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Apple OS X 10.5.6 Update Breaks Some MacBook Pros
Newscloud writes "As PC Mag reported last week, Apple OS X 10.5.6 can break some MacBook Pros leaving some users (like me) with a dead backlit black screen after the Apple logo appears. While I initially thought I had a hardware failure, it turns out that there is a fix as long as you have an external display, keyboard and mouse. The problem only appears on the second restart, so if you sleep your MacBook a lot as I do, you might not realize the problem is related to the OS update you did the week before. The problem was related to older, incompatible firmware that Software Update wasn't flagging before the upgrade. This definitely gives weight to the argument for waiting a bit to run software upgrades."
Hi, I'm a Mac! Look at me, I can update myself! Hi, I'm a PC! Wow look at that, he's updating himself! So how's the update going, Mac? Hello? Hello? Hellooooo!
Yet another misuse of the term "brick".
...when they have such a small hardware deployment environment? Seriously... Linux runs on TONS of hardware, Windows runs on TONS of hardware. Apple's OSX runs (in a supported fashion ;)) on VERY little hardware.
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Apple controls the hardware, so they can be sure everything runs smoothly on it. That's what you get for running Mac OS X on unsupported hardware. Oh, wait....
True, my AppleTV iBricked itself after the last "update". The only solution is to take it to your local Apple Store for a factory reset. Trouble is, my nearest Apple Store is 160 miles away. :-(
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
Well, you would suppose that the limited flexibility in configurations where you can get OS X would mean that those configurations that are supported are tested properly.
Apple machines may be overpriced or not, but it's hard to deny that the company tries to make the argument that it provides an integrated environment.
I know some people really love their Macs but this is ridiculous.
Hooray, my MacBook Pro is working again. And this seems to confirm for me that the 10.5.6 update breaks some systems if you are running older firmware.
Sorry but if you're skipping a firmware update, and running a major OS update on old firmware, you deserve a headache.
The Software Update presents updates in the order Apple recommends you install them. Skipping one update to run another is a stupid thing to do. The worst combination I can imagine is a firmware and an os update being installed out of order.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
What def would you use? Software almost never makes a piece of hardware completely unfixable. Honestly I'm curious because I don't know.
The difference is: when it happens to Apple, then ..well "shit happens". When it happens with MS, then it's "haha" time on /.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
It is nice that this issue can be fixed by users themselves without having to send the computers for repair.
If they have additional hardware like an external keyboard, mouse and display. Otherwise, I assume they'll have to send/take it in.
Waiting on Apple? Look, if you're not the first one to greet and hug your dad, you'll feel less love next time!
Obviously if your dad is Vista, the first one to greet and hug usually gets smack on the head.
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
Except after two months you still can't get the dual link dvi adapters. Those with 30" monitors were already pretty peeved that they haven't been able to use them. Now you have to buy a useless $30 attachment or go to the Apple store to fix your mac after a firmware bug. No thanks.
So, how's that 'just workin' for ya?
Sorry, I don't mean to be flamebait, but this story is irritating. If it were a Windows story, it would be, "Microsoft update bricks user pc's" with the summary "Microsoft, in yet another example of shoddy programming, has managed to brick billions of users' pc's with their latest auto-update. With most users unaware they can even disable these updates, is it really any surprise that they've screwed their customer once again?"
Instead, we get this, "Ah gee golly look, I guess this little update means we should let someone else work the kinks out before we update our macs!" Nevermind that Apple has a history of shutting down their hardware via updates.
NOTE: I believe brick == unrecoverable. I'm merely stating what I think the summary would have been, not what it should have been/etc.
Get a USB patch stick (search on google code), which includes SSH as an install... then do a search for "downgrade apple tv" and you'll find a little script which will download and install the 2.2 firmware for you (or 2.1 if you're so inclined)... then we it reboots, go and turn off the auto-update feature under settings.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Or a friend or neighbor with such obscure hardware....
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Exactly â"Âalmost never â" bricking is a very rare occurrence, and it's not happening in this case.
Here we go matching anecdote with anecdote, but I cannot resist.
Look.. I'm a UNIX/Linux guy.. as matter of fact I'm typing this on Slackware. I also like Macs.. but please dispense with the bullshit you're spouting.
I work in higher education as a network admin and work along side the end user support folks. I've seen maybe four Vista crashes out of hundreds of machines coming in through the door.
For the record I've seen a couple of Macs with serious problems as well, including one that lost all of the data on a non-faulty hard drive.
If you don't like Vista, don't use it. I fall into that category, but I don't run around spreading disinformation.
Typically it is advisable to download and run the Combo update installer for these point releases. While Software Update is great for the little things, these bigger updates can cause issues for a variety of reasons if done through Software Update (sometimes files don't get updated that should be updated due to permissions or corruption or some other random change the update is not expecting to see).
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
So you traded your blue screens, which more often than not are user/hardware error, for kernel panics and cryptic, obscure error messages? Yep... you've stepped up in the PC world!
