Mac OS X 10.3.4 Released

[Open-Your-Eyes]

TRUTH TIME

Don't own a mac, but am considering an ibook, and i'm excited...

But there is one thing that i would love for someone to clear up.

PC's have faster processors, it says on the tin and everyone knows this. But, i hear so many people say that 1GhZ on a mac is roughly the equivilent to 2.5GHZ on a PC. Does this have any truth to it? Or is it just a way to make Macs sound exceptable?

Please can someone shed some light on the situation.

 

[~Shard~]

Don't own a mac, but am considering an ibook, and i'm excited...

But there is one thing that i would love for someone to clear up.

PC's have faster processors, it says on the tin and everyone knows this. But, i hear so many people say that 1GhZ on a mac is roughly the equivilent to 2.5GHZ on a PC. Does this have any truth to it? Or is it just a way to make Macs sound exceptable?

Please can someone shed some light on the situation.

A friendly suggestion would be to post questions and inquiries like this is in the other forums, as this is somewhat off-topic for this thread. Have a browse through the forums and you'll find hardware discussion forums, buying guide forums, and many others.

As for a general, high-level answer to your question though, let me put it this way - what you are are referring to is "the megahertz myth" and is a common misconception among computer users. It is ignorant, and I don't mean that in a bad way (eveyone always has such negative connotations surrounding that word!), it's just that people aren't educated enough about the subject. Just because the MHz/GHz number is more, well, this means s@#$, quite frankly. I could go into a whole discussion here on on microprocessor design, instruction sets, coding, etc., but will not since this is off-topic already.

It is always hard to compare Apples and lemons since their architecture and evertything else is so different (straight comparisons don't always work) and it's difficult to draw a parallel, saying an "x" GHz Mac is equal to an "x" GHz PC, but basically if you go onto certain sites you can find benchmarking of systems which can help. These are of course subject to which application is bveing tested, how it being tested, etc., so these results are usually to be taken with a grain of salt.

At any rate, go into the forums and you'll find a plethora of information alread on this subject - or better yet, start your own thread with your questions! That's the beauty of MacRumors.

As for buying a Mac, do it - you won't regret it. After moving to a Mac myself I don't know how I lived in the Windows world for as long as I did.

 

[mkrishnan]

I don't know if I think Safari is overall much faster than it was, but I definnitely feel like changing tabs is faster. And that was the one thing I wanted, so I'm a happy camper.

There was a comment earlier about munging up your system bc you manually delete apps you don't like...I am trying to avoid installing anything, but, for instance, I had Unsanity App Enhancer and Windowshade installed. Windowshade was the only AE product, and after the trial expired, I decided I didn't need it. AE itself has an uninstall feature that works; you click the button, it removes itself. The AE panel is gone from SysPrefs. Windowshade doesn't. So after AE is uninstalled, I'm left with a WindowShade prefs option. If I click it, I get an error message.

Finally I resolved this by searching the disk for windowshade components and deleting them.

What should I have done?

FWIW though, I have not yet had any problems with Apple updates. But this is maybe the only piece of software I've ever done this with.

 

[delphine]

Mail bug still remains

I am upset that 10.3.4 does not correct a bug in Mail app. I don't know if it is a worldwide or a French version bug.
Yet, links between original and sent messages DON'T WORK (it says that "you may have put the message in another place" NOPE!).

Is there any hope that I won't have to pay 10.5 (whichever name it has) to have this useful feature working?
I have just tried Entourage 2004: ugly ! I am stucked on Mail.

 

[wdlove]

I just installed 10.3.4 and the Security update last night. Then I ran the Repair Permissions. My G4 is running at peak performance.

 

[Powerbook G5]

I just installed 10.3.4 and the Security update last night. Then I ran the Repair Permissions. My G4 is running at peak performance.

Your G4 won't truly run at peak performance until you open her up and feed the mouse some cheese laced with speed.

 

[GiantsFan]

it seems like my pb is heatin up faster. anyone else have this problem ?

