I had all of the difficulties you mention at the end of the article. Mostly had to do with anything that does heavy network usage.
The only solution that worked for me was to download Maintenance.app from titanium software (titanium.free.fr) and run *all* of the steps, then reboot.
Then remove my user caches (~/Library/Caches/*) and my Mail caching folder (~/Library/Mail), which Mail would recreate when I restarted it.
After that lot, I had no more trouble. I suspect there was some inconsistency between versions of cached data somewhere.
Anyway, the above steps have, thus far, always sorted out such issues...thus far.
Guess I was one of the lucky ones, as I upgraded with no issues (yet). Looks like quite the cock-up for Apple though. I guess they're focussing too much on how to pry more money out of iPhone/Touch customers, rather than on how to make sure things work right. Maybe they should sell the Mac computer unit to Psystar?
Ah, so *that's* the cause! I took the combo update down to the iMac in the office, and it's been making wee clicks, cracks and pops on reboot ever since.
Ah well, good job I only use it to run a full screen virtualbox session of XP to run my VMware Infrastructure client, eh?
Fullscreen XP on a big shiny iMac seems to wind up the Mac fans a bit :-P
I wonder if the update tries to detect !mac* and it produces many false positives resulting in the failure. It is getting to the point where the fix for Vista is OS X and the fix for OS X is... Linux!? That will certainly be true for those with the old PPC machines when Apple finally cuts that limb off the tree.
Yep, my updated macbook wakes from sleep then takes 1-4 minutes to reconnect to my wifi.
So glad "it just works" 10.5.6 is certainly becoming "a bag of hurt", I'm certainly starting to "think different" about macs now that I've seen so my many bugs in so many updates and in new products.
Everyone likes trashing Apple about problems with updates. I would like to bet that the percentage of users with problems is very small. We have 4 Macs in the house, 3 have upgraded with no problems, a early 2008 MacBook Pro, 2007 MacBook and 2006 iMac 20. The souped up G4 Cube is being updated now. I'm very careful when I upgrade.
I back up first, repair disk permissions before and after the update, and I never have the problems others report.
Would you rather have a few minor problems with an upgrade or have your data stolen using IE7?
After reading these stories I was worried about the update however my sailed through perfectly. No problems at all. Maybe it's a problem downloading across wireless (mine's tethered and used as a desktop) or third party software interfering?
Really what kind of problems, cause I was able to successfully update from 10.5.5 to 10.5.6 without a hitch. I downloaded, well Software Update downloaded the 190MB version of the udpate, the 360MB is always an option for those that have issues. You can also attempt to re-apply 10.5.5 and try 10.5.6 and see if that works.
I don't think I'll purchase Apple products again after 2007, my next purchase if I can find one is the older Macbooks late 2007 ones a 15inch. Anything newer then that seems to have some issues. My Mac right now is a 24inch white Late 2006 iMac and I love it it's awsome and I've had no issues whats so ever. It was made back in the day when Apple had good QA, it's not one with the screen problems either I checked the serials on it.
The update broke my OSX Server installation. Our group calendar and wiki stopped working after the update was installed. Luckily, Time Machine does work properly (if a little slowly) and after a full system restore overnight we're back to 10.5.5 and it's working again.
I have updated 220+ now of various models and no problems noticed. I'll look out for the audio pops. I haven't noticed it on the ones I use, but I don't use all of them myself!
Me and few of my friends installed the update without any problems. We all have pretty new MBP's. I guess for most users the update works just fine. As usual Reg makes big news about nothing. Nothing to see here move along.
After I updated a few apps were behaving badly, specifically Mail which would crash if you viewed a mail with an attachment or tried to send one with an attachment.
After a bit of digging, i accidently stumbled on the problem.
About a month ago I purchased a new MBP 17" and had copied the contents of my old machine to a Subfolder on the new one and then Started moving apps, prefs, data into the relevant locations manually. Now, i know i could use Migration Assistant but i'm old-skool and like to use the opportunity to remove things i dont use etc.
I then keep this Old-Drive folder for a few months in case there is a pref/framework file i need that i didnt copy.
