OSX Update

[mperdue]

It looks like Apple also released a Mountain Lion update today. Installing 10.8.2 now.

 

[Neutron]

Here's what it addresses:



Additional Information
This update is recommended for all OS X Mountain Lion users, and includes new features and fixes:

Facebook
• Single sign on for Facebook
• Adds Facebook as an option when sharing links and photos
• See Facebook friends' contact information and profile pictures in Contacts
• Facebook notifications now appear in Notification Center

Game Center
• Share scores to Facebook, Twitter, Mail, or Messages
• Facebook friends are included in Game Center friend recommendations
• Added Facebook "Like" button for games
• Challenge friends to beat your score or achievement

Other new features
• Adds Power Nap support for MacBook Air (Late 2010)
• iMessages sent to your phone number now appear in Messages on your Mac*
• You can now add passes to Passbook (on your iPhone or iPod touch) from Safari and Mail on your Mac*
• FaceTime can now receive calls sent to your phone number*
• New shared Reminders lists
• New sort options allow you to sort notes by title, the date you edited them, and when you created them
• Dictation now supports additional languages: Mandarin, Cantonese, Spanish, Korean, Canadian English, Canadian French, and Italian
• Dictionary app now includes a French definition dictionary
Sina Weibo profile photos can now be added to Contacts

* Requires iOS 6

General fixes
The OS X Mountain Lion v10.8.2 update also includes general operating system fixes that improve the stability, compatibility and security of your Mac, including the following fixes:

• Adds an option to discard the changes in the original document when choosing Save As
• Unsent drafts are now opened automatically when launching Mail
• Receive Twitter notifications for mentions and replies from anyone
• URLs are shortened when sending tweets from Notification Center
• Notifications are disabled when AirPlay Mirroring is being used
• Adds SSL support for Google searches from the Smart Search Field in Safari
• Adds a new preference to have Safari launch with previously open webpages
• Resolves an issue that may cause the "Enable Autodiscover" checkbox to always remain checked
• Enables access to the Mac App Store when Parental Controls are enabled Support for @icloud.com email addresses
• Resolves a video issue with some VGA projectors when connected to certain Mac notebooks
• Addresses an issue that may prevent Active Directory accounts from being locked out
• Resolves an issue that may cause the policy banner to re-appear prior to logging in
• Improvements to SMB
• Addresses an issue with NIS users when auto-login is enabled
• Addresses an issue in which the Keychain may not be accessible
• Ability to pre-authenticate a FileVault protected system
• Addresses an issue that may cause Xsan to not automatically start after migrating from Mac OS X Snow Leopard

 

[Foxbat]

For those who haven't upgraded (or can't upgrade) to Mountain Lion, Apple also released a new version of OS X 10.7.5 which exposes GateKeeper among other things.

 

[Foxbat]

If anybody out there is using iPhoto to manage their digital photography and iTunes to synchronize there pictures with their iOS device, I have a word of caution: A combination of circumstances may cause your iTunes Sync to fail with an "unknown error" (I was getting 1140, others have reported -50). It appears that something changed within all the updates to iLife '09, OS X, and iTunes 10.7 that Apple rolled out Wednesday.

I have a ton of photos in my iPhoto library. They are organized by events that I've given descriptive names to, like "2008 Mercury Milan" for pictures of my car, or "2012 John Adams Freshman Football" for pictures of my son's football career. This includes a number of weddings or anniversaries that I've attended and taken pictures, so I'll say something like "2006 Rebecca & Joshua's Wedding" or "Mom & Dad's 50th Anniversary".

Seems innocent enough, but iPhoto uses XML as its database that ties photos to Events, Albums, and Slide Shows. And the ampersand ("&") is a code prefix. iPhoto stores the Event name with an XML tag like <Event>The Event Name<Event/>. When you insert and ampersand into this string, XML is expecting ? to describe a Special Character and never sees the terminating character. So, evidently iTunes was looking at this XML file and ignoring everything after the first ampersand it encountered.

What this does in the current version of iTunes is prevent you from selecting a subset of your iPhoto library to sync with your devices. Now, if your iPhoto library isn't very big, you probably have enough room on your iOS device for all of your pictures. Since I have over fifteen years of digital images, my iPhoto Library file is just over 125 GB. It's the single largest file I have on my Mac Pro. So, iTunes changed to enable all my photos, not the last three months worth like I had with the previous version. When I went to sync after the iTunes/OS X/iPhoto updates, kerblamo!

I posted to the Apple Support Forum and some other people have seen this issue on their machines. Someone downloaded a free-ware/share-ware program that manages your iPhoto LIbrary and allows it to exist in multiple places (a small, one-two year file located on your internal drive and all the rest in a library on an external HD. Supposedly it made recommendations on how to fix the errors it detected and the one user said it was the "AlbumData.xml" file. I found AlbumData2.xml inside the iPhoto Library contents and used Xcode to parse the XML file for errors. Xcode shows the tags and fields in different colors so it was easy to see where the file went off the rails. That's how I found the ampersand problem. All I had to do was look through 400 or so events and albums looking for an ampersand in the name (or in the album artist/title/track info for the default slide shows) and change it to "and" where it made sense.

An hour or so later and I can now sync my 32 GB iPhone again. And when my new iPhone 5 arrive in several hours, I'll be ready!