On Monday, Apple released its Aperture SlideShow Support Update 1.1 patch, a 3.3 megabyte download which addresses an issue affecting the playback of HD video clips used in Aperture 3 slideshows on Mac OS X 10.6.x (Snow Leopard). Audio and video tracks now remain properly synced in video clips that have been trimmed.

The update can be directly downloaded or located and snagged via Mac OS X’s built-in Software Update feature.

The Aperture SlideShow Support Update 1.1 file requires Mac OS X 10.5 and an Intel-based Mac to install and run.

If you’ve tried the fix and have any feedback to offer about it, please let us know.

If you’re still being told that the Mac is on its way out (a la the mantra of the 90′s), a new set of statistics released today show that the market share of Mac OS X in Web use has grown by 29.4% in the last year, while Windows has decreased 3.8%.

According to AppleInsider, web statistics company Quantcast found that Mac OS X represented 10.9% of total Web consumption in North America in January. Despite its losses over a year prior, Windows remains the dominant format with 86.8% of all Web use.

The analytics company noted that Windows share held steady for the last three months, following the introduction of Windows 7. But January repented a decline once again following a strong holiday season during which Apple sold 3.36 million Macs.

Mac OS X share also grew 7% between December and January, and also saw 5.2% quarterly growth. Windows saw a 0.9 percent increase in both monthly and quarterly share.

The report cited that the greatest growth in Web use has been on mobile devices wherein mobile operating systems increased their presence by 123.8% year-over-year in January. Even with that tremendous growth, mobile devices still represent just 1.3% of total Web use.

Quantcast also revealed that Mac OS X 10.5 remains the dominant version of Apple’s operating system. In January, Leopard represented 52.1% of all Mac users.

Adoption of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard remained rapid, with 27.3% of Mac users running Apple’s latest operating system, which was released in August and got off to a strong sales start twice as high as the debut of Leopard and four times better than Tiger.

In January, 17.2% of Mac users were running Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, while 3.4% were on an earlier version.

For Microsoft, Windows XP remains the dominant platform, with 51.8% of users running the operating system. In fact, Quantast found that Windows XP actually gained share in January, due to strong sales of netbooks.

Windows Vista commands 37.4% of PC users, while Windows 7 has been adopted by 10.2%.

On Monday, Skype released version 2.8.0.851 of its popular Voice over Internet Protocol communications program.

The new version, a 43.3 megabyte download, adds the following fixes and features:

- Platform specific: OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Skype Access was not working
- Skype occasionally crashed when the host of a conference call would hang up on one participants during the call.
- Platform specific: OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Users were unable to call phone numbers via their Mac Address Book.
- Platform specific: OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Some animated emoticons were not displayed correctly.
- Skype crashed due to invalid avatars (occurred seldom).
- Users sometimes experienced an “Unable to mount database” error message when launching Skype.
- Skype crashed when a user quit after opening an authorization missed event.
- Platform specific: OS X 10.3 Panther Occasionally Skype crashed right after an account was created.
- Improved notification on how to disable a mood message chat.

Skype 2.8.0.851 is available for free and requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later to install and run.

Mac OS X 10.6.3 will include significant enhancements to QuickTime X while also focusing on printing and Logic performance.

Per AppleInsider, sources close to the story have stated that build 10D538, which arrived roughly two weeks after the company issued build 10D522, included support for OpenGL 3.0 as well as an update to QuickTime X that, when finalized, will improve security and compatibility while simultaneously enhancing overall reliability. The release will also include tweaks that aim to enhance the performance of Apple’s 64-bit Logic pro audio suite. Other planned improvements include better compatibility with third-party printers and OpenGL-grounded applications, those same people say.

In addition to those areas, Apple is reportedly asking developers to focus their evaluation efforts on a few other core system components, such as AirPort, VoiceOver and graphics drivers.

A single issue related to photo albums viewed via the company’s Front Row media center software is said to be plaguing the latest beta.

The 665+ megabyte release is expected to be made public sometime in the next six weeks.

Adium, the open source instant message chat client with support for multiple programs (including AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, Jabber, MSN, Yahoo! Google Talk, Bonjour, etc.) has been updated to version 1.3.9.

The new version, a 21.3 megabyte download, offers the following fixes and changes:

- 1.6 +Version 1.3.9 (01/11/2010).
- Updated libpurple to fix a security issue with custom emoticons.
- Corrected user icons not updating correctly on Snow Leopard.

Adium X is available for free and requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later to run. The program functions as a Universal Binary and runs at native speeds on both PowerPC and Intel-based hardware.

Since installing it, I have to admit that I like Snow Leopard and it has yet to kick my pets or burn my apartment to the very ground.

These are good things.

Even so, per CNET, a large number of MacBook and MacBook Pro owners have noticed a problem with the computer frequently displaying a “Service Battery” warning in the battery system menu. This also seems to be coupled with relatively short battery life, either with the battery discharging rapidly or with the computer going to sleep but still reporting high percentage of charge left in the battery. As of the Mac OS 10.6.2 update, affected users are still experiencing the problem.

