Of course, only one Mac model offers 802.11ac, a.k.a. gigabit wifi, the 2013 Haswell-powered MacBook Air. Still, early user reports say OS X 10.8.5 Update roughly doubles throughput, which had been throttled by a bug. What else is new in perhaps the last interim Mountain Lion update? Step inside.

• OS X 10.8.5 Update (Combo) (download)
— Fixes an issue that may prevent Mail from displaying messages
— Improves AFP file transfer performance over 802.11ac Wi-Fi
— Resolves an issue that may prevent a screen saver from starting automatically
— Improves Xsan reliability
— Improves reliability when transferring large files over Ethernet
— Improves performance when authenticating to an Open Directory server
— Addresses an issue that prevented a smart card from unlocking preference panes in System Preferences
— Contains the improvements included in MacBook Air (Mid 2013) Software Update 1.0
— Also available as OS X Mountain Lion Update v10.8.5 (Delta)

OS X 10.8.5: Parsing the Pieces

Given that OS X Mavericks is dropping Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) for SMB2, this is perhaps the last functional AFP tweak that Apple will offer — stick a fork in it, this legacy file sharing protocol that traces its roots all the way back to the original 128K Mac and AppleTalk is done.

Of course, AFP will hang around as a legacy protocol to support older Macs running OS X 10.8 and earlier. Again, however, the SMB2 protocol also used by Windows and Linux is the future.

A fix for the Photoshop CS6 flicking issue is one of the improvements OS X 10.8.5 Update shares with the MBA Software Update 1.0.

One of the pieces not a part of OS X 10.8.5 is Safari 6.1, which delivers many of the new features in Safari 7 — i.e. Sidebar, Safari Power Saver, new Top Sites, etc.

Security content is a very important component of this update. Specifically, Apple hits vulnerabilities affecting Apache, Cetificates, Core Animation, Bind and more.

Lastly, is OS X 10.8.5 the last Mountain Lion update? Surely there will be additional security patches, but this realistically could be the final operating system patch.

For example, another one-year Mac operating system wonder, OS X Lion, only received five interim updates — v10.7.5 was the last version released.

What unresolved issues does OS X Mountain Lion have?

Related posts:
— OS X 10.9 Mavericks Won’t Be Late [See the Demo Again]
— New in OS X Mavericks: OpenGL 4.1 Brings Features, Performance
— New in OS X 10.9: OpenGL 4.1, OpenCL 1.2
— http://fairerplatform.com/2013/06/can-my-mac-run-os-x-109-mavericks/
— What’s New in OS X 10.9 Mavericks