Hey, good tip, thanks a million. That has definitely saved me driving down to the smoke next week. Cheers :-)
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
I've run Vista 64 SP1 for the last year and have experienced 1 crash, and that was due to a FOSS app which I simply stopped using. I didn't have to trade blue screens for sad faces and bombs, I'm ok with that.
This definitely gives weight to the argument for waiting a bit to run software upgrades."
I'm going to pick on submitter here. This is your fear of the unknown. There is another guy who I work with that likes to pull this BS out of the air all the time when a new release comes out.
His argument: Ohnoz, I'm scared.
My argument: Here is the changelog. These are the real risks that are posed by continuing to use the old version. These are the benefits of upgrading.
When I started working for the company, software was years and years out of date. He had used this excuse for a long time to basically not do anything he thought was risky, but had in fact amassed a huge amount of risk to the business that ended up costing us a lot of real money.
Granted, there is some value to waiting a reasonable short period of time to gather your wits and read the changelog before upgrading/patching, but that should never be an excuse to coddle a fear of the unknown.
Whenever someone I know tells me that they won't try Linux because they're afraid something will break and they won't be able to fix, I point at these kind of events.
The fact of the matter is, no matter what operating system we use, things break.. I'm actually impressed they don't break more.. as equally impressed as I am that bald-monkeys can rocket down asphalt at 60mph and generally make it to where they're going.
I simply switched to Linux because I'd rather have someone break my tool for free than pay them to do it.. and that it has forced me to experiment more with that tool, and thus understand it better.
But maybe that's all to reasonable.. so let the OS oneupmanship begin!
The reason for the difference is that by and large Apple provides a better user experience. Therefore Apple owners are more likely to be fanboys, because when you are treated well, it generates loyalty. I don't know why this is, but the experience of owning a Windows machine is qualitatively different than owning a Mac. Is Apple a corporation interested in its stock price? Yep. But the culture at Apple seems to be different such the user experience is different from that of MS users.
Currently hooked on AMP
And this is how you spot the recent switchers. The older ones remember the 10.3.8 update, which damaged the contents of external firewire drives.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The problems lies in right management. Vista is pretty stable - only if you use it in lock down mode as a user with limited rights. As long as you use it with an admin account though, things can go wrong very soon.
As single user on a machine, people tend to use an admin account though, since it makes installing stuff etc. not as long-winded. UAC is a good idea, except that it comes way too often and makes people get annoyed so they don't even thing when they click on OK. Similarly, on OS X, we have password prompts, which don't occur as often, but also guarantees authorization. You can also authorize yourself as an admin even when the current session is from a limited user.
You hardly ever have to worry about pesky OS upgrades.
Better experience for who? I have been a Mac and Windows user since MacOS 7 and I still dislike both MacOs and OSX with all my heart. It's not a bad system, but there are lots of those little irritating things that makes a mac, oh so Fisher pricish....
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Sorry Phelan, it's been restarted & rebooted a couple of dozen times. All I get is the Apple logo twice then blankety-blank.
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
Perhaps at the "Reality Distortion Field" level the culture is different. But I don't see a hell of lot of difference between the 'user experience' of a BSOD and the failure of a point upgrade that would require a non technical user to return the computer to the store / factory. The OS X kernel panic screen has nifty graphics but also has even more incomprehensible babble than the typical BSOD screen (really, I don't understand Mandarin Chinese, I don't). That's not the user experience you're looking for....
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I don't see defensive Apple zealots, in fact, here are ALL the posts above, including yours..
Yet another FW update that bricks machines.
So, when you discouvered your Mac had what you thought was a hardware failure, who talked you back from the ledge? Are you in therapy?
Hi, I'm a Mac! Look at me, I can update myself! Hi, I'm a PC! Wow look at that, he's updating himself! So how's the update going, Mac? Hello? Hello? Hellooooo!
Haha :-D
Apple zealots defending this lack of testing to their death. Imagine the trolls that would be out if this were a Vista update ;-)
I know which system slashtarded trolls mostly support, and it's not Vista either. It's the one system that doesn't get idiotic comments like all the above, because updates _neeeeeever_ break it, and bad things just don't happen to it (that Slashdot reports). Quit making the rest of that community look bad.
Switching it on?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So, when you discouvered your Mac had what you thought was a hardware failure, who talked you back from the ledge? Are you in therapy?
OK. I'm not a Mac fanboy, but I do use a MacBook (not Pro) among other platforms, and I briefly had serious issues with a newly-purchased (cheapie) Huawei E169 mobile broadband dongle (well, strictly speaking, fraudband but enough to meet requirements). The 10.5.6 update fixed the problem instantly.
FWIW, I have no idea why this worked, nor do I care, since I ran the update without bothering to look for any changelogs. Sometimes "quick and dirty" is good enough...
Jobs should fire his OS validation team.
It is completely unacceptable not to find this when you control ALL of the hardware.
Pathetic. The mind just boggles.
Apple really screwed the pooch on this one.
