TidBITS Watchlist: Notable Software Updates for 10 June 2013

LaunchBar 5.5 — Objective Development has released LaunchBar 5.5, which brings a new snippets feature as well as tight integration with Automator workflows to the keyboard-based launcher. An addition to the standard text expansion utility, LaunchBar’s snippets enable you to include clipboard contents (including multiple items from your clipboard history), and they’re compatible with LaunchBar’s Instant Send feature. Snippets can be found by typing a few letters included in the name (rather than requiring a specific keyboard shortcut). The Objective Development blog has a
good introductory overview of this new feature.

LaunchBar 5.5 also now enables you to run Automator workflows, including the capability to pass text or file arguments and then return results back to LaunchBar, and it adds sharing of workflows via import and export. The update improves Calendar event creation, Contacts support (including indexing of social networking profiles), iCloud document indexing, detection of Google Chrome bookmarks, and iTunes support (with a playback fix and a new feature that detects tracks with the same name from different albums or artists). Other changes include an upgrade to 64-bit compatibility, support for spoken feedback via VoiceOver, and improved support of third-party email clients (including Mailplane 3). ($35 new with a 20-percent discount for TidBITS members, free update, 2.5 MB, release notes)

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Aperture 3.4.5 — Apple has released Aperture 3.4.5, a minor update to its professional photo management application that nonetheless corrects a persnickety issue that caused Aperture to crash (or, as Apple phrases it, “quit unexpectedly”) when deleting files from a camera or memory card after an import. A related fix also correctly ejects memory cards after using the Delete Items option after importing photos, and the update also includes other unspecified stability improvements. ($79.99 new at the Mac App Store, free update, 550 MB, release notes)

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iTunes 11.0.4 — Just a few short weeks since its last update (see “iTunes 11.0.3 Updated with Redesigned MiniPlayer,” 16 May 2013), Apple has released iTunes 11.0.4 with fixes for two small but highly frustrating bugs. The update puts paid to the repetitive requests for your iTunes password that bedeviled many, and fixes a bug that caused iTunes to crash when switching between wired and wireless syncing. It’s available as a direct download from Apple’s iTunes Web page (188 MB), via Software Update on systems prior to OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion (194.1 MB), or via the
Mac App Store on Mountain Lion (194 MB).

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BBEdit 10.5.4 — Bare Bones Software has released BBEdit 10.5.4, another update that is focused on fixes for previously reported issues. As usual, the release notes are some of the best-written (and surprisingly colorful) in the Mac software landscape, such as these extremely specific examples:

Made a change to prevent the annoying system alert when trying to save a text document that doesn’t use one of the state-approved filename extensions.

Fixed bug in which page-guide-colored turds would appear in the scrollbar when changing the selection in windows that were narrower than the page guide width by less than the width of the sidebar.

Other highlights amongst the more than 50 listed changes include added support for using a mouse scroll wheel to make or drag text selections; improvements to the Wrap Around indicator and Clippings menu title art for Retina displays; a fix for the Undo state in Remove Line Breaks that led to lost content; and resolution to a problem with certain operations that prevented text from being placed in the Clipboard if done immediately after rebooting. The update also fixes several crashes, such as when comparing two large files with insufficient memory, having a file name change, using Move to Trash in a project list with multiple selected items, and when closing text documents while the Live Search box was visible.

While many of the changes are mirrored in the concurrent release of TextWrangler 4.5.2 (Bare Bones Software’s free text editor), several improvements are available only in BBEdit. The Counterparts menu is fixed to prevent the display of jumbo previews from Photoshop, scaling down the previews to a more appropriate size of 16 pixels. BBEdit 10.5.4 also fixes an issue in which using the $CWD Perl command would cause long stalls, along with an internal exception when encountering a link with no file name while checking links in a document or folder. ($49.99 new from Bare Bones or the Mac App Store, free update, 12.6 MB, release notes)

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TextWrangler 4.5.2 — In addition to the BBEdit 10.5.4 maintenance release, Bare Bones Software has updated TextWrangler to version 4.5.2 with many of the same fixes and improvements. Highlights amongst the more than 40 listed changes include Retina support for the Wrap Around indicator and Clippings menu title art; a fix for the Undo state in Remove Line Breaks that led to lost content; and resolution to a problem with certain operations that prevented text from being placed in the Clipboard if done immediately after rebooting. The update also fixes several
crashes, such as when comparing two large files with insufficient memory, having a file name change, and after entering a bookmark without a server name and then trying to save it. (Free from Bare Bones Software and the Mac App Store, 9.6 MB, release notes)

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Security Update 2013-002 for Snow Leopard and Lion — Apple has released Security Update 2013-002 for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and 10.7 Lion, with each operating system getting two versions: Snow Leopard (329.85 MB) and Snow Leopard Server (404.83 MB); and Lion (57.69 MB) and Lion Server (105.61 MB). Several of the security changes are the same as those added to the just-released update to Mountain Lion (see “OS X 10.8.4 Mountain
Lion Finally Fixes Messages,” 5 June 2013), which shares its security overview page with the 2013-002 security updates. (Be sure to look at the “Available for” line under each of the changes to see if it pertains to your system.) Across all the big cats, the security updates close vulnerabilities related to OpenSSL and QuickTime, while Snow Leopard gets targeted fixes for vulnerabilities in Directory Service and Ruby on Rails. (Free)

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