Turns out that the 10.5.6 Update upgraded all the Apps in the Applications folder of the OldDrive instead of my main folder :
ie : all os x apps in /OldDrive/Aplications for updated instead of /Applications
So the version of mail i was using after the update was for 10.5.5 hence the crash.
Removed the rogue Apps folder, re-applied the updated and bingo... perfect machine again..
"Would you rather have a few minor problems with an upgrade or have your data stolen using IE7?"
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Last I recall Safari and Firefox were vulnerable to the same stuff. Not to mention Apple not updating Safari when there are big holes. Oh right your a Mactard so your holes are already big enough from St. Jobs. I have nothing against Macs or PCs and will be the first to say that EVERY big update has issues Windows, Mac or *nix. On a limited number of systems. Under certain conditions. So keep that in mind chuckles.
/anon to prevent rabid Mactards from hunting me down and beating me to death with their jesusPhones
Remember all the coverage that OpenSSH got a few months ago because an update caused it to become...well. wide open. And also the coverage that Vista SP1 and XP SP3 broke MS's retail sale software. No Mr. card carrying member of the Steve Jobs Army, we are not singling you out. Now please go back to the coffee shop and work on your screenplay.
@Steven, do you realise that with BootCamp you can run XP natively on Mac hardware, no OS X underneath? Should be a better solution than VMWare on XP on VirtualBox on OS X, surely?
@AC, you state it with the unnecessary antagonism of a troll, but I think I agree with your key point that it's ridiculous to completely rescore the various software providers from scratch each time a new flaw comes out. All of the browsers have had some major security flaws.
Anyway, this is a MacBook Pro from 2006 that has never had a fresh reinstall of any OS component
(ie, I applied all the 10.4 updates as they came, upgraded to 10.5 shortly after it came out, have applied all the updates as they came since then). It has still never had a problem — so I can at least rule out any theory that the new delta update necessarily breaks the OS. I seem to have nothing substantial in /Library/Updates (an Index.plist, no more) and ~/Library/Updates does not exist.
No Mac Mini ppc or MBP intel issues here. Both updated fine.
Anonymous Coward
I don't personally know anyone who fell foul of this.. #
Posted Sunday 21st December 2008 19:09 GMT
..and managed a three hour set with traktor pro (no mean feat getting traktor to behave, but that's another story) without it missing a beat, on my Macbook pro. Networking has been fine (grabbed a couple of tracks in over wireless while playing, naughty me) and it was slick I'd hope.
I do wonder what special combo source of hardware and software triggers it.. knowing this would probably be a good clue as to what apple fouled up.
Download kept failing at about 45 MB on my eMac, but Software Update managed to figure out it was an incomplete download, and kept telling me to try back later. Later that evening, went without problem.
Wonder how many people take Apple's advice and repair the Disk Permissions before downloading an update, especially one as big as this? 25 machines from G4 Tower and PowerBook to latest Mac Pro's and MacBook Pro's updated without a single hitch.
Not doubting the word of those who report problems, but.. I have updated two machines here (unibody MBP, late 2007 iMac 24") and had no problems whatsoever. Maybe those of you with problems have third-party extensions loaded? Those often seem to cause hurt when updating.
Oh, and I know I'm expected to say something like "it feels snappier!!" but.. no difference whatsoever. Still has the annoying glitch on both machines whereby after resuming from sleep it will fail to see my WEP* network for about 60 seconds (sees the neighbours' open/WPA2 ones, however).
*yeah, I know - WEP bad. I have an old device here that doesn't "do" anything more recent.
What happens on my mac is that the signal strength (you can monitor that kinda by keeping 'option' pressed, then clicking on airport icon in task bar..) goes up and down, up and down... Only after a while (switching on and off the airport card) the connection is stable enough for normal operations.
As Chris Iverson says, stuff like this makes news. Its good(?) to see that not just us PC types (for our sins) are immune to corrupt file downloads. SP3 update broke, I just followed a link on this very site which fixed the problem. It appeears that the old fashioned view of stuff "just working" is now invalid.
Maybe El Reg should provide tech support and bill Messrs Jobs & Gates.
