Apple Releases Mac OS X 10.4.8

Apple released Mac OS X 10.4.8 a few days ago, for both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs.

Some of the fixes/changes that may benefit Mac users interested in virtualization/emulation:
– Improves Apple File Sharing client performance by changing the default AFP WAN quantum size.. More…
– Windows File Sharing now generates only one process, avoiding an issue that could cause a Mac OS X computer to become unresponsive if it won a master browser election.
– Improves the accuracy of Rosetta numerics and addresses Altivec translation issues on Intel-based Macs.
– Adds support on Intel-based Macs for multiple cores to LAPACK and BLAS routines in the Accelerate framework; the maximum number of threads used by Accelerate BLAS routines is now limited by the environment variable VECLIB_MAXIMUM_THREADS; addresses an issue with some complex BLAS routines in the Accelerate framework that were encountering an illegal instruction.

Some virtualization software uses Windows File Sharing/Apple File Sharing to transfer data back and forth between the virtual environment and Mac OS X, and this is a welcome fix. I played around with Parallels after having upgraded to Mac OS X 10.4.8, but I had also upgraded to Parallels Build 1922 as well and while things felt faster, I did not have a chance to do before and after comparisons, to see where any improvements were made.