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OS X Operating Systems Bug Businesses Upgrades Apple

Apple 10.4.11 Update Can Brick Macs With Boot Camp 425

Posted by kdawson from the doesn't-take-a-genius dept.
g-san writes "Some Mac users are having problems with the latest 10.4.11 update, yours truly included. The problem seems to be caused by the presence of a Boot Camp partition and renders the Mac unable to reboot after the update fails. Note the Geniuses at the Apple stores are recommending a full disk wipe; but data can be recovered via Firewire." MacNN has a note up that if you fall victim to this "known issue" and need to reformat the disk, you can't reinstall Boot Camp because it is no longer available to OS X 10.4 Tiger users.
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Apple 10.4.11 Update Can Brick Macs With Boot Camp More

Apple 10.4.11 Update Can Brick Macs With Boot Camp

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  • Macs (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tumbleweed ( 3706 ) * on Monday November 26, 2007 @08:45PM (#21486927)
    "They just _work_."

    • Re:Macs (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26, 2007 @08:53PM (#21487011)
      Gasp! Something makes them unable to run... WINDOWS!!!

      MS has the same thing. It's called "VISTA"

    • Re:Macs (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CoreDump01 ( 558675 ) * on Monday November 26, 2007 @09:07PM (#21487161)
      If you can get it to work again via routine tasks (like reinstalling the OS on HDD) it is technically not a brick. A "bricked" Mac would almost always require you to send in the machine to the manufacturer to unbrick.

      • Re:Macs (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Ajehals ( 947354 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @09:56PM (#21487559) Journal
        I agree that it does not render the MAc bricked, but I'd dispute that reinstalling an OS is routine. It might be simple, fast, easy etc.. but its not and shouldn't have to be routine.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by arminw ( 717974 )
          .....but I'd dispute that reinstalling an OS is routine....

          With Macs, unlike Windows, it is definitely NOT routine. I wonder, does this update only screw up Macs that also have a Windows OS installed? From the article, it seems to be the case. Moral: If you want to run Windows, get a cheap Dell and be happy.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by Swift2001 ( 874553 )
            Well, there were 10 upgrades to 10.4 before this. They worked mostly fine. Fine for me, but I understand that a small percent had trouble now and again. I'd call that routine. And I just upgraded to Leopard. I had a backup all set aside. My plan was to Erase and Install, and then suck all the data and programs off my backup. A friend said, "No. Just try the upgrade. Then, if it doesn't work, you can erase and install." Half and hour later, I booted into Leopard, and everything... just... worked.

            • Re:Macs (Score:5, Interesting)

              by porkus ( 16839 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2007 @12:22AM (#21488673)
              You obviously haven't tried to print to a Windows-shared printer with options like Landscape or n-up printing. Or you haven't tried to add a printer shared from an older Mac, since they turned off CUPS browsing by default in Leopard for no apparently good reason. You may also not have noticed how flaky connecting to SMB shared drives can be. Leopard most certainly does not _just work_ for everyone. I'm back on Tiger and at this point looks like I'll be staying until 10.5.2 at the earliest.
      • Yes. A bricked Mac was back when there was that audio CD with the copy-protection scheme, that crashed the OS as soon as the disk was inserted, and on all subsequent reboots. Since the Mac doesn't have a physical eject button for the CD, the whole system unit had to be shipped to a repair depot where they could eject the offending CD.

        Now, _that_ was a bricked Mac.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by TheGreek ( 2403 )

          A bricked Mac was back when there was that audio CD with the copy-protection scheme, that crashed the OS as soon as the disk was inserted, and on all subsequent reboots. Since the Mac doesn't have a physical eject button for the CD, the whole system unit had to be shipped to a repair depot where they could eject the offending CD.

          1) Power on the computer.
          2) Wait for the chime (don't have to do this on Intel, but I always did with PPC).
          3) Hold down mouse/trackpad button until CD ejects.

          • Re:Macs (Score:4, Informative)

            by cooley ( 261024 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @11:10PM (#21488141) Homepage
            1) Power off the computer
            2) perform paper-clip origami
            3) stick it in the hole to pop the CD tray open

            Back in the day when I was doing desktop support, I just kept a bent paper clip in my toolbox.

