[saxondale.]

Apple Computer this week began providing to its developers the first external pre-release builds of Mac OS X 10.4.6 -- the sixth maintenance update to the company's Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger operating system, which made its debut last April.


According to tipsters and reports already present on several Internet Web sites, Apple issued builds for both PowerPC (build 8I109) and Intel (build 8I1102) Macintosh systems.

While the Intel build places emphasis on the ongoing improvements to the company's Rosetta emulation environment for Mac OS X for Intel, the remainder of the enhancements are common amongst both builds.

Specifically, Mac OS X 10.4.6 is said to focus on Automator, Bluetooth, Cocoa, Carbon, Core Graphics, graphics drivers, hard and optical disc management, .Mac, Printing and Safari.

The builds, which weigh in at approximately 131MB and 166MB in Combo Updater form, already include over four dozen enhancements and bug fixes over Mac OS X 10.4.5, which Apple released just last week.

Certain milestones of Mac OS X 10.4.6 Update are believed by sources to provide software support for Apple's upcoming consumer Macintosh offerings such as the Intel iBook and Mac mini.

AppleInsider
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[alphasubzero949]

Anyone else find these very frequent updates annoying? From an IT perspective, it's a nightmare. Why couldn't Apple wait with 10.4.5 instead of rushing it out the door?

I wonder if the security nightmare has been addressed in this build.

[Grrr]

I think these kind of 'news' articles are part just stating the plain obvious. And part just an automatic response that they always have right after any kind of OS update. Apple Insider has been absolutely consistent in recent months about this. Its kind of like they make it up, knowing its true anyway. Of course Apple works on updates all the time. It stands to reason. And everyone knows that even 10.5 is already in the works.
It really doesn't mean the update will be coming any time soon. I think it was the 10.4.3 update that was a real long time coming. But if you believe what the likes of Apple Insider said, it was always 'just around the corner, in final testing'

PS, I hope that made sense, i was wrecked when I wrote it.
PS2, While im here.. Anyone else noticed that when Macnn goes down, so does AppleInsider? Connections? Hmm Sorry, I just found it amusing for some reason.

[steve626]

Originally Posted by alphasubzero949

Anyone else find these very frequent updates annoying? From an IT perspective, it's a nightmare. Why couldn't Apple wait with 10.4.5 instead of rushing it out the door?

I wonder if the security nightmare has been addressed in this build.

You could elect to install just every other or every third update ... With 10.2, I stayed comfortably on 10.2 (10.2.0 that is) until the final version of 10.2.8 came out and then I waited a bit and installed it with no issues and practically no effort.

With panther I went from 10.3.2 to 10.3.6 to 10.3.9 -- again plenty of time for the eager ones to work out the issues and problems for me and never any complications.

My daughter's iMac G5 is presently on 10.4.4 and since it seems very stable, I am waiting for another couple of incremental updates before going through the protective measures of installing another update. She gets annoyed anyway every time I do this because I kick her off the machine for an hour or so to do backups, permission repairs, Disk Warrior etc. -- the updates themselves just take a few minutes usually.