L-Day plus one: First Leopard update arrives

By Stephen Withers
Monday, 29 October 2007 02:34

Technology

Mac owners were wondering how long it would take for the first patch for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. The answer was one day.

Login & Keychain Update 1.0 appeared on Saturday (US time) to fix a trio of problems relating to passwords.

It's easy to see how Apple might have overlooked the first problem during testing, as it only surfaces when logging into an account first created in Mac OS X 10.1 or earlier, and even then only if the password has eight or more characters. We're talking about a fairly obscure set of circumstances here - apart from anything else, it would be most unusual for a Mac capable of running Leopard to have ever had 10.0 or 10.1 installed on it at all.

Problem number two led to difficulties in connecting to Wi-Fi networks. Apple didn't spell out the exact circumstances, but iTWire has seen reports from users who have encountered this issue.

Finally, the update allows changes to the password of an account protected by FileVault. FileVault, introduced in Mac OS X 10.3, stores the user's home folder as an encrypted disk image file, reducing the risk of data leakage if the computer is stolen.

In related news, Apple has also issued updates for Aperture and Backup that include Leopard compatibility fixes.

Aperture 1.5.6 includes the usual performance and stability fixes, improves compatibility with iPhoto 7.1 and other aspects of iLife 08, and improves the reliability of recovering Aperture libraries from a Vault (Aperture's system for backing up photos and associated metadata).

Backup 3.1.2, part of Apple's .Mac subscription service, provides improved compatibility with Mac OS X 10.5 and with iWork 08. No indication was given of how the previous lack of compatibility may impact on users.