Apple releases Mac OS X 10.4.3

Apple on Monday released an update for , bringing both the client and server versions of theoperating system to 10.4.3. Among the changes in the update are improvementsto Safari, Mail, iChat and Apple’s desktop searching tool,Spotlight.

Apple’s Internet Web browser Safari can now pass Acid2 testand the update has improved the compatibility of Safari with many webcams.Compatibility for OpenGL-accelerated Macromedia Shockwave 3D webpage contenthas also been improved.

Several networking issues with SMB volumes have been addressed fixingproblems where a volume might not mount after it’s been unmounted.

Changes in the Finder include improving responsiveness during Spotlightsearches and Spotlight comments entered in the Finder are now preserved whenusing iDisk syncing. The update also addressed an issue in which Spotlightcannot find a file after using iPhoto to rename it if the filenameoriginally contained an ampersand, according to Apple.

With Mac 10.4.3, you no longer need to store Address Book contactURLs in the Notes field when syncing with .Mac. In addition, Address Bookcontacts organized in subgroups can be synced to an iPod using iTunes.

Apple’s Mail application received quite a few improvements withthis update. IMAP users will no longer be prompted to download attachmentsmore than once; Smart Groups can now be dragged from Address Book to the To,Cc, or Bcc field; Smart Mailboxes that use “Entire MessageContains” and another criteria with the “any” qualifiernow work as expected; and Searches of “All Mailboxes” can now,optionally, include items from Junk and Trash.

iChat, Apple’s messaging application, will now allow .Mac membersto enable encrypted chat sessions. The update also resolves an issue inActivity Monitor in which you might see “iChatAgent (NotResponding)” in red text, even though iChat works just fine. Mac OS X10.4.3 addresses a “No data has been received for the last 10seconds” alert that could often appear when participating in a videochat in iChat with someone using AIM on a PC.

Other applications have been updated with the release including DiskUtility, which can now verify the Mac OS X 10.4 startup volume; KeychainAccess searching is no longer case-sensitive; X11 windows no longer stay inthe background after selecting the X11 application from the Dock or withApplication Switcher; and an issue was addressed in which Preview might onlyprint the first page of a multipage TIFF document.

More information on Mac OS X 10.4.3 will be available from Apple’sWeb site. As MacCentral posted this article, the 10.4.3 update wasavailable through the Software Update system preference pane but not fromApple’s .

Mac OS X Server 10.4.3 includes improvements for AFP, SMB/CIFS, NFS andFTP file sharing protocols; file system permissions and group membershipupdates; NIS, Active Directory integration and home directory creation; mailservices when hosting thousands of user accounts; Weblog authentication andRSS2 compatibility; Software Update server notifications and packagesynchronization; serving files larger than 64k with Apache; reliablystarting MySQL at system startup; software RAID reliability during creationand rebuilding; Workgroup Manager, System Image Utility applications;compatibility with third party applications and devices; and previousstandalone security updates.

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