Appletell

According to a Mac Rumors report, Mac OS 10.5.3 could be very near.  On Friday, the update was seeded to developers.  Starting in february with 10.5.3 (9d10), Apple has slowly been seeding more and more updates to developers, this time with probably the final version (9d19).  No intended date of release has been announced, as it can take developers more then a month sometimes to completely work through a new update.

According to Arnold Kim of Mac Rumors, the update includes “31 bug fixes for the growing list of issues addressed in the upcoming release.  Features that are specifically targeted for focused testing AirPort, Back to my Mac, Spaces, Time Machine, and many others”.  Maybe, just maybe, this will fix the growing number of issues with Time Machine wireless backups. 

Apple today rolled out a Time Machine and Airport combo update. It’s fixes some stuff, blah blah blah. But as soon as I saw “Firmware Updates,” I had a gut feeling that Apple had restored a long lost feature: backing up to Hard Drives attached to the Airport Extreme Base Station.

It turns out my gut feeling might have been right. TUAW is reporting that reader Peder was pleasantly astonished to find that “after downloading the latest Airport-update I checked for updates for my AirPort Extreme. After upgrading to version 7.3.1, Time Machine recognized the attached USB-drive.”

This means that those of you who rushed out to buy an external drive for wireless backups only to get shortchanged when Apple pulled the feature can now use that drive.

Please sound off in the comments with your results. Here’s hoping that this works for everyone!

Read [TUAW]

In an odd move for Apple, they today released the new Airport Express, with 802.11n networking. Usually, Apple releases products on a Tuesday, and it seems that they may have decided to release the product early due to Saturday’s leak.

The new Airport Express units are no different from previous iterations other than the new 802.11n wireless networking capabilities. It also remains with one 10/100 ethernet port, which is slower and older technology compared to the gigabit ethernet offered on all Macs and all other Airport products.

The Airport Express is priced at $99.

See the Airport Express product page at [Apple.com]

Visitors of the Airport Express Page on Switzerland’s online Apple Store may notice that they are greeted with a description of the Airport Express that clearly identifies it as a new model, as reported by MacGeneration.

“Connect to the Internet, print, and share music from iTunes with any room in the house. Everything without wires. Now with 802.11n as standard,” the description (which has now been removed) read, translated from its original French.

Apple promises as much as five times the speed as the earlier 802.11g standard with the new Airport Express, which is used by the current model for sale from Apple. The price, core USB printing, and disk sharing features also appear to be the same as the older model.

Apple is not known to make mistakes on any of its online stores, and while this possible leak is potentially real, it can also be some sort of joke or error on Apple’s part. Apple has now removed most of the “leaked” information, meaning that they might not have meant to display it in the first place.

The (accidental?) slip has not appeared on any of Apple’s other international online stores but would signal the likely change of the Airport Express hardware, which has remained the same since it was introduced by Apple in June 2004.

The latest item to throw Airport Security for a loop? Apple’s latest, thinnest, sleekest, sexiest notebook: the MacBook Air.

At a security checkpoint, blogger Michael Nygard was held up because they had detected something suspicious in his bag. Security staff gathered around, as they wondered how it could possibly have no optical drive and so few ports.

“I’m standing, watching my laptop on the table, listening to security clucking just behind me. ‘There’s no drive,’ one says. ‘And no ports on the back. It has a couple of lines where the drive should be.’”

It took a younger TSA official to explain the MacBook Air to all of the others before Nygard was let through, only to have to rebook, as his flight had just left.

The TSA defended themselves on their blog, saying that they were just doing as they were trained, though you’d think that to be qualified to inspect stuff, you would have to have knowledge about the stuff you are inspecting.

At least this wasn’t as bad as the befuddled Danish police officers who last month were confused by a first generation candy colored iMac, wondering where the actual computer was.

Via [MacNN]

The Airport Express page on the Swiss Apple Store Online has been preemptively updated to show that the Airport Express has been updated with 802.11n wireless capabilities. As of now, all products in the Mac and Airport lines except for the Airport Express are wireless N compatible.

The 802.11n wireless networking protocol allows for more stable, secure and faster internet. 802.11n provides a greater range and speed of up to more than four times faster than 802.11g, it’s predecessor. It is currently available in Airport Extreme and Time Capsule, and has taken it’s good old time in getting to the Airport Express. Most likely, we will see this update on Tuesday.

Via [MacRumors]

A new update has just been released from Apple. AirPort Base Station Update 2008-001 was released midday Tuesday and as of this time is not available on Apple’s website.

According to Apple, the update “includes general fixes and compatibility updates for the following applications: AirPort Utility, AirPort Disk Utility, [and] AirPort Base Station Agent.”

With luck, this will fix the Airport issues many have been having with Leopard, but it does not appear to be the update hinted at by an Apple representative yesterday.

Download for Windows, Leopard, or Tiger.

As someone who works from a home office I often am looking for a change in scenery and find myself up at the local Starbucks, that way I can get a great cup of coffee and get some work done at the same time. Using the T-Mobile HotSpot service I am easily able to connect and get to work, except with the HotSpot connection my internet traffic has always been unsecured and therefor open for snooping. It turns out that T-Mobile offers a Connection Manager software for Windows but nothing for Mac.

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