Mac OS X 10.5.2 is packing hefty fixes, due January-ish

As much love as Apple's Mac OS X Leopard has received in the press and from users, there are still plenty of bugs that need ironing out. Lucky for those users and those not-easily-embarrassed members of the press, Apple seems to be addressing most of those remaining bugs with its 10.5.2 update, which it just seeded to developers. There are apparently 76 fixes listed in the release notes, ranging from fan-faves like MacBook AirPort funkiness to obscure gems like Rosetta PowerPC compatibility memory leaks. This is just the first distribution of the update, and a release to users is rumored to hit mid-January, coinciding with new hardware at Macworld.

[Com @ Jan 24th 2008 5:03PM]

My poor MBP. I have the latest MBP release (2.4Ghz, 8800m gt). Unfortunately, Apple programmers know how to write a WHOLE OS but can't add the 8800m gt to the Nvidia driver's ini file(cause that's what I had to do in order to replace the crap Apple bootcamp drivers).

Also, as far as Leopard is concerned, Quicktime plays like crap (HD content has screen tearing) and Leopard still thinks that my bootcamp partition is an iPod, CD, or DVD. YAY!

But my keyboard lights up when it gets dark. :0

[sburko @ Dec 19th 2007 5:36PM]

Oh they're not charging for this one?

[Michael LaFramboise @ Dec 19th 2007 5:41PM]

No; they only charge for 10.X releases, not 10.X.X...

Its like you Windows users never paid for SP1, SP2, SP3... oh wait, spoke too soon, you already paid upwards of 400 bucks for SP3 ;)

[a ham sandwich @ Dec 19th 2007 5:50PM]

mike, i think (read: hope) he was kidding on that one.

[nerdtalker @ Dec 19th 2007 5:58PM]

Those of us that understand humor will recognize that the OP was poking fun at the service pack-type, near Windows-esque upgrades that are the incremental aspect of 10.X upgrades/updates.

It's pretty obvious that these are bugfixes (and good, long needed ones at that), and not anything else.

But, we all got that humor, didn't we?

[Fitz @ Dec 20th 2007 7:43PM]

I only paid $120 for Vista Premium - don't know many that paid 400 for ultimate, besides there's simple registry hacks (in which I had no problems implementing) to enable some of the missing features between premium and ultimate

As we're all aware ALL OS's have bugs so get off your high horse - Apple is not infallible

[syadasti @ Dec 19th 2007 6:17PM]

Windows 2000 = NT 5
Windows XP = NT 5.1-5.2 (they gave significant new features for free in service packs)
Windows Vista = NT 6

So the paying or not varies with Microsoft release.

[sburko @ Dec 19th 2007 6:17PM]

@ Mike
/sarcasm, you're a mac user you might know this concept.

[Me @ Dec 19th 2007 6:56PM]

ArcticFox: lol, mac users dont need to spend 130 with each major release. i dont know whod be stupid enough to go out and buy OS X legit as it doesnt need a serial.

[michael @ Dec 19th 2007 7:52PM]

@Michael LaFramboise:

Hate to rain on your parade here, but XP SP2 was for certin, free.

Take a look see : http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sp2/default.mspx

It clearly says "free update for XP". I already bought this computer with SP2 a few years ago, so I don't really care. I just really hate it when 'some' Apple users like to put these little lies in, to make it sound so better.

And I don't know where the heck you got that $400 tag.

[Ellianth @ Dec 19th 2007 8:53PM]

Fritz. How can i get in contact with you? I want some of the ultimate features for free.

[Fitz @ Dec 19th 2007 9:46PM]

For anyone that is interested:

OK here's a clue to to enable remote desktop for premium...SP1 may break it, but I'm sure it'll be solved in a matter of days. The performance of RDC through Vista is waayyyy faster than a free third party.

Got to thegreenbutton search for "alternates to remote desktop" and you should find it in a thread.

I don't want to just provide a link because I think its on a personal website. There are hacks to other features missing in Premium which you can search for on TGB or should be able to find on other forums....believe me they're there...

[ArcticFox @ Dec 19th 2007 6:06PM]

Yeah but how many 10.x updates have there been in XP and Vista lifetime, Windows users only have to pay every few years, OSX users have to pay $130 every 10.x release.

[scott @ Dec 19th 2007 5:42PM]

802.1x fixed yet?

[CharlieX @ Dec 19th 2007 5:47PM]

Maybe Adobe will be ready by then and upgrading to Leopard will make sense

[randy @ Dec 19th 2007 6:13PM]

And FileMaker Server --- My god those people are ALWAYS months behind

[Melenor @ Dec 19th 2007 6:53PM]

And Nvidia as well. I'd like my Tiger 60 FPS back.

