Just 17 days after releasing its ‘Tiger’ OS X 10.4 operating system, Apple has issued a sizeable bug fix update after growing gripes from customers.
The hefty 37MB patch delivers upgraded graphics card drivers and fixes at least 35 bugs in the operating system, including problems with bundled applications such as the Mail client, Safari browser, iCal, Mail client, iSync and iDVD.
Almost immediately after Tiger was launched, customers were posting up on Internet bulletin boards detailing problems varying from networking hassles to applications that would crash under certain circumstances.
Upgraders weren’t too pleased to discover that Safari would “unexpectedly quit” when right clicking on some PDF files or graphics or that iDVD would commit hari-kari when hiding it while burning a DVD or saving a disc image.
Russians were also most annoyedski to find the iDVD player bombing when the operating system was set to their home language (something that affected a host of other languages too).
A security fix included in the update disallows files, applications and Web pages from automatically opening at the password prompt, appearing whenever a user wakes the computer from sleep or stops a screen saver.
Apple’s support site claims the patch also improves the reliability of the operating system’s Active Directory plug-in.
Talking to vnunet.com, senior analyst Joe Wilcox at Jupiter Research commented: “The quick update really shows how responsive Apple tries to be in respect to its operating system.”
But there was a sting in Wilcox’s praise, as the analyst pointed out that releasing such a man-sized patch just weeks after the launch revealed a flaw in Apple’s development process.
“A lot of things [at Apple] are pretty secretive; there aren’t necessarily as many eyes looking over the products as there could be,” said Wilcox, commenting on the company’s decision to use a limited group of beta testers looking at the code.
“Apple has a developer programme that catches a lot of things, but certain problems won’t be uncovered until a whole lot of people have the software,” he added.
The 10.4.1 update can be downloaded manually from Apple’s Web site, or retrieved automatically from within the Tiger OS using its Software Update feature.
About the Mac OS X 10.4.1 Update
Apple download page
vnunet.com
After the high profile launches of 
A few facts did emerge: the Revolution will come with 512MB of internal RAM, an IBM CPU, ATi GPU, an SD slot, built-in WiFi, wireless controllers and a selection of USB2 ports.
Nintendo’s new machine will be their first console capable of playing standard storage DVDs, but they haven’t forgotten their old-school fans, with the Revolution able to accept Ye Olde Gamecube discs.
Rumours persist that Nintendo may have a surprise up their sleeve for the end of the expo, but so far reaction to their presentation seems a little muted.
Wooargh! The lights! The shapes…the colours….all that swirling…and moving…have I gone back in time to a chemically assisted squat rave?
The mind-melding visual feasts are driven by beat detection or joypad control, letting users take interactive control of the camera, patterns and effect generators, to create their own psychedelic wig-outs.
We’ve liked Jeff Minter’s stuff ever since the days when an Amiga 1200 (RIP) with 4meg of RAM was considered positively ostentatious. Even then his Llamatron was streets ahead of the competition, so it’s great it see the spliff-consuming, loveable hippy still producing such great work.
And he’s still got his principles too, writing on his bulletin board: “And we haven’t sold our souls, or our IP, to Microsoft either. We’ve created for them an interactive visualiser for the Xbox360, and we’ll not do a visualiser for the rival consoles for this coming generation. But if someone were to ring me up tomorrow and say “Blimey Yak mate, that Neon’s a bit tasty, any chance of a bit of that for the next “not_a_console_visualiser_app” I could quite legitimately say “abso-smegging-lutely!” and we could be delivering working code in a few weeks. We can use it in games on *any* platform. The engine is small, efficient and portable.”
Although Nintendo’s 
“We’re making the gorgeous Game Boy Micro for image-conscious folks who love video games, the ones who want the look of their system to be as cool as the games they play on it,” waffled George Harrison, who has one of the longest job descriptions we’ve seen for a while: Nintendo Of America’s Senior Vice President Of Marketing And Corporate Communications.
Wrapping up the feature list, the Game Boy Micro comes with a built-in, rechargeable lithium-ion battery, supports standard headphones and comes with a removable face plate for that all-important customisation thang.
Microsoft has released the final version of MSN Desktop Search, offering new features based on extensive user feedback and boasting extended support for file types.
These advanced indexing options also let users specify file types to be indexed as text, create a list of file types that should not be indexed, decide the location of the index file and boost the priority of the indexing process (although this may cause some PCs to run as slow as a tired sloth on Mogadons, but at least it can be turned off).
As is the norm with search toolbars, there’s a pop up blocker and form-filler installed, although there’s still no Firefox-style tabbed browsing on offer, although MSN says it will be added soon.
Sony has unveiled prototypes of their new Playstation 3 console at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles.
Sony are currently collaborating with the world’s leading tools and middleware companies, to provide developers with extensive tools and libraries to make the best of the Cell processor and enable efficient software development.
Microsoft has announced that it would begin testing OneCare Live – a PC-health care fix-it all application – with a general release sometime next year.
OneCare is a separately sold subscription-based service designed to work as a mainly “hands-off” application, quietly doing its good deeds in the background while sending security updates to users’ computer systems without them having to download or install the fixes.
Xbox 360, Microsoft’s successor to their popular Xbox gaming console, will be “unleashed” tonight at a celebrity-packed launch broadcast on MTV, which shows at 8pm in the UK. It was launched on US MTV last night.
The Xbox will ship with a 12X dual-layer DVD-ROM drive – supporting progressive-scan DVD movies and a host of DVD and CD formats – three USB 2.0 ports, two memory unit slots and support for four wireless game controllers.
“Xbox 360 marks the beginning of a renaissance in video games,” whooped Don Mattrick, president of Worldwide Studios for Electronic Arts. “The unbelievable Xbox 360 games in development at Electronic Arts will accelerate the industry’s mission to make video games the pre-eminent form of all entertainment.”
Naturally, gamers love to customise their experience, so there’s a camera option to let vain players add their mugshots into games or even see their friends onscreen as they frag them to an inch of their worthless lives.
Xbox 360 players can also access recorded TV and digital movies, music, video and photos stored on Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005-based PCs through any Xbox 360 system in the house.
Microsoft has unveiled Windows Mobile 5.0, a new version of its Windows operating system for mobile devices.
Although the underlying software code remains 90 percent the same as its predecessors, the new Windows Mobile removes some technological distinctions that gave the phone and PDA platforms different capabilities.
Swivel action business folks will appreciate updates to the mobile versions of Microsoft Word and Excel, with the software providing more consistent formatting of documents created on a computer and allowing charts to be created from a spreadsheet.
Games developers have included Internet access in their products. The best example of this is Wipeout Pure, which includes a browser, allowing the user to download new game levels and features. Since the game has a browser built-in, it can be reasonable to assume that Sony have actually put all the code to access the Internet in the PSP itself (and made it available to developers).
Rather than everyone set-up spoof servers, some nice people have done it for you, and these then point to a PSP portal which someone has set-up PSP friendly content. You can access the spoof DNS servers by amending your Internet set-up configuration (on the PSP) and leave everything to automatic except for the DNS settings, into which you enter the spoof server settings.
Once updated versions of the firmware come out, or there are 3rd party applications, the system will have all the features to be a powerful media hub. It supports WiFi, has a decent screen and video capability now, adding other Internet capabilities will just add the finishing touches to a superb product.