Filed under: OS, Software Update, Surveys and Polls, Beta Beat, Snow Leopard

In the last few days, two builds of Mac OS X 10.6.2 Snow Leopard have been seeded to the Mac developer community. The latest build, 10C591F, is 456.8 MB in size and adds about a dozen changes to the fifty or so tweaks in the prior build.

Apple has asked developers to test nearly 150 specific areas in order to make the new version of Snow Leopard as clean as possible. Known issues that are outstanding and have yet to be addressed include Core Data output, video corruption, and occasional hangs within System Preferences.

With another release of Snow Leopard pending, I thought we could have a little fun with a poll. Given that it took 88 days for 10.5.2 to hit Software Update after the initial release of Leopard, it may be too soon for another Snow Leopard cub to show up (November 24th would be 88 days). Of course, the past isn't any indication of future Apple OS release dates, so your guess is going to be as good as mine. If we don't have a date range listed that's you think is plausible, let us know what your guess is in the comments.

TUAWSecond build of Mac OS X 10.6.2 seeded to Apple developers originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Retail, Apple

Over the past week, something new on the Apple Store went somewhat unnoticed and unreported in the Mac media. Apple has added a new Questions & Answers feature to most of the product listings on its online store. This new feature allows customers to interact with each other; however, this is different from the current review system Apple has. In addition, this feature is somewhat similar to the Customer Discussions feature that Amazon.com offers. It adds a bit more of a social push, something Apple has been up to lately.

Do you think Apple's Questions & Answers will be a useful tool, or just another place for people to gripe? Let us know in the comments below.

TUAWApple adds Questions & Answers to its online store originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 11 Oct 2009 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: iTunes, Music

Update: ElectricPig is reporting on 10/13 that an Apple spokesperson said the LP format will be opened up for all, indies and majors alike.

There's word from an indie record-label that iTunes LPs are not for the indies. Introduced at Apple's "It's Only Rock and Roll" event in September, the iTunes LP format adds "bigger than a matchbook" album art, song lyrics, video clips, and other extra content to albums sold through the iTunes store.

Brian McKinney of Chicago-based label Chocolate Lab Records saw some promise in the new format and started looking into the idea of producing for iTunes LPs himself. But the truly small labels may have a hard time getting in. McKinney spoke to the digital distribution manager at his label's distributor, who reportedly told him that Apple charges a $10,000 production fee for iTunes LPs. $10,000 may be less than the heads of Warner Music Group, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, and EMI spend on breakfast, but could be cost prohibitive for the little label that could (if it had $10,000 handy for each of its acts).

It's not just the cost that prohibits the little labels. According to McKinney, it's also Apple. McKinney says his dude in distribution was told "that LPs aren't being offered to indies and that there are only about 12 LPs being offered right now."

"Foul, foul, filth and foul," cries Cult of Mac's Pete Mortensen. Like a financial analyst moving a stock from "buy" to "sell," Mortensen says iTunes LP has gone from "the first digital album good enough to criticize," to "the first major content misstep in the history of the iTunes Store." Assuming that Chocolate Lab's distributor info is on the up-and-up, Mortensen thinks iTunes LP is "less a new format for music than it is a new form of paid advertising on the iTunes store."

Continue reading iTunes LP broken for indie record labels?

TUAWiTunes LP broken for indie record labels? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 11 Oct 2009 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Certains l'ont peut-être déjà vu sur le forum ou d'autres ne sont pas encore au courant, mais le site iTuto vient de réouvrir à l'occasion de la sortie de Blackra1n.

Les tutoriaux pour le passage en 3.1.2 jailbreaké ont été réécrits et différents conseils sont proposés si vous êtes un peu perdu et que vous ne savez pas vraiment quoi faire avec votre iPod Touch / iPhone et blackra1n.

C'est également la raison pour laquelle un petit guide est également disponible à cette adresse.

En répondant aux différents renseignements, vous serez apte à savoir ce que vous devez faire ou ne pas faire.

iTuto.fr // iTuto.fr sur twitter // iTuto.fr sur facebook

This week Apple released two builds of Mac OS X 10.6.2 to the developer community. The builds, 10C514f and 10C519f came just four days apart and already contain a sizeable number of fixes and focus areas.

The latest build 10C519f weighs in at 456.94MB for the combo update.

Seed notes for Mac OS X 10.6.2 10C519f below.

Known Issues

• There may be video corruption lines with certain video cards
• Core Data is generating incorrect SQL and returning wrong results
• In Koetori, pressing + may not behave as expected
• In some systems with external display attached, opening System Preferences causes the system to hang

