Panther 10.3.8 Released to Developers

[MacRumors]

AppleInsider reports (http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=814) that Apple released a build of Mac OS X 10.3.8 to developers today.Details of the update are scarce, but sources say the software will deliver improved graphics performance along with several fixes that will improve the overall stability of the Panther operating system.

[swissmann]

Overall stability would be good but please not at the expense of the speed.

[sjpetry]

Overall stability would be good but please not at the expense of the speed.

That has been happening with every upgrade when they run tests on speed. :mad:

[Capt Underpants]

Maybe I'll be able to get framerates out of the twenties in MOHAA: Spearhead...

[shompa]

10.3.7 brooke my EYETV200.

Hope this version will fix it.

[AmnesiacOpera]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't nearly every update to 10.3 supposedly included updates to graphics performance?

[hcuar]

AppleInsider reports (http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=814) that Apple released a build of Mac OS X 10.3.8 to developers today.

Great!!! ;) No complaints about updates! (As long as they don't break anything, or slow anything down :rolleyes: )

[Bern]

I guess this means we're getting closer to a Tiger release date. Didn't Apple release 10.2.9 days before the announcement of Panther's release date?

[hob]

I guess this means we're getting closer to a Tiger release date. Didn't Apple release 10.2.9 days before the announcement of Panther's release date?

I thought we only got to 10.2.8?

Hob

[Bern]

I thought we only got to 10.2.8?

Hob

Oops my bad. :D

[iChan]

to this day, i have yet to get ichat voice or video to work over a broadband connectiong between two towns?!?!


that sucks...

it works if i am in the same house, or heck, the same town... but outside that, no hope... maybe an ISP problem? I don't know! hopefully tiger will fix it.\


PS. Skype works great!

[PlaceofDis]

to this day, i have yet to get ichat voice or video to work over a broadband connectiong between two towns?!?!


that sucks...

it works if i am in the same house, or heck, the same town... but outside that, no hope... maybe an ISP problem? I don't know! hopefully tiger will fix it.\


PS. Skype works great!

that is weird, i have had no problem video or voice chatting with people hundreds of miles away (Northern IL to Orlando, FL). perhaps it is an ISP problem, is this one one particular user or if the same user is closer there are no problems? perhaps its an issue on thier end.

On Topic:

im glad to see Panther getting to .8, i wonder if it will go to .9 by Tiger and i wonder if they only reason for these releases will be to stable out the OS so it can remain without updates like Jaguar ( i hope that made sense)

[Bob Knob]

to this day, i have yet to get ichat voice or video to work over a broadband connectiong between two towns?!?!

Really?
I've been iChatting (voice and video) between here (So Cal) and Japan (and just last month China) since I got my iSight when it first came out. There might be a bad node/router somewhere between your office and your house.

[AppleMatt]

I wonder if "improves stability" is actually in the developers notes or AppleInsider are making that up. Same with the graphics drivers, Apple have updated them with every single point release so it's a safe bet to say it will bring updated graphics drivers.

AppleMatt

[ClimbingTheLog]

Overall stability would be good but please not at the expense of the speed.

Are you kidding? You want a fast computer that crashes? No thanks. I'll take 5% off the top for a rock-solid machine any day.

[BeigeUser]

to this day, i have yet to get ichat voice or video to work over a broadband connectiong between two towns?!?!


I ichat video across the pacific on a weekly basis. If it works in town but not outside then there is a problem on the other end. The other persons ISP either has a firewall that blocks a crucial port or the other persons connection is too slow. But since voice doesn't work, I'm thinking that it's probably the firewall.

Here's a few documents that may or may not help you:

http://search.info.apple.com/index.html?q=ichat%20av%20firewall&lr=lang_en&search=Go

[Flying Llama]

why is this on page 2?

[Doctor Q]

why is this on page 2?It went to Page 2 because there was little detail, no confirmation, and it was likely to be of lesser importance to most visitors than stories on Page 1.

[LimeiBook86]

I smell a Tiger... Jaguar only went to 10.2.8, I just hope Apple isn't rushing things too much. I still get the occasional kernel panic and spinning wheel of death. But, I do want Tiger ASAP so I can do a fresh install on my PowerBook...I don't think I'll do it on the iBook, it won't know how to handle it, haha. :D :cool:

[virus1]

lol... they are running out of panther updates.. what will they do? :rolleyes:

[Doctor Q]

Even after Tiger is released, I expect to see Panther 10.3.9, 10.3.10, etc., probably including some security updates.

