General Info

Introduction

Section Links

1. Hardware Requirements
   
2. Installation
3. What's New?
   
4. "Full" or Update?
   
5. Installer note
   
6. Apple Technote
   
7. LaserWriter Technote
   
8. Apple Menu Glitch fix
9. Open Transport 2.0.3

Hardware Requirements

Installation

Mac OS 8.6: What's new?

• Multitasking integrated into the nanokernel.
• Multiprocessor library can run with VM enabled.
• Full symmetric multiprocessor capability.
• Existing applications will run without changes.
  

• Sherlock has improved the ability to search behind firewalls, including SOCKS and authenticated proxy servers. You can also set the number of Internet connections that you can make simultaneously in Sherlock's Preferences window.
• The Search Internet panel is now resizable so you can easily see all available search sites. Click the new Uncheck All button to quickly deselect the selected search sites.
• The "Find by Content" section of Sherlock now allows you to index and search PDF and HTML files. You can also index or search items with a particular label, or index an individual folder (via a new Contextual menu option).
• Several bug fixes have also been made.

• ColorSync 2.6.1: The ColorSync control panel is newly designed and provides additional file format support for JPEG and GIF. The 18 new AppleScript commands that come with ColorSync provide a complete automated solution for publishing. Additional software includes more profiles and CMMs for expanded color publishing workflow.
• Monitors & Sound: Use Apple's monitor calibrator in Color section of the Monitors & Sound control panel to make it easier to view and customize color settings.
  

• Now you can use DVD-RAM disks to store information, just as you can with any hard disk, floppy disk, or other removable recordable media. Using the Universal Disk Format (UDF) 1.5 to format your DVD-RAM disc, you can share information with any computer platform that supports UDF 1.5.
• You can also view prerecorded DVD-ROM discs, such as movie or video titles. You can also format a DVD-RAM disc using UDF to share files with PCs equipped with DVD-RAM or one of the newer (Generation 3) DVD-ROM drives.
  

• Enjoy secure printing using AppleShare IP 6.1 or later and the new LW 8.6.5 driver. LW 8.6.5 also allows you to connect USB PostScript printers to your computer.
• In the new LW 8.6.5 print dialog box, you can create a Job/Font log to view a history of your printing jobs and fonts used. You can also choose TrueType over Type 1 fonts, and force all fonts to be downloaded to the printer.
• The new Desktop Printer Utility 1.2 allows you to create desktop printers for PostScript printers that are connected to your computer using USB or LPR (TCP/IP).
  

FireWire 2.0 FireWire extensions are now included in the OS. Connect any FireWire device to a FireWire-capable computer to enjoy a super high-speed transfer rate.

Game Sprockets are now included in the OS. Includes InputSprockets, NetSprockets, and SoundSprockets.

Mac OS Runtime for Java (MRJ) 2.1.1 is now included in the OS. It offers performance improvements in both speed and stability. MRJ now supports a wider selection of Java applets and applications.

AppleScript 1.3.7 has several bug fixes.

URL Access provides access to HTTP/S, FTP, and HFS through the URL schemes "http://", "https://", "ftp://", and "file://". The file URLs are provided to allow one code path for local and remote data. (formerly known as SubWoofer.)

A cool demo of this capability is in the Set Desktop to Webcam Pict script, http://www.apple.com/applescript/deskcam/deskcam.html.

PlainTalk 1.5.4 with support for 44.1 Khz input sound sources, and filtering for the built-in microphone on iMac class machines.

Help Viewer 1.2, a new updated help display engine. SDK still to come, so that developers can adopt Apple Help facilities for use with their products.

ATSUI 1.1, Unicode imaging and layout Enhancements from Mac OS 8.5 include client control over memory management and memory allocation and font fallbacks.

Installer 4.5.3/ Upgrader 1.2.4, which is more Appearance savvy, now supports volumes greater than 20GB (2275099), supports extended Finder information, and contains miscellaneous bug fixes.

