Apple OS X 10.5.6 update is littered with problems and issues of all types

The much anticipated, much hyped Apple OS X 10.5.6 system software update finally arrived on Monday and has been causing problems ever since. I personally never install updates immediately after they’re available, especially when it comes to iTunes, and I do it for exactly this reason. But not everyone observes that philosophy, and it’s easy to quickly accept the automatic software updates without really thinking about what you’re updating.

So for those that did update, let me first say, I’m sorry. While some people have described dead logic boards directly after updating, there are a wide range of other issues that have been encountered, mostly on MacBook Pros. For most of those, I hope Apple comes to the rescue soon, but for now the best information is on the Apple Discussion forums. Some users have had to use the Disk Utility to repair permissions and other drive issues, some have reinstalled OS X 10.5.4, some have had their issues magically disappear after numerous reboots and others have had their update go through just fine.

If anyone has to update, for some ungodly reason, my advice is to not use the automatic updater, but instead to download the update from the Apple website. This should head off some potential problems and will prevent the update from hanging while downloading and installing, as some users have encountered.

But there is one issue that’s been effecting Mac Pros that we’ve had success fixing. If you’re continually having your connection to a network drive dropped, or you can’t save files to a network drive and you’re using Mac OS X 10.5.6 to connect to a Mac OS X Server 10.4-based server, the only thing that appears to solve this issue is to update the server to Mac OS X Server 10.4.11. Not 10.4.9, not 10.4.11. No amount of reboots of the server or your OS X 10.5.6 machine will help. For us, the server update fixed the issue immediately.

If you have a different 10.5.6 upgrade issue, good luck.

Mac Pro fix source: Apple Insider

Update: Apple has finally acknowledged that there are issues with the 10.5.6 software update and has posted a recommended solution.