I had a G4 Powerbook for 6 years with very few problems. Of course it did come with factory installed RAM with cellophane under some of the pin so I had to fix it and reinstall the corrupt OS.
I was a workhorse and I loved it.
I recently bought a MBP 2.5/250/4g and it came with a whole slew of problems, crooked keys, totally shitty Airport problems, grinding noise from the opti drive, Safari blows up continually. I really hate this machine and it gets worse with every update. I didn't even install a thing and Apple wouldn't give me a new machine. These are premium priced machines and I would expect a flawless unit out of the box or a replacement - not a repair. This shit is made in China for Christs' sake!
Although there are some obvious problems, I don't see this affected that many people. No one I know, none of the Macs at work, nor mine at home are having any issues. This is a case of the tail wagging the dog. Certainly this would be nice if it didn't happen, but the problems are definitely not as widespread as the article leads you to believe.
Having seen their anti-Apple bias I simply apply this formula to most Apple stories the Reg decides to run:
RegAppleArticle * -1 = TRUTH
or in programming . . .
!RegAppleArticle
Anonymous Coward
updates should work the first time, Apple needs to release update again... #
Posted Monday 22nd December 2008 19:32 GMT
Hi, everyone knows that the 'lather, rinse and repeat was a marketing plot to sell twice as much shampoo, it worked for awhile and probably still does... Apple fix your update, should work on any computer first time.
As a happy user of Apple Laptops for quite some time I can only conclude that nobody bothered to test the "delta update" but rather relied on it being equivalent to the full update. Very sloppy. Apple should be critiqued heavily for this. Perhaps it will improve the next update. Responses from support stating that it was alright for the permissions database not to have been updated and causing confusing messages when the disk utility was run were pretty lame as well.
Experienced the upgrade problem and assumed it was a virus and simply installed a new system and transferred all my doc's and it worked perfectly. After upgrading I dumped the old system. In any case, getting rid of the old system is a good idea as a catch all.
"It is getting to the point where the fix for Vista is OS X and the fix for OS X is... Linux!? That will certainly be true for those with the old PPC machines when Apple finally cuts that limb off the tree."
They've ALREADY cut off below 866mhz G4s, and you're guess at the outcome of this is spot on.
Where I work we mainly sell used Dells, but also Macintoshes.. with Ubuntu 8.04 installed on all of them. After seeing some models for sale here with Ubuntu Linux, a surprising number of Mac fans have been asking me about it (the Mac fans have far more interest than the people buying Dells, although some of them have asked about it too). Ubuntu 8.04 or 8.10 for PowerPC are "unsupported", but work fine once the .iso is tracked down.. the isos are pretty hidden from ubuntu.com, but a direct URL is
They typically do run 10.5 on their boxes that are new enough, but 10.5 has already dropped support for <866mhz G4. (And, apparently if you coax 10.5 to install on a <866, it works but is too slow...) So, on the G4-400s or whatever they have, 10.2/3/4 is losing it's charm, and it's harder to find new software written for 10.2 or whatever, so they decide to try something different.
Apple 13.3" MacBook Pro Notebook (2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Mobile, 2GB DDR3, 160GB HDD, DVD±RW DL, Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard, 13.3" LCD)
Apple MacBook Notebook (2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Mobile, 2GB DDR3, 250GB HDD, DVD±RW DL, Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard, 13.3" LCD)
Apple iMac All-In-One Desktop (3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB DDR2, 1TB, DVD+-RW DL, Mac OS X v10.5 Snow Leopard, 27" LCD)
Apple iMac All-In-One Desktop (3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB DDR2, 500GB, DVD+-RW DL, Mac OS X v10.5 Snow Leopard, 21.5" LCD)
Apple 13.3" MacBook Air Notebook (1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Mobile, 2GB DDR3, 120GB HDD, Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard, 13.3" LCD)
Mac OS 10.5.6 problems? Apple suggests shampoo
Matthew Barker
More than just the combo installer needed #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 00:44 GMT
I always use the combo updater.
I had all of the difficulties you mention at the end of the article. Mostly had to do with anything that does heavy network usage.
