The PC Report

Apple yesterday released an update to their Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” operating system. 10.6.4 includes the new Safari 5 right out of the (virtual) box, fixes some unresponsive keyboard/trackpad issues, fixes a sleep issue with the 2010 MacBook, adds RAW image compatibility for additional digital cameras plus a whole load more improvements, fixes and security patches. Previous updates to Snow Leopard are also included with the 10.6.4 update.

As usual, we highly recommend that you keep your system up to date and for Mac users this means installing the 10.6.4 update. You can download the update through the Software Update on your machine, or via a manual download from Apple’s website. Note that by downloading it through Software Update you will get a reduced file size. Full release notes are below.

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Mac users rejoice today as Valve finally releases their much awaited Mac client for the Steam gaming network and digital distributor. The new client works on all Intel-based Macs (sorry PPC users) and comes with a surprising number of games on launch day. Portal is available along with Civilization IV - both highly recommended games by the staff here – Torchlight, Braid and a variety of other games from smaller publishers are also available with the total number of games coming to 63 as of right now.

Valve has plans to port their entire collection of games based on the Source engine to the Mac, which should include PC favourites such as Left 4 Dead and the Half Life 2 series. To get you started with the launch today, both Mac and PC users will get to download and enjoy Portal for free up until May 24 – we advise you take up Valve on this fantastic offer. As the Mac Steam network continues to grow, more games should be added to the collection so keep an eye out for your favourites.

Today Apple has released an updated to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard (both desktop and server editions) – 10.6.3. In this update package Snow Leopard users will be seeing a number of bugs being fixed, tweaks and the usual performance improvements. Hot on the list of these improvements include better QuickTime X compatibility, improved printing and a far better Crash Reporter that should help Apple find and fix more bugs more efficiently.

The update should be available now via Software update, or you can grab it here for the 10.6.3 desktop update or here for the 10.6.3 server update. Leopard users will also be getting a number of these fixes by a security update, also available via Software Update or the Apple download centre. See below for the full list of major updates in Mac OS X 10.6.3.

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For everyone not using Windows, the wait to access Google’s Chrome as your web browser (officially) is now over, as Google has released a public beta for all you Mac OS X and Linux users. Unfortunately, the Mac/Linux versions aren’t as feature-filled as their Windows counterpart, but still carry enough features to make it a good enough browser to replace your current one.

While the speed and process per tab benefits of Chrome are in the Mac/Linux versions, things such as extensions, the bookmark manager and support for Google Gears are still missing. However it looks like the Mac Chrome edition integrates well with the OS X interface and utilises some key features such as native spell-check, keychain support and Mac-specific animations. The interface also fits in well with the overall Mac look, and the Linux version isn’t too bad either.

You can download the beta version of Chrome for Mac (OS X 10.5 or later) or Linux (Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora/openSUSE) from the respective downloads pages.

Now is the time to update your Snow Leopard machine; the Mac OS X 10.6.2 update is out now via Apple Software Update. The biggest change to Snow Leopard in 10.6.2 is the fix to that crippling bug that happened to delete your account data after you used the guest account. The update also kills your Atom machine, just as the rumours predicted.

The update comes in at a hefty 157.7MB if you’re on 10.6.1, but if you’re on an earlier version of Snow Leopard, you’ll need the combo updater which weighs in at around 500MB (sometimes less, sometimes more). Open up Software Update to download the much needed update, but for Atom users we recommend that you stay on 10.6.1 to keep your machine alive until someone finds a work around.

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Are you a Hackintosh user running Mac OS X on an Intel Atom powered machine? If so, you should be worried, as the next update to Apple’s Snow Leopard OS will drop support for Atom processors completely, rendering your OS X installation useless. Not surprising really, considering the Atom 330 wasn’t supported officially since Mac OS X 10.5.7

So, you Atom Snow Leopard users have two choices when the 10.6.2 update comes around. Either you can not update and stick with 10.6.1, or update to 10.6.2 but use an earlier kernel (or a custom kernel) so that you can continue to enjoy the latest Mac OS X on your Atom machine. Hopefully Atom support will be re-introduced in a later update, but I doubt it as Apple only needs to look after CPUs they actually ship in their machines.

Update: Looks like the latest developer build has brought back Atom support.

Update 2: Support is gone again, and it looks like it won’t be coming back any time soon

It appears as though that if you have Mac running Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you’ll be able to run the newest version of VMware’s Windows-on-a-Mac virtualization software which will be packing some pretty cool features. VMware Fusion 3 will support DirectX 9.0c, Shader Model 3 and OpenGL 2.1, allowing you to play some of the latest games on your beloved Mac system in a Windows virtualized environment.

Fusion 3 also will officially support Windows 7, unlike previous versions and its main competitor, Parallels Desktop 4.0. It also supports Aero and Flip 3D if you desire these features on your Mac. While 3D gaming is still not the greatest on Mac systems even with this update to VMware’s Fusion software, you can still grab the software for US$79.99 pre-order, shipping October 27.