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by vux984 ( 928602 )
              Some macs do not have the 'paperclip' hole in the case. The physical drive still had it, but you had to dismantle and open up the case to reach it... this wasn't particularly trivial on some macs.

              • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

                by Splab ( 574204 )
                About a year ago I was working as a sysadmin, an iMac came in and was tagged for disposal, but to ensure no data could be extracted we needed the HDD. Those things are build like Fort Knox, in the end I dismantled it using a hammer, bit hard to get it back together again I guess, but luckily not an issue there.

        • Re:Macs (Score:4, Funny)

          by Lehk228 ( 705449 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2007 @12:07AM (#21488553) Journal
          remember the "drag the hard drive to the trash to eject it" bug? i can't remember which version of mac OS it was, something pre OS9 I think.

    • Re:Macs (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @09:26PM (#21487341)

      Yeah if you're running a beta boot loader that you've hacked to prevent it from expiring (or intentionally set your system clock to a couple months ago) and you install an OS system update on it without waiting to see how it works on other people's hacked machines, then your system may not boot until you fix it. Why is the OS relevant in this case again?

      • Re:Macs (Score:5, Insightful)

        by cloricus ( 691063 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @09:50PM (#21487523)
        Moreso what is with the over use of the term 'bricked' lately. My understanding was that 'to brick a device' was to make it unusable ever again creating a possibly expensive paperweight. The last handful of stories using the term (mostly related to Apple) have all had undo solutions leaving the hardware in a working state. Did a miss a memo some where a long the way?

      • Re:Macs (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Repton ( 60818 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @10:48PM (#21487955) Homepage

        Huh?

        The bootloader doesn't expire. The only thing that expired is the Boot Camp partitioning software. Existing boot camp partitions, and your ability to boot into them, are unaffected by Boot Camp Beta's expiry.

      • Re:Macs (Score:5, Insightful)

        by kestasjk ( 933987 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @10:49PM (#21487969) Homepage
        What?! I haven't seen anything about these users running a beta boot loader hacked to prevent it expiring, it only seems to be related to Boot Camp.

        Why is the OS an issue? Well on non-Apple PCs booting into other OSes is taken for granted, and isn't expected to affect OS updates. Apparently on Macs booting into other OSes is an amazing new innovation called "Boot Camp", and an update to an OS causes the ability to dual boot to break, and requires you to reformat your entire hard disk.

        Can you imagine if a Windows update made your computer unable to boot if you had it set up to dual-boot into Linux? Why do people rush to the defense of Apple when they completely fuck up and make a mockery of their cheesy "it just works" phrase?

        • Re:Macs (Score:5, Funny)

          by dwater ( 72834 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @11:10PM (#21488145)
          Your problem is that you're not thinking different enough.

        • re: Boot loaders (Score:3, Informative)

          by King_TJ ( 85913 )
          Umm.... it has definitely happened in the past on Windows-based boxes with dual or multi-boot configurations set up on them! I remember struggles and research to recover "dead" systems that came about when trying to set up dual-boot configurations with things like IBM OS/2 and Windows, for example. One OS would perform an upgrade over the old one, and in the process clobber the boot record info that was formerly allowing a dual-boot.

          And although this is an unfortunate situation, it's hardly a case of Appl

        • Re:Macs (Score:4, Insightful)

          by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2007 @02:38AM (#21489447) Journal

          Can you imagine if a Windows update made your computer unable to boot if you had it set up to dual-boot into Linux? Why do people rush to the defense of Apple when they completely f-BEEP-k up and make a mockery of their cheesy "it just works" phrase?

          I'm with you on this one. (as I type away on my Mac-mini) I would be UTTERLY LIVID if a Windows update horked my grub bootloader, Apple deserves no less rage for this shenanigan. Apple, are you listening?

          I have a problem with them dictating what I can and can't do with their stuff, especially when they'd previously indicated that I can do this. And no, I don't have boot camp. I don't care about boot camp. I have computers running Linux, Windows, and MacOS all throughout my house. (I'm a CTO / Software engineer, I have about a dozen computers in my house right now)

          When you buy a product, ANY product, there's an implied agreement. I don't expect to run OSX on any old computer - it has to be an Apple; but in exchange for this limitation I expect drivers and such to be more or less a non-issue, which it pretty much always has been. (The latest OSX doesn't work on my ancient cherry 400 Mhz PPC iMac anymore... ugh) OSX is the most closed OS around - it's locked to specific hardware, there are no drivers that I can download anywhere, and it works how it works or I load in binary hacks that jeopordize the stability of the system.

