There is more fallout from the current Leopard update to version 10.5.6. Many users are flocking to the Apple support forums to share their tales of woe about Time Machine failures after the update. (Ironically, Time Machine was on the list of items that received bug fixes).

Upgraders are seeing Time Machine stall, fail to identify the target hard drive, lock up while Time Machine is 'preparing' to backup, and other assorted glitches. There is no guarantee that these issues were caused by the update to 10.5.6, but users are seeing a lot of problems in parallel to the software changes.

MacFixit has quite a bit of guidance on the Time Machine issues. One of the most interesting observations is the long pause while 'preparing' to backup. It seems TM needs to do a deep traversal of the data because it sees a lot of file changes to copy, as would be expected with a major software update. The advice is to wait it out and and eventually TM is likely to get going. I had the same issue and eventually stopped the process, erased my TM drive and started again. That was after more than 2 hours of 'preparing'. It looks like I might have been better off to wait.

I had hoped 10.5.6 would fix the occasional TM error I get telling me that the backup failed, but then when I try again, everything is fine. I spent a good hour on the phone with Apple support on this problem some months ago, but didn't get anywhere. Many others have seen this rather arcane message and reported it. Hopefully it will be fixed in the next OS update.

It's good to keep in mind that most people updated without any dire consequences, but there are enough people grumbling that it merits a closer look by Apple.

Today in 1983, "Beat It" by Michael Jackson may have topped the charts, but a slight bug in the *dir() library was found only a few days ago by OpenBSD developer Marc Balmer (no rela -- oh, wait). OS News has the entire amusing tale of the bug in BSD (the UNIX foundation of Mac OS X) that's been alive and kicking for nearly 25 years. Balmer contacted Marshall Kirk McKusick, the original developer of the *dir() library, who confirmed the error.

Thankfully, the fix was simple, but Balmer kidded, "[s]orry that it took us almost 25 years to fix it."

Thanks, Cameron!

After Effects 7 users, take note: there have been some interesting and unfortunate developments with the recent release of the QuickTime 7.4 update. Apparently, it disables After Effects 7 and will not permit users to complete rendering videos. There have been some arguments about what is causing this error, with some claiming it is related to DRM issues (let's hope not), while others claim it is nothing more than a preferences bug.

Nevertheless, you can not revert back to a previous version of QuickTime once you have updated. In short: After Effects 7 users, beware! Avoid the QT7.4 update at all costs, unless you want to deal with a major headache.