Apple Software Updates In The Past Two Days

Apple’s been busy rolling out software updates yesterday and today.

First, 10.4.11 was released yesterday ending out Tiger’s regin as the even-slightly-current Mac OS version. The update gave Tiger users Safari 3 and many other well-apreciated improvements. If you’re on the brink of installing 10.5(.0) then I sugest that you don’t install this update.

Also yesterday, iPhoto 7.1.1 was rolled out to both 10.4.10/.11 and 10.5.0/.1 users. This update is a minor release that does give some improvements. I don’t yet know what those improvements are.

Earlier today Apple sent out the Mac OS X 10.5.1 update. This is the first incremental release of 10.5 Leopard and brings with it a long list of changes and improvements. Airport password issues have been resolved. Back-to-my-Mac issues tying to the Finder sidebar have been resolved. A Disk Utilities progress bar issue (which I’ve experienced) was resolved. Disk Image and Partitioning support was also improved. Email alarms and attendee invitations have been improved in iCal. There are many improvements to Mail including .Mac syncing, smart mailboxes, “simple setup”, HTML email attachments, and stability when resizing columns. Networking was enhanced with improvements on Microsoft Widows shared folders. Preset saving was improved for printing. Code signing was enhanced. The “Block All” was changed to “Allow Only essential services” in the FireWall tab of Security preferences. The data loss bug that has hung on since before 10.4.0 was killed (transferring, not copying, files from one disk or partition to another). Flash Player compatibility was enhanced. Time Machine got some enhancements, a restore bug were it didn’t restore the file, and formatting issues (but not AEBS disk support).

These updates should be taken. But I do sugest that you run a Time Machine backup before installing the 10.5.1 update. Enjoy, Alex.