 

[Powerbook G5]

That's odd, because mine seems to run about 2 degrees C cooler now. I have my processor set to Automatic, though, instead of Highest so perhaps that makes the difference.

 

[telecomm]

I did the update and now all my OpenGL games run so slow they are unplayable. Its definitely the update, because I was playing UT2k4 and getting 40fps, now I get less then 10fps immediately after the update less then 1 hour later.

Anyone else get this with UT2k3 and Warcraft 3?

Haven't been using UT 2003 for a while, but UT 2004 is definitely slower on my PB. Also, I've got Alice (an older game) which used to fly on my computer with the settings maxed. It's noticeably choppier too.

 

[RIP]

Much much more responsive

I'm running a G4/533 with 488MB of ram and an ATI Radeon 9000 Pro AGP video card. After this update everything about my machine is as the title of this post states. I haven't experienced this much improvement since upgrading to Jag. The two games I play, American McGee's Alice and Tiger woods also are much more fluid also which is nice since I was very happy with the performance I had before the update.

Call me satisfied.

 

[josh_joshbond]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hemingray
Wonder if this update fixes the desktop Finder bug with all the drop shadow artifacts under the file names. So far so good!

Co workers never could coroborate that they'd seen that behavior. I kept wondering if it was just ugly shadowing. I never could find a way to purposely cause it.

It's good to hear someone else has seen it.
-----------------------------------------
It is happening to me also. I did a clean install of 10.3.4. The ghosting of the file names on the desktop seems to happen after just a little while of working. Also, I can make the ghost disappear by clicking on the desktop folder.

I told Apple Tech Support about it but they said they haven't had any other reports of this problem.

Quote:
safari keeps crashing on me. like all the windows would close and a pop up would ask me if i want to send a bug report to Apple.
---------------------------------------------------
It happened to me also...turns out to be a font issue (the fonts safari uses vs fonts that my font manager manages caused the problem. Safari doesn't know where to get the fonts it needs so it panics and crashes.

Apple Tech couldn't help but Suitcase Tech got me half way to the solution by having me move all of the computers fonts (EXCEPT the system>libraries>fonts folder) to my "purchased fonts" folder I keep on the HD. Now Suitcase can manage all...So then I played with the Suitcase preferences and discovered that if I have SC only activate a font when needed and QXP, ID, and AI Suitcase preferences only activate fonts that are called for and close when done, I can keep Safari, and my pro apps, from crashing.

 

[Jim_N_Tonik]

Multi Monitor Support?

I'm hoping somebody has had a similar experience and can tell me I'
m not crazy

I installed the 10.3.4 patch today on my iBook G4. I use two monitors while I'm at home, the laptop monitor and a 17" CRT that I hook up using the adapter.

Apple says that with the iBook that only mirroring is supported (i.e. you cannot have a "split screen" between the two monitors) -- at least this is what I thought (I thought that an "unofficial" hack was required to get slip screen support).

After installing the patch today I suddenly have split screen support! I was really surprised to say the least -- and I can't see in the system prefs where I configure this... so I'm wondering - is this an isolated experience? Did I find a bug? Is it just me? Please let me know! Thanks,

- Jim

Edit: It seems to be a fluke -- the happened after I took my book out of sleep mode, after going into a game that used full screen mode it was reset to mirror mode... maybe this is just a bug. Please let me know what you've seen.

 

[7racer]

it seems like my pb is heatin up faster. anyone else have this problem ?

mine has been doing it too... quite noticable

also in Safari, when replying on forums with motion "smileys" i see the CPU usage jump up to almost 60% to just reply in a forum!!!

 

[davetrow1997]

This happen to anyone else?

I have a 15" DVI 1GHZ powerbook; I was updating to 10.3.4... walked away for a few, came back to a grey screen. Very strange.. wouldn't respond to any commands. Had to remove the battery to shut down. When I powered back on, I was greeted with a black screen, and a command line that was flickering what looked like a startup script faster than I could read. I shut down, restarted.. same thing. REALLY freaked me out. Luckily, I was able to eject the CD that was in there and boot from the system CD. I archived and reinstalled, then reran the update.. everything worked smoothly from then on... Very strange.

