One item of interest regarding last week's Mac OS X 10.6.8 update reveals that Apple has enabled TRIM support retroactively for solid state hard drives shipped in Apple-produced configurations. TRIM is a feature that allows solid state drives (SSDs) to automatically handle garbage collection, cleaning up unused blocks of data and preparing them for rewriting, thereby preventing slowdowns that would otherwise occur over time as garbage data accumulates.
Support for TRIM has been included in OS X Lion since its early developer builds, but Apple has apparently decided to push the feature out to Snow Leopard users as well. The new native TRIM support does appear to limited to stock Apple drives, as users who have installed third-party SSDs into their machines have reported that TRIM is not enabled by the update.
Mac OS X 10.6.8 also appears to have brought graphics improvements that have been most apparent to gamers. According to one set of benchmarks, Mac OS X 10.6.8 outperforms Mac OS X 10.6.7 in many measure of graphics performance, sometimes by a significant margin.
User reports in the MacRumors forums and the Steam forums similarly point to significant improvements in graphics performance under real-world conditions. A number of users has actually reported significant declines in graphics performance with Mac OS X 10.6.7, so improvements with the new Mac OS X 10.6.8 are certainly to be welcome.
Update: To clarify Apple's TRIM support, the new MacBook Pros released in February shipped with a special build of Mac OS X 10.6.6 that included TRIM support for Apple SSDs. But that TRIM support had not been extended to all SSD-configurable Macs until the release of Mac OS X 10.6.8 last week.
Update 2: A number of users of pre-"Late 2010" MacBook Air models have reported that Mac OS X 10.6.8 does not enable TRIM on their machines.
Friday January 17, 2025 2:42 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 19 is still around six months away from being announced, but a new leak has allegedly revealed a completely redesigned Camera app.
Based on footage it obtained, YouTube channel Front Page Tech shared a video showing what the new Camera app will apparently look like, with the key change being translucent menus for camera controls. Overall, the design of these menus looks similar to...
Sunday January 19, 2025 6:58 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple on late Saturday removed TikTok from the App Store in the U.S., and it has now explained why it was required to take this action.
Last year, the U.S. passed a law that required Chinese company ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok due to potential national security risks, or else the platform would be banned. That law went into effect today, and companies like Apple and Google...
Thursday January 16, 2025 6:45 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple today adjusted estimated trade-in values for select iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch models in the U.S., according to its website.
Some values increased, while others decreased. The changes were not too significant, with most values rising or dropping by $5 to $50.
We have outlined some examples below:
Device
New Value
Old Value
iPhone 15 Pro Max
Up to $630
U ...
Thursday January 16, 2025 12:39 pm PST by Juli Clover
Apple provided the third beta of iOS 18.3 to developers today, and while the betas have so far been light on new features, the third beta makes some major changes to Notification Summaries and also tweaks a few other features.
Notification Summary Changes
Apple made multiple changes to Notification Summaries in response to complaints about inaccurate summaries of news headlines.
For...
Saturday January 18, 2025 10:28 am PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 19 will not drop support for any iPhone models, according to French website iPhoneSoft.fr.
The report cited a source who said iOS 19 will be compatible with any iPhone that can run iOS 18, which would mean the following models:
iPhone 16
iPhone 16 Plus
iPhone 16 Pro
iPhone 16 Pro Max
iPhone 15
iPhone 15 Plus
iPhone 15 Pro
iPhone 15 Pro Max
iPhone 14
iPhon...
Monday January 20, 2025 9:01 am PST by Joe Rossignol
A new iPhone SE is widely rumored to launch this year, and the device has potentially been confirmed today by known leaker Evan Blass.
In a private social media post, Blass shared an image of what appears to be source code mentioning an iPhone SE (4th Gen), which casts doubt on the alternative "iPhone 16E" name rumored for the device. However, the name in the source code could be a...
Sunday January 19, 2025 8:11 am PST by Joe Rossignol
After a four-year wait, a new AirTag is finally expected to launch in 2025. Below, we recap rumored upgrades for the accessory.
A few months ago, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said Apple was aiming to release the AirTag 2 around the middle of 2025. While he did not offer a more specific timeframe, that means the AirTag 2 could be announced by the end of June.
The original AirTag was announced...
Friday January 17, 2025 3:38 pm PST by Juli Clover
For the last several months, we've been hearing rumors about a redesigned version of the iPhone 17 that Apple might call the iPhone 17 "Air," or something along those lines. It's going to replace the iPhone 17 Plus as Apple's fourth iPhone option, and it will be offered alongside the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max.
We know the iPhone 17 Air is going to be super slim, but...
Apple is not in the business of writing firmware for every storage vendor's devices. Apple has created support for TRIM in the operating system. Get on your device's manufacturer's case for adding support for it in OS X.
Windows 7 supports TRIM on a wide range of SSDs, and there are third party hacks that enable TRIM on any SSD where the firmware supports it (which is almost every drive shipped now). It wouldn't be difficult for Apple to do the same.
What if they are? If you want a file, don't delete it.
No offense, but why would you want to recover a deleted file? I mean you already have the option to recover it from the trash... If you delete it from the trash then you probably don't need it at all (or you should have thought better)
No offense, but you're putting a lot of words into his mouth. He just asked if it made deleted files unrecoverable more quickly. For all we know, he might consider that a GOOD thing. I know I do. :)
Apple is not in the business of writing firmware for every storage vendor's devices. Apple has created support for TRIM in the operating system. Get on your device's manufacturer's case for adding support for it in OS X.
TRIM is a standard ATA feature, similar to SATA 6G. There's no need for Apple to write firmware or drivers for anyone in order to support it. Either a SSD has the capability (which will be announced to the OS if it asks nicely), or it doesn't. In the latter case, it won't work on Windows or with TRIM Enabler either. Apple has just decided not to enable it on other drives for political reasons. There's no technical reason. Windows supports TRIM generally, so could OS X.
Did anyone try the trim enabler application on 10.6.8 with third party SSD?
edit: nevermind, a new version was released by the author (http://www.groths.org/) edit2: just applied the trim enabler and it is working now on 10.6.8