[ALoLA]

to this day, i have yet to get ichat voice or video to work over a broadband connectiong between two towns?!?!


that sucks...

it works if i am in the same house, or heck, the same town... but outside that, no hope... maybe an ISP problem? I don't know! hopefully tiger will fix it.\


I iChat with a friend in Chicago all the time. That's across two time zones with no problems. We've also tried Skype, but that's audio only. :)

[Zaty]

Even after Tiger is released, I expect to see Panther 10.3.9, 10.3.10, etc., probably including some security updates.

Wouldn't that be a change in Apple's policy, didn't they stop development (except for security fixes) of old Mac OS X versions after the release of a new one?

[Blue Velvet]

I'm still on 10.3.4 at work and at home.

Spending time on this site has made me far warier about updates esp. when I read of things suddenly stopping working. I can't afford to have that happen at the office...

Is it my imagination or have the recent rash of releases been problematic?
I hope that 10.3.8 will be well received and I'll certainly be 'watching this space' for news and reports.

[BWhaler]

to this day, i have yet to get ichat voice or video to work over a broadband connectiong between two towns?!?!


that sucks...

it works if i am in the same house, or heck, the same town... but outside that, no hope... maybe an ISP problem? I don't know! hopefully tiger will fix it.\


PS. Skype works great!

I get chat and video to work to India from the USA every night. I suspect it is your ISP or home network if you have one.

And you are correct that Skype is awesome.

[Platform]

What will 10.3.8 have ??

[virus1]

I iChat with a friend in Chicago all the time. That's across two time zones with no problems. We've also tried Skype, but that's audio only. :)

tried it tuesday with a friend who lives in canada right above maine... (im in california) and it worked fine..

[virus1]

What will 10.3.8 have ??
i have an adc account... here is what the seednote says for this build:
- Improved Quartz 2D Extreme performance on PCI devices
- Kernel version updated to 7.8.0
- NVIDIA graphics performance fixes
- OpenGL performances fixes

not too much, come to think of it..

[Platform]

i have an adc account... here is what the seednote says for this build:
- Improved Quartz 2D Extreme performance on PCI devices
- Kernel version updated to 7.8.0
- NVIDIA graphics performance fixes
- OpenGL performances fixes

not too much, come to think of it..

Thank you

Waiting for Tiger to give some real improvment to system performance :D

[ASP272]

Another update is always welcome. I just hope it fixes the many problems a lot of MR members have been having with the last two updates. Thankfully, I am not one of those people. I'm always for updates! Especially when they are free. :D

[Benj]

I get chat and video to work to India from the USA every night. I suspect it is your ISP or home network if you have one.

And you are correct that Skype is awesome.

I have chatted across the Atlantic with no probs. Haven't people even managed to do it from a Lufthansa plane over the Atlantic?

[AppleMatt]

i have an adc account... here is what the seednote says for this build:
- Improved Quartz 2D Extreme performance on PCI devices


Quartz 2D Extreme doesn't exist in Panther, it's only coming in Tiger.
And you can't get it on PCI devices, because I don't know of any PCI cards in currently shipping Macs that are pixel-programmable.
Quartz Extreme (not 2D) requires an AGP graphics card.

I don't believe you.

AppleMatt

[millypede]

Quartz 2D Extreme doesn't exist in Panther, it's only coming in Tiger.
And you can't get it on PCI devices, because I don't know of any PCI cards in currently shipping Macs that are pixel-programmable.
Quartz Extreme (not 2D) requires an AGP graphics card.

I don't believe you.

AppleMatt


No hes right just looked myself

[iSee]

You are going to get sued for revealing confidential information about Apple pre-release software!!! I think Apple has like 30 information protection engineers for MR alone, just looking for people abusing their ADC membership like this!!! You never know who is one...

[Eric5h5]

Is it my imagination or have the recent rash of releases been problematic?

It's your imagination. Generally you tend to hear from people who have problems, and there are always going to be a few with any update, often for reasons that aren't even necessarily the update's fault. I think the vast majority of people have no problems; certainly I didn't when I went from 10.3.5 to 10.3.7 (skipped 10.3.6 just because I never quite got around to downloading the update before 10.3.7 was already here).

