Apple ships Mac OS X 10.6.5 update

As world+dog rumored it would, Apple released its latest update to Mac OS X Snow Leopard on Wednesday: version 10.6.5. Enhancements include improved Microsoft Exchange reliability, a variety of performance and stability improvements, security fixes, a couple of Bluetooth tweaks, and — in answer to some Mac Pro owners' prayers …

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow...

680.1MB. That's a big update even by Apple standards. No wonder this took so long!

[Real Name]

xcode

You aint seen xcode! 3GB for the new update!

[Bear Features]

security

I thought there was no such thing as a security threat in Apple land? ;o)

[Volker Hett]

There are bugs, but not many exploits

The bad guys don't like Macs that much.

So most of the loopholes are found by the good guys and get fixed before the bad guys try to exploit them.

[Giles Jones]

Largely 3rd party issues

Did you not read the summary? updates to MySQL, Apache and Adobe Flash. Apple is hardly responsible for the faults in other peoples code.

[The Fuzzy Wotnot]

Nope!

I don't think anyone, well anyone worth listening to, has ever said that? While I like OSX I am under illusions it's safe. There are some very daft things it does, but I run security software just so I take care not to pass the nasties down the line to others on less fortunate operatiing systems.

OSX like every O/S has some very nasty holes, but it's so low down the list of targets worth bothering with, the exploiters can't be arsed very often. Far higher yields from attacking the number one desktop, which the manufacturers whoever they are, begins with M I think, keep claiming to have made safe!

Now, please go and stand in the corner, you can come back when you have something useful to add to the discussion!

[GraemeH]

finally some sleep and power saving

had given up on the hope that my mac would ever get any sleep- great to hear thats been sorted for the raid card...finally

[Adze]

Backup..?

What?! Doesn't it.. just... work?!!1one!

[Steve Ives]

Backup

Assuming you're using Time Machine (and why not), then yes - it just works.

[Giles Jones]

Tweakers

Never had issues with an upgrade.

There are people who like to tweak things under the hood which they probably shouldn't and no software firm can promise that things will work if you deviate from a standard configuration.

[Julian Lawton]

Issues

It's not always users tweaking things - I had no problems on one machine, on my laptop, the UI was locking up about 45 seconds after boot. Luckily enough time to fire up terminal and console, and problem went away when I disabled some Akamai download/p2p software (which in turn seemed connected to downloading something from Adobe at some point). Specifically it seemed an issue with a network service it wanted to spawn via launchd.

[uncertified-dba]

Stanford U sees PGP disk encryption corruption issue with 10.6.5

Here's the email I received today:

Subject: Serious Compatibility Issue with SWDE/PGP Whole Disk Encryption and OS X 10.6.5

Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2010 16:45:21 -0800

From: Jeremy Tavan <[e-mail]>

To: [e-mail], [e-mail]

Partners, LNAs:

Today Apple released an upgrade to version 10.6.5 of MacOS X. IT Services has become aware of an interaction between this upgrade and the PGP software used in the Stanford Whole Disk Encryption service which renders PGP-encrypted machines unbootable following the upgrade to 10.6.5. Machines which no longer boot as a result of this upgrade can be fixed by following the instructions in section 1 of https://supportimg.pgp.com/guides/Tech_Note_PGP_WDE_Recovering_Data_Mac_OS_X.pdf

Please let your SWDE-using Mac users know that they should NOT upgrade to 10.6.5 until this incompatibility is resolved. PGP support is aware of the problem and will keep us informed of their remediation process.

If you have any questions or need any assistance please submit a HelpSU Request: https://remedyweb.stanford.edu/helpsu/helpsu?pcat=WholeDiskEncryption

--

Jeremy Tavan

Stanford University IT Services CRC

[Wibble]

Thank you

That's a huge issue for whole disc encryption users. Having just suffered from a disc failure, that would have been a real pain.

Thank you.

[bigfoot780]

Win7 Support noshow

No Windows 7 support for the server edition of 10.6.5. Tut Tut apple,

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh Noes! Nothing works!

I installed the update and nothing works! well like it used to :P

Wasn't the huge 600MB monster on the MBP 17" 2k8 and its flying on all cylinders. Got the new Firefox 4 Beta 7 and its jamming like a demon out of hell with its accelerated javascript engine and used of OpenGL rendering.

All good in user space.

[Ian 35]

SSL for iDisk

At last.

[Ascylto]

Flash ... a ar

Flash doesn't work on my MacBook after the update.

Is this an evil?

[Scott Mckenzie]

Hmm...

....my update is only 517.3MB.

[karabuni]

...so's mine...

... but hopefully size isn't important.

The print delay has been "addressed" apparently, and printing no longer has the hang between jobs, which meant that it was taking longer with a new macMini to run off multiple print jobs than it did with the old G4, which took longer to process them but didn't wait 30 seconds before sending the next print job to the printer (Kyocera laser).

And there's a new (unwanted) feature: A4 pdfs printed with Preview are treated as Landscape and come out "feet first" (bottom of page) - why?

[Anonymous Coward]

glad i'm not using PGP WDE

I warned my coworkers but they went ahead and had borked systems

My upgrade went okay - haven't hit any show suppers yet

[Jim Oase]

Mail Rules still broken..

Mail/preferences/Rules/Edit... add 25 or more rules the Rules Window will extend off the bottom of the screen taking the control button out of view. Window size buttons will control the window the next level below the active window.

Problem has existed since 2005 (OSX 10.4.0)

[Patrick 8]

FLASH - The pig of the patch!

Looks like Adobe Flash patches and fixes take up nearly half of the bug fixes in this massive update.

Probably no wonder some users still have borked Adobe Flash on their OS X system.

[Zorbec le Gras]

Little Snitch scare...

Was sweating bullets for a few minutes there... after upgrading from 10.6.4 to 10.6.5, Safari would crash upon start up. Eventually figured out the culprit was LittleSnitch, which was still at v2.1.3 and blissfully unaware of Snow Leopard. After upgrading LS to v2.3.2, Safari starts just fine.

For some reason LittleSnitch does not check for updates, thus I didn't question it's suitability for Snow Leopard...