[brian @ Dec 19th 2007 9:47PM]

and digidesign protools

[jeremydcox @ Dec 20th 2007 9:17AM]

The worst part about DigiDesign is that when they do update they're going to charge us for it.

[waiownsyou @ Dec 19th 2007 5:56PM]

I just got my MacBook Pro with Leopard and I can't tell if it's working right correctly or filled with bugs... this is what I get for growing up with Windows everywhere.

[syadasti @ Dec 19th 2007 6:12PM]

Well they just patched 30 security holes today:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307179

And they have 76 fixes to roll out in January.

It just works...like any other piece of software, Windows or not, it has plenty of bugs/holes/flaws...

[Me @ Dec 19th 2007 6:00PM]

I hope they get rid of STACKS and bring back the old hierarchical function. Worst leopard bug by far.

[Isaac @ Dec 19th 2007 6:13PM]

Thats not a bug its a feature.

[Juice Daddy @ Dec 19th 2007 6:36PM]

lawl

you know your a mac user when you have to tell yourself "its not a bug, its a feature"

[rxse7en @ Dec 19th 2007 6:41PM]

DEATH TO STACKS!

[Ireland @ Dec 19th 2007 9:30PM]

Stacks is my favorite Leopard feature, not by far or anything, but it's my favorite. Clean and simple feature that most definitely just works. People who want to bring back hierarchical menus within the dock either don't know what Quicksilver is, where the new and totally rewritten Spotlight is, or haven't heard of the new Finder. Sometimes change is a good thing, if you're open to it.

[Eugene @ Dec 20th 2007 7:27PM]

Done and done: http://macenstein.com/default/archives/983
"According to a source familiar with the latest Leopard build seeded to developers, in addition to all those meaningless “little” fixes (like Data Detectors, the Mac OS X Dock, the Finder, grammar checking, iCal, iChat, Mail, Parental Controls, Quick Look, Rosetta, Safari, Time Machine, and AirPort), our source tells us that Apple has fixed Stacks by adding the missing “list view” option that should have been there all along!"

[Delvis343 @ Dec 19th 2007 6:04PM]

Any word, or guess of what these fixes will be? Now, if only MIcrosoft would improve Vista like this.

[L. M. Lloyd @ Dec 19th 2007 7:02PM]

I get so tired of this comment! There have been 52 updates to Vista since release. That averages out to about one a week. Please, quit pretending that updates only come in service packs. No company out there, even Apple, updates their software more often that Microsoft.

[JAmerican @ Dec 19th 2007 8:57PM]

Seems like Apple is releasing updates like Sony does for the PS3. LOL :) BTW I own a PB so I welcome newer updates as long as they don't slow down my already slow 1GHz PPC machine.

[Neonkoala @ Dec 19th 2007 6:09PM]

Oh dear "obscure gems like Rosetta PowerPC" someone doesn't know their macs very well... This happens to be quite critical for old PowerPC programs that need to run on Intel.

[Andrew @ Dec 20th 2007 11:10AM]

Could this be why all my powerPC programs run like complete ass ever since the leopard upgrade? I had to upgrade to 3 GB of RAM on my MBP because photoshop and illustrator (CS2) somehow managed to use ALL 2GB.

[g2 @ Dec 19th 2007 6:06PM]

I hope Apple fixes the problem with the Airport dropping internet connection in Macbook.

[nikster @ Dec 19th 2007 8:49PM]

Seconded. It's ridiculous - how hard is it to make an AirPort driver that works? AirPort has been funky ever since 10.4.10.

[orka @ Dec 19th 2007 6:16PM]

So you're complaining about the fact that Apple likes to keep a steady pace of major OS versions, unlike Microsoft which needed six years to finally get Vista out the door?

Sigh.

[james @ Dec 20th 2007 3:40PM]

you are forgetting the reason WHY that happened was so they could work on SP2 for XP which you got free (assuming you had xp)

[iankelleigh @ Dec 19th 2007 6:28PM]

Please please please please let this have a fix for FrontRow and it's inability to play through Airtunes.

[randy @ Dec 19th 2007 6:26PM]

My Apple MacBook Pro crashes practically every day. A MacBook Pro apparently completely seizes when you wake from sleep and then switch network locations.

And yesterday my Dock crashed. It suddenly crashed and then kept rapidly disappearing and reappearing. Like this: Crash, relaunch. Crash, relaunch. Crash, relaunch. Crash, relaunch. Crash, relaunch..... (Up, down, Up, Down, UP, down, etc, for eternity). Deleting a swath of Apple preferences did not fix the problem. In the end, I had to remove their new Leopard "spring loaded quickview folder snap" folders from the right side of the Dock, apparently Apple has missed a couple exceptions in those somewhere.

