Mac OS X 10.6.5 Notes: exFAT Support, AirPrint, Flash Player Vulnerability Fixes

[MacRumors]

Since yesterday's release of Mac OS X 10.6.5, users have been testing out the updated version of Snow Leopard to find out what has changed, and we've collected a few notes on what has been found.

- exFAT Support: Apple began including support for the exFAT file system in builds of Mac OS X 10.6.4 shipping on some of the company's latest iMacs and Mac minis with SDXC card slots, but Mac OS X 10.6.5 extends compatibility to all Macs.

- AirPrint: As had been rumored, Apple at the last minute removed support for printing via AirPrint from iOS 4.2 devices to printers shared on Macs running Mac OS X 10.6.5. The feature had been touted by Apple in its initial AirPrint press release and was present in early developer builds of Mac OS X 10.6.5, but was removed for unspecified reasons. Note that the basic AirPrint functionality, including direct printing to compatible HP printers, is included in Mac OS X 10.6.5.

We've heard claims of technical or legal/patent issues being behind the removal of support for shared printers, but have not received confirmation of any single reason for the change. Notably, those developers who installed earlier developer builds of Mac OS X 10.6.5 have retained access to the shared printing feature even with the public release, and one developer has outlined a process by which users can add the capability.

- Flash Player Vulnerabilities Fixed: Apple's attempts to distance itself from Adobe's Flash technology are well-known, and the list of security issues addressed in Mac OS X 10.6.5 is only adding fuel to that fire. Of a massive 134 security issues addressed in the update, 41% of them are directly attributable to Flash, the largest single source of security holes patched in the update. The second largest source of security flaws patched in Mac OS X 10.6.5 is X11, the optional install that allows Macs to run certain windowed Unix applications, with 12% of the total fixes.

Article Link: Mac OS X 10.6.5 Notes: exFAT Support, AirPrint, Flash Player Vulnerability Fixes

 

[skate71290]

i have a feeling this is going to be a really stupid question, but why can't Apple develop their own version of Flash Player, or something similar, would knock Adobe and HTML5 out of the park!

 

[aloshka]

trim

How about Trim? I really hope they got trim in this one. I know people say that SSD's don't slow down on Macs, but I beg to differ. They take longer but eventually slow down like a pc.

 

[dereth]

i have a feeling this is going to be a really stupid question, but why can't Apple develop their own version of Flash Player, or something similar, would knock Adobe and HTML5 out of the park!

Ah... you mean like the success Microsoft is enjoying with Silverlight now?

 

[SandynJosh]

Hard to believe FLASH was that full of exploit holes.

I wonder how vulnerable Windows is in this regard?

It doesn't appear that the printing feature was removed for technical reasons. It must be a legal issue that needs to be cleaned up. It should be released before version 2 of the iPad hits the streets, IMHO.

 

[SandynJosh]

How about Trim? I really hope they got trim in this one. I know people say that SSD's don't slow down on Macs, but I beg to differ. They take longer but eventually slow down like a pc.

I've seen this feature mentioned by name before, but have never read a good description of what it does or how it does what it does. Anyone have a link or short description?

 

[zorinlynx]

exFAT is amazing news.

*FINALLY* we have a filesystem we can put on external hard drives and be able to share them between Macs and Windows boxes without limitations.

FAT32 had a 4GB file size limit. NTFS-3G, while available for Mac, is rather slow for writing (10-15Mbyte/sec whereas on the same hardware with HFS+ you get 30). HFS+ support is only available on Windows as a commercial (paid) add-on.

It'll be nice, when visiting friends, to just be able to hand them an exFAT formatted external USB drive and have them be able to read and write to it without having to install drivers or incur any performance penalties.

This is a lot bigger than just being able to use SDXC, folks. Time to start formatting those external hard drives with exFAT instead of HFS+.

EDIT: This will also be awesome for sharing data between OS X and Windows on a boot camped system. Just put your videos, music, etc. on an ExFAT partition and off you go.

 

[twoodcc]

well hopefully OS 4.2 is released tomorrow

 

[timmo13]

They also added the iOS-like scrolling.

 

[dagamer34]

exFAT is amazing news.

*FINALLY* we have a filesystem we can put on external hard drives and be able to share them between Macs and Windows boxes without limitations.

FAT32 had a 4GB file size limit. NTFS-3G, while available for Mac, is rather slow for writing. HFS+ support is only available on Windows as a commercial (paid) add-on.

