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.
Saturday February 7, 2026 9:26 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple today shared an ad that shows how the upgraded Center Stage front camera on the latest iPhones improves the process of taking a group selfie.
"Watch how the new front facing camera on iPhone 17 Pro takes group selfies that automatically expand and rotate as more people come into frame," says Apple. While the ad is focused on the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max, the regular iPhone...
Thursday February 5, 2026 12:22 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple plans to announce the iPhone 17e on Thursday, February 19, according to Macwelt, the German equivalent of Macworld.
The report, citing industry sources, is available in English on Macworld.
Apple announced the iPhone 16e on Wednesday, February 19 last year, so the iPhone 17e would be unveiled exactly one year later if this rumor is accurate. It is quite uncommon for Apple to unveil...
Thursday February 5, 2026 12:54 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple turns 50 this year, and its CEO Tim Cook has promised to celebrate the milestone. The big day falls on April 1, 2026.
"I've been unusually reflective lately about Apple because we have been working on what do we do to mark this moment," Cook told employees today, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. "When you really stop and pause and think about the last 50 years, it makes your heart ...
Friday February 6, 2026 3:06 pm PST by Juli Clover
In the iOS 26.4 update that's coming this spring, Apple will introduce a new version of Siri that's going to overhaul how we interact with the personal assistant and what it's able to do.
The iOS 26.4 version of Siri won't work like ChatGPT or Claude, but it will rely on large language models (LLMs) and has been updated from the ground up.
Upgraded Architecture
The next-generation...
Tuesday February 3, 2026 7:47 am PST by Joe Rossignol
While the iOS 26.3 Release Candidate is now available ahead of a public release, the first iOS 26.4 beta is likely still at least a week away. Following beta testing, iOS 26.4 will likely be released to the general public in March or April.
Below, we have recapped known or rumored iOS 26.3 and iOS 26.4 features so far.
iOS 26.3
iPhone to Android Transfer Tool
iOS 26.3 makes it easier...
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