The only solution that worked for me was to download Maintenance.app from titanium software (titanium.free.fr) and run *all* of the steps, then reboot.
Then remove my user caches (~/Library/Caches/*) and my Mail caching folder (~/Library/Mail), which Mail would recreate when I restarted it.
After that lot, I had no more trouble. I suspect there was some inconsistency between versions of cached data somewhere.
Anyway, the above steps have, thus far, always sorted out such issues...thus far.
raving angry loony
Lucky #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 00:44 GMT
Guess I was one of the lucky ones, as I upgraded with no issues (yet). Looks like quite the cock-up for Apple though. I guess they're focussing too much on how to pry more money out of iPhone/Touch customers, rather than on how to make sure things work right. Maybe they should sell the Mac computer unit to Psystar?
Anonymous Coward
Heh heh? #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 02:58 GMT
Maybe there will be Windows Mac to make it all easier?
Update of Mac Pro and Mac Book Pro went easy-peasy which sometimes suggest 3rd party software stuff interfering somewhat.
Steven Raith
Audio pops? #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 02:58 GMT
Ah, so *that's* the cause! I took the combo update down to the iMac in the office, and it's been making wee clicks, cracks and pops on reboot ever since.
Ah well, good job I only use it to run a full screen virtualbox session of XP to run my VMware Infrastructure client, eh?
Fullscreen XP on a big shiny iMac seems to wind up the Mac fans a bit :-P
Steven R
Eddy Ito
Sad #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 02:58 GMT
I wonder if the update tries to detect !mac* and it produces many false positives resulting in the failure. It is getting to the point where the fix for Vista is OS X and the fix for OS X is... Linux!? That will certainly be true for those with the old PPC machines when Apple finally cuts that limb off the tree.
*Perhaps that should be <>mac.
David Simpson
Think Different! #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 05:14 GMT
Yep, my updated macbook wakes from sleep then takes 1-4 minutes to reconnect to my wifi.
So glad "it just works" 10.5.6 is certainly becoming "a bag of hurt", I'm certainly starting to "think different" about macs now that I've seen so my many bugs in so many updates and in new products.
I wish i was a PC
Anonymous Coward
OS X 10.5.6 Update problems #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 05:20 GMT
Everyone likes trashing Apple about problems with updates. I would like to bet that the percentage of users with problems is very small. We have 4 Macs in the house, 3 have upgraded with no problems, a early 2008 MacBook Pro, 2007 MacBook and 2006 iMac 20. The souped up G4 Cube is being updated now. I'm very careful when I upgrade.
I back up first, repair disk permissions before and after the update, and I never have the problems others report.
Would you rather have a few minor problems with an upgrade or have your data stolen using IE7?
Mark
No problems here #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 08:13 GMT
After reading these stories I was worried about the update however my sailed through perfectly. No problems at all. Maybe it's a problem downloading across wireless (mine's tethered and used as a desktop) or third party software interfering?
Cristhian Mejia
Update was a Breeze #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 08:37 GMT
Really what kind of problems, cause I was able to successfully update from 10.5.5 to 10.5.6 without a hitch. I downloaded, well Software Update downloaded the 190MB version of the udpate, the 360MB is always an option for those that have issues. You can also attempt to re-apply 10.5.5 and try 10.5.6 and see if that works.
Cristhian Mejia
Older Macs R Better #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 08:37 GMT
I don't think I'll purchase Apple products again after 2007, my next purchase if I can find one is the older Macbooks late 2007 ones a 15inch. Anything newer then that seems to have some issues. My Mac right now is a 24inch white Late 2006 iMac and I love it it's awsome and I've had no issues whats so ever. It was made back in the day when Apple had good QA, it's not one with the screen problems either I checked the serials on it.
Anonymous Coward
Update breaks OSX server #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 11:09 GMT
The update broke my OSX Server installation. Our group calendar and wiki stopped working after the update was installed. Luckily, Time Machine does work properly (if a little slowly) and after a full system restore overnight we're back to 10.5.5 and it's working again.
