Apple Events, Apple Software | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
By Staff | Published: May 17, 2009

Multitasking for 3rd-Party Apps?

Some have speculated, based on varying degrees of “insider” information, that all iDevices (current 2007/2008 iPhones & iPod Touch models as well as upcoming 2009 iPhones, iPod Touch models and an all-new iDevice sometimes referred to as ‘iTablet,’ ‘iPad’ or ‘iPortal’ which will compete with Tablets and “Netbooks”) running iPhone OS 3.0 when it ships this summer may have more than just the “background notification” features announced at the iPhone OS 3.0 Preview Event in March.

Specifically, several rumor-mongers have suggested that certain apps — either a specified number (two [2] is the most frequently mentioned figure), or a limited range of application types which would fit certain requirements to be “pre-approved” for background-tasking capability by Apple’s AppStore managers.

Neither of these fits very well with Infinite Loop’s style, nor are they consistent in any way with the information we’ve received from our own “insider” sources. Read more

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Posted in 3rd Party Software, App Store, Apple Software | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Responses
By Staff | Published: May 13, 2009

Mac OS X 10.5.7 “Juno” released along with several other updates

Apple has posted the Mac OS X 10.5.7 Update package to its Software Update servers, weighing in at a hefty 449MB just for the incremental update from 10.5.6. Combo packages are also available both for the standard (729MB) and server (951MB) variants from Apple’s Downloads Page.

Readers are encouraged to report on any problems or changes.

From release notes for the standard Delta Update package:

What’s new in this update?

Address Book

* Improves reliability of Address Book syncing with iPhone and other devices and applications.

AirPort

* Improves the reliability of AirPort connections, including improvements when roaming in large wireless networks with an Intel-based Mac.

Client management

* Improves reliability of synchronizing files on a portable home directory.
* Fixes an issue in Mac OS X 10.5.4 and 10.5.5 in which managed users may not see printers that use the Generic PPD.

Read more
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Posted in Apple Software | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Responses
By Staff | Published: May 5, 2009

Whither Mac OS X 10.5.7 “Juno”?!

Numerous sources, and the grapevine at large, are in agreement that Juno is in a nearly completed state — in fact, several developers had already been pulled off the project to join other operating systems development teams (Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” and iPhone OS 3.0) as of last Friday.

But so far this week, there has been no new developer seed nor has the update been released. Historically, for many reasons Apple has chosen to release point upgrades for OS X on Mondays or Tuesdays. In keeping with that trend, it is still possible that we could see a release in the next 24 hours….but at least one key source reports that may not happen.

In fact, this source — who has rarely been wrong, but is not necessarily in a position to know for certain whether any items remain on the Juno team’s to-do list (which was almost entirely minor bug fixes as of last week) — says that it could be a few more days, and there could be one final developer seed to test the associated bug fixes before posting 10.5.7 to the Software Update servers. Read more

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Posted in Apple Software | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Responses
By Staff | Published: April 27, 2009

Impressive Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” build 10A335 seeded

Despite being a mere 21 builds apart from the previous seed, 10A314, released earlier this month….the latest Snow Leopard seed (simultaneously released in both Standard and Server versions) has definitely taken a big step forward in many areas.

Several elements of the full internal Mac OS X 10.6 code tree, such as the “Marble” interface revamp and overhauled Finder as well as the entire PowerPC version of the operating system, continue to be withheld from the developer builds — but even absent those more visible features, Snow Leopard is truly beginning to shine and show full potential with the advent of 10A335.

Performance is a notable area of big improvement since build 314 was released at the beginning of April; already stunningly fast, sources confirm that 335 removes a significant amount of debug code which always bogs down developmental versions of OS X as compared to their final-release counterparts. Read more

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Posted in Apple Software | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Responses
By Staff | Published: April 23, 2009

Mac OS X 10.5.7 build 9J56 seeded to developers with Bluetooth 3.0

Despite the previous build of Mac OS X 10.5.7 code-name “Juno” appearing nearly ready for release within days (it’s now been over a week), Apple has delivered a new seed — build 9J56 — to developers, and it looks like a little bit of work still remains before we’ll see 10.5.7 in Software Update.

From Apple’s build notes on 9J56, the following headline changes were highlighted for developers to test against:

  • Fixed an issue when a process is killed or crashes while using AFP
  • Bluetooth compatibility and stability fixes
  • Crash reports missing application’s short version info fix
  • Crash log file missing machine’s name fix
  • Fixed an issue with Personal File Sharing where an AFP volume was not a valid Time Machine backup disk

Although these seem relatively minor, set against the full “Juno” project changelist which is nearly 200 items long at this point (and doesn’t include subtle tweaks of relatively little interest to third party developers for whom the change logs are written)….of particular note is the focus on Bluetooth in this build. Read more

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Posted in Apple Software | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Responses
By Staff | Published: April 23, 2009

Apple announces $1.33/share Q2 profit, shatters Wall Street estimates

As nearly everyone notes right from the start when they begin to dig into the numbers that Infinite Loop has disclosed, the company’s profits — up 15% overall — have been driven primarily by strong sales & margins in the iPhone sector of its business.

That is to be expected, and will continue to be the case; however, in about seven weeks’ time (WWDC, June 8-12th) we are increasingly confident that more than just new iPhones & iPods will be announced. Whether the new iDevice(s) will be Apple’s answer to the netbook, the “iTablet,” or both in one device…whether they will be marketed as a Mac, given an i-Name, or one of each….these are the questions that we’ll be digging into over the coming days. Read more

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Posted in Apple Inc. | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Response