OS X 10.6.5. Bug fixes and improvements.

Yesterday Apple released Mac OS X 10.6.5 update. Now that its installed on two of my Macs I'm happy to report my findings. So far only a couple of things but the list will be updated in days to come.

• Problem with VoiceOver affecting behaviour of the mouse pointer appears to have been rectified.

Before, when using both VO and Zoom together with VO reading text under mouse and Zoom alinement mode set to "Continuously with pointer" the experience of browsing sites and any webkit related stuff was terrible. When encountering some content VO would make the mouse pointer jump, resulting in jerky and difficult to control behaviour of the pointer/zoom window.

Initially submitted by me back in September 2009, when 10.6 came out it took Apple over a year to fix this issue. Falls into category of things that worked right to begin with, then were broken with updates and are now fixed. As does the next bug fix.


• The infamous VoiceOver Safari crash is now also fixed. At least the problem does not occur when browsing apple.com or using the Google Search page. This one came as no surprise since the Webkit nightly built partially addressed the problem.
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• Last but not least VoiceOver now does what it did in version 10.4. When in Mail it automatically reads email messages if the message body is in focus.

To sum it up I'm glad to see all of this stuff fixed. Just wish it wasn't broken to begin with. I mean they got it right the first time. Then broke it and took forever to fix.


Improvements.

• VoiceOver automatically interacting with HTML content. For me its auto-interaction with HTML always worked but intermittently. With no rime nor reason. I'm still observing the same behavior. Others report differently. I guess only confirms that no two installs of OS work quite the same way. Given all of the settings and options its no surprise.

• Also being told that VoiceOver now finds and auto-interacts with form controls on some pages. Just like with above case I cannot personally confirm. Its as spotty as it was for me. My unique Macs I guess.

• What I am noticing instead is that VoiceOver auto-interacts with form fields without having to "VO+Space" to confirm interaction. This I'm noticing quite a bit.

• Overall VoiceOver seems more responsive. Noticed it immediately after installing/restarting and opening Safari. It does seem snappier, cleaner and more reliable. Although not excluding the novelty of having freshly released OS. May have a better idea when that wears off.

That's it for now. Will keep updating the blog.