back to article The Mac OS 10.5.6 update saga continues

Apple is hoping that its latest support bulletin will calm down some of the uproar over problems caused by its latest Mac OS X upgrade - in this case, the propensity of Apple's email client to unexpectedly quit. As we reported first one week ago and then again last Friday, the Mac OS 10.5.6 update has gone less than swimmingly …

COMMENTS

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  1. Dave

    Plan B...

    Install Thunderbird or some other mail program and use that instead.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

    There is a God.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    but...

    "First run Software Update to see if your copy of Mail is, indeed, up to date - which we're assuming it is, because no Mac user smart enough to read The Reg would be dumb enough to not keep their apps up to date."

    But they bought a Mac. How can you assume any form of intelligence whatsoever?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    Yawn

    Type your comment here — plain text only, no HTML

  5. Mark Dowling
    Thumb Down

    move the plugins in the file system?

    You mean Apple hasn't got an equivalent to Firefox's Add-in manager where you can simply disable them? Weak.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Horns

    In case of failure...

    ... perform the following steps:

    1) Go f*ck yourself

    2) P*ss up a rope

    3) Sh*ve it *p y**r *ss

    4) Have a nice Chr*stm*s

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    For christ sake...

    You lot are a sad bunch of wankers aren't you? Pathetic.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Gates Halo

    How is this possible??!!!??!?!?!?

    I can't believe it.

    A GOD update that went wrong? What? Can't be! What?

    But how? What?

  9. sfsa
    Jobs Horns

    Snow Kitty hopefully will "Just Work"

    I had to spend a hr this morning helping my neighbor get her iMac to "just work" again.

    Looks like the effete RDF iLobotomy hasn't infected Britain or the rest of the world in their reporting.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmm

    Looking through the responses, it's pretty easy to tell who can and who cannot afford a Mac.

  11. Richard
    Unhappy

    Minimize button!

    They broke the minimize button too:

    http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1418381&tstart=-1

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    @ AC 20:48

    Why would I buy a Mac to install Fedora on? I mean I could, but it's somewhat illogical from a practical standpoint...

  13. James

    funny

    How people go into over drive at the mention of Apple in an article.

    For the record mine seems fine so far after the update. Not sure if its an intermittent thing though. Time will tell.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    All dandy here

    Both my Macs upgraded fine without any fuss as normal. Just as my XP boxes upgrade without any fuss.

    Sad to see some people are still so insecure about their choice of OS that they feel the need to act like children in the playground in 1985. My C64 is better than your Amstrad, etc.

    I use both XP and OSX. I even use XP on the OSX desktop via Parallels so I get the best of both worlds on one box at the same time. That hopefully makes both the Microsoft fanboys and the Apple fanboys sick to their stomachs.

    So lets stop the baiting eh, and turn our attention to a group of users who really do deserve our scorn.... Acorn fanboys.

  15. Sleeping Dragon

    Re: Hmm

    Quote: Looking through the responses, it's pretty easy to tell who can and who cannot afford a Mac.

    Really? You must be fscking psychic then. I can easily afford a Mac, several of them in fact; but if I wanted a PC that required what is essentially a reinstall, then I would have purchased a Windows-based PC.

  16. Stephen
    Boffin

    Except the story is wrong

    I updated to 10.5.6 and it hosed my system (though thankfully only my laptop, not the Mac Pro that's my main production system, that would have been very expensive for me in time and thus money). Not a huge deal, I did an Install and Archive, then ran the 10.5.6 Combo update and was back in business in a couple of hours - except for Mail, which would crash on any email with an attachment.

    Mail was standard - NO plug-ins, but the updater was skipping it and it was showing Version 3.0 rather than the correct Version 3.5 (Build 390/30) that it was meant to.

    Apple have now released another update that fixed it, for me at least. Annoying - yes, inconvenient - also yes. I hope they lift their game a fair bit on the next releases.

    BTW - am I the only one who finds the Apple ad about Windows having cryptic error messages deeply ironic? Apple's error messages are hopeless and almost completely useless compared with Windows from XP onwards...

  17. Graham Lockley
    Happy

    Whut ? Where ?

    >So lets stop the baiting eh, and turn our attention to a group of users who really do deserve our scorn.... Acorn fanboys.

    You saw one ? In the wild ?

    Its Global Warming I tell ya, its disrupted their breeding patterns so badly that they are as rare as AmigaFanBois nowadays. At least you can coax the odd AmigaFanBoi out of the bushes by cooing 'Blitter' every once in a while.

  18. Joshua Goodall
    Flame

    Acorn fanboy

    RISC OS 3.5 never had this problem.

    *FX

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Heart

    Blitter...

    Don't forget Alice, Lisa and Paula, the girls of my dreams.

  20. grant warkentin

    My 10.6 update went swimingly

    My 10.6 update went swimmingly.