Anonymous Coward
Exaggerated? #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 11:09 GMT
I have updated 220+ now of various models and no problems noticed. I'll look out for the audio pops. I haven't noticed it on the ones I use, but I don't use all of them myself!
Seamaster
It just worked #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 11:09 GMT
No problems to report here - updated automatically via Software Update and everything is tickety-boo.
In other news, brand new work-issued top-of-the-line HP notebook, bluescreened first time out of the box. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...
Rob McDougall
No worries on 4x macs... #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 11:09 GMT
New MBP + MB, Old MB and the oldest intel iMac... all went swimmingly...
Richard Moseley
8 Macs #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 19:47 GMT
I updated 4 macs on day of release of 10.5.6,
imac 2007 intel
new macbook 2008 intel
white macbook intel
mac mini intel
And not one had any problems updating, i also know another 4 mac's that updated without any problems.
I haven't heard from anyone that had problems with the update.
N
Flawless #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 19:47 GMT
Four Macs all fine, no problems at all
vincent himpe
i always thought #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 19:47 GMT
apple checksum algorithm looked like this
if (sales_price_of_apple_branded_hardware >= 3 * sales_price_of_generic_kit) then checksum = match. else goto pay_us_some_more_money
Henri Koskinen
it works just fine #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 20:48 GMT
Me and few of my friends installed the update without any problems. We all have pretty new MBP's. I guess for most users the update works just fine. As usual Reg makes big news about nothing. Nothing to see here move along.
Mick F
It screwed up big time! #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 20:48 GMT
Problems here on MBP, MB & mini. NOT IMPRESSED. All Intel.
Seanie Ryan
advice on update #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 20:48 GMT
After I updated a few apps were behaving badly, specifically Mail which would crash if you viewed a mail with an attachment or tried to send one with an attachment.
After a bit of digging, i accidently stumbled on the problem.
About a month ago I purchased a new MBP 17" and had copied the contents of my old machine to a Subfolder on the new one and then Started moving apps, prefs, data into the relevant locations manually. Now, i know i could use Migration Assistant but i'm old-skool and like to use the opportunity to remove things i dont use etc.
I then keep this Old-Drive folder for a few months in case there is a pref/framework file i need that i didnt copy.
Turns out that the 10.5.6 Update upgraded all the Apps in the Applications folder of the OldDrive instead of my main folder :
ie : all os x apps in /OldDrive/Aplications for updated instead of /Applications
So the version of mail i was using after the update was for 10.5.5 hence the crash.
Removed the rogue Apps folder, re-applied the updated and bingo... perfect machine again..
Might help soneone someday out there...
Matthew Sinclair
No problems... #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 20:48 GMT
All of the macs in this household are just fine.
You guys must be doing something wrong.
seriously...
T.T;
Chris Tucker
What Problems? #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 20:48 GMT
1.42 Ghz Dual Processor G4 (MDD/FW800)
Software update did it's thing, I restarted the Mac. It booted twice and has been working flawlessly ever since, including the wireless.
Anonymous Coward
@OS X 10.5.6 Update problems #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 20:48 GMT
"Would you rather have a few minor problems with an upgrade or have your data stolen using IE7?"
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Last I recall Safari and Firefox were vulnerable to the same stuff. Not to mention Apple not updating Safari when there are big holes. Oh right your a Mactard so your holes are already big enough from St. Jobs. I have nothing against Macs or PCs and will be the first to say that EVERY big update has issues Windows, Mac or *nix. On a limited number of systems. Under certain conditions. So keep that in mind chuckles.
/anon to prevent rabid Mactards from hunting me down and beating me to death with their jesusPhones
Andy Tyzack
no problems here #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 20:48 GMT
new aluminium macbook 2.0ghz.
no problems here
"reports of problems on mac os x, have been greatly exaggerated"
N
Could it be that... #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 23:20 GMT
The problem appears to be associated with the download being incorrectly reported as complete.
By co-incidence the FLAG fibre optic was severly damaged on Friday causing a lot of internet disruption.
Just a guess.
