Apple Revises Snow Leopard Security Update and Pulls 10.7.3 Delta Update

[milo]

One thing that has surprised me is that with Apple's beta testers they give a choice between the delta and combo, and don't encourage anyone to use one or the other. What they need is for about half the users to use the delta and half the combo, but with the common opinion that the combo is safer, it's entirely possible that far more testers are using the combo and the delta just isn't getting tested widely enough.

I certainly hope they monitor how many testers are using each installer, and if the numbers aren't balanced I'd hope they'd consider taking some sort of measure to make sure both versions get enough testing, whether that's recommending to people to use one, or even not giving users a choice and giving them a link to one version or another.

Another issue is that this may have been a problem where the release version of the delta was missing something that was present in earlier betas such that installing over earlier betas didn't show a problem (which would be the case for the vast majority of testers) but installing it over 10.7.2 would give the problem. Something like that would only be caught by installing each beta over 10.7.2, which very very few testers would be doing since it is so time consuming. Hopefully Apple is doing that testing internally with each beta release (or at the very least, with any release candidate).

There have been issues in the past with bugs only appearing in one installer but not the other, I wonder if Apple would just dump deltas and only release combos?

And while people generally assume that combo updates are safer, wasn't there a 10.6.x release that had a bug in the combo installer but the delta was fine (or am I just remembering wrong)?

In most recent news: iTunes match not working, and two unrelated updates cause serious bugs, both pulled.

What do you mean about Match? Is there a newer recent problem or are you just talking about it not working well since it was released?

You should probably try the same URL without the "?viewlocale=null&locale=null" part. I know, that is very difficult.

Even without that, not working here. Entering the URL without it, the website adds that part at the end anyway.

 

[burgen]

I downloaded the combo update and installed it again, now the build # is 11D50b instead of 11D50, so the combo update has been updated.

The combo update dmg is not the same as the original one posted for 10.7.3.

If you downloaded the combo updater on the initial release day, you may want to download it again. The SHA1 checksums I have are:

b8322dbd1f7b55bf35aac4122ad2204c51307793  MacOSXUpdCombo10.7.3(1).dmg
07dfce300f6801eb63d9ac13e0bec84e1862a16c  MacOSXUpdCombo10.7.3.dmg

The first one (the one with the 1 in parentheses) is the most recent one and that checksum matches the one posted at http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1484

 

[Taz Mangus]

I'll set things clear up front :

1. I'm not a software developper but

2. I have enough experience on computers that I know when errors are users ones or softwares ones.


Ever since I updated my 2 Macs with Lion, I'm suffering with stability issues, unresponsive applications and unresponsive OS. Lion is not more stable than my Win XP job Laptop and God knows how I hate Windows. I miss SL so much but unfortunately, if you want to use iCloud, there is no choice of using Lion.

Both my Macs are always updated with the latest patch releases so there is no way that I missed an update. They are always up to date.

Both my Macs have been updated on last Thursday evening using the Combo update. No improvement so far on stability.

Since the update, Time Machine is crawling. Backup was done after the update and took hours to complete. And the worst, yesterday evening, TM started a backup on my MacBook and guess what...bakcup size was 54 GB ??????? I barely used the the MacBook in the last days and it completed the full backup right after Combo update.

I find Apple Quality Control on Softwares is messing a lot lastly. Even the simple iBooks app on iOS. They upgraded to V2 and made a event on this about developping textbooks for schools with publishing companies. Guess what...V2.01 fixed major bug which prevented Textbooks from opening....I mean they should be kidding.

Did you upgrade to Lion as a clean install or apply Lion on top of Snow Leopard. If the later, then that could be causing your issues. I did a clean install of Lion and the system response is great, better then Snow Leopard that I had on three of my Mac computers. Time machine has been very responsive for me, I even do a wireless backup (don't use a time capsule) of my MacBook Pro and the backup is pretty quick, maybe 10 minutes if there is a lot to backup.

I have experienced some bugs with Lion. There were also teething pains in Snow Leopard and Leopard before that. I can even remember people complaining about Tiger when it was the latest OS X.

I understand your frustration but there could be more things going on causing your issues.

 

[Eraserhead]

I did an upgrade of Snow Leopard and have had no problems with the delta updater.

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

I may run the second combo again and report back.

 

[SMGreenfield]

I waited to do the 1.1 revision of the latest Apple Security Update for Snow Leopard 10.6.8. I'm having a horrible crashing problem with Perforce's P4Merge ("diff") utility. It's a Universal app, crafted from the QT app framework.

