hoakley Macs, Technology

So what was all OS X 10.11.3 about? The real list of updates

Apple’s official listing of bug and security fixes included in the El Capitan 10.11.3 update is decidedly unimpressive for more than 600 MB of payload.

So here is a more complete list of what it actually updated:

  • App Store.app
  • Contacts.app and Address Book Plugins
  • FaceTime.app
  • Mail.app – MailWebPlugIn and more
  • Messages.app
  • Notes.app
  • Photos.app – including Automator library
  • Preview.app
  • QuickTime Player.app and the QuickTime AppleIntermediate Codec
  • Safari.app – updated to version 9.0.3 with a security fix and more in WebKit too
  • Audio MIDI Setup.app
  • Bluetooth File Exchange.app
  • Disk Utility.app
  • Keychain Access.app
  • iBooks.app – substantial updates
  • various library updates
  • iLifeMediaBrowser – substantial updates
  • various plugins, including AirPlay and iSight audio support
  • authentication and notification support, various
  • Automator libraries, various
  • Feedback Assistant.app
  • RAID Utility.app and AppleRAID
  • System Image Utility.app
  • Bluetooth Setup and more
  • Certificate Assistant.app
  • various Core Services
  • Finder.app
  • several Menu Extras
  • Spotlight.app and several of its importers
  • Time Machine’s daemon and tools
  • iCloud Photo Library support
  • several graphics card drivers
  • many other drivers and Kernel Extensions (KEXTs)
  • battery and power management
  • Thunderbolt support
  • USB support
  • CoreStorage
  • networking libraries
  • Quarantine and Sandbox security
  • SMB and NTFS file system support
  • many key frameworks used by many apps
  • Python 2.7 support
  • Ruby 2.0.0 support
  • Bluetooth Preference Pane
  • Notifications Preference Pane
  • QuickLook
  • System Profiler
  • many command shell tools, including ping, emacs 22.1, compilers etc., git, hdiutil, mdutil, trimforce
  • MiniTerm.app
  • ApplicationFirewall.

Certain Mac models will also have undergone firmware update as part of this process.

These appear to fall into two main groups: bug fixes for existing features in OS X, and bug fixes which have been causing problems with third-party apps. The latter should, hopefully, address many of the remaining issues that users have been experiencing with third-party software and hardware.

It is baffling as to why Apple’s official listing is so brief and unhelpful.