          Windows, on the other hand, is more open. In exchange for a bit of roughness around drivers and such, I get the opportunity to run it on anything X86. (Even newer Macs!) I don't get to modify the OS per se, but there are plenty of ports for drivers, software, etc. that extend, tweak, and refine the operations of the OS.

          Linux is the most open. Everything is available to me, including sources. But I'm in the wild-wild west if I should do *anything* unusual. I can literally create my own Operating System from the ground up, line-by-line if I desire, with Linux. This degree of openness is really more than I can handle, so I make a subsequent deal with a distributor (in my case, Red Hat) to box-up the Operating System and provide a consistent experience so that I can rely on various things to be present, including drivers and such.

          Counter-intuitively, the support structure for Linux is most like Macintosh - I have to make sure I have supported hardware, and if a particular piece of hardware hasn't been blessed by your particular distro, you have to resort to some weird hacks and custom-compiled software, but within that, management is a dream, and usually "just works".

          For example, to load a CentOS/RedHat system from install to completely updated requires just a load, a single up2date (or yum -y update) command, and a single reboot. Raw hardware to fully updated in under an hour. MacOS is very similar. Windows takes 2 days of updates, driver downloads, and reboots. I can only use CentOS/Ubuntu with hardware on their HCL, unless I want to pull up the sleeves and spend an afternoon dickering. These qualities are much like MacOS.

          From a management perspective, RedHat/Ubuntu == Apple.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by catwh0re ( 540371 )
        While not to distract from the importance of service packs working on expired betas that are probably being artificially maintained while yielding unpredictable results.

        My eyes were first attracted to the word "bricked" only to realise that it was again not "bricked" but just someone aiming high with a sensationalist headline.

        I feel that bricked = no longer functional with no redemption at all.. I.e your hardware might as well be a brick. The ability to extract your data and at worst having to then format

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by DrXym ( 126579 )
      That used to be the case. These days Apple seem to be coasting on a reputation which they no longer hold. Virtually every single Apple device seems to be accompanied by major and sometimes serious faults - yellowing cases, expanding batteries, fire hazard cables, scratchable screens, faulty earjacks.

      Even the software isn't up to snuff any more. I use iTunes on Vista and the thing still doesn't work properly after having something like 10 updates since Vista appeared. It still shows black screens, still ch

  • Do any of the 3rd party disk tools fix this without havering to reload the os.

  • Yeah (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DurendalMac ( 736637 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @08:49PM (#21486965)
    We have four or five people in a thread and it's news? Please. In addition, this is NOT A BRICKING. Bricking means it's completely inoperable. If you can reinstall, it's not bricked. Period. I also find it hard to believe that you can't archive & install if something goes wrong, or at least do the plain old install.
    • Sure its not "bricking" but its a Mac equivalent to a Blue Screen of Death, which although Windows is re-installable because your BIOS isn't broken it sure is a pain to do so. Computers with working hardware and a BIOS can never be truly "bricked" but they can come very close to being as useful as one.
      • Oh, I'm not saying it isn't a pain in the ass, but bricking is far from accurate. It's like someone just copied a Digg headline to Slashdot.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by EvanED ( 569694 )
        Sure its not "bricking" but its a Mac equivalent to a Blue Screen of Death

        Um, no, it's not. A BSOD is usually a temporary condition, and rebooting "solves" it. Sure it's an indication of a bug, but if that bug only causes a fault every 1000 hours of operation, that's not too horrible. Certainly well below the "you need to reinstall" level.

        Sure, there are things that will prevent you from booting again that also cause BSODs, but these are a small part of all BSODs.
        • For me 75% of all BSOD were unbootable systems, the rest were wi-fi and other-type cards not being pressed in all the way
    • Okay, a couple of people report a problem on Apple's support site, one guy got what's probably bad advice from his local Mac Genius, and now it's on Slashdot?

      I don't doubt that these people are upset, but there's nothing in the linked discussion that even validates the theory that the problem is Boot Camp related...
    • Errm, a minor update causes OS X running in a common configuration to not boot. Sounds like news for nerds to me!