Seems like Apple is making up for longer intervals between major releases with more point releases....

(And why does "they are running out of numbers!" always come up? There are an infinite number of numbers. They can release 10.3.1735673934646523 if they want to. Or 10.3.85.4.76.65.128.1232. Although with a version number THAT fine-grained, the last number would have to be updated every time someone typed another character into the source code....)

--Eric

[wdlove]

Always good news to hear about a Panther update. It means that Apple is hard at work for us. Although I usually wait for a couple of days to see the comments before downloading.

[Blue Velvet]

It's your imagination. Generally you tend to hear from people who have problems...

It's precisely for those reasons the updaters don't go automatically on the work machines. There was a reported problem -- here and elsewhere -- with 10.3.5, fonts and Suitcase.

We can't afford any downtime on the basis of an updater esp. with that flaky app called Quark 6.x...

So we'll wait until the end of 2005 and update Panther then... and Tiger will have to wait till 2006. By then I will have had it running at home for at least 6 months to see how it works with everything... on a separate partition as well, that's how paranoid I am.

[WM.]

Quartz 2D Extreme doesn't exist in Panther, it's only coming in Tiger.
I'm going to guess that Quartz 2D Extreme = Quartz Extreme and not Core Image, which is what you're thinking of. That would make a lot more sense to me.

And you can't get it on PCI devices, because I don't know of any PCI cards in currently shipping Macs that are pixel-programmable.
Right, there aren't any PCI GPUs with programmable pixel shaders AFAIK (and I kind of doubt there ever will be, since PCI is probably slow enough that it would be a massive bottleneck).

Quartz Extreme (not 2D) requires an AGP graphics card.
Officially, yes, which does make me suspicious of these supposed seed notes; however, two separate people have confirmed it. And Apple has been known to start officially supporting features that previously required (relatively simple) hacks (see AirPort 3.1).

I don't believe you.
I suppose I believe it for now, but I have my reservations. :)

WM

[AppleMatt]

I'm going to guess that Quartz 2D Extreme = Quartz Extreme and not Core Image, which is what you're thinking of. That would make a lot more sense to me.

Nope, not what I'm thinking of. Quartz 2D Extreme is coming in Tiger and it's completely separate from CoreImage (and Quartz...err...normal...Extreme). Watch the QuickTime state of the Union address at about 23 minutes in. It's very, very impressive. But I think you're right in assuming that it's meant to read "Quartz Extreme" instead, which is good if there's improvements there.

I saw a similar posting on macosxrumors.com. I really don't know what Apple mean by it, or if it's a typo or a hoax.

AppleMatt :)

[Stella]

Wouldn't that be a change in Apple's policy, didn't they stop development (except for security fixes) of old Mac OS X versions after the release of a new one?

Yep, just like they don't release major software updates for older iPods.

[MacsRgr8]

Even after Tiger is released, I expect to see Panther 10.3.9, 10.3.10, etc., probably including some security updates.

Interesting thought.

If so, then Panther will be the first version of Mac OS which will get OS updates after e next version is released. There have been some minor updates for previous verisions of Mac OS X, but not a "full" 10.x.X update.

It does suggest that Panther is the first real finished version of Mac OS X.

BTW this encourages me!:
- NVIDIA graphics performance fixes
- OpenGL performances fixes

I have a GeForce 6800 Ultra, and must admit that performance is below par. Now that the X800 XT is here too, making use of far better drivers, I was starting to believe I had made a very bad purchase.
Maybe 10.3.8. will give the nVidia's top model the extra 10%..... :rolleyes:

[WM.]

Nope, not what I'm thinking of. Quartz 2D Extreme is coming in Tiger and it's completely separate from CoreImage (and Quartz...err...normal...Extreme). Watch the QuickTime state of the Union address at about 23 minutes in.
I'm just about 30 minutes in right now and I have not seen or heard the term "Quartz 2D Extreme" yet, although I did skip through the Guitar Rig and Motion demos (though I was watching during all of minute 23).