Here's an idea:


APPLE -- YOU HAVE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS -- can't you SPEND A COUPLE MILLION BEFORE EACH LAUNCH TO TEST YOUR SOFTWARE better? Pay some people! Come up with a bug reporting policy for you own employees! MY GOD! Is this your plan? To just farm out your bug reporting to your users? That seems really disingenuous.

Personally, I can't be submitting your bug reports all day long anymore. I've already got a full time job. I've had it. When the Beachball of Death comes up, I turn my chair around and open a book, or switch to my iPhone.

[aschmack @ Dec 19th 2007 6:39PM]

Seriously, they only have maybe 75 computer configurations that they have that will run this, it seems like they could have tested this better.

[Jhongerkong @ Dec 19th 2007 6:39PM]

"And yesterday my Dock crashed. It suddenly crashed and then kept rapidly disappearing and reappearing. Like this: Crash, relaunch. Crash, relaunch. Crash, relaunch. Crash, relaunch. Crash, relaunch..... (Up, down, Up, Down, UP, down, etc, for eternity)."

Yesterday, my dock also kept crashing. Crash, Crash, relaunch, relaunch, Crash, Crash, relaunch, relaunch, reboot, shutdown, reboot, shutdown (Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right)

My life expectancy then went up by 30 years.

[morcheeba @ Dec 19th 2007 9:26PM]

randy - my MBP is in a new network connection practically every time I wake it from sleep -- about 2-3 times per day & its fine.

[stevesreed @ Dec 20th 2007 6:46PM]

If you MacBook Pro is crashing that frequently. i would have it check. I sleep in onlocation and wake in other twice every day and it NEVER crashes.

Could be a bad mother board, or memory, or what ever. I doubt it's leopard though.

[kw @ Jan 27th 2008 5:59PM]

the dock crashing crap is down to metadata in the file not being read correctly, or not being recognised.

many people experience this within finder, when viewing a file crashes finder. if that file is in a docked folder (for stacks) the dock will crash when reading the file and hence it cycles.

[Tchad @ Dec 19th 2007 6:47PM]

Apparently the latest revision of the MacBook Pro becomes a multitouch tablet with the software update. Who knew that it was a touchscreen all along?

[L.Rawlins @ Dec 19th 2007 6:56PM]

'Apple had over five times the number of security flaws per month than Windows XP and Vista during the last 12 months...'

http://www.tech.co.uk/computing/mac/news/new-mac-os-x-security-update?articleid=705819797

Popularity would appear to be a mixed blessing for the now trendy Macintosh platform.

[MrWhite @ Dec 19th 2007 7:29PM]

@randy
"Personally, I can't be submitting your bug reports all day long anymore. I've already got a full time job. I've had it. When the Beachball of Death comes up, I turn my chair around and open a book, or switch to my iPhone."

Are you sure a true Mac user? Been running the new OS since release date and haven't had a problem yet. Also, if all the problems are true, I think Apple does a hell of a better job developing software than MS ever will, since this is their first minor hiccup in an OS and I don't consider it a hiccup since I haven't had any problems yet.

[jake @ Dec 19th 2007 8:09PM]

Same goes for Vista. I haven't have problems with it, and from posts from another article in Giz, a lot of people also have had no problems with Vista. But there are also people having terrible problems with Vista and here you hear some people having bad time with Leopard. So how is Apple any better at developing software than Vista? Apple doesn't have to deal with millions of combinations in hardware like MS does and they are also less popular so they should have an easier time developing their OS. Now that they are gaining popularity a lot of the problems they have avoided are showing up. From what I can see, previous releases of OSX had "minor hiccups" but not to the extent on this release which is issuing "hefty fixes", so I wouldn't call these problems minor hiccups.

[michael @ Dec 19th 2007 9:00PM]

I agree with Jake.

That's rather arrogant of you, what a surprise, to think just because you're not facing a problem with your product, other people aren't.

I too use Vista, and other than compatibility problems, Vista works awesome for me. The other things I run in compatibility mode. I use Media Center as my prime DVR and is the focal point of my entertainment center, I'm happy to use the best office suite in the world on my OS (Office 07'), and there's several other tidbits in Vista over Leopard.

So thanks for trying.

[L. M. Lloyd @ Dec 20th 2007 2:54PM]

You are joking right? "First minor hiccup?" You obviously haven't been running OS X since version 10.0! Talk about a train wreck. It took Apple several versions to iron out the kinks, and get the OS running decently.

[samsdarst @ Jan 19th 2008 7:51AM]

-Michael-
"and there's several other tidbits in Vista over Leopard."
Engadget themselves did a check on Vista vs Leopard, as have PC World and many others. It's quite hard to find one where Leopard lost to Vista.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/27/leopard-vs-vista-feature-chart-showdown/