Tiger Bites: Mac OS X 10.4.8 Update Gone Bad.

I’ve been using Macs and OS X long enough to develop a sense of security about updates and upgrades.

Problems? They were few and far between until my Mac was ravaged by Tiger.

Most of us eagerly look forward to an OS X update. Just as eagerly, we upgrade from one cat to another.

Jaguar to Panther. Panther to Tiger. Tiger to Leopard. It’s the circle of life.

The most recent link in that circle, the update to Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.8 bit me and my aging PowerBook.

It’s been so long since I’ve had an update or upgrade problem with Mac OS X that it came as a shock. I came in at the end of the day and saw that OS X 10.4.8 was ready for installation.

Well, that’s good news. Unfortunately, I broke from habit and let Tiger’s new update bite me. Literally.

Normally, I just hit System Preferences and Software Update. A click or two later and the Mac is ready for a reboot and I get more OS X tasty goodness to try.

This time I downloaded the OS X 10.4.8 Combo version. Don’t ask why, and it shouldn’t matter anyway.

I ran through my normal procedure for handling updates, downloaded the Combo updater, updated OS X, restarted.

So confident in the update process that’s gone from cat to cat to cat, that I didn’t pay any attention to my PowerBook until later that evening.

I opened the lid, OS X popped up in seconds, found the wireless network in seconds, and I was ready. Safari crashed on the first site I hit.

Restart Safari. More crash. I tried a couple of other applications. More crashes. Uh oh. Tiger’s teeth were sinking in deep.

Reboot the Mac. Start Safari, check out a site, another crash. Repeat. Rinse. Ohhhhh boy. Here we go.

I tried re-installing the Combo updater, but the installer crashed. Alex, this is not going to be a good Sci Fi Friday.

Obviously, something bad happened, either from the Combo installer, or my Mac. On a good day I could spend some time trying to figure out what went wrong.

In my head I could see the clicks and hours I’d spend on the Apple Support discussion boards, trying to separate fact from fiction.

Instead, I relied on the first thing I did, and always do, before performing an OS X update. My backup.

The basic procedure is startlingly simple. Clone the PowerBook to an external Firewire drive, update, check, re-check.

Once satisfied, I clone from the PowerBook back to the external Firewire hard drive. In this case, I did the reverse and cloned from the backup back to the PowerBook.

That got me back to where I was before Tiger’s 10.4.8 update bit my bum. Rather, my Mac’s bum. The clone was successful.

I let Software Update download the 10.4.8 update, did the restart, and all was good. It was as simple as that. I can only imagine the pain Windows users must go through when things go wrong.

How about you? Any issues resolved or created with Mac OS X updates?