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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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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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

Windows usually has its fair share of bugs, but this time around we are seeing a Snow Leopard bug that should never have got out of the bug testing room. We are seeing reports on the Apple forums of a bug that seems to completely erase all user data on your main account, as well as having all your settings reset. What makes it worse is that the data isn’t recoverable at all, including via un-deleting.

The issue seems to occur when you log into the “guest” account, log back out of the guest account and back into your main account; you’ll find all your data erased. It also seems to be prominent in those people who upgraded from Leopard. This bug can easily be reproduced (not that we suggest you do), and the only fix that seems to work at the moment is to completely disable your guest account.

Until Apple releases a quick bug-fix for this issue, we strongly recommend you disable your guest account to avoid data loss.

During the first two weeks of its release, Snow Leopard outsold Apple’s two previous operating systems by a wide margin and set a record for the Mac maker.
Sales of Apple’s latest OS were more than two times higher than its predecessor, Leopard, and almost four times more than Leopard’s predecessor, Tiger, according to the NPD Group, which tracks retail sales, excluding online sales.

It’s likely that the low prices might be influencing upgrade decisions, even though it is “less feature focused”, as the article says.  It raises some good questions about the most effective release cycle. That is, Apple’s frequent and cheap releases (with minor changes) vs Microsoft’s slow and expensive releases (with major changes). I will be very interested to see how enthusiastically Windows 7 is greeted by the market in its early days of release.

Only two weeks after the original Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard started shipping, Apple has released an updated to the operating system: 10.6.1. The 75MB download is mainly packing bug fixes such as fixing DVD playback, mail issues and user interface bugs – and the latest Adobe Flash Player plugin. If you’re a Snow Leopard user, go into Software Update and grab the update now.