Sam Oliver
Just two betas of the Mac OS X 10.5.8 Update have made their way into developers' hands thus far, the first of which was labeled build 9L12 and arrived for an extremely limited group of testers early last week. That distribution was quickly followed by the release of build 9L14 to all registered Mac OS X developers this past weekend.
Unlike Mac OS X 10.5.7, which addressed roughly two dozen system components and applications, Mac OS X 10.5.8's focus appears more narrow from the onset. People familiar with the update say Apple has asked developers to concentrate their evaluation efforts on just a dozen key technologies, only two of which represent forward-facing applications: Automator and iCal.
The remainder of the update addresses underlying service technologies that include 802.1x wireless protocols, Apple Filing Protocol, AirPort, Bluetooth, graphics drivers, iDisk syncing, networking, Spotlight indexing, Sync Services, and USB.
Similarly, many of the roughly two-dozen code corrections already baked into the first two pre-release builds also target underlying networking and syncing technologies. For example, Apple has reportedly made note of fixes to AFP and TimeMachine syncing, iCal time and calendar syncing, execution of startup items on Network home folders, and problems with DHCP client and 802.1x integration.
New Mac owners wrestling issues with their DisplayPort to DVI/VGA adapters should also see improvements with the release of Mac OS X 10.5.8, though Apple has reportedly failed to provide any color on the specific issues being addressed. Those users experiencing issues where their Mac inexplicably fails to go to sleep a second time around will also reportedly see relief to their problems.
Marko Zivkovic
Christine McKee
Andrew Orr
Andrew O'Hara
William Gallagher
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Bon Adamson
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31 Comments
I doubt this will be the last update to Leopard. After the release of Leopard, Tiger also received some more updates, and I guess Apple will do the same with Leopard, esp. not every Mac user will be able to upgrade to Snow Leopard (think PPC).
I'm glad to see WiFi listed. My 1st-gen MacBook Air and Time Capsule still don't get along 100% of the time on wake-from-sleep. In those instances it takes 2-3 tries from the menu icon to connect. Yet they both talk to any OTHER device over WiFi instantly. And this is on wideband N, so interference from other signals is unlikely. I'm thinking 10.5.8 may be just about my last hope! (Interestingly, they connect to each other just fine every time if I use G--but I do have neighbors who interfere on that frequency, and I want my Time Machine backups at N speed.)
I'm no scientist, but how many updates to Time Machine are needed? You copy a file from a disk to another disk, update a file with timestamps, end of story.
I suppose 98% of the issue is from the superfluous UI.
I'm no scientist, but how many updates to Time Machine are needed? You copy a file from a disk to another disk, update a file with timestamps, end of story.
I suppose 98% of the issue is from the superfluous UI.
Pretty thorough design you got going there!
Maybe they will do something about the speed of the Time Capsules drive throughput as well.
8MB/s on a 1 Gbit/s connection is ridiculous. My Thecus NAS which is hooked in on the Time Capsules switch gives 25MB/s.