Now I'm going to check the Graphics and Media SotU...

edit: Okay, nevermind, the link to the G&M SotU takes you to the QuickTime SotU. Oops. And my ten best guesses at the URL for the G&M SotU didn't bear any fruit. So I'm awaiting more info on what Q2DE is. :)

FWIW
WM

[AppleMatt]

edit: Okay, nevermind, the link to the G&M SotU takes you to the QuickTime SotU. Oops. And my ten best guesses at the URL for the G&M SotU didn't bear any fruit. So I'm awaiting more info on what Q2DE is. :)

I meant to type Graphics and Media. Sorry for wasting your time there.

http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/jun/wwdc_2004_qt_sotu/wwdc_2004_gm_sotu_ref.mov

Watch from 23 minutes onwards if you want to understand it (I would, it's quite interesting) or if you just want to hear him say "Quartz 2D Extreme" (:p) then goto 24:15.

AppleMatt

[virus1]

You are going to get sued for revealing confidential information about Apple pre-release software!!! I think Apple has like 30 information protection engineers for MR alone, just looking for people abusing their ADC membership like this!!! You never know who is one...
anything for MR!

are they really going to sue a 13 year old kid?

[WM.]

I meant to type Graphics and Media. Sorry for wasting your time there.
No problem. Shortly after I posted I realized that I should Google for it, and that led me to a thread here that had the correct link.

I remember that I tried to watch the G&M SotU a few months back and the link on Apple's QTV site (here (http://www.apple.com/quicktime/whatson/appleevents/)) was borked even back then.

IOW, it's not my fault I didn't know about Quartz 2D Extreme. :D

http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/jun/wwdc_2004_qt_sotu/wwdc_2004_gm_sotu_ref.mov

Watch from 23 minutes onwards if you want to understand it (I would, it's quite interesting) or if you just want to hear him say "Quartz 2D Extreme" (:p) then goto 24:15.
I just got done watching it (in its entirety). Very, very, very, very interesting, and incredibly awesome. I CAN'T WAIT for Tiger now. Thank you for mentioning that presentation. I HIGHLY recommend it to any Mac geek (or anyone who's impressed by real-time...well, ANYTHING) who hasn't seen it. I think I'm having a geekgasm just thinking about it. HOLY CRAP DID YOU SEE THOSE WINDOW RESIZES?????

And now I wish I could afford to go to WWDC... :)

WM

[CaptainCode]

Quartz 2D Extreme doesn't exist in Panther, it's only coming in Tiger.
AppleMatt

What's that? Check out the screen shot from the Graphics state of the Union.

[AppleMatt]

What's that? Check out the screen shot from the Graphics state of the Union.

:rolleyes: Did you read the whole thread or just quote from the first page? Read the thread. Watch the links.
Hint: Only the composition engine is "Extreme" at the moment (excluding scrolling).

edit: Ohhh I found a pretty picture.

AppleMatt

[wdlove]

:rolleyes: Did you read the whole thread or just quote from the first page? Read the thread. Watch the links.
Hint: Only the composition engine is "Extreme" at the moment (excluding scrolling).

edit: Ohhh I found a pretty picture.

AppleMatt

Yes, that is a very nice looking and interesting picture. Even better it looks like the 17" that is sitting on my desk. ;)

[invaLPsion]

Hopefully this update will fix the poor performance woes of the 6800 series. Those cards are seriously underperforming right now when compared with their PC counterparts and the X800 XT (Mac), and it is definitely a driver issue.

[Doctor Q]

According to developer discussions monitored by AppleInsider (http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=818):The system update will improve Quartz 2D Extreme performance on PCI devices and deliver a new version of the Mac OS X kernel, said to be 7.8.0. The most recent release of Panther -- Mac OS X 10.3.7 -- includes kernel version 7.7.0. The Panther update is also expected to repair performance bugs associated with Nvidia graphics and OpenGL.

[FoxyKaye]

Is it my imagination or have the recent rash of releases been problematic?

Seems to me to be "yes and no". I've been happily applying Jaguar software updates on my systems through 10.2.8 (thanks to MR, I avoided the ill-fated 10.2.7 update) with little difficulty.

The Panther updates *did* cause problems for folks, it would seem as if 10.3.5 and 10.3.6 did the most damage: that weird DNS thing and the problems with external FireWire drives (both of which Apple acknowledged by 10.3.7).

For me, all of the Panther updates were fine until 10.3.6, which literally caused me to have to reformat and reinstall. In retrospect, I was also encountering the DNS problem, though kept thinking it was faulty hardware (my DSL modem or router) or ISP problems (my ISP was doing a lot of hardware upgrades during this time) that would resolve themselves or be resolved in $100 or less. Haven't encountered it now that I'm running 10.3.7.

