A Monday update to Apple's Leopard operating system continued to wreak havoc today, with some users reporting that Mac OS X 10.5.6 has completely killed their machines.
"Since I (and many other users) installed the update our machines have completely died," Pedro Paiva, who owns a 17-inch MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo, wrote in an e-mail.
When Paiva turns on his MacBook, it makes a spinning sound, the LED light turns on, but then nothing happens, he said.
An authorized Apple reseller told Paiva, who is based in Rio de Janeiro, that "the symptoms look like logic board failure and that I'll probably need to have it replaced. Problem is that warranty expired 9 days ago and logic board costs almost as much as a new machine."
A user who identified himself as "Beerman07" on the Apple forums said he experienced the same thing. "I had a perfectly healthy MacBook until about 10 [minutes] ago when I tried to update to 10.5.6. Now, I cannot start up on that computer. I also have the LED light on in the front," he wrote Tuesday.
"Beerman07" said that he eventually got his machine to start working again after connecting to another computer in Target mode using Diskwarrior, but when he restarted the next day, he was again met with the blank screen and LED light.
"My iMac died essentially the same way as yours, after the 10.5.6 update," a Minneapolis-based user known as "Guvenen" wrote in response to "Beerman07"'s post. "I also tried everything on [the] [Mac]books without success."
The OS X 10.5.6 update is supposed to improve a number of features, including synching between the address book and the iPhone, roaming capabilities of AirPort connections on Intel-based Macs, an encryption alert that appeared in the chat window of iChat, among other things.
After its release, users took to the Apple forums to report a host of problems ranging from broken Bluetooth connections and no sound to large popping noises during boot-up and dead USB ports.
There were few initial reports of completely dead machines, however.
U.K.-based user John Harvey wrote that his 10.5.6 MacBook Pro update also produced the blank screen and permanent LED light. He held the power button down, and the machine re-started, but the printer and the sound were not working. When he restarted the next morning, he was met with a recurring "kernel panic" warning.
Apple tech support eventually walked him through a re-install of 10.5.4, Harvey wrote.
"I did the install and my computer will start up to the apple symbol, hang out there for a while and then turn off," wrote user Aimee Heff. "This causes much stress for this grad student."
London-based user "trikke_d" reported that he encountered the same problem last year when installing the original Leopard on his iMac, which resulted in a dead logic board.
"If you are in warranty you should be fine, if you are not then I am afraid Apple will probably not help," "trikke_d" wrote. " In my experience OS updates can kill your machine, but Apple will never admit this is the case."
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Complaints about the update continued to roll in on Wednesday, including users who could not print, use their machine's search function, view their e-mail, hear alert sounds, or get accurate battery status readings, among other problems.
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I would have more respect for Apple if they shed their tip-light (PR protection) attitude and communicated better with their customers...especially when their are experiencing patch problems or possible security issues.
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