Apple Assures Users with Certified Installers

Check out the little icon at the top right of the window title. I just noticed Apple added a certificate to their software installers/updates, to assure users they are installing a package directly from Apple Inc.

Clicking on the icon brings up the standard Certificate Viewer dialog to show details of the attached certificate.

Last of OS X for PowerPC

Apple Blue LogoShortly after the release of OS X version 10.5.7 Apple released 10.5.8 to its developers for testing. This version of OS X is rumored to be the last of the OS X versions that continues to support the PowerPC Macintosh. With an educated guess this rumor is definitely believable, as OS 10.6 is expected to be released sometime in September 2009, and it will not support Macintosh hardware with PowerPC architecture.New Updates

Yesterday (Cupertino time) Apple made version 10.5.8 of OS X available through Software Update, you can see the list of fixes it includes from Apple’s Knowledge Base article.

Since the list of security fixes is so comprehensive, it is recommended that all OS X users upgrade to this latest version.

Go For It 10.4.3

Apple released “Mac OS X Update 10.4.3” on Halloween, October 31, 2005.

I had previously advised my Macintosh friends to hold off on upgrading their own Macs until I have tested it. Now I have ran it on my PowerBook 12″ for over a week without any problems I believe that it should be safe for my Macintosh friends to upgrade their respective systems.

NOTE: The following steps are the recommended steps to upgrade any Mac OS X versions. It is especially important given the number of fixes that this Apple update included.

  1. Backup all you important files. I had always advised everyone to make frequent backups. You will thank me when time comes to recover from one of those backups.
  2. Run Disk Utility (Location: <user folder>/Applications/Utilities/) and perform a Repair Permission on your boot hard drive
  3. Download Apple’s “Mac OS X Update 10.4.3 Combo” from Apple’s web site (it should be around 109MB in size)
  4. Restart your Mac in Safe mode. To do so, all you have to do is hold down the Shift key while restarting
  5. Mount the disk image (the .dmg file) of Mac OS X Update 10.4.3 Combo and then execute the update, following the instructions on the screen
  6. After the installer ask you to restart your Mac, run Disk Utility (Location: /Applications/Utilities/) again and perform a Repair Permission on your boot hard drive

You can keep up with all the issues that others may have with any Macintosh updates or Macintosh software by going to MacFixIt.

Enjoy!