Submitted by Apple has released Mac OS 10.4.3. This update weighs around 100MB and includes fixes for AFP/SMB/CIFS/FTP, AirPort/BlueTooth, Core Graphics/Audio/Image, Spotlight, Address Book, AppleScript, Automator, Safari (it now passes the Acid2 test), and much, much more. The update is available via Software Update, or as stand-alone packages (delta|combo).
While I find Tiger pretty solid on my PowerMac, I’m still looking forward to the update. Safari seems to have problems loading GMail, and there are few minor annoyances strewn about the OS.
Tiger on our library’s iMac’s is another issue entirely. The Tiger upgrade borked the machines hard. I hope this update makes the more usable!
I’m miffed that they disabled Q2D Extreme. A lot of people were expecting 10.3 to enable it.
Edited 2005-10-31 21:57
I was really hoping for Q2D extreme to be enabled in this release too. It was one of the reasons I upgraded to a 128MB graphics card when I bought my PowerBook in March. I remember being very impressed when I read the section in the Ars Technica article about it (http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/14). I was under the impression when I bought Tiger that Q2D extreme was dropped from 10.4.0 because of last minute bugs and would be enabled in an update – now my hopes have been dashed
“There was one error opening the page. For more information, choose Activity from the Window menu.:
—-
data:application/x-unknown,ERROR”
^
… this fixes the Java G5 bug.
Just installed the update, everything went fine. An interesting note is that coincidentally, just before the update became available, I did an Xbench test, it gave me 28.50 (iBook G4 1.07Ghz, 512MBRAM).
After the 10.4.3 update, it gave me 23.59. Now, even though this statistically means fcuk all, it’s still interesting.
As for the Acid2 test: “Hello World”– does that mean it works?
Quartz 2D Extreme will arrive only with Leopard
(http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301984):
«Disables Quartz 2D Extreme – Quartz 2D Extreme is not a supported
feature in Tiger, and re-enabling it may lead to video redraw issues or
kernel panics.»
If Quartz 2D Extreme is only for Leopard, then they should of not claimed it as a new feature for Tiger, and they still talk about it as a current OS X feature on their webpage (http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/quartzextreme/).
The funny thing is at the end they say “No other operating system delivers the high-quality graphics rendering of Quartz 2D.” Its funny because that includes Mac OS X.
I am really disappointed they didn’t enable this as of yet, and they did claim this as a Tiger feature (and still do it seems). I am still very happy with Tiger, but this is one feature that just should of not been advertised until it was done (just like Sun with ZFS, or WinFS for the next gen Windows).
The funny thing is at the end they say “No other operating system delivers the high-quality graphics rendering of Quartz 2D.” Its funny because that includes Mac OS X.
You are being confused, I think, by the fact that three technologies have very similar names.
Quartz 2D (often just Quartz) is the 2D rendering system used on OS X. It uses a display list format that has a 1:1 mapping with PDF display lists, allowing resolution-independent UI elements to be drawn.
Quartz Extreme was the hardware accelerated compositing system introduced with (I think) Jagwyre. Each window in Quartz 2D is rendered to a buffer. Originally, these were then composited in software. With QE, they were rendered to OpenGL textures and then composited in hardware. This allowed things like translucent windows to be drawn quickly, and made effects like Exposé possible.
Quartz 2D Extreme moves a lot of the things in Quartz 2D into hardware. For example, each character in a font is rendered into an OpenGL buffer with Q2DE, and then composited in the window by the GPU. This makes text rendering much faster with Q2DE (assuming that the GPU is fast enough).
Apple never advertised Q2DE. It was mentioned at the WWDC, but that is a developers conference – and developers can enable it for testing purposes. They advertise Quartz 2D and Quartz Extreme, because these are shipping features.
Ahhh thats makes much more sense then. I guess I got confused by all the terms and how they fit together. Very informative information, thanks for clearing up things for me.
I just hope they get it done before Vista, that way Microsoft doesn’t claim to be the first to do most of the GUI rendering in the GPU. But it looks like Q2DE won’t make it until 10.5.
faster on my G4. I think twice as fast as before – can anybody confirm this?
Your right, it is much faster! That was one of my biggest peeves and now it is fixed!
Yay, gmail works now. The AcidTest site works too. The update also fixed the issue I was having where during startup, the “Staring MacOS X” screen’s progress bar wouldn’t get all the way to the end before showing the desktop. I don’t know why that bothered me so much, but it did.
The 10.4 progress bar is entirely fake. It just measures your startup time and next reboot uses that time to show the bar.
If if fails to fully reach 100% or shows the desktop much too soon, nothing is wrong, it just means your startup time is different from the last time.