    Jan 06 Intel iMac.

  21. Dave

    Acorn Fanboys?

    Why pick on them? No one has mentioned OS/2 yet. Mind you, I don't remember whether that even shipped with an email program.

  22. Jeffrey Nonken
    Paris Hilton

    *sigh*

    I've had the dubious pleasure of experiencing platform wars since... oh, about 1974. IBM vs. CDC vs. Burroughs vs. Xerox vs. Univac, and so on. Same wars, different day. Been there, done that, sold the movie rights. Oh, let's not forget cassette vs. 8-track vs. reel-to-reel vs. vinyl. You know what? They're just as stupid and tedious and asinine now as they were then, if not more so.

    My Mac updated with only a couple hiccoughs (odd, my spelling checker wants to change that either to "hiccups" or "Burroughs"...) but I'm not running 3rd party extensions.

    OTOH, last week we (at work) lost about 4 man-days to chasing down and killing viruses on Windows-based PCs. One of them took down the whole network. Too bad our top priority project just sat collecting dust.

    My gaming machine runs XP (or would if the hardware hadn't died... can't blame that on the OS). I have Parallels and Bootcamp (XP again) on this Macbook. I run a FreeBSD server at home and an Ubuntu server at work. Obviously I'm a fanatic.

    You know what? People choose the platform or platforms they use for their own reasons. I've got reasons for running whatever I'm running on each of these machines. They're MY reasons, not YOUR reasons.

    You like Vista? I hate Vista. And if you want to run Vista, I may express my doubts, but I'm not going to condemn you to some nether regions because your priorities don't match mine.

    I won't even condemn your tastes if you prefer skinny blondes.

    I respect the fact that you have neither my preferences, nor my priorities, nor my needs, nor my reasons. You have your own. And somewhere deep down inside I'm naive enough to think that somewhere, somehow, somebody has the courtesy to return the favor.

    Whereas the rest of you can pound sand. I'm tired of your obsessive ego-centrism. All of you, any platform. Bugger off. Get a life.

    Paris, because while she's not to my taste, I won't call her "ugly", because I respect other people's opinions even when I don't agree with them.

  23. Ian Moffatt
    Thumb Up

    What's your problem?

    My iBook, MDD and my Mum's Mini all upgraded flawlessy.

    So there ;-)

    Ian

  24. A. H. O. Thabeth

    @Jeffrey Nonken

    Well said Sir! Well said!

    Abdo

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    @Jeffrey Nonken

    What the hell is the matter with you Jeff? Can't you properly contribute to an o/s flame war? With your lame ass attitude of live-and-don't-kick-in-the-nuts-either, we likely have less conflict and may even miss out on important events like wars.. which means precious little to drive science and technology, no fresh material for Hollywood action movies or, heaven forbid, fewer first person shooters where I can pwn nubs like you!!

  26. M7S

    Fear not - help is at hand in this season of goodwill.

    My new PC came with a copy of Vista ("its the") Business I'm never going to use. Some Mac user can have that if they want. I'l even chuck in some surplus Office and Outlook licences.

    As I've never tried a Mac, and remain open minded as my uncle has swung that way, I'll quite happily swap OS for the experience if there's a copy going.

    Does that make me bi-curious?

  27. Tony Batt
    Flame

    2 intels, 1 ppc & 1 tiBook

    all fine, dandy and virus free thanks

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    @Jeffrey

    Curse you and your common sense approach!

    Are implying that some of the people in theses comments are written with those of minds of twelve year olds.

    Pah you old timer!

    Next your be telling me that the ZX80 is a waste of money and there is no need for a computer at home....curse you I say....Sinclair ROCKS!

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    But....

    I bought my Mac thinking it would Just Work like their ad said, really disappointed now :-(

  30. Kevin Thomas
    Jobs Halo

    Grin...

    Isn't it amazing the number of ACs who've posted in response to this little item...no guessing where their allegiances lie.

    Merry Christmas everyone ;)

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    when on a work computer

    I have to post as AC when I am on a work computer...

  32. Chris iverson
    Flame

    @All dandy here

    I believe that would be the Mac fanbois go nuts when something happens to windows...anything and claim that jobs an Co are angelic and godlike....etc. So for once please spare us this chance to get the bully's back

    Ta,

    Chris

  33. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    @Chris Iverson

    Hear hear!

    I don't hate Macs. I think they are fine for children and the elderly. They are a wonderful "My first PC;” easier to use than Windows, and while not quite bulletproof, close enough for the average Joe. Similar to most cell phones, they have some real disadvantages by operating in the walled garden that they do. Similar to your average cell phone, it costs way too much without some form of contract subsidy, but it'll do what it's designed for, and should be simple enough for normals. (Yes, I am ignoring Mac’s *nix underpinnings, because fiddling about down there isn’t sanctioned, and any changes not sanctioned by Apple tend to get nuked in a future update.)

