I'm usually one of those people to install updates right away, just because I like tinkering, and always want to be on the bleeding edge, but I also know when to say "no." This is one of those times. I'm currently stage managing a new musical and my Powerbook is running the video projections for it on Keynote. I find myself offering my services for this kind of thing a lot, and it always makes me much more cautious about what goes on my Mac. Just an alert window popping up unexpectedly at the wrong time could ruin the show, so I like to have plenty of time to shake things out after an update. When I saw the Keynote update posted yesterday, I said, "no way." Even more so with an OS update, even though I'm rather intrigued about some of the things it's said to improve. Today is our last performance, I can tinker all I want after that.

The only really bad update I can remember getting (aside from one I was lucky to have not had time to install until after it was recalled by Apple) was a few years ago, I think it was 10.2.4, where every time you turned the computer on it would reset the date to December 31, 1969. I still have a number of e-mail messages time-stamped from 1969 or 1970 because of that.

Ditto Hautster. My family has been blessed with 5 lemons. I should play the lottery.

I always run Disk Utility and do a repair of permissions before and after every update. I have both a MacBook Pro 17" and a dual 2GHz PowerMac G5 tower and have never had a problem with an Apple update. The only thing that has been a problem is using Adobe's Creative Suite under Rosetta, with some weird problems that won't be fixed until Adobe releases CS3, although I'm interested to see if the numerics problems with CS2 are affected by the new Apple update.

Quote:<hr />
A similar situation existed when PPC chips were first used. Your assumption that a carefully designed installer cannot successfully distinguish between multiple configurations and install only those files that are needed for the specific configuration in question, may well be an overly simplified view.

<hr />

This is not my assumption, it is yours. Intel, Power PC G3, G4 and G5 all with deferent components including USB 2 on some models. All sort of video circuitry including the cheep on board Intel stuff. I never stated that an installer can not distinguish one configuration from another, what I am stating is that Apple has never had to deal with two processor architectures like it is now. Yes they had the PPC transition, but once system 8 once announced, the old 6800 processors where abandoned. Now even Leopard will have to keep compatibility with PPC. You don't think this is easy, do you? Your fixing permissions before installing is rubbish.

This is from an article they published here at Macworld

Quote:<hr />
Do I need to repair permissions before installing an update to Mac OS X?
In a word, no. When you install a Mac OS X update, youre required to authenticateprovide an admin-level username and passwordin order for the installation to proceed. When you authenticate, youre allowing the installer to run with the equivalent of root access. What this means is that the installer is not constrained by Mac OS Xs permissions systemit ignores the normal restrictions of file and folder permissions. This is necessary for Installer to be able to update Mac OS X, but, more important for the current discussion, it also means that incorrect permissions shouldnt cause problems with the installation.

The only real benefit to repairing permissions before a Mac OS X update is that if you do so, then immediately install the update, and then repair permissions again immediately afterwards, you can be pretty confident that any permissions issues that are found are a result of the update. But at that point youve also fixed the problem(s), so the pre-install repair provided you with little more than academic knowledge.

<hr />