Unicode Utilities work with international text to sort and collate without translating to the Mac OS character set and back.

Added locale support as a way of storing information associated with cultural conventions such as calendars, date and time formats, number and currency formats, text sorting orders, etc.

The "full" version of Mac OS 8.6

• MRJ 2.1.2
• ColorSync 2.6.1
• ARA Client Only 3.1.3
• English Speech Recognition 1.5.4
• OT Extras 2.0.3
• AppleScript Extras 1.1
• Disk Copy 6.3.3
• iMac Firmware Update 1.0

Mac OS 8.6 and AppleScript: Installer may cause files to vanish

Mac OS 8.6 Technote posted

On computers capable of booting from a network, the Startup Disk control panel now displays a "Network Disk" icon that a user can select in order to boot from the network.

The Startup Disk control panel will also display a "Local Disk" icon on computers that have been net booted. This allows a machine that has been booted from the network to be booted from the internal drive even when all of the internal drives have been "hidden" via the NetBoot Drive Unmounter extension (which a network administrator may have done for all net booted computers). Choosing this item actually sets the boot device to the empty (default) string, which results in booting from the internal hard drive if one is installed and contains a blessed system folder.

[This is also stated in TIL article #60230. However, this may be in error. Anthony Adachi removed it and was then unable to successfully restart. A posting on Apple's Tech Exchange confirms that the TIL and Technote are wrong: John Phelps writes: "The article is wrong...it will be updated."

Mac OS 8.6 does install Text Encoding Converter 1.4.3. It is clearly there on my Mac.

Marc Sheftel says that if you delete TEC, you will get a warning about the Mac not having a bootable System Folder, but it will start up successfully none-the-less.]

A problem on some PowerBooks where icons in the main drive window would not be drawn when it was opened after the main drive was spun down has been corrected.

A problem that could occur when copying a number of files from a Sherlock window to a folder containing some of the files being copied has been corrected. In these cases, Sherlock would ask if the duplicate items are to be replaced. If the user responded "yes", then Sherlock would proceed to delete them before the copy (and the copy would fail since some of the source items were deleted).

A problem where a crash could occur in the Finder when an attempt was made to use an alias file referring to an object on a volume that had been unmounted since the last time the alias was used has been corrected.

A memory leak that could occur while scripts are being compiled has been removed.

A 60-second timeout for error notifications in Folder Actions has been added.

LaserWriter 8.6.5 Technotes

• Introducing the LaserWriter 8 Driver Version 8.6.5 (#1165)
• LaserWriter 8.6.5 Job Log Format (#1166).

Apple Menu item glitch fixed in Mac OS 8.6

This appears to explain a problem Shiro had where item 31 in his menu would be dimmed. Indeed, after he installed Mac OS 8.6, the problem vanished.

Open Transport 2.0.3: significant bugs fixed; problems still noted

Open Transport's implementation of the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) has been improved to support Client Identification and retention of the lease on a given IP address across reboots.

When using the new DHCP Client ID feature, the Client ID is entered into a new field in the TCP/IP control panel.

DHCP now sends out a decline packet when detecting a duplicate IP address.

A bug was fixed which could cause a computer to hang when acquiring a DHCP lease.

Problems with DHCP and some brands of cable modems have been fixed.

Regarding this matter, Bob O'Shaughnessy notes that the new OT Extras 2.0.3 software (link dead) includes a control panel called TCP/IP Options. It allows you to select "Don't Retain DHCP Lease on Shutdown" - which seems to be designed to address the Road Runner and DHCP problem. However, it did not fix the problem for him.

Bob O'Shaughnessy reports that his problems with Road Runner vanished a few days after updating to Mac OS 8.6. He queries: "I'm wondering if this has to do with the fact that Road Runner DHCP leases are for three days, and my lease has since recycled, and I've received a new IP address."

To make AppleTalk active or inactive, use the AppleTalk control panel or the AppleTalk control strip. Using the Chooser to make AppleTalk inactive may not completely deactivate AppleTalk.