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
When I upgraded to 10.5.5 two issues appeared on my macbook pro (coreduo 15"):
* Battery meter would get to between 40-60% and then the laptop would abruptly poweroff. When I was at 10.5.4, the battery meter would drain, as expected, down and warn as expected when it got to 10% or so.
* After about 30seconds of being powered on, the keyboard and touchpad would become unresponsive. External keyboards/mice continue to work.
Both of these issues are documented on apple's forums.
You're probably not looking at it right. Or you have the wrong kind of candles. You sure the Pentagram is exact?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
CUPS is easy to configure if you know what you're doing. So it might not be the service that is the unwilling participant in your scenario.
FYI, OSX uses CUPS as it's printing backend. It's just generally transparent if you're not doing anything crazy.
I had this happen to me after update, I fixed it by increasing the brightness on my screen as the update sometimes lowers the brightness setting to 0.
Umm... Pretty much by definition, blue screens can't be user error, unless that "user error" involves something like disconnecting the hard drive while it's in use. If the user can reliably cause a blue screen through software methods, then that is a bug in the software, and not the user's fault.
The fact that you think you can dismiss most blue screens as user or hardware errors shows that your standards have been lowered so far that you're pretty much incapable of making a meaningful judgment on the issue. (In my experience, most blue screens are caused by buggy drivers, and thus not entirely Microsoft's fault, either.)
And assert that certain linux distributions are far worse then this. And by "certian" I am refering to Gentoo. Nothing is more exciting then either
a) some jackass removed some library in a way that breaks half your dependencies. Lesson? Always make sure you can restart ssh and then log in before you close your existing ssh session.
b) having your upgrade break because some jackass depreciated some library in a way that forces you to upgrade in a very rigid step-by-step manner. Lesson? Be afraid of updating your system--it will probably break.
Funner still is searching the Gentoo forums for an answer and sifting through the "this was in the archives, jackass", "this is what you get for waiting a week between updates," and "didn't you read the CVS commit on mailing-list XYZ? We discussed this already, so it isn't my fault".
You haven't experienced "update breaks system" until you've experienced the "Gentoo update breaks system". Gentoo is good in theory and there is a lot I like--for example I love the use of color in their toolkit and the command line. I with other distros and unix's would make their utilities use color more. But Gentoo is a bitch to update.
I traded in blue screens every couple of weeks for no problems at all with ubuntu, and i didn't even have to pay a thing!
The installer shouldn't refuse to continue, it should upgrade the firmware! OSX has a luxury no other operating system has--it runs on purpose built hardware under its control. Thus its installer has no excuse to not just update the firmware.
1) It's Japanese on the panic message, not Chinese
2) When written, you just call it Chinese and not Mandarin Chinese; the distinctions "Mandarin" and "Cantonese" are primarily for spoken language, as the written languages are very nearly identical
3) I fail to see how it could be incomprehensible, seeing as it is pretty much obvious that there are different languages on the panic screen, and that it is giving you very clear instructions on what to do next: see one for yourself
Besides, Windows XP (and likely Vista too) ship in a default configuration where they do not show BSODs (at least, that was the way it was set up on my system, a consumer-level laptop). This means that all the user gets to see is the system *instantly restarting*, without any sort of warning whatsoever. It also means that they won't see a BSOD, but will be informed after startup that their system "recovered from a serious error" or something like that.
One argument for the OS X panic message is that it doesn't replace the entire screen, meaning that whatever you may have been working on is still potentially recoverable. With a full-screen BSOD, where technical details essentially fill the screen, this doesn't happen.
Actually OSX error messages are in pretty verbose. Especially for kernel panics. /Library/Logs/PanicReporter/ /Library/Logs/HangReporter /Library/Logs/CrashReporter
Diagnosing problems is much easier than Windows since the files are in plain-text and usually give you a clear indication of what the problem is. Event logs aside from being binary format (which if corrupted will negate readability in any of the standard utilities) are the _real_ villains when it comes to cryptic error codes that require an internet connection to look up..
It's worth noting that Apple's Software Update always asks for user confirmation before installing anything. This is substantively different from Microsoft's strategy of installing any and all updates without asking until the user uses the control panel to change the policy.
While this difference doesn't change the number of suckers using each respective platform, Apple's the vendor that makes it easy to put off updates until they've been in the wild for a while. It's also much less presumptive of Apple. (Though their update process with the iPhone offsets any goodwill they may have gotten from that.)
It is true that these things happen to even the best of companies and it's impossible to remove 100% of the bugs in software before it's released. The thing I'm sick of though is that had this happened to even the most obscure laptop manufacturer (and remember, this particular case involves a very popular and very expensive laptop) running Windows after a Windows update there would be hundreds of "this wouldn't happen on a Mac" posts. Such a double standard around here really. It's nice every now and then to see Apple and their herd of zombie followers (which by the way I am not including yourself in, generalized comment) brought down a peg and realize their sacred fruit can also be a rotten apple. Now, excuse me while I go finish trying to get the rest of my software running on Vista.....
You're trying to pass off multilingual error messages as worse than stack dumps? Seriously?