It'll be nice, when visiting friends, to just be able to hand them an exFAT formatted external USB drive and have them be able to read and write to it without having to install drivers or incur any performance penalties.

This is a lot bigger than just being able to use SDXC, folks. Time to start formatting those external hard drives with exFAT instead of HFS+.

Of course, Windows XP doesn't support it by default, which means that it won't be as widespread as we'd like.

 

[zorinlynx]

Of course, Windows XP doesn't support it by default, which means that it won't be as widespread as we'd like.

It's available from Microsoft as an add-on for free, so it's not that big a deal.

 

[Smultie]

Quite a pity that you can't use Time Machine on an exFAT-driver :<
I keep both Time Machine and large files (movies/music) on the same USB-disk. Would've been nice to use that disk on a Windows machine (without Paragon/etc).

 

[jsdc2005]

yes, but...

Is it snappier?

 

[aloshka]

Ah... you mean like the success Microsoft is enjoying with Silverlight now?

Well they are enjoying it a little. I mean, netflix is based on silverlight. Netflix is really heavily used.

 

[kainjow]

Quite a pity that you can't use Time Machine on an exFAT-driver :<
I keep both Time Machine and large files (movies/music) on the same USB-disk. Would've been nice to use that disk on a Windows machine (without Paragon/etc).

I don't think any FAT file system supports hard links, which is what Time Machine uses.

You could just partition the drive to have HFS+ and ExFAT together.

 

[Žalgiris]

Flash... yikes.

 

[JetSter735180]

exFat Support

exFat Support !!!

I think this is the best news from Apple all month and a unexpected one.

I cant wait to get home and try it. I'm hoping this is not only read suport but also write.

 

[netdog]

So for those of us who fixed our 10.6.5 installations, is iOS 4.2 going to print to shared printers when we install it on our iPads, iPhones and iPods tomorrow?

 

[aloshka]

I've seen this feature mentioned by name before, but have never read a good description of what it does or how it does what it does. Anyone have a link or short description?

I'll do a quick summary. SSD's slow down over time because the OS never tells it what is actually deleted and what is used overtime. As the drive slowly fills up (even if you erase files), the SSD has to request and search for empty spaces it can write to. TRIM is a new defined function on SSD's that when the OS deletes something, it tells the SSD directly that sector x-y can be written to, thus making write operations a thousand times faster since the SSD no longer fills up with files that have been deleted a long time ago.

 

[Glenny2lappies]

Problems with PGP whole disc encryption?

I've heard of problems with PGP whole disc encryption and not being able to boot after installing the update.

Has anyone else had issues or heard of issues?

Reported in a forum on TheRegister.co.uk:
http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2010/11/10/mac_os_x_update/

 

[dereth]

Well they are enjoying it a little. I mean, netflix is based on silverlight. Netflix is really heavily used.

Too bad it's not popular in the rest of the world.

 

[SandynJosh]

exFAT is amazing news.

*FINALLY* we have a filesystem we can put on external hard drives and be able to share them between Macs and Windows boxes without limitations.

*snip*

It'll be nice, when visiting friends, to just be able to hand them an exFAT formatted external USB drive and have them be able to read and write to it without having to install drivers or incur any performance penalties.

*Snip*

Actually your friends need to be running System 7 on their peecee or they do need to bring in a witch doctor, spill some chicken blood and install various spells.

Your friends with G4 or G5 systems will look at you like you're being cruel and mean for taunting them with something they will never be able to enjoy.

 

[gordon1234]

exFAT is definitely the biggest news I see here. Until now, there was simply no cross-platform read/write filesystem that could handle file larger than 4 GB. You had to use NTFS, which required a third-party Mac driver (due to Microsoft's refusal to license or release the specifications for NTFS, making read/write support a laborious process of reverse-engineering the entire filesystem).

This is a total surprise. I definitely did not expect this before 10.7, and possibly not even then.

If we're really, Apple will backport it to older versions of the Mac OS so we can start using exFAT drives more often.

 

[lethalOne]

So for those of us who fixed our 10.6.5 installations, is iOS 4.2 going to print to shared printers when we install it on our iPads, iPhones and iPods tomorrow?

Quite likely. I patched my Mac Mini - shared a printer and both my iPhone and iPad can print using 4.2

 

[mactmaster]

confused

Can someone please explain why I am still able to use AirPrint with the final 10.6.5 release? I am running 4.2 GM seed on my iPhone and I am able to print to both of my printers shared via OS X. Is this because I previously had the 10.6.5 betas installed?