    Macs fill a niche. Just as Windows systems have that broad application compatibility necessary for the larger portion of the world, but sacrifice usability. Linux/BSD can work with anything, but only if you speak the Elven word for FSCK. The problem is as it always has been: getting the various widgets to cooperate

    What I DO loathe are Mac fanbois. Keep your gor'am religion to yourself. I don't walk around evangelizing my Motophone as the perfect replacement for your lovely new Crackberry, or your ever-so-chic iPhone. Please then, don't evangelize your Mac as the solution to all my problems, especially when most of my most horrible problems involve getting Macs to play nice with others, or getting them to do something not officially sanctioned for use in their walled garden. Each system has its place, and attracts its own certain type of people.

    Anyone who honestly thinks any widget is the right widget for all situations deserves a right good kicking, and Mac users just happen to be the most visible, loudest group. So on behalf of everyone whose job it is to make all these various widgets and bobbins talk to each other and play nice: please let us poke fun at the fanbois. It’s the only real stress relief we get from having to deal with these “one widget to save them all” ar*eholes all day long.

    Thank you,

    And Happy Holidays.

  34. Michael Pearce
    Boffin

    avoiding updates

    You got it backwards - the smart user NEVER lets Software Update muck things up. Always wait a week after announcement and check Macintouch and MacFixIt to see how may people are having problems. The bugs in Mail app became apparent with 10.5.5 and got no better in 10.5.6 so you're better off staying at 10.5.4, which is the version that comes on the latest MacBookPros.

    You'd be amazed at the number of MBPs that show up at the Linux Users Group meetings, oh trollers.

    I think Apple has been hiring dropouts from the Bush administration to write their updates - they are consistently of the Heckuva Job Brownie class. The last good Safari was 3.1.2 and it still is dog slow compared to Camino. The Security Updates spray fecal firehoses all over anyone who is misfortunate enough to run them. Too bad, because there are some security holes that need fixing. And don't get me started on QuickTime 7.5.5 or iTunes 8.0.x.

    Eventually someone will clean up the mess, but my guess is that will happen with 10.6.3.

    I would still rather have my eyes chewed out by eels than run Windows of any stripe. If Apple died tomorrow I would install Ubuntu.

  35. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    upgrade all you like - leopard is still a virus

    6 'point' upgrades on - sixth or seventh clean install, tried on both a PPC G4 and an intel macbook pro, tried two different installer DVDs, macuser since system 7.5 - and i've got to say leopard is the most rancid POS excuse for an operating system i've ever seen.

    * items decide whether or not to appear or not on desktop, on a whim, after every restart

    * firefox will sometimes launch - most often crashes and burns

    * apps refusing to launch - console errors showing permissions problems, even tho' i'm the admin account on the comp

    * OS doesn't even recognise its own bloody file formats: dmg [OSX native disc image format] files open in disc utility, OS doesn't know WTF pkg files are at all [OSX native installer format]

    * fire up apps and find that i [apparently!] only have two fonts available; helvetica and lucida grande.

    * every app launch is a lottery... 'will it, or won't it?'

    * apple's support forums up to their usual 'bury your head in the sand' standards; someone posts about a horrendous leopard problem, apple fanboi replies blaming the original poster for messing up their own computer, apple marks the thread 'solved' and locks it.

    leopard is god's vengeance on mac users for all the laughs we've had at the expense of windoze drones over the years. even at its most crash-filled, security-hole-riddled worst, surely no version of windoze can ever have been as risible as OSX leopard.

  36. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    As long as everyone else is venting :)

    The real problem with Macs is that they enrage the Windows folks who have spent half of their adult lives learning how to get their PCs to work. Very few windows users are honest enough to admit they use windows because they have always used windows and that they honestly thought that was all anyone used.

  37. Phil
    Thumb Up

    Spot on AC :)

    I use Windows because that's all I have ever used. I have never used a Mac, ever, and haven't really seen the need to. But then I don't push my PC to any limits. I don't play PC games as I have consoles, so all I need is an internet access 'box' and something I can store my music and photos on. XP does this very well and I don't have any issues with it at all.

    I would like to be able to spend some time on a Mac to see if it is easier/faster/prettier, but I don't know anyone who owns one.

  38. Peter
    Thumb Up

    What's all the fuss about?

    Running 10.5.6 on PPC G5 and no glitches as mentioned above even with Sentes GPG. I do not understand why some users report so much grief with macs. The only trouble I've had recently was due to a 3rd party audio effects card. If I ever have any problems, which is rare, I fix them - end of story. I don't spend my entire life re-installing stuff, I usually do it properly the first time.

  39. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Just uninstall

    God people. Just uninstall the update and wait for the f...i...x Oh wait. Its Apple. You are fracked.

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