Wasn’t Quartz Extreme noted at WWDC to be a feature in Tiger? I wonder if they’ll one day enable it, after fixing the bugs?
Quartz Extreme works since Jaguar and it still does. Quartz 2D Extreme goes far beyond Quartz Extreme. 2D Extreme moves much of the Windows compositing into the GPU. That was never enabled by default in Tiger.
Uh, slightly wrong. Quartz Extreme moves window compositing onto the GPU. Quartz 2D Extreme moves drawing of 2D vector graphics into window buffers onto the GPU. This is basically what Glitz does for Cairo on Linux/X11.
With Quartz Extreme, the Safari window in which I’m typing this document is rendered almost entirely via software into a memory buffer. Then, OpenGL is used to take that memory buffer, turn it into a texture, and use the GPU to blend it onto the frontbuffer. With Quartz 2D Extreme, the memory buffer would be a secondary video surface instead, and OpenGL’s render-to-texture functionality would be used to draw all the text and images into the surface, and would also be used to blend that surface onto the front buffer.
This update also conveniently breaks the Front Row hack
I read that elsewhere too, after I’d already rushed and installed 10.4.3, but I have to say I don’t have any problem running Front Row.
So is it possible to enable Quartz 2D Extreme?
Yes, there is utility called “Quartz Debug” that is included with the Developer Tools. Open /Developer/Applications/Performance Tools/Quartz Debug.app, then go to Tools->Enable Quartz 2D Extreme.
Actually the nose is a row of pixels too big.
Is iChat multi-person video-conferencing improved?
The reference rendering doesn’t support the nose roleover will the genuine test now does.
The best OS keeps getting better.
I thought they stopped working on OS 9? Oh well, I guess you’re talking about OS X. Really, though, if they replaced the OS X interface with the OS 9 one, they would be so much better off. Not perfect, but much nicer than it currently is.
-bytecoder
When should we see 10.5?
My guess would be about 1 year from now.
Be sure to repair disk permissions – there are a ton to be repaired.
I’m still waiting for the day that all of the Brushed Metal look applications like Finder and Safari will start to use something else. Before I owned a Mac I thought the Brushed Metal look was nice, but now that I see it every day things have changed… I need a GUI theme with staying power!
try UNO
http://gui.interacto.net/
Safari does in fact NOT pass. There are yet several problems reproducing the image. Opera 9 is yet the closest with only one line the wrong color. Better luck the next time.
Funny, I just ran the test and the only thing I noticed was that the nose of the smiley was a little bit smaller than the reference picture.
Well it passes on mine. The images are exact.
Same here, It’s 100% Perfect on my Mac Mini with the 10.4.3 Combo Updater. There is NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL. None. I looked for 5 minutes. I tried latest Opera and it’s not even close although Opera was the closest till today.
Just to confirm…Safari v2.0.2(416.12) does not render correctly from the eyes up on a G5. Is the version correctly rendering now the same as this?
Is ok on my G5, as stated the nose is slightly smaller thats it.
Yes exact version and side by side they are EXACTLY the same on Mac Mini. Safari 2.02 (416.12)
Did ACID 2 on my B&W at home, it passed but the nose was marginally smaller than the test rendering.
it DOES pass Acid2 here.
I just did a quick’n’dirty benchmark in Xbench before and after the update.
The test was run on a freshly booted system in a clean user profile with no background processes running. Four iterations for each OS version.
The test system was my rather slow 1.2 GHz 7455 Cube equipped with Radeon 8500.
Overall 10.4.2: 34.99 (min) / 35.95 (max) / 35.65 (avg)
Overall 10.4.3: 37.37 (min) / 38.77 (max) / 38.08 (avg) ~7% gain
Here are three sub-scores that differed most:
Memory Test 10.4.2: 16.55 (min) / 17.31 (max) / 16.95 (avg)
Memory Test 10.4.3: 18.11 (min) / 18.52 (max) / 18.28 (avg) ~8% gain
Quartz Graphics Test 10.4.2: 45.47 (min) / 46.17 (max) / 45.85 (avg)
Quartz Graphics Test 10.4.3: 49.69 (min) / 51.67 (max) / 51.06 (avg) ~11% gain
User Interface Test 10.4.2: 30.52 (min) / 32.08 (max) / 31.25 (avg)
User Interface Test 10.4.3: 34.92 (min) / 36.63 (max) / 35.66 (avg) ~14% gain
At least on my machines, it fails to load the acid page properly. Guess by passing acid they ment something else.
The Acid 2 test worked for me.
…but I would swear my 20″ iMac screen is brighter after upgrading. I find it difficult to look at my email windows. Probably all in my mind.
