OS X 10.8.4 is now out and promises to: improve compatibility for connecting to some enterprise Wi-Fi networks and for Microsoft Exchange working with Calendar, resolve an issue where conversation threads in Messages appear non-chronologically, and lets FaceTime calls properly connect to users outside the U.S.

Here’s the full list of what this update addresses:

• Compatibility improvements when connecting to certain enterprise Wi-Fi networks
• Microsoft Exchange compatibility improvements in Calendar
• A fix for an issue that prevented FaceTime calls to non-U.S. phone numbers
• A fix for an issue that may prevent scheduled sleep after using Boot Camp
• Improves VoiceOver compatibility with text in PDF documents
• Includes Safari 6.0.5, which improves stability for some websites with chat features and games
• A fix for an issue that may cause iMessages to display out of order in Messages
• Resolves an issue in which Calendars Birthdays may appear incorrectly in certain time zones
• A fix for an issue that may prevent the desktop background picture from being preserved after restart
• A fix for an issue that may prevent documents from being saved to a server using SMB
• Addresses an issue that may prevent certain files from opening after copied to a volume named “Home”
• A fix for an issue that may prevent changes to files made over NFS from displaying
• Resolves an issue saving files to an Xsan volume from certain applications
• Improves Active Directory log-in performance, especially for cached accounts or when using a .local domain
• Improves OpenDirectory data replication
• Improves 802.1X compatibility with ActiveDirectory networks
• Improves compatibility when using mobile accounts

Apple has said it will unveil the next version of OS X (10.9) next week at WWDC.

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• Apple issued the iOS 6 update yesterday, the same day as a Mountain Lion upgrade, as well as a bunch of new updated third-party apps. What did App Store traffic look like? Sandvine has a rather amazing chart.
• Downloaded iOS 6 and already decided you can’t deal with the change from Google Maps to Apple Maps? 9to5 Mac has helpfully put together a list of apps that will bring back the features you might be missing.
• It took a little over three months, but Microsoft finally updated Microsoft Word for the MacBook Pro with Retina display. (via MacRumors)
• Patent troll alert: Unwired Planet (formerly Openwave Systems) targets Apple and Google with lawsuits claiming each company violates 10 mobile patents each, CNET reports.
• Apple exploring ways to offer a streaming music service sent Pandora’s stock diving last week. Still, Pandora’s user base continues to grow. The New York Times looks at the barriers to entry Apple may face in building such a service.

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The Facebook integration announced in June was not available when the software was initially rolled out in late July. With the new update, your Facebook friends’ contact info will appear in Contacts; you’ll get Facebook alerts right in the desktop Notification Center; you can challenge Facebook friends to GameCenter games; like games on Facebook; share GameCenter scores on Facebook, in addition to Twitter or through the Mail or Messages apps. This is timely since Apple’s newly Facebook-integrated iOS 6 also went live Wednesday.

Wednesday’s update also brings improvements to iMessage and FaceTime. Now messages and FaceTime calls sent to both your email address and your phone number will show up on the desktop version of those clients.

Other updates include:

• Power Nap feature switched on for late-2010 era MacBook Air
• Shared reminder lists
• Add passes to iOS Passbook from Mail or Safari on your desktop
• Dictation can now be made in Cantonese, Mandarin, Spanish, Korean, Canadian English and French, and Italian
• Get Twitter notifications in Notification Center for mentions and @-replies
• Shorter URLs when tweeting from Notification Center

This isn’t an exhaustive list of bug fixes and new features. For that, see Apple’s documentation.

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A valid question to ask in the midst of all of the Java-based security issues that have been taking place in recent months is, “Do you need to install Java on your Mac?”  It is likely that most Mac users do not have Java, as it does not come pre-installed for you with OS X as it once did.  Since OS X Lion arrived a year ago, installing Java on a Mac has been a manual opt-in process.  It is also likely that besides a few web sites and an occasional piece of software you may want to run, you don’t really need Java on your Mac at all.

Mac applications that require Java

There are two very popular games, Minecraft and Runescape, that both require Java in order to run.  The Mac version of the online backup service CrashPlan needs Java, but interestingly the Windows version of the client does not.  Adobe Creative Suite also requires Java to be installed for some of the features to work.  For instance, I was not able to install Illustrator without first installing Java, but I was able to install Photoshop.  OpenOffice and NeoOffice, two alternatives to Microsoft’s Office suite, are two more Mac-based applications that require Java for some of their main features, most notably the OpenOffice database application Base, to function properly.

That’s about it for most of the mainstream desktop applications that are out there.  There are more niche products that require it, like FreeMind and Xmind, two mind mapping tools, Gantt for project management, Vuze for managing torrents, and Screenr for creating screencasts to name a few.  Also, if you work in the world of enterprise Java development, it’s very likely that on the Mac you use, you will have some tool based on the popular Eclipse framework that will require you to have Java installed.  There are also several popular VPN clients for the Mac that enable network access from home, like those from Cisco and Juniper, that are Java-based as well.

How to disable Java on OS X Mountain Lion

If you have already installed Java on your Mac, and you find that you no longer use any programs that require Java, you can of course disable Java entirely.  Located in the Utilities folder is the Java Preferences utility.  This utility requires Java to be installed in order to run.  It could be that you don’t already have Java installed, which you’ll know if you’re prompted to install Java upon opening the utility. Obviously don’t bother installing if that’s the case.  If you do have it installed, once you have the Java Preferences utility up and running, you will see two checkboxes indicating which compatible version of Java should be used.  Simply uncheck both checkboxes to disable Java.  If you try to run an application that requires Java, or access a website that needs Java, you will be prompted to enable Java.

