[Tech] A NEW APPLE UPDATE, AND UPDATE TROUBLES...

Hi folks. Sorry, I wasn't feeling up to a creative title today. Lack of sleep this week is stripping away my creativity, so I apologize in advance for anything I post today that might be considered boring. ;)

So with the release of OS X 10.4.10 ("Tiger Ten" sounds like a cooler nickname than "Delta", doesn't it?) there are a whole host of folks updating...and as of late I've noticed quite a bit of concern about updating the Mac OS, due to unrecoverable crashes after the install. This happened back during the past couple of updates, and thanks to one of the best posters over at cubeowner.com (good post Fangy!), this article was pointed out to me from back in March of this year.

Basically it is written by someone who feels there is a huge bug in the Apple Software Update system. This "bug" occurs during the "Optimizing System Performance" stage...in which he recommends that you do NOTHING while your computer does this. Because it is running update_prebinding, if you launch an application that accesses the libraries not yet "prebound", it can cause a whole host of errors in the system.

Recovering from something like this can be extremely difficult, if not impossible if you do not have a backup. (BACK UP YOUR COMPUTER! That can never be said enough.) If it is really bad, you'll have to boot into FireWire Target Disk Mode and hope that you can run the combo updater from another machine.

One should always be careful when doing the Apple Software Update. Not because the OS is buggy or bad...but the nature of the update program can cause problems with your system if you're working while it's working. Do it at night when you're about to go to bed, so it can handle it all while you count sheep.

Great...now I've got an odd craving for a lamb curry. :P

-Mike Leader