This happen to anybody else?

 

[cb911]

Software Update should have an Auto-restart feature so you can walk away and have the machine restart automatically when the update is done.

you could just write an AppleScript i guess that would make it launch the installer, then restart after the installer is finished...

and about the colour - i've updated now, yeah it looks to be the same.

 

[mkrishnan]

Edit: It seems to be a fluke -- the happened after I took my book out of sleep mode, after going into a game that used full screen mode it was reset to mirror mode... maybe this is just a bug. Please let me know what you've seen.

That's too bad -- now *that* would have been a nice Easter Egg...

 

[Black Badger]

I've got it running on my Beige G3/300 and its pretty good!.

 

[Trekkie]

Hi,
It works fine (and has worked fine) for me. What is Safari saying? Where does it stop working? I've done it successfully on a iMac 1ghz, dual G4 800, G4 867, and a 1.5ghz PB with every version of Safari from 1.0 and whatever version of Mac OS X that has been out since it. (I just say that to illustrate the variety here, plus a friend uses an older iBook.)

I've tried it from Safari on an iMac 800MHz and my PB 12" 867MHz. BillPay just doesn't display anything when I go to it. I can browse my statements, etc, but I have to use IE if I want to use the web based bill pay.

 

[wdlove]

Your G4 won't truly run at peak performance until you open her up and feed the mouse some cheese laced with speed.

What would you suggest that I do now?

 

[igucl]

No noticeable improvements

After installing 10.3.4 I didn't notice any gains in performance, but I did notice that some of my preferences were screwed up. My mouse speed was much slower and keyboard shortcuts which I had changed were back to the defaults.

 

[Wonder Boy]

ive had some issues with my ibook's display. everything is very grainy. is there a way to reset dispay prefs? i couldnt find one.

 

[slooksterPSV]

What's the patch update for exactly?

 

[WM.]

I have a 15" DVI 1GHZ powerbook; I was updating to 10.3.4... walked away for a few, came back to a grey screen. Very strange.. wouldn't respond to any commands. Had to remove the battery to shut down. When I powered back on, I was greeted with a black screen, and a command line that was flickering what looked like a startup script faster than I could read. I shut down, restarted.. same thing. REALLY freaked me out. Luckily, I was able to eject the CD that was in there and boot from the system CD. I archived and reinstalled, then reran the update.. everything worked smoothly from then on... Very strange.

This happen to anybody else?

Didn't happen to me, but I think you were experiencing verbose mode (or single-user mode?), which wouldn't necessarily indicate anything wrong with your Mac. Starting up in verbose mode obviously isn't normal, nor is the gray screen that you experienced before the reboot, but I don't think it was necessary to archive and install, depending on how long you waited before you restarted or shut down (if it was ten minutes, well, yeah, something was wrong, but if it was only 30 seconds, you might've been watching your Mac boot up). So...how long did you wait?

WM

 

[mkrishnan]

ive had some issues with my ibook's display. everything is very grainy. is there a way to reset dispay prefs? i couldnt find one.

Did you try the second tab (Color) of the displays syspref? Running through the calibration procedure again might help.

 

[g.money]

Internal Mic no more!

I have a dual-USB iBook/500Mhz and after updating to .3.4 I no longer see my internal mic in the sys prefs and can't use it for audio iChat.

A few others have reported this on Apple discussion forums...seems like a temp solution is to zap the PRAM (command-option-p-r upon startup)...but everytime you shut down it gets lost again. Apparently it's not a hardware issue as it appears in classic.

Just thought I should let you guys know. Anyone else with this problem? From the Apple forums, it seems like this only affects iBook Dual-USB versions.

BTW, do I lose anything by zapping PRAM--will my battery life change? What does it do?