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 Stephen Withers turns his gaze on the world of Apple, with
detours into other aspects of IT and communications as they catch his
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Technology news and Jobs 
Our Blogs Core Dump Leopard: Take three [Update]
Our Blogs Core Dump Leopard: Take three [Update] | Leopard: Take three [Update] |
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| by Stephen Withers | |
| Wednesday, 23 January 2008 | |
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The report also says that the new graphics drivers have been isolated from Mac OS X 10.5.2 proper, and will be released as the Leopard Graphics Update. Build 9C16 of the 10.5.2 update, released to developers last week, addresses issues in a veritable laundry list of components from AirPort to X11. If you want to see just how long the list is, MacScoop has collated the fix lists from this and previous builds. So if you have run into a bug in Leopard, it seems there is a better than usual chance that it'll be fixed in 10.5.2. What's more, rumour sites such as BabyGotMac are suggesting we will see some functional improvements when the update is released. High on the list is the ability to use Time Machine with a disk connected to an AirPort Extreme base station. This was originally billed as a Leopard feature, but was dropped from the 10.5.0 release without adequate explanation. Its restoration in 10.5.2 is presumably a prerequisite for Apple's forthcoming Time Capsule, and should smooth feathers ruffled by the suggestion that Time Machine was deliberately crippled to encourage the replacement of AirPort Extremes with Time Capsules. (An old adage says a cock-up is more likely than a conspiracy.) It also seems that the optical drive sharing feature associated with the MacBook Air is more generalised and is a part of 10.5.2. Those of us that have resorted to third party utilities such as Leopaque or manually editing system files to turn off the translucent menu bar will be pleased to see a setting in Desktop Preferences that gives control over this misfeature. Who thought a translucent menu bar was a good idea in the first place? All it does is reduce legibility. Another feature that's taken a caning is Stacks, and as previously reported 10.5.2 will improve it with the addition of a List view resembling the traditional hierarchical display of the contents of a folder in the Dock. Bad news for those on ISP plans with small download quotas: build 9C16 is more than 400M. While Apple may be able to trim a little fat from the final version, there are still a couple of known bugs to be fixed and I don't expect it to be substantially smaller. Still, if the completion of 10.5.2 was the gating factor for the release of the MacBook Air and Time Capsule , maybe we'll see those products a little sooner than previously expected.
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