Anyone else have P4Merge?

 

[Dry Rot]

Anyone have any iTunes problems after installing the first security update for Snow Leopard?

My iTunes kept on randomly opening after i quit it. Installed v2 of update and iTunes is fine. Also memory usage seems way down now.

 

[RedRaven571]

Not to be a douche, but....

I'm starting to feel the same way about OS X updates as I did about Windows updates, meaning I don't want to apply them because I like my MBP as is (i.e. - working).

The big difference is Microsoft didn't bully you into applying updates to the OS (e.g. - this app will only run on Windows 7 version 6.1 Build 7600).

I mean, I really love SL (much better than any version of Windows I've used) but, c'mon now....

 

[mijail]

The big difference is Microsoft didn't bully you into applying updates to the OS (e.g. - this app will only run on Windows 7 version 6.1 Build 7600).

I seem to remember I have been forced to install .NET updates to be able to run apps. You could argue, maybe, that that isn't an OS update; but given that the .NET runtimes are so mixed into Windows now, I think that would be mostly an academic difference.

 

[RedRaven571]

I seem to remember I have been forced to install .NET updates to be able to run apps. You could argue, maybe, that that isn't an OS update; but given that the .NET runtimes are so mixed into Windows now, I think that would be mostly an academic difference.

I'll give you that. I guess it just annoys me that some Apple products/apps will only run on 10.7 (or 10.6.8 vs. 10.6.7). That, and the nonsense that, supposedly, you cannot install an earlier version of the OS than what shipped on your computer. I was 'lucky' enough that my son's 13" MBP came with SL since, if it came with Lion pre-installed, we wouldn't be able to install SL on it.
But that's really a separate peeve....

 

[Tumbleweed666]

No, my theory is that if you make that much in profits, you should be able to have enough competent people who work on specific projects to help prevent more bugs.

-

How do you know they didn't hire more people in order to reduce bugs?

What number of bugs do you regard as appropriate, when factoring profits into account? How would you measure this?

Is there a metric for bugs per $ EPS or something?

 

[cjmillsnun]

I can tell that no none commenting has ever worked with software development.

Mistakes happen, its impossible to test for every single system. Its not like every person has these issues, its a select few. You can test all day in the lab but until something is released in the wild the developers will NEVER be able to know if more bugs are present in their code or not.

Agreed.

I do UAT and regression testing for our system at work, have found what I think to be all the defects, logged them on Quality Centre, had them reviewed and fixes done by the developers, gone through another 2 testing cycles, found no further defects, gone for release, and bam, problems found.

Dare I say it but the brown smelly stuff happens.

 

[jameslmoser]

How do you know they didn't hire more people in order to reduce bugs?

What number of bugs do you regard as appropriate, when factoring profits into account? How would you measure this?

Is there a metric for bugs per $ EPS or something?

One day, two OS (critical components to most computers) updates, two big fails. I would say this means failure no mater what metrics you decide to use.

 

[Terry Dearborn]

new update fixes bug with Office Suite.

2-07-12 I installed the NEW security update 2012-001 v1.4
Now you can save excel, word, etc. This allows you to quit these programs instead of having to "force quit"

This Apple error gave me a chance to adapt PAGES and NUMBERS to my WORD and EXCEL files. These Apple substitutes are much better than Open Office. HOW EVER.... PAGES was never taught how to define PRINT AREA in spread sheets. Many hope that this will appear in iWORK 11.

Terry
Walnut Creek, CA

 

[AidenShaw]

2-07-12 I installed the NEW security update 2012-001 v1.4
Now you can save excel, word, etc. This allows you to quit these programs instead of having to "force quit"

This Apple error gave me a chance to adapt PAGES and NUMBERS to my WORD and EXCEL files. These Apple substitutes are much better than Open Office. HOW EVER.... PAGES was never taught how to define PRINT AREA in spread sheets. Many hope that this will appear in iWORK 11.

Terry
Walnut Creek, CA

You joined MacRumours today, and this is your only post.

Which Apple office are you from?

ps: Standard English would be "adopt PAGES and NUMBERS", not "adapt PAGES and NUMBERS"....

 

[2cool4games]

Can't control volume with the buttons when headphones are plugged in...after update!!

I can't control the headphones volume with my buttons on my keyboard!!!! After the two updates. When I unplug them, it still works the same!!!!