Reviewing the boards for the 10.3.5 and 10.3.6 updates, users who were experiencing problems seemed to break down in to several categories: legitimate problems, imagined problems ("Wow, this update took 1.3 fps away from Doom!"), self-induced problems ("I haven't done any permissions repair since 10.3.1, I've installed two versions of CandyBar, haven't backed up my data, and now I've lost everything!"), and what I'll call the "random quirk problems" in which the user does everything right and something still goes wrong.

Maybe this is a really Zen approach to my computing, but I look at it like this: I don't do anything on my home system that is so critical to my livelihood that it couldn't disappear for a few days to a week. I've got regular system maintenance, data backup/recovery procedures and other steps in place to ensure that if something does go wrong I can be up and running again within 24 hours. Even the Web sites I host from home aren't that important, and certainly don't contribute hugely to the Internet as a whole. So, I feel freer to play with my home system then the ones that we use at work - I sometimes use it as a test-bed for stuff we'd like to install at work but I'm afraid would affect our mission-critical stability. Of course, I'd feel differently about this if I worked from home...

Anyhow, I suppose this is a long-winded way of saying that no software update from Apple is perfect, and depending on system configurations (especially folks with hot-rodded systems or lots of software haxies) they can be problematic. However, I'll be looking forward to 10.3.8 because I know that Apple's trying to improve its OS in a way that I haven't really seen M$ do since WindowsNT. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for DVR-108 native support in 10.3.8, and looking forward to a more stable system regardless.

Oh, and please folks, software update numbers are just that: means of tracking significant OS updates. They'll never run out as long as there's an infinite amount of numbers in the universe. If Panther gets to 10.3.9.9.9.9.9.9.9.9.9.9.9.9.9.9.9.9.9.9.9, then so be it - I'm certain the folks at Apple won't hold off from making a software revision because they don't know what to call it.

[Tuttle]

The new stuff and amount of work Apple is putting into Tiger is extraordinary. Most of it is not as immediately visible as something like Expose, and the benefits will only really be realized over the coming year as the stuff developers are working on now begin surface to the general public. OS X developers are like kids in a new candy store right now. The amount of man hours Apple is putting into this upgrade make paying full price an amazing bargain.

It's too bad about the dismal situation the graphics card driver situation is for OS X. It has been very much fix a bug, add a bug for some time now including this upcoming release. I don't think there is any reason to hope the situation will get any better with Tiger.

[MacsRgr8]

Hopefully this update will fix the poor performance woes of the 6800 series. Those cards are seriously underperforming right now when compared with their PC counterparts and the X800 XT (Mac), and it is definitely a driver issue.

Seriously underperforming is a bit exaggerated.
Reviewing the tests done at BareFeats, InsideMacGames and Anandtech, I think there is little difference between the X800 and the 6800 Ultra, except for the $ 100,- which makes the Radeon a better buy.
But it is a fact that Apple's drivers for the nVidia are by no means optimal. In the PC world the 6800 Ultra is the top dog OpenGL card, and on the Mac side, it is not. So, I expect that the 6800 series will perform better with every Panther update.
I wonder how well it does on Tiger.... :rolleyes:

[Zaty]

I noticed that Apple is said to update the system kernel with 10.3.8. When was the last time they did this?

As for the version numbers, Apple could go to 10.3.10, 10.3.11 etc. if they have to. Although I guess there is good chance that 10.3.8 will be the last update for Panther. But that of course depends on Tiger.

[maradong]

I noticed that Apple is said to update the system kernel with 10.3.8. When was the last time they did this?

As for the version numbers, Apple could go to 10.3.10, 10.3.11 etc. if they have to. Although I guess there is good chance that 10.3.8 will be the last update for Panther. But that of course depends on Tiger.

Well, of course they _could_ go on with new releases, but I strongly doubt that they will do so. I mean, it's way better if they concentrate on 10.4 than to bring new releases on 10.3.

Security fixes for 10.3.7 or 10.3.8 is an absolute necessity, but I don't think that new features or a lot of core work are a good idea. That may be just me thought.

