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Finder and Spotlight changes include: improved responsiveness during Spotlight searches in the Finder; preservation of Spotlight comments entered in the Finder during iDisk syncing; items copied into a Drop Box have permissions set correctly; and the Spotlight image indexer now uses the 'Software' TIFF property to support graphics rendering and image editing applications that use this property.

Safari now passes the Acid2 test for rendering standards compliance and has improved webcam compatibility and improved compatibility with OpenGL-accelerated Shockwave 3D content.

The update also fixes several problems with SMB networking - addressing an issue in which an SMB volume might not mount again after it has been unmounted and addressing some issues in which the Finder might not be able to connect to an SMB volume - and resolves an issue in which Internet Connect wouldn't connect to a dial-up ISP if the account password contained a double-quote (") character.

Syncing changes mean that you no longer need to store Address Book contact URLs in the Notes field when syncing with .Mac and ensures that Mac sync error alerts now provide a better description of the issue. It also enables Address Book contacts that are organised in subgroups to be synced to an iPod using iTunes.

There is also a lengthy list of changes to the Mail email software. Mail will no longer prompt you to download items attached to an IMAP email message more than once. Smart Mailboxes that use 'Entire Message Contains' and another criteria with the 'any' qualifier now work as expected and the number of messages in a Smart Mailbox are now displayed in the title bar. Smart Groups of addresses can now be dragged from Address Book to a message's

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'To:', 'Cc:' or 'Bcc:'field while pressing Tab while composing a Mail message now inserts a tab character, instead of four spaces.

The update reduces the amount of blank lines Mail might insert into a message when forwarding or replying to it and ensures that email addresses in the 'To:', 'Cc:', 'Bcc:' fields, as well as the Accounts pop-up menu, no longer appear in red if the address is in a different letter case than what is entered in the 'Mark addresses not in the domain' field; for example, 'Mac@MAC.Com' will no longer be marked in red if the 'Mark addresses not in the domain' field contains 'mac.com.'

Accounts created in Mail after installing this update will avoid an issue in which .Mac mail could not be sent if the Internet Service Provider blocks port 25. Searches of 'All Mailboxes' can now optionally include items from Junk and Trash. The update also addresses an issue in which some Mail rules could be lost or duplicated after a .Mac sync - see Some Mail rules may be disabled after syncing with .Mac for information on preserving synced rules - and resolves an issue in which meeting requests sent from Microsoft Outlook to an Exchange account in Mail might not appear.

The updater also includes fixes for iChat, iCal and Preview as well as numerous other changes. For full details see the release notes.

Apple has also introduced a live verification feature in Disk Utility that lets you verify your Mac's startup disk or volume without requiring that you to start up from another volume. For more information on this see Using Disk Utility in Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later to verify or repair disks.

OS X 10.4.3 is available via Software Update or from www.apple.com/support/downloads/ and requires 10.4.2. A Combo Update is available for earlier versions of Tiger. An OS X Server update has also been released.