      The article also suggests that Apple new about the issue prior to release, a very serious charge if true.

      Watch the quality of Desktop version of OS X slip as Jobs puts all the good engineers onto the iPhone/iPod. After all, as Jobs himself said: "...unning Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it's worth -- and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by DurendalMac ( 736637 )
      In addition to my original post, I'd also like to add that I work in a Mac shop. I've seen some Leopard bugs that made me shake my head in disgust, but I have yet to see any issues with 10.4.11, this one included, and I've had plenty of Macs with 10.4.x come across the bench that were upgraded to 10.4.11 with no issues at all. I seriously doubt this is widespread at all.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nurb432 ( 527695 )
      I have to agree, its damned frustrating and inconvenient, but its not a *brick*.

  • OSX 10.4.11 (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ethanol-fueled ( 1125189 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @08:52PM (#21487007) Homepage Journal
    Just reached #11 on CNET UK's "Worst Consumer Tech" list ;)

    *ducks*

  • Hmm... (Score:2)

    by di0s ( 582680 )
    "Boot Camp doesn't work in 10.4 anymore? Upgrade to Leopard!" Planned obsolescence strikes again!

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @08:57PM (#21487047)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Informative)

      by 644bd346996 ( 1012333 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @09:11PM (#21487213)
      This could actually be interpreted as partly Google's fault, for raising expectations of "beta" software. Which is exactly what Boot Camp on 10.4 is: a public beta that expired quite a while ago. In particular, when the beta software also involves your boot sector and the Windows bootloader, you should consider yourself lucky to have anything recoverable. (Of course, it doesn't sound like Windows was at fault here, but nobody should be surprised when something like this breaks.)

      In the case of the OP on the Apple forums, it sounds like the biggest problem was that the person had less than 1GB free space on the OS X partition. Obviously, this is only indirectly due to BootCamp, but it did stop the OP from doing an "archive and re-install" of the OS. It is interesting that one person reported that running the 10.4.11 updater under 10.5 but applied to the 10.4.10 partition works, so it isn't a completely reliable bug.

      It is also worth noting that nobody has reported an actual filesystem corruption requiring a reformat, so the linked article is just plain wrong. Using the "archive and install" option to roll back the OS seems to be a reliable workaround. (With the one exception noted above.)
    • You can still boot to your Windows partition just fine. You just can't use Boot Camp to repartition your drive. Hell, you could still install Windows on a secondary hard drive. Yawn.
  • This "wipe the hard drive" procedure, is it a standard procedure if OS X doesn't boot, or is there something about this update that royally screws up the whole system beyond a OS reinstall?

    I've used OS X a little bit, but never done any system work on it so I'm not an expert. I'm just curious about this because although I look at OS X positively, it sounds scary to me that the fix for a non-boot condition is to wipe the hard drive. Or is this just the easy fix for Joe Sixpack and there's really a more in-de
    • I can just about guarantee that there's a fix that doesn't require wiping. It'll take some good old troubleshooting, but I'm sure a fix is out there. The easy fix is for J6P.

    • Or is this just the easy fix for Joe Sixpack and there's really a more in-depth fix that doesn't involve wiping the drive but is too difficult for the average user?

      On the support forum users are reporting the option to reinstall the OS while archiving the old data seems to work. There is no need to wipe the drive and I imagine it is just people conditioned by years of windows use; wiping the drive versus the correct option is just a matter of which selection button you pick and is no harder.

  • brick? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Gary W. Longsine ( 124661 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @08:54PM (#21487023) Homepage Journal
    The term "brick [wikipedia.org]" is being bandied about pretty loosely these days. It does not mean, "I had a problem, possibly even one of my own creation, that can only be cured by re-installation, and that annoys me and I think I can get some blog hits by griping about it."

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @08:54PM (#21487027)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • The Boot Camp beta expiring means you can't use it to repartition your hard drive. It's not going to nuke your Windows partition/drive. You could even use a Windows install disc to install to another hard drive, or even wipe OS X and install Windows without ever using Boot Camp.

    • If you read the original agreement when install Bootcamp without Leopard (ie the pre-Leopard versions of Bootcamp), it tells you it is Beta software only and that it will expire in October 2007. And that's what it did.

