The biggest Mac news so far this week is the arrival of Aperture 3, Apple's professional and prosumer photo management and editing application. It's not really my sort of program (iPhoto does the job for me), so I'll just point you to my news story about Aperture 3 over at iTWire.

But a couple of software updates of slightly broader interest arrived alongside Aperture 3.

All users of iLife 09, iWork 09 and Aperture are recommended to install iLife Support 9.0.4 as it improves the overall stability of the Media Browser and iPhoto slideshows. The update also provides compatibility between Aperture 3 and the Media Browser.

Whether you use iPhoto 09 or Aperture 3, Digital Camera Raw Compatibility Update 3.0 provides RAW compatibility for the Canon sRAW, mRAW and PowerShot S90; the Leica D-LUX 4; and the Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1, DMC-GH1 and DMC-LX3.

Aperture 3 adopters and their friends will also need Aperture SlideShow Support Update 1.0 to avoid a problem playing back Aperture 3 slideshows on Snow Leopard.

Grab these updates via Software Update or Support Downloads.

Turning away from photography, if you're still using Microsoft Office 2004, be sure to download and install the latest update (Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.5.7 Update) to patch a couple of vulnerabilities that could be used to run malicious code hidden inside documents.

Either run Microsoft Autoupdate or download the updater manually from Microsoft's web site.

Office 2008 isn't affected.