At least most people can recognize that the different portions of the OS X kernel panic message have the same meaning, so there's no reason to try to understand those that aren't in your native language. With a windows BSoD, there's way too much information in a language that no regular user is going to be able to parse. So, honestly, which is really worse from a usability standpoint?
I've yet to see a FM, printed or not, that has workarounds for bugs in a very specific software upgrade. That is what knowledge base articles are for.
This is why nobody has FM's for troubleshooting. Software and hardware are too complex to distill into a few pages of troubleshooting. The best you can hope for is "Is the computer plugged in" and leave the rest to a high quality knowledge base. And what is funny is the "Is the computer plugged in" sometimes turns out to solve the problem!!!
Now, the question is, does apple have a good knowledge base? I dont know, I dont own one :-) Microsoft has the best out there, but even then it is missing a lot of lore that only google can provide. Too bad the FreeBSD guys don't put together a knowledge base... in fact I can't think of any open source software besides Firefox that has a knowledge base.
Oh you linux guys crack me up. If you don't have any problems with your OS, you're not doing anything important.
And the erroneous "FW update" phrase... *having* the firmware update would have prevented the problem.
Unless, of course, your macbook is your only computer; and you have no way of knowing how to fix it. In that case, I'd say it's effectively bricked.
"Umm... Pretty much by definition, blue screens can't be user error, unless that" So something like, say, overclocking the wrong way or adjusting your memory timings too tight in the bios wouldn't be something caused by the user? Interesting...
iBrick®
If Apple had the market share of Windows and still had the default be "dont automatically install most updates", they'd be a huge source of botnets. Microsoft instead chose to install most updates by default (which is probably what most people want) and let nerds who know what they are doing turn that feature off.
Personally, I am surprised to learn Apple doesn't install most updates by default. I think for a consumer OS, such a policy is a very insecure one and is asking for trouble. Are you telling me it won't update itself without asking even if there is a zero-day exploit in the wild?
Unless, of course, you take it to your local Apple store, Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. Then they'll likely have it fixed for you in fifteen minutes. But, yes, it's a PITA.
But it's not actually bricked. It might appear to be bricked, but it wouldn't be wise to make the judgment that it's bricked without at least doing some basic diagnostics such as putting the machine into target disk mode or testing an external display.
Bricking a piece of hardware is relatively difficult for a piece of software to do, even with firmware, because replacing the firmware is usually possible.
Speaking as a bit of a language Nazi (and geek), bricking is one of those terms that should be reserved for extreme cases where the hardware actually IS bricked. Using it for situations where the hardware is recoverable dilutes the meaning and makes it much more difficult to convey when hardware is legitimately bricked.
> There's no such thing as a UNIX/Linux guy. You're a Linux guy if you're typing it on Slackware. If you were a UNIX guy you'd be typing it on Solaris or BSD.
Oh, right, because nobody could EVER use both, at different times, for different reasons.
You know, you should just pull your own plug because you are effectively brain-dead.
One argument for the OS X panic message is that it doesn't replace the entire screen, meaning that whatever you may have been working on is still potentially recoverable. With a full-screen BSOD, where technical details essentially fill the screen, this doesn't happen.
Honestly? Instead of using an OS that lets you recuperate 1/4 of a page of a letter you're writing, use a text writer that has a recovery system.
As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.
But sometimes, very rarely it does. Used to be you could destroy the TRS-80 video driver hardware from assembly language; some monitors still have similar problems. Likewise, some devices if disconnected during a firmware update will never come back. And if it can be fixed with a debug cable, it is not bricked. If you have to swap some ROM chip to fix it, it is bricked.
There is currently a "haha" tag. Maybe there wasn't when you posted.
In my experience the response is the same but the sneer is on a different side of the mouth. Why people get religious about OSes is beyond me, but I can assure that there was no shortage people waiting to jump in with little more to say than "I thought Macs didn't crash fanboi! Derp derp".
But I can't blame them, given how shrill Apple's TV ads always are.
1) There's no such thing as a UNIX/Linux guy. You're a Linux guy if you're typing it on Slackware. If you were a UNIX guy you'd be typing it on Solaris or BSD. Also, Slackware? Are you guys on ELF binaries
Well, would you want him to type the same reply twice on a different platform just to prove you're wrong?
Key...board? Is that like a touch screen?
No one claims Linux is easy. From my experience, and educated and informed decision is the key. If I want to purchase a hardware, I always make sure that it runs well on linux. My notebook is a BenQ Joybook R5200 on Gutsy. Everything (including a dial up softmodem) except the internal card reader works out of the box. And I don't really miss that card reader.
You had blue screens every couple of weeks? Sounds like a hardware problem, not a Vista problem. Good thing you were able to find an excuse to insult Vista though! Nice job!
I've misjudged your bias. You think overclocking is common. It isn't. It definitely isn't among the kinds of people who would switch to a Mac for the sake of stability. Besides, the first step for somebody disappointed with the stability of their system is to stop running the hardware beyond the specs! Crashes caused by hardware failures due to overclocking are not at all germane to a discussion of the relative stability of two software platforms under everyday use, because overclocking is not an everyday task, and if overclocking to a certain extent is going to destabilize your system, it won't matter what operating system you're running.
