Apple's Mac OS X 10.5.3 Has Landed
jaymus of dawning writes with word that, as promised, "Apple has just released the latest major revision of OS X. The update yields improvements to tons of system components and applications including the Software Update system, Address Book, AirPort, Automater, iCal, iChat, Mail, Parental Controls, Spaces, Time Machine and VoiceOver. This release contains 200 bug fixes from 10.5.2. See Apple's release page for all the delicious details."
More than one reboot is not uncommon in my experience with previous major updates. Although, I don't remember them occurring before I switched to Intel Macs excluding obvious things like firmware updates.
You know, I've had my share of problems with Macs over the years but even though I've heard lots of horror stories, no system update has ever hosed my computer. I've used some pretty unusual combinations of Apple/third party hardware, too, like a Centris 650 (68040 chip) with a PPC upgrade card and an ancient Toby Frame Buffer video card out of a Mac II installed.
This ain't rocket surgery.
Hang around in #MacOSX on Freenode for the next week, I guarantee you will see hosed systems :) (And not just from random people popping in, regulars will be hit as well). Happens every release.
10.5.2 made my machine unbootable. Fortunately, I got in the habit of making backups before applying updates when the same thing happened to me sometime in the 10.4 era (10.4.8? I can't remember).
I prefer not to have to install little patches that have many dependencies on other patches and require restarts individually when I have a fresh Windows install.
It would be nice if Microsoft bundled their updates quarterly and let you download one blob and then select the updates to install in one shot.
SP3 was in the oven for a long time and I'm so glad it's here now, but getting an SP2 or earlier system up to date was a huge pain in March.
Quarterly updates (delta and combo version) are helpful. They would reduce my work building slipstream disks by a lot.
You don't miss bug fixes because you just do quarterly+other updates as they come- but for new installs combo updates are wonderful.