Chris iverson
Bad updates make news #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 23:20 GMT
Remember all the coverage that OpenSSH got a few months ago because an update caused it to become...well. wide open. And also the coverage that Vista SP1 and XP SP3 broke MS's retail sale software. No Mr. card carrying member of the Steve Jobs Army, we are not singling you out. Now please go back to the coffee shop and work on your screenplay.
Thomas
@Steven Raith, AC directly above #
Posted Saturday 20th December 2008 23:20 GMT
@Steven, do you realise that with BootCamp you can run XP natively on Mac hardware, no OS X underneath? Should be a better solution than VMWare on XP on VirtualBox on OS X, surely?
@AC, you state it with the unnecessary antagonism of a troll, but I think I agree with your key point that it's ridiculous to completely rescore the various software providers from scratch each time a new flaw comes out. All of the browsers have had some major security flaws.
Anyway, this is a MacBook Pro from 2006 that has never had a fresh reinstall of any OS component
(ie, I applied all the 10.4 updates as they came, upgraded to 10.5 shortly after it came out, have applied all the updates as they came since then). It has still never had a problem — so I can at least rule out any theory that the new delta update necessarily breaks the OS. I seem to have nothing substantial in /Library/Updates (an Index.plist, no more) and ~/Library/Updates does not exist.
Patrick
No mini, MBP issues #
Posted Sunday 21st December 2008 10:46 GMT
No Mac Mini ppc or MBP intel issues here. Both updated fine.
Anonymous Coward
I don't personally know anyone who fell foul of this.. #
Posted Sunday 21st December 2008 19:09 GMT
..and managed a three hour set with traktor pro (no mean feat getting traktor to behave, but that's another story) without it missing a beat, on my Macbook pro. Networking has been fine (grabbed a couple of tracks in over wireless while playing, naughty me) and it was slick I'd hope.
I do wonder what special combo source of hardware and software triggers it.. knowing this would probably be a good clue as to what apple fouled up.
Dive Fox
A title is required. #
Posted Monday 22nd December 2008 01:07 GMT
Download kept failing at about 45 MB on my eMac, but Software Update managed to figure out it was an incomplete download, and kept telling me to try back later. Later that evening, went without problem.
Alex
2008 MBP #
Posted Monday 22nd December 2008 11:52 GMT
Wireless has gone back to dropping and scanning ever three minutes, it GETS RIGHT ON MY TITS!
John Blagden
Old habit die hard #
Posted Monday 22nd December 2008 11:52 GMT
Wonder how many people take Apple's advice and repair the Disk Permissions before downloading an update, especially one as big as this? 25 machines from G4 Tower and PowerBook to latest Mac Pro's and MacBook Pro's updated without a single hitch.
twunt
Power PC #
Posted Monday 22nd December 2008 12:03 GMT
PPC G5 - No problems here.
Robbie
RC #
Posted Monday 22nd December 2008 12:03 GMT
Worked fine with regular update on Mac Pro + Mini. Lucky I guess?
Mick F
@No Problems #
Posted Monday 22nd December 2008 13:16 GMT
"You guys must be doing something wrong." what the hell can you do wrong by selecting "Software Update"!!!!???
It is buggy and Apple have admitted it.
David
Again, no problems here #
Posted Monday 22nd December 2008 13:16 GMT
Not doubting the word of those who report problems, but.. I have updated two machines here (unibody MBP, late 2007 iMac 24") and had no problems whatsoever. Maybe those of you with problems have third-party extensions loaded? Those often seem to cause hurt when updating.
Oh, and I know I'm expected to say something like "it feels snappier!!" but.. no difference whatsoever. Still has the annoying glitch on both machines whereby after resuming from sleep it will fail to see my WEP* network for about 60 seconds (sees the neighbours' open/WPA2 ones, however).
*yeah, I know - WEP bad. I have an old device here that doesn't "do" anything more recent.
Roland
iMac 20" 2008 - update went well, but #
Posted Monday 22nd December 2008 16:52 GMT
still having the intermittent wifi connection.
What happens on my mac is that the signal strength (you can monitor that kinda by keeping 'option' pressed, then clicking on airport icon in task bar..) goes up and down, up and down... Only after a while (switching on and off the airport card) the connection is stable enough for normal operations.
