10.8

Apple released what is likely to be the last round of fixes to 10.8 Mountain Lion ahead of a look at the next major version of OS X at next week's Worldwide Developer conference.

10.8.4 -- which has been in developer testing for months -- went out Tuesday and fixes a handful of bugs while promising "improvements' in other areas.

Key among them is a fix for a bug in Apple's Messages software that would display messages out of order, an issue that could make the app's conversational style useless and confusing.

On … Read more

One common upgrade to install for older Mac systems is to replace the conventional hard drive with a high-speed SSD to reduce data access bottlenecks and greatly speed up the system. However, those who have used some of Intel's SSDs may find that they cannot successfully install OS X 10.8.3.

After applying the updates from Apple, instead of booting normally the system will simply hang at startup or show a no-entry symbol that indicates the operating system cannot boot on the available hardware configuration. Reverting to the previous 10.8.2 installation via a Time Machine backup … Read more

Apple recently released OS X 10.8.3 along with security updates for past versions of OS X, and while the updates have worked properly for the vast majority of users, a few have reported having the problem that certain programs like Preview and TextEdit now will not run. When the program is opened, in some cases the system prompts users to authenticate and repair the user Library, but after this is done the program simply quits after bouncing in the OS X Dock for a few seconds. In other cases the program may simply crash and generate an error … Read more

Apple has just released the OS X 10.8.3 update for Mountain Lion users, and while the update has gone smoothly for most people, as with any update there are a few who have run into a couple of hurdles when installing.

The most prominent issue so far is a small number of users have run into an issue where the update appears to install but then gives a message that simply states "Update Failed" with an option to restart the system. Upon doing so, the system reports it is still running OS X 10.8.2; … Read more

Apple has released its third update for OS X Mountain Lion, bringing the latest version of the software to 10.8.3 after over three months of development. Along with a number of bug fixes for problems users have been experiencing in 10.8.2 and earlier, the new version adds a couple of new features.

The first is that Mac users can now redeem iTunes gift cards using an iSight camera. Now if you take a snapshot of the card in the Mac App Store you can have the system identify its number and redeem it instead of having … Read more

Apple has re-issued its 10.8.2 update for specific Mac systems after having pulled it over a week ago.

OS X 10.8.2 has been available for Mac systems since mid-September, but in mid-November Apple pulled a specific version of the updater for the 2012 Mac Mini, iMac, and 13-inch MacBook Pro models, resulting in the inability for those with these systems to be updated to the latest version of OS X.

The reasons for the pulled update were not made public. When users attempted to install the Combo updater for OS X 10.8.2 on their … Read more

Yesterday Apple released a developer preview build of OS X 10.8.3 to its testing community, and upon investigating the build a few people have found it includes new drivers for AMD's high-end Radeon 7000 series graphics cards. People who have tested the build with PC versions of the Radeon 7970 have found that the card is recognized and works, and suggests that possibilities for new hardware offerings from Apple are in the works.

In the past, Apple has switched back and forth between graphics processors from AMD and Nvidia with iterations of its hardware, with its latest … Read more

Apple has issued a supplemental update for version 10.8.2 of OS X, which addresses a few problems users are having with the way the OS handles the Keychain in some systems. The update is for Macs issued in 2012, and is a small 26.65MB download that will apply new versions of the SecurityAgent process and its supporting daemons and configuration files.

SecurityAgent is a background process that implements protocols for accessing certificates, keychains, and other security measures in OS X, and provides interface elements for user interaction with these, including dialog boxes that prompt for usernames and … Read more

If you own one of Apple's latest 2012 Mac Mini systems and are attempting to update it to the latest version of OS X, you may find the update is not available via the App Store's Software Update service. Furthermore, if you download the manual updater for 10.8.2 and attempt to install it, you will see an error that states: "Error: OS X Update can't be installed on this disk. This volume does not meet the requirements for this update."

The reason for this error is the 2012 Mac Mini requires a special … Read more