If you have applications that require Java, and all you want to do is disable Java on the internet, you can turn off Java in Safari.  Open Safari’s Security Preferences and uncheck the Enable Java checkbox to turn off Java in Safari.  As an alternative, if you have multiple browsers installed, like Chrome or Firefox, you can elect to pick just one browser to use with Java.  Choose which browser you want to use Java with and only enable Java in that browser’s preferences.

For the most part, the majority of users can get by without ever installing Java on their Macs and never know what they were missing.  And if you do need to have Java installed, there are ways to minimize the risk, and only enable it when you need it.

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Chitika derives its data from sampling “hundreds of millions” of desktop web ad impressions and the operating systems of the computers that access these ads.

Apple unveiled the latest version of OS X on July 24 and only made it available via download from the Mac App Store. It also slapped a $20 price tag on it, $10 cheaper than the previous version of the software, OS X Lion. By comparison, Lion took three months to reach a 14 percent base installation, according to Chitika.

One in 10 is nothing compared to how fast Apple’s mobile software is updated by its users. For example, a month after iOS 5 was released in October last year, it was on approximately one out of every three iPhones and iPads. But iOS updates are free. Desktops have not traditionally seen quick uptake rates like that, and the speed of Mountain Lion’s adoption is unprecedented for Apple desktop software, it’s safe to say. Here’s Chitika’s tracking of the installation rates over this last month:

The spike seen in our previous Mountain Lion study actually continued past the first 48 hours, plateauing at 5.65% on July 29^th, a full four days post release. Mountain Lion users represented an average of 9.61% of all Mac OS X traffic from August 20^th through August 27^th, and the adoption rate has shown no signs of letting up. By August 27^th, Mountain Lion usage constituted 10.3% of all Mac-based desktop impressions seen over the extensive Chitika ad network.

The initial release was well-reviewed, but it wasn’t perfect; Apple released its first major update to Mountain Lion to squash some of the reported bugs last week.

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Here’s a list of all the issues the update address:

It also appears the update may address battery life problems that cropped up for some MacBook owners after installing Mountain Lion.

Mountain Lion went on sale for $19.99 in late July, and is Apple’s first attempt to sell desktop software entirely through the Mac App Store. So far, it’s working well. The company announced that it had sold 3 million copies in the first 4 days. And likely because of the ease of downloading directly from the App Store, it was one of the fastest desktop software uptakes in Apple’s history: after two days it was already on 3.2 percent of Macs.

Users will be prompted to update automatically or you can find the update in the Mac App Store under Updates.

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• The Apple-Samsung patent infringement trial carries on, and no judgment has been issued yet. Still, TIME argues that the larger point Apple was attempting to make by suing Samsung (and others) has already been made.
• Yesterday was the deadline to own Apple stock if you wanted to be eligible for the company’s new $2.65 dividend. Fortune reviews how traders went about procuring that stock to be in the money.
• Ars Technica did some of its own testing, and found evidence that OS X Mountain Lion is resulting in shortened battery life for some Mac owners who’ve installed the recent OS update.
• The latest Apple Store rumor is that Apple is “quietly” price-matching the iPhone 4 to potential buyers who mention they’ve seen a discounted device at Sprint, other carriers and retailers like Best Buy are currently offering. MacRumors has a look at what it says is an employee memo allowing for a $49 price cut in stores.
• Gizmodo has a first-person account of what it’s like to be an extra on the set of Jobs, one of the two Steve Jobs biopic projects currently underway.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Nisha A.

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• Apple’s being forced to reveal this detail to defend its claim that Samsung copied the iPhone and iPad. But the trial is also forcing other Apple secrets to come to light, including customer data Samsung got its hands on during pre-trial discovery, CNET reports.
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• Apple TV might have a new fan in Hulu, but CBS? Not so much. The Wrap reports that CBS still “isn’t sold” on Apple TV’s value as a distributor of its content.
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“Just a year after the incredibly successful introduction of Lion, customers have downloaded Mountain Lion over three million times in just four days, making it our most successful release ever,” Apple SVP of Worldwide Marketing Philip Schiller said in a press release Monday.

There were hints by late last week it had been a very successful software release for Apple already. Chitika Insights released data it had gathered from its ad network showing that Mountain Lion was running on 3.2 percent of all Macs, just 48 hours after the OS became available.

That Apple is calling it the most successful Mac software release ever shows a couple of things. It  means Apple’s decision to forego physical software distribution, either via DVDs or USB drives, was smart: Mac App Store-only availability is driving faster adoption of the software. It also probably helps that Mountain Lion is a little bit cheaper than Lion, which cost $29.99.

But the fact that Mac customers are pouncing on its desktop OS also shows that even with Apple’s iPhone and iPad-centric vision, its traditional PC business is still very hot.

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Chitika’s data, which is culled from its extensive ad network, showed that Lion remained at 14 percent adoption still three months after it was released last summer. As the chart below shows, the most popular Mac OS X version is the version that came before Lion, OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, which is on 45.5 percent of Macs still.

Two possible reasons why the adoption of Mountain Lion is outpacing Lion: Mountain Lion is a bit cheaper than Lion at $19.99 compared to $29.99. But Lion was also considered a largely evolutionary upgrade and, as Om put it, was a confusing cacophony of new features. Mountain Lion, on the other hand, has been positively reviewed as a much better upgrade, and includes some very important pieces to Apple’s overall product vision, including iCloud.

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