John
is the cheque in the post? #
Posted Monday 22nd December 2008 17:17 GMT
As Chris Iverson says, stuff like this makes news. Its good(?) to see that not just us PC types (for our sins) are immune to corrupt file downloads. SP3 update broke, I just followed a link on this very site which fixed the problem. It appeears that the old fashioned view of stuff "just working" is now invalid.
Maybe El Reg should provide tech support and bill Messrs Jobs & Gates.
Shallel
worse and worse #
Posted Monday 22nd December 2008 17:17 GMT
I had a G4 Powerbook for 6 years with very few problems. Of course it did come with factory installed RAM with cellophane under some of the pin so I had to fix it and reinstall the corrupt OS.
I was a workhorse and I loved it.
I recently bought a MBP 2.5/250/4g and it came with a whole slew of problems, crooked keys, totally shitty Airport problems, grinding noise from the opti drive, Safari blows up continually. I really hate this machine and it gets worse with every update. I didn't even install a thing and Apple wouldn't give me a new machine. These are premium priced machines and I would expect a flawless unit out of the box or a replacement - not a repair. This shit is made in China for Christs' sake!
Fuck you Apple! You Suck!
B
What's the real percentage of affected users? #
Posted Monday 22nd December 2008 18:26 GMT
Although there are some obvious problems, I don't see this affected that many people. No one I know, none of the Macs at work, nor mine at home are having any issues. This is a case of the tail wagging the dog. Certainly this would be nice if it didn't happen, but the problems are definitely not as widespread as the article leads you to believe.
Having seen their anti-Apple bias I simply apply this formula to most Apple stories the Reg decides to run:
RegAppleArticle * -1 = TRUTH
or in programming . . .
!RegAppleArticle
Anonymous Coward
updates should work the first time, Apple needs to release update again... #
Posted Monday 22nd December 2008 19:32 GMT
Hi, everyone knows that the 'lather, rinse and repeat was a marketing plot to sell twice as much shampoo, it worked for awhile and probably still does... Apple fix your update, should work on any computer first time.
Anonymous Coward
No Testing #
Posted Wednesday 24th December 2008 10:02 GMT
As a happy user of Apple Laptops for quite some time I can only conclude that nobody bothered to test the "delta update" but rather relied on it being equivalent to the full update. Very sloppy. Apple should be critiqued heavily for this. Perhaps it will improve the next update. Responses from support stating that it was alright for the permissions database not to have been updated and causing confusing messages when the disk utility was run were pretty lame as well.
Edward Maher
Owner #
Posted Friday 26th December 2008 22:03 GMT
Experienced the upgrade problem and assumed it was a virus and simply installed a new system and transferred all my doc's and it worked perfectly. After upgrading I dumped the old system. In any case, getting rid of the old system is a good idea as a catch all.
Henry Wertz
Unsupported machines #
Posted Tuesday 30th December 2008 22:39 GMT
"It is getting to the point where the fix for Vista is OS X and the fix for OS X is... Linux!? That will certainly be true for those with the old PPC machines when Apple finally cuts that limb off the tree."
They've ALREADY cut off below 866mhz G4s, and you're guess at the outcome of this is spot on.
Where I work we mainly sell used Dells, but also Macintoshes.. with Ubuntu 8.04 installed on all of them. After seeing some models for sale here with Ubuntu Linux, a surprising number of Mac fans have been asking me about it (the Mac fans have far more interest than the people buying Dells, although some of them have asked about it too). Ubuntu 8.04 or 8.10 for PowerPC are "unsupported", but work fine once the .iso is tracked down.. the isos are pretty hidden from ubuntu.com, but a direct URL is
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/intrepid/release/ )
They typically do run 10.5 on their boxes that are new enough, but 10.5 has already dropped support for <866mhz G4. (And, apparently if you coax 10.5 to install on a <866, it works but is too slow...) So, on the G4-400s or whatever they have, 10.2/3/4 is losing it's charm, and it's harder to find new software written for 10.2 or whatever, so they decide to try something different.