I traded bluescreens in an old version of Windows (95/98 vs XP) against more or less daily application crashes from Safari, X-lite, Mail, ...
I've been unhappy with Apple's hardware for some time.
The last decent desktop keyboard Apple shipped was the beige "Extended II". It wasn't a great keyboard, but it was a decent one.
I'm not sure they've *ever* had a decent laptop keyboard, but I've read that some models of the Powerbook designed by IBM Japan were significantly better than the average. My Macbook Pro causes me actual pain to use for more than half an hour or so.
No, I'm not new here.
Neither am I trolling, neither is this flamebait.
It's just that there a LOT of posts complaining that if this were to happen with an MS update, the Apple gang would be crucifying them and a lot of negativity that this is funny.
Mismanaged updates by either corporation - Apple or MS - is indefensible and inexcusable, and it's usually a real problem for the victims.
The occasional screwed-up update from Apple is something Apple users are - unfortunately - used to experiencing. Ditto for the MS users. Given that I'm a user of both, that's just my experience.
I think we excuse Linux problems (I'm a user of that, too) because the software was free. There's some merit to that, but as I think about that statement it does make me ponder... In any case, the real demerits of the OS choices are overlooked at times like this:
1. Linux not liked because no corporation stands behind the OS potentially misbehaving. This is a real problem in the minds of many corporate managers who have to oversee risk.
2. OS X is the "odd man out" where corp mgrs don't want that risk.
3. MS may obsolesce something that worked for the whole organization in favor of something that seems to work less well, another risk issue for corp mgrs.
The fact that an update involving any of the three might screw something up is neither a decision-point nor cause for immature glee.
The problem from TFA is an unfortunate and foreseeable consequence of testing getting the short-shrift.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
If you are stupid enough to Windows-only device (may it be modem, printer or scanner) instead of one offering standards support it's your own fault and problem. I know cheap modems are shit, I know there are plenty of GID(?) printers and so on, but get a printer and scanner which uses PCL and Twain and it should work, or? Obviously things which don't work without generic drivers won't work in an OS with no specific drivers. It's just the same with many sound cards and probably other expansion cards for Macs and also for graphic cards. I'd assume more of both would work on Linux machines ..
If you run Linux make sure you buy hardware which WORKS, how hard can it be?
As it turned out, it ended up being 'Vista Ready' certified video drivers.. So. Yeah, I think Microsoft was to blame. They certified it as being production ready when it wasn't.
I'm totally fine with people insulting the operating system I use the most (I use various flavors of Unix, BSD, Windows and OSX at my job) -- because it's an operating system. It's not my personal identity, consider that when you read Slashdot - just because Vista isn't my cup of tea doesn't mean it shouldn't be yours. Personal preference, no insult directed at you for what you like.
If Vista works for you and you don't have any problems, congrats.
Ummm...this is Mac OS X 10.5.x, codename Leopard, the first Mac OS X to be certified as a UNIX. So yeah, Mac OS X geeks are UNIX geeks. Oh yeah, Jordan Hubbard, one of the main FreeBSD guys, is now working at Apple. On Mac OS X.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I propose the term "breezeblocked".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Sorry Phelan, it's been restarted & rebooted a couple of dozen times. All I get is the Apple logo twice then blankety-blank.
Yeah... it was popular at the time, but I can see how being shown nothing but Blankety Blank could get annoying.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
True, but which of those used the slogan "it just works"?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
And a "bricked" router, etc, can usually be fixed if you have access to and know what to do with JTAG, yet we still call it "bricked". Go figure...
Don't blame Apple because you haven't upgraded to the latest Macbook Pro modell yet!
And here's what the popup box says: To allow, click the mouse button. To deny, click the mouse button.
Srsly, unless it said that it would totally bork your display, asking for confirmation is a waste of time and totally irrelevant. Obsequious != user friendly.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
When I was cobbling together my own OS kernel in the early 1990s (no, I'm not Linus) I killed a 3.5" floppy drive by coding a bug in the driver which caused the head to seek from the outermost to innermost track, over and over again (a funny little accidental infinite loop it could only get into under a certain set of conditions). I guess it was causing the head to slam against something, or lose alignment, because within just a few seconds it stopped seeking and never worked again...
Especially when it was a LED 17" MBP which must have been out less than a year.
Oh wait, it hasn't in months.
Anecdotes do not data make, but lets not go assuming you have some culprit to blame.
Yet another misuse of the term "brick".
Apparently you are unaware of Eric S. Raymond. A geek who appointed himself to be in charge of all geek definitions.
Apparently you don't know the definition of bricked.
There's no place like
Though, most Windows users would say that macs suck and is expensive and you can't play games on them so what the fuck would they want to have a mac for?
So well, I don't know if there are less Windows fanboys, or that the Apple user experience is superior. Depends on who you are I guess.
Completely agreed. And thanks for posting something constructive rather than the "omg can u imagine the apple fanboys if this was vista?" posts that usually appear on stories like this.
