Apple 10.4.11 Update Can Brick Macs With Boot Camp

g-san writes "Some Mac users are having problems with the latest 10.4.11 update, yours truly included. The problem seems to be caused by the presence of a Boot Camp partition and renders the Mac unable to reboot after the update fails. Note the Geniuses at the Apple stores are recommending a full disk wipe; but data can be recovered via Firewire." MacNN has a note up that if you fall victim to this "known issue" and need to reformat the disk, you can't reinstall Boot Camp because it is no longer available to OS X 10.4 Tiger users.

Comments

Need more common hardware...

[webmaster404]

One of the reasons that has put me off getting a Mac (besides the high price, and the fact that Ubuntu can act like a Mac on a $25 used desktop) is the fact that Apple has control over the hardware and software. If you need *insert application that is a given on Linux and Windows* you have to pay $100 to get it, or if your hardware isn't supported anymore, your out of luck. It wouldn't be such a bad problem if the average Mac laptop costs $1000 and $500 PC laptops that can run Linux fine are common. If Apple would allow OS-X to be used on ordinary hardware or make it less proprietary by open-sourcing the components under a better license (why do I need to put my primary billing address to sign up for an account just to download source code???) or open sourcing all of OS-X. Another reason I don't go out and buy a Mac is Apple's lack of interest in supporting Linux despite it being an "alternative OS" like OS-X is and more then capable of doing the same things that OS-X and XP do, yet there is no iTunes or other key apps for it, nor are they open-source so porting would be easy. I doubt that I will be getting a Mac soon and this story only keeps me from buying one, if Apple would make their hardware and software less proprietary, OS-X would grow and topple Vista in a heartbeat.