[invaLPsion]

Seriously underperforming is a bit exaggerated.
Reviewing the tests done at BareFeats, InsideMacGames and Anandtech, I think there is little difference between the X800 and the 6800 Ultra, except for the $ 100,- which makes the Radeon a better buy.
But it is a fact that Apple's drivers for the nVidia are by no means optimal. In the PC world the 6800 Ultra is the top dog OpenGL card, and on the Mac side, it is not. So, I expect that the 6800 series will perform better with every Panther update.
I wonder how well it does on Tiger.... :rolleyes:

Seriously underperforming is truth. In no game run at 1280 by 1024 should this card ever dip under 30 or even 20 frames per second. But this, it does, quite frequently.

[CubaTBird]

i could see us going to this dot release before tiger comes out.. similar to what happend with jaguar and panther

[MacsRgr8]

Seriously underperforming is truth. In no game run at 1280 by 1024 should this card ever dip under 30 or even 20 frames per second. But this, it does, quite frequently.

Well, then the X800 is also seriously underperforming. According to those tests, there isn't much difference between the Ultra and the X800.

[invaLPsion]

Well, then the X800 is also seriously underperforming. According to those tests, there isn't much difference between the Ultra and the X800.

We'll just have to wait and see if Apple fixes the performance issues with the 6800 series. I'm 100% sure that is what they mean by "Nvidia performance bugs."

[wdlove]

Well, of course they _could_ go on with new releases, but I strongly doubt that they will do so. I mean, it's way better if they concentrate on 10.4 than to bring new releases on 10.3.

Security fixes for 10.3.7 or 10.3.8 is an absolute necessity, but I don't think that new features or a lot of core work are a good idea. That may be just me thought.

I think that they are going to try to make Panther as stable as possible. So I still look for more updates. Especially with the pace that this updates have been released.

[MacsRgr8]

We'll just have to wait and see if Apple fixes the performance issues with the 6800 series. I'm 100% sure that is what they mean by "Nvidia performance bugs."

I agree. And I hope so too. I own an 6800 Ultra, and would love to see this card live up to its expectation.
I assume that ATi will be updating their Radeon drivers this week, aiming for the best performance of all grfx cards on a Mac.
Doom 3 will obviously be the benchmark. Both Apple (not nVidia themselves unfortunately) and ATi have a couple more weeks to tweak their drivers.

Let the games begin :)

[hcuar]

I agree. And I hope so too. I own an 6800 Ultra, and would love to see this card live up to its expectation.
I assume that ATi will be updating their Radeon drivers this week, aiming for the best performance of all grfx cards on a Mac.
Doom 3 will obviously be the benchmark. Both Apple (not nVidia themselves unfortunately) and ATi have a couple more weeks to tweak their drivers.

Let the games begin :)

Yuck... Doom 3. Wouldn't waste my time or money. Pick it up in the bargain bin. It might be the obvious benchmark, but just a warning to people thinking of buying it when available.

[Nermal]

What I'm interested in finding out is whether 10.3.8 adds support for any double layer DVD writers. I believe you currently need to use PatchBurn in order to use DL drives.

[LimeiBook86]

What I'm interested in finding out is whether 10.3.8 adds support for any double layer DVD writers. I believe you currently need to use PatchBurn in order to use DL drives.

Now that I think of it that is one major disadvantage in Mac OS X. Although I don't own a DL drive (I didn't even knew they were compatible), I'd think that maybe we can hope for Tiger to have it. Although someone probably didn't think of this and it won't be for a while until Apple updates it. But we can all hope and I could be wrong. That would be a nice thing. :D

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

What I'm interested in finding out is whether 10.3.8 adds support for any double layer DVD writers. I believe you currently need to use PatchBurn in order to use DL drives.

Then why are AppleStore selling LaCie 16x d2 DVD+/-RW Double Layer Drive (http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore?productLearnMore=TA849LL/A) for $199 and getting several reviews that it works great...???

[erroneous]

I'm hoping that 10.3.8 fixed whatever it was they did to the QE system that stops it from working on Radio 9200 PCI cards. There's a very simple configuration file hack to enable QE on this card. Annoyingly for me I bought a 9200 PCI card for my G5 to drive a third monitor last week, just a few days after I upgraded to 10.3.7. Such fine timing. :o

Makes using expose on the two main 9600xt displays clunk like heck, not just on the tertiary display, even though the test tools still report the mains displays as accelerated. The window-resizing expose functions generate one, two at the most, intermediate frames of eye-candy.

I knew when I got the card that PCI cards didn't officially support QE, but it's a shame to see a feature many people on older pre-AGP Macs have been using for so long disappear.

