Ten Four Too
I waited a whole extra day to upgrade to 10.4.2 just to be on the safe side, and last night downloaded the combo updater. The update went very quickly, and I restarted. The machine came up with a blue screen and the spinning pinwheel, as if it were finishing the update. Macfixit had warned that on restart some users reported their Macs “hanging” for up to 30 minutes. I waited 30 minutes, then an hour, then headed for bed.
In the morning, nothing had changed, and since I could hear no drive activity, I forced a restart. Everything was just fine, so what happened? This is not a new or isolated event, either. The same thing has happened in the past on my old hardware—a minor system upgrade would render the machine unbootable. This was always easy to fix (by zapping the PRAM), but doesn't speak highly of Apple's QA. I mean, they have it easy. They make the software and the hardware, and I have a totally stock kit with no unauthorized toys. Glad to have my Mac back, though. At least I don't have to reinstall the whole OS every six months.
I've only been using the update for an hour, but have already encountered a strange glitch that occurs when waking the machine up from sleep. Normally, when you wake the machine up, you're put back in the same application you were using before sleep. After the update, waking from sleep never puts you back in the same application, but rather you're put back in the next-to-last application you used. Weyodd.
[UPDATE] The application switch after sleep doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the 10.4.2 update, although that’s what triggered it for me. Rather it’s related to setting Security to require a password when waking up from sleep or a screen saver. If you turn off this option, the application switch stops. Definitely a bug, and not a new one, either.