…on my powerbook
With Software Update, it was a 56MB file.
Now Finder crashes and restarts every second, safari crashes on start, and most apps are broken.
Writing this comment from FireFox!
I am downloading the full update (100MB) hoping I can somehow install it. BTW anyone know how to force softwareupdate to install a package it doesn’t want to?
That is VERY interesting because it said the same with my wife’s iMac. Mine was 97 MB, her’s was only 56 MB. Her machine isn’t crashing tho’. All seems well. Did you also download several other updates at the same time? I am wondering if some of the size is because it incorporates older updates?
Yes, I think the one software update grabbed is the delta (from 1.4.2 to 1.4.3) whereas the combo updates from 10.4
onwards.
Still fetching the combo but apple’s download site is slow as molasses, under high load I suppose.
Seems like some core libraries are broken. Opening Safari yields:
//////////////////////
Exception: EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION (0x0002)
Code[0]: 0x00000002
Code[1]: 0x95bf96d4
Thread 0 Crashed:
0 com.apple.WebCore 0x95bf96d4 QString::fromNSString(NSString*) + 64
1 com.apple.WebCore 0x95bf9654 -[WebCoreBridge setName:] + 32
2 com.apple.WebKit 0x959cdedc -[WebBridge initWithWebFrame:] + 156
3 com.apple.WebKit 0x959cdc80 -[WebFrame initWithName:webFrameView:webView:] + 196
//////////////////////
etc.
We’ll see. I am loath to reinstalling tiger but that may be recessary
I have installed the combo update package (~100MB) and things have improved, I can run Safari okay. Cross fingers
About the size of the update:
//////////////////////
Software Update notes:
* The update’s size may vary from computer to computer when installed using Software Update.
* Because some updates are prerequisites for others, you may need to run Software Update more than once to get all available updates.
//////////////////////
This sounds like the problem I had with 10.4.1 and 10.4.2: broke everything, crashes and in the end severe kernel panics.
Problem: bad memory module, despite paying a hefty pricetag at my local Apple dealer. Ordered a new one at apple.com and it fixed everything.
I downloaded a 56Mb update and it works fine.
Anyone know if the bug with late iBooks and new PowerBooks where if you have over 1 GB of memory installed, you lose internet connectivity every couple of hours is fixed?
I have a new 17″ PowerBook that is affected by this. I really hope 10.4.3 fixes this since it is a deal breaker.
I was hoping someone would mentiont this. I have the same problem iwth my iBook and yes it is a deal breaker. What is the link to the bug report? I’d like to keep track of this one.
are you using dial up? allmost all dial up connections on any computer seem to disconect after 2hrs i never heard of a pwerbook with over 1gb of ram specificlaly ….i got a 12″ powerbook 1.25 gb ram on wireless internet hub, never loose internet.
Well, so far this is the best OSX update ever for me. Well, maybe the one that fixed the kernel panics and full bore fan running back in Panther was a good one too.
But apple finally fixed the DNG support in tiger, which was suppose to work in tiger from day one, but actually only worked very selectively.
Well, thats gone. It now works beautifully. And the RAW for my DSLR is supported system wide. This is great. Preview opened nearly 2.5 gig of raw files for me and worked through them great. And uses very little ram at the same time.
Time will tell on how safari does. So far it’s still under 100 meg of ram usage, but it’s only been an hour.
Anyone got a link to this test people speak of.
So far safari at least seams to be leaking ram at a slower rate.
Acid2 Test:
http://www.webstandards.org/act/acid2/test.html
Well, it works here except for the nose grows bigger on the bottom two sides of the box.
Also I think the color of the green eyes ever so slightly changes.
The nose gets smaller, not bigger.
Anyways, looks like no fix to the memory leak. Safari is up to 231meg of ram.
Are you guys sure Safari leaks? I never use Safari, I use Camino, but I also own Omniweb and it sucks up ram too… but I always figured that was because it goes out and checks all your bookmarked sites for updates, and maybe it caches them as it goes?
Are you guys sure Safari leaks? I never use Safari, I use Camino, but I also own Omniweb and it sucks up ram too… but I always figured that was because it goes out and checks all your bookmarked sites for updates, and maybe it caches them as it goes?
Yes – http://webkit.opendarwin.org/blog/?p=24
Does anyone know if the leak fixes are included in the 10.4.3 build? And if so, should we expect an updated Safari for Panther as well? (I surely hope so given 4000+ leaks – and yes, I can feel them!)
BR//Karl
Nothing new appears broken over here.
Safari still seems to leak though; closed all safari windows and tabs except OSNEWS, cleared caches, and safari is gobbling 88MB of real memory and 214MB of virtual memory.