There's a work-around, but it involves extracting the Core graphics system from the 10.3.6 updater and overwriting those files on a 10.3.7 machine. That doesn't seem remotely sensible to me. :eek:

[relimw]

My predicition: 10.3.8 on Tuesday Jan 25. :D

Any bets?

[wdlove]

My predicition: 10.3.8 on Tuesday Jan 25. :D

Any bets?

Sounds to me like a good of a date as any. It will be after the release on the 22nd. What kind of bet were you making? If nothing else, is you are correct, then you will have bragging rights on that date.

[relimw]

Sounds to me like a good of a date as any. It will be after the release on the 22nd. What kind of bet were you making? If nothing else, is you are correct, then you will have bragging rights on that date.

Hmm, I was thinking only bragging rights, but why not make it useful, and say a small monetary contribution to the opensource software of the winner's choice?

[daveL]

New seed came out yesterday. It continues to focus on graphics drivers and OpenGL performance and mentions game performance, as previously reported.

[MacsRgr8]

New seed came out yesterday. It continues to focus on graphics drivers and OpenGL performance and mentions game performance, as previously reported.

This is unheard of!
Apple really truly aiming performance gains on games?!? WOW! :)

It would be so nice if my GeForce 6800 Ultra would perform as it should.
Especially now that the newest PC vs Mac benchmarking app will be launched soon: Doom 3 ;)

This über grfx card must start performing. And not only as a 30" must have...

[centauratlas]

I was curious why this was a page 2 item. It isn't like some of the iHome stuff....it is well confirmed from what I've read. :-)

[Benj]

I was curious why this was a page 2 item. It isn't like some of the iHome stuff....it is well confirmed from what I've read. :-)

Post #18.

All anyone cares about at the moment is Mac Mini and all things iPod. (With a touch of iLife and iWork....)

[wdlove]

Hmm, I was thinking only bragging rights, but why not make it useful, and say a small monetary contribution to the opensource software of the winner's choice?

The company in your signature, Opensource 3D Game engine, appears to be a very worthy company. Are you connected with the site?

[relimw]

The company in your signature, Opensource 3D Game engine, appears to be a very worthy company. Are you connected with the site?

I was providing nightly Mac builds for the project, but after a HD crash, and then landing myself in the hospital for a week (2004 was a crappy year), I now only provide developer access to my machine as a on-demand build machine.

CrystalSpace is a good project, and I wish more people would actively and publicly make use of it. The largest project using it right now is Planeshift (http://www.planeshift.it/), a MMORPG.

[applekid]

- NVIDIA graphics performance fixes
- OpenGL performances fixes

Woohoo!

Hopefully we get back to the performance that was in in the earlier versions of Panther. I remember that being as the best OpenGL and nVidia performance in MacOS X. These latest updates hurt nVidia cards for sure.

Then again, this isn't the first time Apple promised to improve the drivers and we only see yet another performance hit. :( Hopefully this will make things right.

[mdriftmeyer]

I agree. And I hope so too. I own an 6800 Ultra, and would love to see this card live up to its expectation.
I assume that ATi will be updating their Radeon drivers this week, aiming for the best performance of all grfx cards on a Mac.
Doom 3 will obviously be the benchmark. Both Apple (not nVidia themselves unfortunately) and ATi have a couple more weeks to tweak their drivers.

Let the games begin :)

Neither the ATI nor the nVidia device drivers are written by either third party. They provide the OEM boards, access to low-level APIs and Apple I/O Develops the device drivers. They manage all improvements.

Ask nVidia or ATI: they don't get their hands dirty with the ObjC++.

[PalmHarborTchr]

I guess this means we're getting closer to a Tiger release date. Didn't Apple release 10.2.9 days before the announcement of Panther's release date?


Wouldn't it be nice if they eliminated some of the warnings? Such as
"do you really want to bounce those junk emails?"

[iGary]

to this day, i have yet to get ichat voice or video to work over a broadband connectiong between two towns?!?!


that sucks...

it works if i am in the same house, or heck, the same town... but outside that, no hope... maybe an ISP problem? I don't know! hopefully tiger will fix it.\


PS. Skype works great!


I have the same problem. Very flukey performance between Maryland and Maine.

[daveL]

7U15 was seeded to developers on the 3rd of Feb. Nothing new in the seed notes.