Apple has released another bug-fix update to Mac OS X 10.5, a.k.a. “Leopard”. Version 10.5.3 has been in development for several months and fixes literally hundreds of “issues” in such areas as Airport, iCal, Mail, Time machine and others.
The update is available via Software Update in the Apple menu at the left end of the menu bar, or you can download the Combo Updaters that also include all previous Leopard updates and which have, in the past, proven to be somewhat more reliable in terms of avoiding potential problems. It’s probably also not a bad idea to launch Disk Utility (in the Utilities folder in Applications) and run both Verify Disk and Repair Permissions on your boot disk before applying the update.
I haven’t applied this update to any of machines yet, having just now discovered it was available, but I will do so soon and update this post with my results. Feel free to post your experiences in the comments section.
UPDATE 1: I’ve successfully installed the combo updater on a Dual G5 Tower and MacBook Pro. It is normal to see an extra Restart when the install has finished on PowerPC based Macs so don’t panic if that occurs.
Comments & Trackbacks
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I just installed the combo update on my Macbook and things seem to have gone smoothly. There is an extra restart on Intel machines as well as PowerPC machines.
In addition to running verify disk and repair disk permissions. I usually apply updates by downloading the COMBO updater and launching it manually rather than using Software Update or using the “delta” updater. I’ve seen people with update issues that seem to go away when they go back and install the combo updater. It may be more superstition than reality but I VERY rarely have any update problems.
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Didn’t see the extra restart on my MacBook Pro. Also installed it on a PowerPC mini but wasn’t in the room when it restarted. I think Apple actually documented the reason for this at some point but I can’t find it now.
And yeah, I always use the Combo Updater and I never have problems after a software update. Could very well be more superstition than fact but it does ensure that the updated files from previous Software Updates are still correctly in place.
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Upgraded my MacBook using the “Delta” updater (my MacBook came with 10.5.2 installed as base system) and every thing seems to work fine. I did see the 2nd restart and the Fans were working overtime for awhile but back to normal now. I did repair permissions and verify disk before and after. Disk utility displays more info now as permissions are being repaired. Lets you know what is going on.
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Just to let you know that the update to a test partition on my Mac Pro did not go quite as smoothly. The installer hung during the “Writing Receipt” phase of the installation and needed to be force quit. After that I attempted to reboot but the reboot process hung during the boot cache rebuild and needed to be powered off. That said, everything SEEMED ok when I rebooted and OS X seemed to install properly. The main difference between this install and the one prior (besides the hardware) is that while I ran a DiskWarrior scan of the drive I forgot to repair permissions.