      I don't know. I've had Boot Camp on my Mac for a long time now. I upgraded to 10.4.11 right when it came out. I can still boot to the Windows partition; I did so just yesterday. Doesn't seem to me like this is some conscious decision to disable Boot Camp with the new version of the OS.

    • use rEFit (Score:4, Informative)

      by Dystopian Rebel ( 714995 ) * on Monday November 26, 2007 @11:53PM (#21488437) Journal

      If you read the original agreement when install Bootcamp without Leopard (ie the pre-Leopard versions of Bootcamp), it tells you it is Beta software only and that it will expire in October 2007. And that's what it did.


      Yep. Use this instead.
      http://refit.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

  • Right.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by feepness ( 543479 )
    So you can lose all your files during a copy, an upgrade will break your computer requiring a re-install of the OS...

    ...and Vista is the one we're supposed to give up on?

  • Meanwhile The Linux World Continues To Flounder (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26, 2007 @09:00PM (#21487083)
    Microsoft and Vista a mess most people don't want to touch or deal with.

    Apple and OS X becoming more and more of just another buggy OS and app vendor but with a huge markup on their prices.

    Almost everyone I know want to move on to an open vendor neutral platform like Linux and yet...

    * We still have to competing desktops that are only marginally different in how they fail to deliver a commercial grade user experience

    * KDE klowns are still sitting around slapping each other on the back about naming everything with the idiotic K in front and doing a poor job of cloning Windows 2000

    * Gnome still has Microsoft fanboys infesting open source desktops with Microsoft patent time bombs

    * Open source/Linux developers still can't seem to grasp the most basic principals of font usage, UI element spacing and alignments, colour choice, and so on and instead are pointlessly trying to 'prove they are ahead' with inane 3D accelerated desktop effects no one wants

    * A million sub 1.0 apps all of which do some things right and other things wrong but no single apps that actually get things people expect from commercial desktop software. And each of those open source apps depend on a hundred million crazily named library packages that are constantly getting updated.

    The computing world WANTS to jump to Linux. They've been wanting to for years. They are waiting for you open source kids to finally grow up and get your shit together.

  • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Try This Instead: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thedbp ( 443047 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @09:04PM (#21487139)
    Not sure what the exact symptoms are, because no one in this thread seems to have actually experienced the issue. If its an issue where you turn the computer on, and all you get is the Apple logo and spinning gear, follow these directions:

    If you have access to another Mac that is still working:

    1. Put the 'broken' Mac in FireWire Disk Mode (reboot while holding down "T").
    2. Attach via FireWire, the HD shows up on the desktop.
    3. Download the 10.4.11 Combo update and re-install it on the "broken" Mac. Make sure its the "Combo" update. Get it by searching for "10.4.11 Combo" at apple.com/support
    4. Reboot the "broken" Mac, it should just work now.

    If you have a bootable external drive (always good for troubleshooting and recovery!), boot the "broken" Mac to the external drive and follow the above steps from 3.

    Its actually really quick and easy to fix. Hope this helps.

    • If you have access to another Mac that is still working:

      Supposedly, just reinstalling from disk and selecting the archive old data option works too, without needing an external disk. Of course if you have an external disk, backing up is a good idea.

    • Re:Try This Instead: (Score:4, Insightful)

      by GomezAdams ( 679726 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @11:04PM (#21488099)
      Ya gotta remember that the folks that this happened to are sitting around and watching Heroes tonight instead of posting comments on Slashdot because their PCs are now door stops.

      And this appears to me as the wakeup call to Apple users about how Apple treats its customers - just like Microsoft. In other words you are a cash cow, your machine belongs to them and you are not allowed to do anything that Gates or Jobs doesn't want you to do and that includes experimenting with something that may be better for you but because they didn't sell it to you they will take steps to stop you from getting any use from it. Apple is just as evil as Microsoft only smaller because Jobs the AssClown decided to keep everything proprietary and Gates let his stuff work on any "standard" PC compatible hardware made by hundreds if not thousands of vendors. Apple could have ruled the world if they had licensed their hardware and software out to third party vendors or made it open source. But instead greed ruled and Apple became a niche product.

  • I have a 17" iMac bought one month after this guy (Score:5, Informative)

    by theurge14 ( 820596 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @09:07PM (#21487171)
    On that thread he says he has a 17" Macbook Pro bought 9/06, I bought my 17" iMac a month later. I was able to run Software Update from OS X 10.4.10 to 10.4.11 without incident and I also have the Boot Camp beta (1.3 to be exact). Anecdotal evidence really doesn't prove much in his case.

