macnn
12/26/2008, 10:45am, EST
Friday, December 26th
Mac OS X 10.5.6 crashes related to older firmware?
On older MacBook Pros, at least, some of the recent crashes triggered by the Mac OS X 10.5.6 update may be related to outdated firmware, experimentation suggests. A Pro owner who has managed to fix problems with v10.5.6 notes that he was never alerted to the existence of a newer firmware update from April. After installing the update, the owner claims that his Pro is functioning fine under v10.5.6.
Extra steps were taken before installing the firmware however, mainly connecting an external display, keyboard and mouse, and deleting system, account and volume caches. The owner notes that he also operated with his Pro's lid closed. It is likewise uncertain if firmware could be behind the full range of crashes, which have affected a variety of different Macs, not just Pros. The v10.5.6 package has moreover triggered errors with Time Machine backups and USB devices.
Filed under: computers, troubleshooting
Other story tags: Mac OS X, MacBook Pro
, 
, 5
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
Top
subscribe to comments
for this article
3 steps up, 2 steps back
Apple is getting more like Microsoft every week, they do not do adequate regression testing on updates, and these often are prone to breaking what was an otherwise properly operating Mac. Seldom does an update become critical like those for Windows, and Apple should use this leeway to take advantage of better in-house testing..rather than pile more Windows style beta testing/update garbage on the otherwise happy Mac user community. Updates on 10.5.6 and 10.4.11 both are plagued by new and useless irritating quirks.
re: 3 steps up, 2 steps
Yeah, I agree. I think Apple is not doing enough Q/A on software or hardware. I've been a Mac owner since 1990, and I have to say the highest Quality Mac I've ever owned, was the good old IIsi, which is still around and functioning.
I fully realize that everything has become much more sophisticated and much more complex, but so has the technology for development and testing. I would rather have an OS release every 3 years, if it means more stability. In fact I'd rather have less features instead of stability.
In this day and age, where stability and reliability are a rarity, I urge Apple to stick to the old principles of upping the quality.
There is stepping up ....
There is OS X stepping up and Vista stepping up. I think OS X is consistently stepping towards more capable, more stable, more market share, its slow progress, its steady progress the result of persistent effort. I will take persistent.Consider that the next product effort 10.6 a super clean up of all that has come since 10.0 at a time when MicroSoft is going crazy trying to get folks to stop using their second to last product because their last product is less usable according to their customers.OSX is not perfect.... according to computer users world wide its a fine product compared to its competition as a result OSX's market share is growing.That's my story and I am sticking to itJim
The name is greed
Production pressure is the biggest enemy of the quality in many fields, not just computers. Apple was/is tempted to make a couple extra $$ and increase the market share taking advantage of MS releasing a lousy OS. That made them to release a raw version of Leopard along with an experimental version of MobileMe. More than that, one cannot install a copy of the Tiger on the intel-based Mac rather than from the recovery DVD. They leave you no choice but to upgrade to Leopard. This makes Apple much worse than Microsoft. What I have been watching during last 2-3 years is that Apple is not going to improve quality of their product.
Firmware list per device
It is better to check the firmware version from this chart than the link provided in article. At least I had newer firmware than the April update.http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1237