General Focus Areas

• AddressBook
• AFP
• apache
• AppleBacklight
• AppleDisplays
• AppleScript
• AppleWWANSupport
• ApplicationFirewall
• AppKit
• Apache Portable Runtime
• ASR
• ATS
• ATSUI
• Battery Menu Extra
• Bluetooth
• CarbonCore
• CFNetwork
• CFPropertyList
• CFRunLoop
• CFURL
• ColorSync
• Component Manager
• configd
• Core Chinese Engine
• Core Media
• Core Animation
• Core Applications
• CoreAudio
• CoreData Framework
• CoreData Predicates
• CoreFoundation
• CoreGraphics
• CoreImage
• CoreMedia
• CorePDF
• CoreServicesUIAgent
• CoreText
• CoreTypes
• CoreUI
• CoreVideo
• CrashCatcher
• Date Time Prefs
• Dictionary Application
• Dock
• ExchangeWebServices
• Expose
• Family Controls
• Fax
• FileSync
• FileURL
• Finder
• Fonts
• Foundation
• Front Row
• Garbage Collection
• GraphicsDrivers
• GPU Compute
• Help Viewer
• HFS
• High Level Toolbox
• iCal
• iCal Exchange
• iChat Audio/Video/BuddyList/Jabber/Menu/Pref
• ICU
• iDisk Syncing
• Image Capture
• ImageIO
• ImageKit
• Inkwell
• InstallCmds
• IOAHCIBlockStorage
• IOHIDFamily
• IOPlatformPluginFamily
• IONetworkingFamily
• IOKit Kernel
• iPhoto
• IPSec
• Japanese Analysis
• Kerberos
• Kernel
• KeychainAccess
• Kotoeri Dictionary Trainer
• Language Analysis
• Latent Semantic Mapping
• LaunchServices
• libdispatch
• LibInfo
• libpcap
• libsecurity
• libxml2
• LoginWindowUI
• Mail
• mDNSResponder
• Migration
• MobileMe
• Mosaic Screen Saver
• network_cmds
• Networking
• Network Pref Pane
• NTFS
• Objective C
• OpenCL
• OpenGL
• OSInstaller
• PackageKit
• Parental Controls
• Phone Conduit Sync
• Photo Booth
• Preview
• Printing
• Quartz Composer Engine
• QuickLook Office
• QuickTime
• QuickDraw Manager
• QuickTime Player
• Screen Saver
• Screen Sharing
• securityd
• security_certificates
• SecurityAgent
• Software Update
• Spaces
• Speech Recognition
• Spell Checker
• Spotlight
• Sync Services
• System Prefs
• System Configuration
• System UI Server
• Text Checking
• Time Machine
• Time Zone Data
• Traditional Chinese Input Method
• Translation Widget
• Universal Access Pref Pane
• URLMount
• USB
• Voice Over
• VPN
• Weather Widget
• WebDAVFS
• xQuery
• xType

Areas of Change
Fixed in current seed:

• Dock: Cmd-Tab app switcher now loops with single key press
• File Manager: There was a slight delay on unmounting when signed up for NSWorkspaceWillUnmountNotification
• GraphicsDrivers: Quartz Composer was crashing opening simultaneous compositions simultaneously on some video cards
• GraphicsDrivers: DVD Player was hanging sometimes
• Installer: Net restore was sometimes failing
• OpenCL Compiler: Video encoder performance fix
• Parental controls: Pref pane crash fix when selecting a user
• Printing: Bluetooth print queue would pause when a print job is held or deleted
• Preview: Was failing to load images (eg, jpegs and raws)
• X Update: System Preferences was hanging after connecting to Airport network
• X Update: on some machines, optical drives were not recognized and the eject key was not ejecting media
• X Update: update overwriting /etc/authorization fix
• Other general fixes and performance improvements

Fixed in previous seed:

• Address Book: Crash in Core Data fix
• AppleScript: Coercion of negative integers now returns correct result
• AppleScript: Negative number operations fix
• AppleScriptObjC: AppleScript apps created in Xcode was failing to quit sometimes
• Graphic drivers: glBlitFramebufferEXT() fix
• Graphic drivers: Shader Compiler performance fixes
• Graphic drivers: glCopyTexSubImage2D() performance improved
• Graphic drivers: Multisampling was not working on certain graphics cards
• ATS: Certain LWFNs and fonts compatibility fix
• ATS: kMDQueryDidFinishNotification() and runloop compatibility fix
• ATS: The family identifier now working with CreateFontForScaler()
• ColorSync: Localization and ASCII profile description compatibility fix
• ColorSync: Inspector and v4 description fixes
• ColorSync: Fixed issues with window colors when certain ICC monitor profiles were used
• Component Manager: QuickTime components are now immediately registered when installed in /Library/QuickTime
• Core Chinese Engine: Input method performance enhanced
• Core Animation: CATiledLayer with perspective & translation transformation render fix
• Core Audio: MP4AudioFile and file write bug fix
• Core Audio: AudioFileOpenURL now opens valid MP3 with or without hint
• Core Data: Store migration now works for objects which have been pre-fetched
• Core Data: Row cache and data compatibility fix
• Core Data: NSPredicate was failing on non-canonicalized strings
• Core Data: CFMessagePort occasional failure fix
• Core Graphics: CGWindowListCreateImage() was failing when passed CGRectInfinite
• Core Graphics: CGImageCreateWithImageInRect() was returning NULL for image with mask
• Core Text: Cocoa character kerning now properly works for text strings
• File Manager: FSMoveObject() and FSCopyObject() APIs fail if destName parameter contained a forward slash
• Garbage Collection: Improved memory usage when adding observers to objects
• Help Viewer: HelpViewer sometimes fails to open help after running an AppleScript
• ImageKit: Incorrect vertical offset applied to the image scanned with rotated selection
• IOHIDFamily: Access to IR Remote HID device fix
• Networking: UDP broadcast loopback change
• NS Image: NSCustomImageRep() was not displaying dialogs correctly
• NS Image: Fixed drawInRect() issue
• OpenCL: clEnqueueRead() and assert failure fix
• OpenCL: Image creation size fix
• OpenCL: cl_event from clEnqueueMarker() contained no profiling info
• OpenGL: glPopAttrib() was crashing in certain conditions
• OSA: AppleScript droplets fix
• QT Kit: userDataOfType in 64-bit mode fix
• Speech Recognition: Speech recognition server was incorrectly reading/writing language model objects
• Sync Services: Filtering records fix
• Xtype: Fonts can now be disabled in the local registry
• Xtype: Occasional hang in UnregisterFonts when removing many fonts fix
• Other general fixes and performance improvements