This problem appears to be an issue with Snow Leopard’s handling of the battery hardware, where the services that are supposed to detect battery problems are incorrectly reporting the battery status, and subsequently triggering the system to go into a precautionary sleep mode or claiming the battery is draining. This theory is backed up by the fact that affected people who have downgraded back to Leopard either by reinstalling, restoring from backup, or even booting off the 10.5 Leopard DVD have not had the problem occur on the same hardware.

A recent TUAW article suggests this behavior stems from Snow Leopard being fine-tuned to reveal existing battery problems that Leopard was not aware of. While this may be the case for some people, the sheer number of people reporting the problem indicates there may be errors in the software. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to discern those with pre-existing battery problems from those with healthy batteries.

In order to address the issue, the article offers the following tips to help sort things out via the mighty Apple Knowledge Base:

- Calibrating the battery

- Resetting the PRAM

- Resetting the SMC

Strangely, the battery issues have cleared for a few users who have just shut down and restarted their systems on a regular basis. While keeping the power supply plugged in to prevent any issued with the battery, they’ve turned off the machine and rebooted to see the battery being normally recognized. This suggests the problem may be with a setting more than a specific bug, that hopefully can be reset by a full restart. MacBook owners may tend to sleep their systems instead of restarting them, which will keep various settings from being refreshed.

Further supporting the claim of software issues in Snow Leopard is that some users have cleared the problem by booting into 64-bit mode. If you do not have any software that requires a 32-bit kernel and system extensions, try booting into 64-bit mode by restarting and holding down the “6″ and “4″ keys simultaneously. For some the problem has returned when booted back into 32-bit mode, but for others the switch to 64-bit mode has fixed it even when booted into 32-bit mode.

Another suggestion to address this problem is to remove the power management system preferences, which contains parameters that determine how the system will behave when running on either AC power, battery, or a UPS. This file is called “com.apple.PowerManagement.plist” and is located in the /Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/ folder, and can be removed without harming anything. This isn’t a fix, however, and those who have done this have found it only seems to temporarily remove the warning in the battery system menu, and does not address the underlying issue.

Lastly, the issue may lie with the upgrade process itself, where settings for Leopard are not working with Snow Leopard. The temporary successes with removal of the Power Management property list suggests this may be a possibility. As a result, try booting off a clean OS installation of Snow Leopard to test the hardware.

If you’ve seen this issue on your end of have found a fix or workaround of your own, please let us know.

Late Tuesday, Apple released its Lexmark Printer Drivers 2.2 for Mac OS X 10.6 update, a 121 megabyte download that provides the latest drivers for Lexmark owners running Mac OS X 10.6 or later. The company also released its Epson Printer Drivers v2.2 for Mac OS X v10.6.1 update, a 546 megabyte download that also includes scanning software and it’s aimed at users running the 10.6.1 update.

A full list of supported printer models for both Lexmark and Epson.

As always, the updates can be found, snagged and installed via Mac OS X’s Software Update feature.

On Saturday, Microsoft released version 6.2 of their drivers for their IntelliType keyboards and IntelliType mice. The drivers, which can be selected and downloaded here, bring the software up to speed with Mac OS X 10.6.2 (“Snow Leopard”) and offer full 64-bit compatibility with the operating system.

The drivers require Mac OS X 10.4 or later to install and run.

If you’ve tried the new version and have any feedback, let us know what you think and feel free to hurl your two cents in, as Microsoft’s list of changes is fairly vague for the new version.

On Tuesday, virtualization softare maker VMWare released version 3.0.1 of its Fusion software for the Mac.

Similar to other virtualization software packages, VMWare allows users to run alternate operating systems such as Windows and Linux distributions on Intel-based Macs at native speeds. Other features, such as Unity, allow users to run and minimize Windows applications from the Mac OS X Dock.

The new version, which can be found here, offers the following new features and fixes:

Highlighted New and Improved Features:
- Faster 3D performance, with Windows Experience scores 20-80% faster than before on Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
- Reduced time for resuming virtual machines.
- Supports import of standalone VHD disks into VMware virtual machines.
- Supports import of Parallels Desktop 5 virtual machines into VMware virtual machines.
- New 64-bit native networking subsystem to match the 64-bit native engine.

PC Migration Agent and Migration Assistant Improvements:
- Adds support for Windows Server 2008 R2.
- Installer localized into all supported languages.
- Shows progress that VMware Tools are being installed in last step of migrating the PC.
- Does not automatically show the PC Migration Agent application in the resulting virtual machine.
- Adds only one network adapter to imported PC virtual machines.

A full list of changes and fixes can be found here.

Fusion 3.0.1 requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later to install and run and retails for US$79.99.

The first external builds of Mac OS X 10.6.3, the next incremental update to Apple’s Snow Leopard operating system, should be seeded to developers this week. Per AppleInsider, sources close to the story say the forthcoming builds are likely to be released to some developers in the next 48 hours, and carry the expected prefix of 10Dxx. It is not yet known what issues Apple hopes to address with the latest update.

A month ago, Apple released Mac OS X 10.6.2, which corrected a guest account bug that could potentially delete a user’s account data, triggered by logging in and out of a guest account on a Snow Leopard machine. The update also included native support for the Mac maker’s new multi-touch Magic Mouse.

That update was in beta for just over a month, before its release to the public on Nov. 9. A timeframe for the potential Mac OS X 10.6.3 release is not yet known.

Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.