    The thing I don't understand about his story is that he took his Macbook Pro to a Apple store genius bar and they told him his only option was a reinstall, they wouldn't tell him how to boot into target disk mode and now he's online asking how to fix this problem? Uh... I'm sorry, but I just don't believe that.
    • Yes, I'm quite sure the guy decided to lie to the whole internet, because it is utterly unthinkable that some kid making ten bucks an hour at an Apple Store in a mall somewhere would be wrong, or uninterested in helping.

      The people at Genius Bars are not superheroes, they don't actually care about your problems, and the minute percentage of Mac users experiencing this problem does not warrant training every Apple Store employee everywhere.

      Apple's a corporation, not your best friend. Learn not to be aghast w

  • Unlicensed Software (Score:3, Informative)

    by Pinky3 ( 22411 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @09:15PM (#21487247) Homepage
    "The license to use Boot Camp Beta expires when Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is available to the public."

    "Warning: Boot Camp Beta is preview software licensed for use on a trial basis for a limited time. Do not use Boot Camp Beta in a commercial operating environment or with important data. You should back up all of your data before installing this software and regularly back up data while using the software. Your rights to use Boot Camp Beta are subject to acceptance of the terms of the software license agreement that accompanies the software."

    Users of Boot Camp Beta did read the terms of use, didn't they?
  • "It is evidence (in my opinion) of very sloppy software release. To crash a system on a known problem with Boot Camp is 100 per cent totally unacceptable. People (like me) have just too much stuff on their systems to be having to start over with hard disk reformat," the analyst told Macworld UK.

    since so many windows users have to do that when their OS gets totally owned by a virus. (the odds of a reformat-requiring infection on XP right now is about 1 in 25 from what we see - "you'd better bring your resto

  • An interesting coincidence (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Alexx K ( 1167919 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @09:29PM (#21487353)

    I know I'll probably be modded down for this, but...

    1. Apple releases a popular piece of software in beta form.
    2. apple releases new operating system, in which this software is included.
    3. Apple makes this software unavailable for older OS.
    4. Apple releases update that borks installs of older OS's with this software, so OS must be reinstalled.
    5. Apple: "Woops, sorry about that! Upgrading to Leopard for just $129 will fix this problem! Will that be cheque, credit card, debit, or money order?"

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by the_humeister ( 922869 )
      Amazing isn't it? Microsoft does the same thing, which makes them evil. Apple does this and people defend them to no end.

  • I think the correct term is (Score:3, Informative)

    by Techman83 ( 949264 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @09:36PM (#21487415)
    Hosed [foldoc.org] not brick [wikipedia.org]

  • How to make users move forward (Score:5, Funny)

    by 4D6963 ( 933028 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @09:55PM (#21487553)

    Microsoft, listen and learn, because Apple is doing things the right way. You've released a pretty buggy, poorly designed major revision of your OS, alright, why not, but right then you release a service pack to your previous major version of your OS to make it better. This is NOT the way to go!

    In order to make your users move on to your new but inferior major revision, you need to ruin the version of your OS that everyone is using. Just look at how Apple handled it. They just released a pretty buggy major revision of their OS, but it's okay! Because to make up for it they updated the previous version that everybody was using so that computers equipped with it won't even boot anymore! This way users are more than eager to move on to the new version, despite its flaws!

    Steve Jobs' genius will never cease from amazing us, nor shall you cease from learning from it.

  • huh? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by watchingeyes ( 1097855 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @11:29PM (#21488295) Homepage
    How is a problem that can be fixed with a reinstall "bricking" a mac? Bricking is when you permanently ruin something! I agree the problem is bad but it isnt that bad!

  • Standard reply to end users (Score:5, Funny)

    by guruevi ( 827432 ) on Monday November 26, 2007 @11:32PM (#21488309)
    That's what you get for trying to run Windows.

    I know this will burn my karma.

  • Not a case of bricking. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Pyrion ( 525584 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2007 @01:29AM (#21489085) Homepage
    As they're too big to be bricks.

    "Boat anchoring" perhaps?

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2007 @11:48AM (#21493573)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

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