Mac OS X 10.5.3 Released!!!!!

Apple, sometime earlier today, released the next iteration of Mac OS X Leopard, 10.5.3. This long anticipated (for over a month) update is said to fix many issues that showed up in 10.5.2, as well as many other fixes. Some that caught my eye on the extended release notes were:

Improves the accuracy of the Software Update progress bar indicator. Addresses potential privacy issues by allowing events to be marked as private. Addresses reliability issues with screen sharing. Fixes an issue that could occur if two compose windows are open when dragging a file to the Mail icon in the Dock. Resolves an issue in which switching to a different space and returning back to the original space may reorder the application windows with a different active window. Resolves an issue in which activating an application from the Dock switches to a different space, even if there is a window for that application in the current space. Resolves certain issues when backing up a portable Mac that is on battery power. Addresses compatibility issues with Aperture 2. Fixes an issue in which certain function keys may be disabled after using Time Machine.

Beyond those, some that don’t appear on the public release notes but I know to be in this update package from the developer release notes and other sources include:

Various Airport issues after wake from sleep (which has a 97% chance to be the fix for what I’ve been seeing after installing 10.5.2) Addition of Address Book and Gmail Contacts syncing only for Macs that sync either an iPhone or iPod Touch Improves the accuracy of the Disk Utility progress bar indicator when repairing permissions

Also, it is important to keep in mind that this is a system update, and therefore should be installed only when you get the time to deal with any possible bugs that come out of it (ie: download the update now, but wait until Saturday to install it). Also, it has been reported that some SIMBL plugins broke after the installation of 10.5.3. If you (like me) use PlugSuit to run these plugins then you can just disable PlugSuit ahead of installing the updates, or at least are running the plugins at the user level so they are less dangerous over a system update (and you can disable the single plugins that broke easily).

Anyway, the update is finally public, so it’s there when we’re ready to make the well-anticipated jump to Mac OS X 10.5.3. Enjoy, Alex.

Update: Yesterday I downloaded this update as a 198.6 MB patch, today I had to re-download it as a 420 MB patch. Odd, but at least I won’t install it until Saturday (in case they do this thing again).