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Leopard Upgraders Getting "Blue Screen of Death"

Z80xxc! writes "Some Mac users upgrading to Apple's new Leopard operating system are encountering long delays on reboot — an experience they liken to the Windows 'Blue Screen of Death.' While some of those upgrading were able to access their computer after waiting for as long as several hours, others were forced to do a complete reinstall. Some suspect that a framework called 'Application Enhancer' by Unsanity LLC may be causing the problem, but there has been no official word from Apple at this point."

9 of 542 comments (clear)

  1. jesus h christ by deathtopaulw · · Score: 3, Insightful

    people are so fucking stupid
    "oh no this 3rd party application which adds dubious and useless enhancements to my system is causing my computer to not work upon upgrading to a completely new version!"
    bust out the slashdot article I guess

    1. Re:jesus h christ by Ash-Fox · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This reminds of the Automatix debacle on Ubuntu - Have people forgotten that? Or does Ubuntu get a free pass because it is Linux?
      Honestly, I see more people defending OS X here than what Ubuntu had.

      Not only did Ubuntu have people going insane over that, but they also had the "is not ready for the desktop" memes all over the place and stupid crap about issues that haven't existed for a decade in Linux.
      --
      Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
  2. Re:When posting replies to this article by nine-times · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Just remember, if windows got taken down by a third party app, not only would you be screaming and shouting...

    Not under circumstances like this, we wouldn't. Some of Unsanity's programs are pretty invasive little things that fuck around with the OS in ways that Apple doesn't support. From their site:

    What exactly is Application Enhancer? It is a combination of a Framework and a system daemon. Application Enhancer performs its task by loading plugins (Application Enhancer modules) containing executable code into the running applications. Once loaded, the APE module performs the needed modifications (such as redefining the minimize window action, or customizing the standard Apple menu) on the launched application memory space, never touching any files on disk, utilizing set of functions defined in the Application Enhancer framework.

    So yeah, if you have even a vague understanding of what this product does, it shouldn't be any surprise that it could cause problems if you threw it on a new/unknown version of the operating system. This isn't just a "3rd party application". It's not like if Windows crashed when you installed Firefox (which Microsoft would get criticized for), but more like if Windows crashed when you tried to use an obscure and invasive 3rd party WindowsXP hack on Windows Vista (which Microsoft would not get criticized for).

    And it's not even clear that OSX itself crashed (as in a kernel panic). For as few details are available, it could just be that Finder or the installer crashed, which wouldn't be surprising if APE is screwing around with those applications' memory space.

  3. come on, Apple, move into the 21st century by m2943 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Too bad Apple doesn't talk up safe booting more so people will know it is there.

    Too bad Apple doesn't do the user-friendly thing, which is to offer users "safe mode" when the previous boot failed. That's what both Linux and Windows do, and it's the right thing to do (well, even better would be detecting and disabling broken extensions, but I guess that's too hard for any of them).

  4. Re:Archive and install by Hijacked+Public · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Like most problems of society, drug use is not likely the cause of the above errant moderation.

    I get mod points quite often and I've fucked up applying them a few times. Each time it was related to the fact that the current UI for moderating is drop down menu (which is just fine) that applies whatever moderation is selected immediately upon being clicked (no fine). This would be halfway fine if there were some means to un-mod a post, or at least re-mod it, but there is not.If my mouse pointer is off slightly when I click an item in the list I'll have applied the wrong moderation and can do nothing about it.

    This is obviously dumb. I don't want to be bothered like I'm using Windows, but some things involving user selections on a computer need either a confirmation step that is distinct from the selection or have a Back button.

    --
    "Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
  5. Re:When posting replies to this article by NMerriam · · Score: 4, Insightful

    you don't need to look hard to see what comments get moderated up on this site. Groupthink is strong here, whether you notice it or not.


    I've noticed that is the latest groupthink to make the rounds. it's a statement about as useful as "i know I'll get modded down for this..." which inevitably gets modded up.

    There are a lot of people on slashdot (and I guess in the world in general) who seem to enjoy being the victim of some massive conspiracy, rather than perhaps recognizing that when lots of people disagree with them it really is just a lot of people thinking they're wrong.
    --
    Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
  6. Re:Boot verbosely by kithrup · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No, verbose boot just causes the graphics to be delayed until loginwindow is run. It does not affect "safe boot" in any way.

    One of the first things I do on setting up a new Mac is to change the boot-args nvram variable to be verbose. Not only is it informative if there's a problem, but I find the scrolling text messages to be comforting in their obscurity.

  7. Re:Mod parent up by pebs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If things go wrong sometimes, then I would say that "it just works" isn't all that true. I don't use Apple stuff, but I still have a pretty good impression of their integration/user experience work.

    I just started getting into Apple stuff with the release of the G4 Mac Mini. I then subsequently got a Mac Pro to replace my main machine which was running Linux. I decided to give OS X a fair chance to see if really was better than Linux.

    In my experience "it just works" is far from accurate. It's definitely a slick environment and worth using, but comes with enough issues that it doesn't live up to the hype. But I guess its a mistake to listen to the hype (Apple's products fell far short of my expectations due to hype).

    The problem, as with any commercial vendor, is that you are often stuck waiting for the company to fix things. For example, iLife apps crash. They crash a *LOT*. What can you possibly do other than wait for them to fix the bugs? OS X itself is usually pretty solid. Occasional something just won't work right. Sometimes I actually have to REBOOT to fix things. This is just not what I expect from an OS based on UNIX. I suspect (partially from experience) that they just haven't gotten it together after the Intel switch.

    Apple's products have just as many problems as any other OS vendor. They may be different problems, but don't believe anyone who says they don't exist. And Apple is a company that is constantly changing things (OS9 -> OSX, PowerPC -> Intel, frequent OS updates), so you can't possibly expect stability from them. Having control over the hardware apparently still isn't enough to achieve this.

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    #!/
  8. Re:Archive and install by Lonewolf666 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    On Windows it can get somewhat more complicated, because

    1) the registry entries may be spread over various sections of the registry. Offhand, I can recall
    -HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE
    -HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software
    -HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT (have fun searching through that)

    2) fishing out the DLLS may require an extra tool like Dependency Walker (URL:http://www.dependencywalker.com/). Easy enough if you know such a tool, but it may be somewhat beyond a newbie.

    --
    C - the footgun of programming languages