It’s been a lot worse though, sometimes Safari gets so bogged down that browsing on the windows box via VNC is better.
You’re lucky. Watch what happens when Adobe Reader plugin is launched and then closed. The number of threads remains constant:
It’s amazing to have 3 tabs and the browser view overall occupying 17 threads, 140+ MB RAM after the 5th browser tab which housed the adobe plugin is now closed.
It’s bloat and it needs to be addressed.
Oh WOW! I’d be replacing Apple’s core with the opendarwin webkit.
Many users are missing it but an important feature added by this update
is the support for GLSL shaders accelerated in hardware:
GLSL Status:
“Expect some developer notes shortly (this week). We have to put the
final dots on the i’s and crosses on the t’s.”
Geoff Stahl
3D Graphics Architecture
Apple
(http://lists.apple.com/archives/Mac-opengl/2005/Oct/msg00166.html)
Updated G5 iMac and now the fan runs at high speed constantly, great for cooling the cpu, now approx 31deg celcius. But now noisy as hell. Did all the usual repair permissions before and after, no luck there.
🙁
iMac 1.8 G5 here–no problems. Have any hacks to your system?
http://img357.imageshack.us/img357/4615/picture21sw.png
I upgraded my iBook G3 600Mhz (16MB VRAM) and iMac G5 1.8Ghz 20inch, both worked flawlessly.
Btw, remove all pointless crap like tweakers, boosters, and so-called fixers; stick with the tools that Apple provides, chuck the rest out, and you won’t experience any problems.
The summary says there’s also a fix for :
“disc recording when creating and burning media”
Anyone know exactly what was changed here ? It’s not in the detailed view.
The acid test works _almost_ perfectly for me. The nose is slightly bigger, that’s it.
Overall, I am most pleased with this release. One more solid and comprehensive patch, and I think Tiger will be fantastic for 99% of the folks out there.
I am so glad Apple took their time with 10.4.3. It was worth waiting for.
From what I can see, Safari seems to handle memory better than Firefox does.
Just for fun, tried the Acid Test on XP with both Firefox and IE…….good God.
And you guys are complaining the nose is slightly too small?
>Just to confirm…Safari v2.0.2(416.12) does not render correctly from >the eyes up on a G5. Is the version correctly rendering now the same as >this?
My G5 renders it perfectly. Be sure you clean up Sarfari chache if you tried it before.
The nose has perfect behaviour and size in my G5 also, and it is oficial, Safari passsed the test,
http://www.webstandards.org/
I emptied the cache and even reset all defaults. Perhaps the “official” announcement was a bit premature if it doesn’t render the same for everyone?
FYI:
I discovered that the Acid2 test is affected by the font size. It wasn’t until I set the minimum size from 14 to 12 that the image was rendered correctly. Go figure?
Link?
I have an ibook 1.33 w/1.25 GB of ram. I don’t have any issue with airport dropping, but I have read something about it. I’m online 24/7 without any issues.
I still use OSX10.3, don’t see any safari update. Apple should release the same update for 1.3. I hope Apple still maintain safari 1.3; otherwise I see no value to use apple — nice hardware, poor software support.
head toward http://webkit.opendarwin.org/building/checkout.html. and follow those instructions to get hold of the latest safari.
I seem to be seeing a pattern here. I have a dual 2.0 ghz processor G5 that I use to do distributed computing in the background. Most times both processors are running at 100% 24/7 and I noticed this same thing happening with, first Panther, and now Tiger.
The first few iterations if the OS seemed to run the processors a bit hot with the temps sometimes getting into the high 140’s at times. Panther settled down to running about 15 degrees cooler after one of the upgrades. When I installed 10.4.0 and then did the combo update to 10.4.2 a few weeks ago I noticed the processors were again running hotter than before. I installed 10.4.3 yesterday and my system is again running cooler. I can hear the fans kicking into high speed much more often than before and the temp is staying a few degrees cooler. Can anyone else confirm this behavior?
Bill
Sounds more like a problem with Adobe Reader plugin than Safari.
I’ve currently have open Camino, Safari and Firebird. Four tabs have been opened in each browser, each tab has the same website loaded. Each browser is running in the background.
Camino is using between 50-60% of the CPU. 12 threads are opened and it is using 68.42 MB of real memory and 421.70 MB of Virtual Memory.
Safari is using between 12-15% of the CPU. 6 threads are opened and it is using 42.68 MB of real memory and 255.32 MB of Virtual Memory.
Firefox is using between 50-60% of the CPU. 10 threads are opened and it is using 76.62 MB of real memory and 430 MB of Virtual Memory.