By Tom Krazit
Thursday, November 15 2007 09:54 AM
URL: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/security/0,39044215,62034417,00.htm

The company released a major update to Mac OS X 10.4 on Wednesday that delivers several improvements, fixes some bugs, and patches several security holes identified in recent months.

Mac OS X 10.4.11 is immediately available through Software Update, or it can be downloaded from Apple's Web site.

Among the highlights: RAW image support for some Panasonic, Olympus, Leica, and Canon cameras as well as reliability improvements for Intel-based Macs running VMware's Fusion virtualization software. Other Mac users might be interested to know that 10.4.11 improves the reliability of mounting external hard drives and a Mac's compatibility with third-party wireless networking equipment, which has been a perennial issue for me and my Linksys router.

Dozens of security updates were delivered along with the 10.4.11 release, some of which could perhaps lead to remote code execution. All of those patches are included as part of the update--the user will not need to download them separately. A separate batch of security patches is also available for Panther users (Mac OS X 10.3) that corrects the issues contained in the Tiger security updates that are also relevant to Panther users.

Another point worth noting is that Safari 3 is now officially out of beta for Mac users, and it's included along with the rest of the update. Those using Safari 3 on Windows, however, are still in beta, and they need to download a security update released on Wednesday along with the rest of the downloads.

To top it all off, Apple released updates for several applications like iPhoto and some professional tools like Final Cut Pro. The entire list of downloads made available Wednesday can be found here, but Software Update should prompt you to download the ones that are relevant to your system.

There are two choices for the update: the user can download just the 10.4.11 update, if he is current with the other incremental releases, or you can download a combo update if you're still running 10.4.9 or earlier versions of Tiger. The standalone update for Intel Macs is 128MBs, while the combo update is 321.5MBs. The PowerPC versions are about half that size.

The first update to Leopard, Mac OS X 10.5.1, should be out soon if Apple follows the same plan it did after it released Tiger in April 2005.

This article was originally a blog post on News.com.