It's not my personal identity
Your personal identity made a choice to use one OS or another based on your personal identity's knowledge. So if your personal identity chooses to run vista, your personal identity is either uninformed about Vista (some people might use the term 'idiot' here--especially if your personal identity lays claim to being 'knowledgeable' about computers), or a masochist.
There's no place like
Excuse me, is what? Vista and XP will, upon install, pop up a dialog asking if you want to automatically download and install updates, automatically download and prompt for installation, notify download availability, or "do nothing". It certainly is not even remotely close to "automatically install any and all updates until you find a control panel and say otherwise".
Though step 1:
Getting to know it's fixable if you solve the screen issue is the hardest most unlikely part.
And of course, you used your iPrecognition to know that your Mac wasn't unusable, but just required these things, when you saw the results of the upgrade, right?
I'd argue that OS X was a unix playground since the public beta - probably because by that time, I was used to pure BSD and pure AT&T UNIX and many, many variants and pre-Novell, pre-SCO and pre-whatever nobuddy I knew gave a toot about certs - so long as we knew how to manage the beast, it was just another nix.
Is it true that this rev is the first to be certified as UNIX? I'll take your word for it.
But certified or not - it's core has always been UNIX. Today Apple gives credit to its FreeBSD heritage, but in the early OS X days they noted the OpenBSD and NetBSD components that were part of the effort. I think that all the hoo-hah has come from the non-BSD kernel being a part of it all.
Even if it had had a BSD kernel, I don't think it would stop unintelligent or uniformed opinions about OS X. Non-unix guys and non-OS X experienced guys don't get that in the early OS X days, many of us would run an X desktop in addition to our Aqua desktops (many of the tools for that have fallen by my wayside) and unless you were doing kernel mods or kernel programming, it was indistinguishable from BSD. When fink came out, one guy I corresponded with regularly at the Apple form posted his Gnome desktop running on his Mac.
Your link was for OS X server. For those that don't know, simply install the BSD subsystem and devel tools with the desktop version and you get X and gcc and from there, just about anything useful that you might like.
By 10.0, you could finagle NetInfo to manage your desktop as an NFS server and many other server tasks. As memory serves, the Apple mods removed my instructions on how to do that from the Apple forums. Can't say I blamed them - the guys that could wrench a desktop rev into a server rev didn't my advice and the guys that did were prolly better off paying for the server and getting Apple support (that group being mutually exclusive to those that were comfortable running a free nix server in the first place).
I don't really have a point, so I'll stop. :)
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Working the tech desk at a university, I saw a relatively new vista laptop which had BSODd 12 times in the course of a week. I didn't end up working on the machine, But there was reportedly a correlation with using the built-in webcam.
ERROR: SIG NOT FOUND (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?:
The only posts that were there were some more or less amusing comments about how stupid this was of apple.
Are you suffering from premature commentation?
Ummm...this is Mac OS X 10.5.x, codename Leopard...
And since the update 10.5.6 broke it, it would be Codename Leper.
Face your daemons!
Linux not liked because no corporation stands behind the OS potentially misbehaving.
I think it's not so much that they have someone they can rely on to fix their problems because- let's face it- if you have a problem with Windows it's not like MS are going to do anything about it.
What *is* the case (and may be what you meant) is that with something like Windows, they can always clearly blame MS if something went wrong. Particularly as (paraphrasing) no-one ever got fired for buying Windows; being able to blame MS is an accepted defence. Whereas with Linux there is no-one to point the finger at clearly, making it more likely that it ends up pointing at *you* for going with that weird-ass commie hippie etc. operating system.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
You identify another facet of the phenomena and a very valid one at that.
I meant what I said - so I **am** guilty of being perhaps too narrow or too obscure. Not only can you blame someone (MS specifically, but Apple applies in my analogy) but if the problem is, in fact, big enough then someone will fix it - like a nice third party for malware or a virus or a bad network problem, if MS or Apple doesn't. (And I mean nice in that sentence in the worst possible way!!)
FWIW, I didn't think you were paraphrasing on the part about no one ever getting fired for buying Windows. That was my intent.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
FWIW, I didn't think you were paraphrasing on the part about no one ever getting fired for buying Windows. That was my intent.
No, it was paraphrasing- and updating- the old (and now out-of-date) expression "No-one ever got fired for buying IBM".
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Geez - I'd forgotten all about that!!
They say if you're old enough, you've seen it all before. If you're older than that, you've forgotten what you've seen. And if you're older than that, you run the risk of forgetting what you've forgotten.
Many thanks for the clarification.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
My argument: Here is the changelog. These are the real risks that are posed by continuing to use the old version. These are the benefits of upgrading.
Those are what's on the label. I'm going to guess "breaks some laptops" isn't.
The fact is there's often the risk of some unpredicted interaction. The more diligent the manufacturer is about mapping out potential machine states, the lower that risk is, but the risk is going to exist.
