Apple Releases First Leopard Patch

Major issues in Finder and Time Machine have been resolved, along with a basket of other annoyances.

Although Apple’s new Mac OS X Leopard has been lauded by fans for features like Time Machine, Stacks and the flashy Cover Flow system when it was released in late October, critics found it hard to overlook the handful of bugs that plagued the system. Apple attempted to remedy the situation on Thursday with its first update to the three-week-old operating system, now version 10.5.1.

Although the full list of updates is quite lengthy, one of the most notable fixes involves Finder. In the version of Leopard that shipped, files could be lost completely while being moved, if the connection to the source material was lost. For instance, if a user wanted to transfer a large file from an external USB drive to an internal drive, but accidentally tripped over the USB cord while it was transferring and unplugged it, the file would be missing from the source drive and only the data that made it to the internal drive would be left. Version 10.5.1 handily fixes this bug.

Time Machine also received a much-need fix. It can now handle drives greater than 512GB as well as the common NTFS file system, which it was completely unable to cope with before. The update also resolves issues with files being restored in the wrong places.

A host of other mini fixes round out the update, included patched security holes, issues with saved passwords in wireless networking, and reliability in various programs.