What's New - Sep 20, 2006

Introduction

• General issues, workarounds and fixes
• New Software and hardware
• Software and hardware updates/patches

Section Links

1. Notable Updates
2. New Hardware
3. Leopard is Coming!
   
4. Apple News
   
5. Issues
   
6. Humor

Notable Updates

• Mozilla Firefox - 1.5.0.7
  
• Adobe Photoshop CS2 - 9.0.2
  
• Photoshop no longer crashes when encountering unsupported file types through the Acrobat Touchup workflow.
• Supported files that incorrectly produced an "unsupported color space" message now open as expected.
• TIFF files with layer data greater than 2GB now open correctly.
• A printing issue that could cause banding when using inkjet printers with Mac OS X v.10.4 has been resolved.
• Apple Quicktime - 7.1.3
  
• QuickTime 7.1.3 is an important release that delivers numerous bug fixes and addresses critical security issues. This update is recommended for all QuickTime 7 users and is required for playback of content purchased in the iTunes Store.
  
• Apple iTunes - 7.0
  
• With iTunes 7 and the new iTunes Store, preview and purchase high-quality hit movies plus new and classic games designed exclusively for the Fifth Generation iPod. Flip through your collection by album cover with Cover Flow, protect your iTunes library by backing up to CDs or DVDs, and much more.
• Parallels Desktop - 2.2.1884.0
  
• Support for new quad-processor Mac Pro towers outfitted with up to 3.5GB of RAM. This addition means that Parallels Desktop for Mac is now compatible with all Intel-powered Apple computers, which in addition to the Mac Pro includes the MacBook, MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac Mini!
• Compatibility with developer build of Mac OS X 10.5, code-named “Leopard”
• Experimental support for Windows Vista
• Solaris guest OS no longer hangs after suspend/resume
• An improved Parallels Tools package
• Full support for OpenBSD 3.8 as a guest operating system
• G4U hard disk cloning tool now works in virtual machines
• Better video output improvement and acceleration
• Added multi interface USB devices support (including Windows Mobile 2005 devices)
• Added isochronous USB devices support (including WebCam devices)
• Minor USB fixes
• Keyboard support improvement: Eject CD key support, left/right Shift/Ctrl/Alt (Option)/Windows keys difference support
• Added virtual disk cache policy option: Mac OS X performance optimized or guest OS performance optimized
• Image Tool fixes
• Optimized disk cache policy for Suspend/Resume feature
• Windows ME Suspend/Resume fix
• Shared Folders first time access acceleration
• Clipboard synchronization tool fixes (unreadable symbols sometimes added during copy and paste)
• Sound playback and recording improvement
• Minor Full Screen mode fixes
• “Unable to allocate virtual memory” during virtual machine power on fix
• Minor GUI fixes and improvements
• Solaris doesn’t work with more than one virtual disk fix
• BBEdit - 8.5
  
• "Code Folding" collapse ranges of text (as determined automatically on a per-language basis; you may also manually select a range of text to be folded)
• Clippings previously known as "the Glossary", Clippings provide an easy way to capture and re-use frequently needed bits of text. Placeholders and embedded script invocation make it easier to add automation and "smarts". A new Clippings menu and improved "Insert Clipping" command provide quick access to your existing clippings and easy creation of new clippings
• Preferences Revised and simplified, now with searching ability.
• Language Support Now with built-in syntax coloring and function navigation for Ruby, YAML, and SQL source files; improved JavaScript function navigation including anonymous-function support; set editing and display options on a per-language basis.
• More than a hundred and sixty improvements and enhancements in all, including numerous user interface refinements
• Retrospect 6 Driver Update - 6.1.7.101
  
• This driver update is a plug-in extension for EMC Dantz Retrospect 6.0. It updates Retrospect to support new drives, fix bugs, and work around problems. For a list of devices supported by this driver update, point your web browser to: http://www.emcdantz.com/supporteddevices/
• Apple MacBook SMC Firmware Update
  
• The SMC Firmware Update adjusts fan behavior in the MacBook. After this update has completed successfully, your SMC Version will be: 1.4f10. The updater application will be installed in the /Applications/Utilities folder. Please follow the instructions in the updater application to complete the update process.
• Apple XSAN - 1.4
  
• labeling and initializing Fibre Channel LUNs larger than 2TB in size
• expanding storage pools and volumes
• working with multiple Xsan metadata controllers in a heterogeneous environment
• displaying progress messages while performing lengthy operations
• preventing custom configuration changes from being overwritten during a save
• accurately reporting Fibre Channel multipathing errors
• X Bench - 1.3
  
• Corrected a mistake that caused the altivec test to be turned off on PowerPC machines
• Turned off coalesced graphics updates for all platforms on Mac OS 10.4.4 and higher
• Switched compiler to GCC 4.0 on PowerPC. This provides some boost to floating point and AltiVec scores, and these have been recalibrated accordingly. This also raises Xbench's system requirements to 10.3.9 or higher.
• Revised machine database to include the MacBook, Intel iMac and several other models
• Added code to dynamically load machine database on launch from the Xbench website
• Added support for temporarily turning off beam sync on Tiger while running graphics tests
• Fixed an issue that causes Xbench to fail to launch on Leopard
• Built with Xcode 2.4
• Adobe Flash Player - 9.0.20.0
• Apple Security Update 2006-004
• XCode - 2.4
• Provides overall stability and performance enhancements to the Xcode IDE, and is a recommended update for all Xcode users.
• Microsoft Office 2004 - 11.2.6
• Fixes vulnerabilities in Office 2004 that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer's memory with malicious code.
• Apple OS X Server Admin Tools - 10.4.7
• Flip4Mac WMV - 2.1.0.33
• Added universal binary support for Intel Macs
• Added playback optimizations for Intel Macs
• Added significant export optimizations for PowerPC Macs
• Added multi language audio support in player
• Added overlay when importing WMV content in trial mode
• Added support for web authors to disable "save as" feature in web browser
• Improved support for MMS servers and live streams
• Fixed DCT Blocking issue (progressive deterioration with increasing distance from previous keyframe)
• Fixed encode errors when the audio bit rate is set higher than the video bit rate.
• Tech Tool Pro - 4.5.1
• Added support for Intel processor compatibility (Universal Binary).
• Updated Disk Controller test.
• Updated Volume Structures test.
• Added German localization.
• Other minor changes and feature enhancements.

New Hardware

• Suggested Configuration:
• Two 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon "Woodcrest" processors
• 4MB shared L2 cache per processor
• 1.33GHz dual independent frontside buses
• 1GB memory (667MHz DDR2 fully-buffered DIMM ECC)
• NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT graphics with 256MB memory
• 250GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7200-rpm hard drive
• 16x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)

• Now featuring the Intel Core 2 Duo Procesor!
• 64-Bit
• Up to 2.33 GHz
• New 24-inch model
• NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT with 128MB GDDR3 memory

• 8GB of flash!
• 24 hours  of battery life!
• Brighter screen!
• Pretty colors ...

Leopard is Coming!

Apple News

• > 125,000 movie downloads in the first week of iTunes 7.0!
• Leopard offered to ADC members
• Get ready for Intel's "Core 2 Quadro"
• 8MB of L2 cache!!!

Issues

• Cannot purchase songs from the store

• Reportedly lots of issues!
• Album Ard, iPods sync problmes, video playback issues, poor sound quality

Humor