Waiting a while does in fact provide some advantage: rolling out the updates effectively tests it on a wider variety of potential machine states. The manufacturer then has an opportunity to fix reported problems.
software was years and years out of date
Years and years is obviously too long to wait, but a few weeks can be quite prudent, unless your risk is a security vulnerability with an exploit already in the wild.
Tweet, tweet.
If MS Updates were as dangerous as Apple updates, then they would need to ask for user permission before bricking their machine.
Instead MS seamlessly updates their OS on an infinite combination of hardware configurations and infinite amount of software configurations, and never has anyone needed an 'external monitor and keyboard' to unbrick their computer.
So you are saying the Apple making user's responsible for harm the Apple updates do to their system is a feature or a good thing? (Put the kool-aid cup down - NOW...)
No, it asks for an admin password.
Doesn't seem like the definition should depend on the competence of the user.
Do you have to have seen the source to the patch and prove that you understand it in order to be granted one?
No.
Did you have a relevant contribution to make?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
reset PRAM. it should resolve the issue. a silly thing to let slip by, but trivial to fix.
big deal!
You said it yourself, it was a bug with the drivers. If you honestly think that Microsoft re-certifies drivers from all manufacturers every time they are updated, you're a quack.
No I don't see my OS as a personal identity. I could be a douche now and list the OS's I use, too. But that doesn't matter to me. What does matter is that people BMC about Vista when most of the time it has nothing to do with Microsoft. This just seems like another case.
With this update, a blue screen of death is more than you get from a MacBook.
"Bricked", you've turned the hardware into a brick.
An error where reinstalling the OS fixes it isn't "bricked" it is "broke" at best.
Every couple of weeks? What the hell were you doing to Vista that invoked Blue Screens that often?
He turned off the default action of silently restarting instead of displaying the BSOD?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
That's because JTAG A. is specialized hardware that very, very few people have access to, and B. almost always involves soldering a connector onto the device's board because it almost NEVER gets shipped with the headers populated in production hardware. So yes, safe to say if it requires soldering inside the unit, that qualifies as bricked.... That's significantly different than a software issue.
BTW, at least one of the people in that thread is (with 85% probability) seeing an NVidia chip failure. I wouldn't be surprised if several of them were that. The original poster also has some sort of hardware problem. And so on. These issues are all over the map, but are getting lumped together because they have the same symptoms and all happened right around the time of a software update. I strongly suspect that this is yet another non-story in which people jump to very wrong conclusions and mistakenly see patterns where none exist. It happens after pretty much every Mac OS X update, and apart from fairly minor things like "X feature of Y app doesn't work" or "X application crashes now", they almost never pan out.... (The one time in my memory that they did, it was caused by APE.)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
What def would you use?
The general definition seems to be
In a state where the hardware is fine but the software is fucked to the point where the system cannot be recovered without extrodinary measures.
Some measures that I would consider extraordinary:
* opening the case and soldering extra wires/connectors to the board
* buying special programming hardware
* removing components that aren't intended to be user removable
* creating a media shitstorm and hence bullying the manufacturer into releasing previously hidden recovery information
That was afaict not the case here, the firmware screen was still coming up so a reinstall should have been possible and the initial software issue could be directly installed if the user had an external keyboard monitor and mouse (hardly specialist hardware)
I wouldn't consider either a normal OS reinstall or using an external keyboard monitor and mouse to control the machine to be extraordinary measures.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
So it's not even that help isn't available if something goes wrong -- there IS support out there... managers just don't like Linux because there's nobody to sue!
I suggest you read Slashdot
It broke my Hackintosh!
Isn't one of Apple's advantages supposed to be that they control the platform, so they can make sure things 'just work'?
I'm really not trying to be a smart ass but is there an example of something meeting those requirements in the last decade? Something not anecdotal but a real bug that has occurred that caused hardware to brick? Should the word brick ever be used anymore or should the word be modified to mean something more modern, like PITA for average user to fix?
NOTE: I believe brick == unrecoverable. I'm merely stating what I think the summary would have been, not what it should have been/etc.
Brick is a relative term. It generally implies that it is a keys locked in the car sort of problem. That is, the fault itself prevents measures that would reverse the fault e.g. need a reflash due to bad firmware, but can't boot due to bad firmware, so can't flash).
Usually there *IS* a fix to bricking, but the practicality varies greatly. For example, a WRT54(GL) can be de-bricked by soldering pins to the JTAG port pads and building a simple parallel port JTAG interface.
A bricked PC (due to a bad BIOS upgrade where the boot block gets corrupted) can be de-bricked if the flash chip is socketed and you have a spare. (Potentially, you can use a flash chip switcher or hot-plugging to re-flash in another computer that also has a socketed BIOS).
The MacBook Pro 'bricking' isn't quite as hard as those though recovery does require additional hardware that you may or may not have handy. It's not as easy as booting to safe mode and trying again either, so I can see considering it 'bricked' to a degree (perhaps it's 'Nerf Bricked' or 'briquetted').
Then maybe it's about the hardware. If I need to crack open the case and plug in a JTAG, it's bricked, since the end user is unlikely to own the tools necessary to fix it. If everything is fixable via software (even if it involves holding down some obscure keystroke and typing in some commands) it's not bricked.
