Combo pack and upgrades - Myth or Reality?

[Tumbleweed666]

I see many posts here from people saying that they have installed the 10.5.7 combo pack to prevent problems - is this just urban myth along the same lines as people repairing permissions seemingly any time anything happens? eg "My screen is cracked" ..... "hmm, have you tried repairing permissions"??

I'd have thought all the combo pack install would do would be to install the appropriate upgrade for your level, so that if you are already on 10.5.6 it would be exactly the same as the upgrade purely for a system on 10.5.6 , and all you have done is pointlessly download a few hundred extra gig, or is something more complex going on and it reinstalls everything again from a base image of 10.5.0 or whatever the first 10.5 release was, overwriting stuff that's already there? Otherwise I can't see why there would be any difference in results.

 

[themoonisdown09]

I have always used the Software Update tool, and I always update as soon as a download is available. Therefore, this is a myth for me.

Also, I have never "repaired permissions" in the 6 years I've been a Mac user. Same goes for "resetting the PRAM".

 

[iShater]

I think it just includes all the changes and updates since version x.y.z, allowing you to do a single download and update vs. having to manually go one by one.

I don't think going with a single pack vs. combo pack causes/reduces problems. Either the systems are already having issues that are not apparent, or the update (either one) is hosed.

 

[jt2ga65]

A co-worker experienced a problem with doing multiple updates at the same time that resulted in his superdrive becoming unusable. I guess one of the updates rebooted the computer while the other was attempting to update the prom on the superdrive. Since the code on the superrive got interrupted, it's pretty much a brick.

I would think that it's probably better to apply only one update at a time, but it the combo update acts like a single update, then I don't see why there would be a problem with it.

-jt2

 

[Tumbleweed666]

A co-worker experienced a problem with doing multiple updates at the same time that resulted in his superdrive becoming unusable. I guess one of the updates rebooted the computer while the other was attempting to update the prom on the superdrive. Since the code on the superrive got interrupted, it's pretty much a brick.

I would think that it's probably better to apply only one update at a time, but it the combo update acts like a single update, then I don't see why there would be a problem with it.

-jt2

fair enough but if you are just going up one level, eg 10.5.5 to 10.5.6 or 10.5.6. to 10.5.7 as now, do you think thee is any difference to combo vs 'standard'? The people who trumpet 'I always use combo' seem to be the ones on the latest version and thus only going up one update level anyway.

 

[iShater]

fair enough but if you are just going up one level, eg 10.5.5 to 10.5.6 or 10.5.6. to 10.5.7 as now, do you think thee is any difference to combo vs 'standard'? The people who trumpet 'I always use combo' seem to be the ones on the latest version and thus only going up one update level anyway.

If you are going one revision up, it doesn't make a difference. Go with the smaller download.