Apple unleashes second Mac OS X 10.5.4 developer build

Stephen Withers
Monday, 16 June 2008 06:13

Opinion and Analysis

Apple has released second developer build (9E12) of Mac OS X 10.5.4 to qualified parties, with public release expected within a month. The new build fixes a dozen groups of bugs found in its predecessors.

Developers have been asked to address a relatively broad set of areas during testing. More than 20 focus areas were identified by Apple, including AirPort, iCal, iChat, iLife, Keychain, Mail, printing and Spaces.

Several issues affecting earlier builds have been fixed, including Expose failing to display all windows, Spaces problems, and a bug causing systems to hang on shutdown.

While Mac OS X 10.5.3 fixed over 200 bugs in its predecessor, several others remained or resurfaced. Most notable was the problem that caused corruption in Photoshop CS3 documents saved directly to a server rather than to a local disk. This is reportedly fixed by 10.5.4.

10.5.3 also failed to correct a graphics redraw issue plaguing some MacBook and MacBook Pro owners. There's no word yet on whether 10.5.4 does the job.

Various commentators have also identified their pet bugs that survived the release of 10.5.3, including Spotlight's random file renaming bug, and files saved to Desktop not appearing there (I ran into that one over the weekend).

And Rixstep's Learning Curve blog was particularly scathing about 10.5.3: "although this is the fourth release of OS X 10.5 it is still not ready for prime time.

So, what was worse? Please read on to page 2.