3. MS may obsolesce something that worked for the whole organization in favor of something that seems to work less well, another risk issue for corp mgrs.
The way I see it it's the *opposite* of this that keeps MS stagnant. They have so much legacy technology in their platform that it's all just cruft that contributes to compatibility and stability problems. Peek into the Win32 API and notice how much has been deprecated but never removed, for fear of breaking some major legacy app or another. The consequence of this is that developers now *know* that MS has no teeth behind the word "deprecated", and will gladly keep using API that has been obsolete for near a decade. This is a vicious cycle, forcing MS to keep back-compat a higher priority than it ought to be, since removal of long-disused API will break even new software.
Gentoo, the Linux distro for professionals who don't want a working OS.
Perhaps. My reference was based upon what I think I know of corporate management's perspective of things - perception and reality don't necessarily coincide.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Generally, bricked implied that the hardware was not actually damaged but that the system somehow got into a useless state that it cannot be gotten out of by 'ordinary' means. It's most commonly used in cases where a bootstrap is overwritten but could also mean you've managed to mis-configure an embedded device to the point that it ignores all possible inputs including any "return to defaults" sequence.
Of course, in truth, practically any of those conditions can be overcome by some combination of a tophat flash programmer, a JTAG port, or a bus interposer if you know what your doing at that level.
The MacBook Pro situation at least looks like one of those situations since booting from a rescue disk won't fix it and it and it doesn't appear to be responsive to keyboard or mouse (and you couldn't see what you were doing anyway).
It's certainly not bricked in the strictest use of the term, but it's analogous, hence my suggestions 'nerf bricked' or 'briquetted' (sort of a lesser bricking).
Words evolve. At one time, 'nice' meant only level and plumb. It evolved into aesthetically pleasing or socially correct, etc.
So, honestly, which is really worse from a usability standpoint?
the Mac kernel panic screen looks worse. at least with a BSOD you can write down the error and google it after the reboot to get an idea about what's wrong.
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
But why should any user have to know how to configure CUPS? Yes OS X uses CUPS but as a user you don't even generally know that. You can access the web interface but the vast majority of users have no idea this is even happening. OS X does all the configuration for you and all you really have to do is plug the printer in.
On Vista when it wants to reboot, the nag screen as a "snooze" button so you can defer the nagging for up to 4 hours. After the 4 hours, you can just hit the snooze again for four hours and when you leave for the day it will just reboot for you. I think they improved it quite a bit.
I sure wish Microsoft would figure out a way to let 3rd party installers hook into it's auto-update system. Every seems to want to re-invent that wheel and they all seem to do a really shitty job of it. The way I see it is there is no reason for "GoogleUpdater.exe", "QuicktimeUpdater" or whatever when the OS seems to have a pretty good update system already.
So, honestly, which is really worse from a usability standpoint?
the Mac kernel panic screen looks worse. at least with a BSOD you can write down the error and google it after the reboot to get an idea about what's wrong.
Yeah, writing it down is so much better than just opening the log after a reboot, and having the complete info right there.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Yes that is all well and good, but how do you spell exhausted?
-The world would be a better place if everyone had a hoverboard
"Bricked", you've turned the hardware into a brick.
An error where reinstalling the OS fixes it isn't "bricked" it is "broke" at best.
I always refer to the comparison of the common paperweight with the verb/adj "bricked." That way the people who stole their geek cards can understand the term's definition a little more clearly.
Hardly new. I remember when updating all the PowerMac 8500 machines in our office to OS 8.0 a decade ago. The new OS caused the CD-ROMs in [i]half[/i] of our entire Mac network to stop working. They just didn't exist anymore, save for holding the "C" key on bootup (first time ever I could actually push the "eject" button and have it work every time). Also, for the Macs where the CD-ROMs did work, inserting an audio CD caused an instant system lock-up. That drove our Arts and Entertainment department nuts.
For months, I had to install new software over the network. Back then, there were no critical updates, and I believe it took Apple about 6+ months to release the much-applauded 15MB 8.1 "Superpatch" which finally fixed the CD-ROM issue. There were no other patches either before or after the 8.1 update -- Apple wanted everyone to buy 8.5 to get other fixes.
BTW, all the Macs that had the CD-ROM fail had Sony disc drives, and the Macs that worked fine had Toshiba drives. So much for a closed platform with limited hardware configurations. Even back then, it was mostly PC hardware.
You know, usually OSes run on hardware, not vice-versa.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
If I'm taking down a quick note in, say, Notepad, do I get a recovery system? Absolutely not. Being able to recover a document from *any application*, even if said application hasn't implemented recovery (which would be severe overkill for numerous applications in any OS), beats being totally unable to recover it.
bad 3rd party driver code + video code in Ring0 = FAIL.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
...including the ability to switch power profiles from the power menu icon. Now if you want to temporarily switch from Better Performance to Better Battery Life, you have to open System Preferences.
Comment removed based on user account deletion