Panther 10.3.9 patch available

Last patch before Tiger! This sould bring more stability and speed to Safari and Finder.

From Estonian macuser forum I read, that latest 10.3.9 patch may contain some of the Tigers unvisible enchancements.

- There seems to be problems with Limewire. Universal solution is to run permission repear. Or reinstall Java 1.4.2.
- In addition some weird Finder problem.
- Even more, people see problems with Safari plug-ins.


I have heard from friends, that in general you should be very careful with software updates etc... Why repear the system if it is not broken? From curiousity? Well I am sure that I will put the latest Panther patch, after all, then it should be the most ready Panther there is!

Powerbook battery issue

If you have a Powerbook G4 from last week of December 2003, you should check this. Apple has found manufacturing fault in Powerbook battery.

Open issues

Tiger iSync supported devices!

I have Nokia 6820, seems, that I will not have calendar sync support for that? Still unclear.

Also backup solution is not chosen yet. One interesting (only files) is Synk (20$)! Also .mac is an option, but that costs money every month.

Installed new Skype version

I use Skype to call conference calls, one2one between computers and also Skypeout. Skypein unfortually is still only available in four countries. Estonia is not one of them.

New version 1.0.0.24 should have all this changed.

MacOS X 10.4 Tiger is probably the most expected and spoken mac operating system. I surfed throught the new functionality and few things are interesting for me.

Probably I will update Panther 10.3.8 to 10.3.9 and wait for first patch to Tiger and then switch to new version.







VoiceOver - I have always wanted to have more interfaces to my computer to automate repitive tasks and ease the mouse load.

Dashboard - More space on desktop is always good thing. Specially space, which is meant for specific applications, which run in the background anyway. I hope it is well configureable.

Powerbook hangs

yeah, this was the second time now (over 1 month)! I mainly put it in sleep mode, when moving etc...

So, here is the logfile, could not find anything special, but when it woke up, but was extremely slow and mouse did not move. Also Orinoco network card was not powered.

Apr 11 16:47:51 localhost mDNSResponder[164]: mDNSResponder Sleeping at 6159425
Apr 11 16:47:52 localhost kernel: AppleNMI mask NMI
Apr 11 16:47:52 localhost kernel: [IOBluetoothSCOAudioDevice][staticHCIControllerNotification] -536870384
Apr 11 16:47:52 localhost kernel: [IOBluetoothSCOAudioDevice][HCIControllerNotification] -536870384
Apr 11 16:47:52 localhost kernel: [IOBluetoothSCOAudioDevice][HCIControllerNotification] kIOMessageDeviceWillPowerOff
Apr 11 16:47:52 localhost kernel: [IOBluetoothSCOAudioDevice][performPowerStateChange] 1 -> 0
Apr 11 16:47:52 localhost kernel: [IOBluetoothSCOAudioDevice][registerForDeviceNotification]
Apr 11 16:47:52 localhost kernel: [HCIController][setPowerState] 0 (ignore=0)
Apr 11 16:47:52 localhost kernel: [HCIController][setPowerStateWL] 0
Apr 11 16:47:52 localhost kernel: [setPowerStateWL] setting up controller for sleep.
Apr 11 16:47:52 localhost kernel: [HCIController][PerformPowerStateChange] 1->2
Apr 11 16:47:52 localhost kernel: [HCIController][CompletePowerStateChange]
Apr 11 16:47:52 localhost kernel: USBF: 6159.769 AppleUSBOHCI[0x1ddb800] Processing WDH before suspending
Apr 11 20:10:05 localhost syslogd: restart
Apr 11 20:10:05 localhost syslogd: kernel boot file is /mach_kernel
Apr 11 20:10:05 localhost kernel: standard timeslicing quantum is 10000 us
Apr 11 20:10:05 localhost kernel: vm_page_bootstrap: 252723 free pages
Apr 11 20:10:05 localhost kernel: mig_table_max_displ = 68
Apr 11 20:10:05 localhost kernel: IOKit Component Version 7.8:
Apr 11 20:10:05 localhost kernel: Wed Dec 22 14:23:55 PST 2004; root(rcbuilder):RELEASE_PPC/iokit/RELEASE
...

Phone sync

My primary phone is Nokia 6820, but few days ago it refused to work (now in maintainence). Also Nokia changed the syncronization protocol to SyncML and iSync does not work with that protocol yet. (possibly corrected in MacOS X 10.4 Tiger)
So now I am using my old T39m, workhorse I bought few years back, when GPRS was launched in Estonia. T39m works fine with iSync and I am able to syncronize iCal and Address Book without problems. Actually there was somekind of bluetooth problem, old pairing did not work, so I had to reset mac (this did not helped) and then created new pairing to be able to syncronize changes. If this bug reappears, I will write more about it.

Updates to Neooffice and MS Office.

Neooffice has matured to Release candidate level (based on openoffice 1.1.4 (download). Also patch to that is released already. In last beta patch I found some unstability, it crashed in printing and sometimes during slideshow modification.

I also downloaded latest updates from Microsoft to MS Office 2004. I am still having an email client/calender/phonesync problem, and have not yet decided which one to choose of two applications (MS Entourage or Thunderbird) I am using currently. Actually three, but for Lotus Notes and must have Lotus Notes mac client 6.5 anyway.