For both 10.4.8 and 10.4.9-- "if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it".

Otherwise, for those needing to revert to an earlier OS:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25404

I have had some issues since installing OS 10.4.9 - the one that affects Vienna Instruments software is a change in the amount of time it takes to open (initially) a a single empty instance of the VI plugin. Prior to installing 10.4.9 this took 1' 10" but afterwords, it took 6 minutes to accomplish this.

However, after rebuilding the directories of the startup disk and the sample library disk (a 1 terabyte SATA RAID 0 array consisting of two 500GB Seagate drives) with Alsoft's DiskWarrior, loading a single empty instance of the plugin again took 1'10". Now, two weeks later, loading single empty istance of the plugin into Logic takes 3' 24." I have not dowloaded Apple's latest "Security Update" which was released yesterday. I will try rebuilding the diretories again with DiskWarrior and report back.

Rebuilding the directories during which DiskWarrior did not report any specific errors reduced intial opening of the VI Plugin to 2' 48" Repairing permissions - which always finds exactly the same permissions to repair every time it is run (probably a bug)- - and running Apple's Disk Utility (which found "nothing to repair") did not affect launch time.

Hi Chris, can You be more specific ?
Thanks

1) If you did already and did not encounter any problems, ignore this and continue working.

2) If you did already and did encounter problems, hm, there ain't no easy way to roll back. I think OS installer prevents that ( well I never tried ).
2.1) wait for an update
2.2) Try to find out more, ie find out where and when malfunction appears.
2.3) If problems are unacceptable: clean disk (or better take a new one) and reinstall everything. On Mac this is not as time consuming as it would be on a PC, however. Nevertheless, quite some work and time.

I posted this, because of upcoming issues hitting our support.

Just cautionary .

chrisT

Thanks for the answer, but
i had no problem on 3 Mac G5 and 1 MacPro 8 core running 10.4.9 VI Logic and lot of other softwares.

I'm not having any problems on my Logic Express 7.2 set-up. with MOTU DP that's another story altogether. but you can apparently re-install OSX from your boot disc, then go to the Apple site and update you OS in increments. This sounds terribly complicated and as one person posted earlier, it might result in some other apps not working right. No, I'll stick with OS 10.49 until a newe update comes out. With OS10.5 (Leopard) now being put off until Sept. or October 2007, we'll probably see an OS 10.4.9.5 or something like that. Or else, developers will update their programs to 10.4.9

If you wish to go back to an earlier OS version, it is important to do the update in increments - - downloading the Combo Updater for each increment from the Apple website. I found that, when I was reinstalling the OS and used a combo updater that went from an early version of the OS (e.g 10.4.1) to a much later version (e.g.10.4.6), some essential components were left out that rendered some software inoperable (e.g Altiverb). This is true whether you are doing a clean OS install or an Archive and Install. It's laborious, but worth it, if you are having problems.

Just a thought. It's been the case with many of Apple's OS X updates that things get broken doing Software Update, or installing with the standard incremental Updater. In fact, cycling74 had a bunch of problems with Max/MSP from the standard updater for 10.4.9 as well. *Always* download the Combined Updater for whatever version you're updating to. I don't know if it will fix the problems in this case, but it's been a workaround on multiple OS X updates many times in the past (and it cured c74's 10.4.9 problems), so it's certainly worth a try. If you've already updated, just download the OS X 10.4.9 Combined update and try running that. And, as scary as it sounds, some Max users were even finding that running the Combo update more than once would fix the problems... go figure...

J.

@Another User said:

1) If you did already and did not encounter any problems, ignore this and continue working.

Too bad I hadn't read this last night!

I'm working with the Apogee Ensemble, which needs 10.4.7+, so I figured I'd just let Software Update take me to 10.4.9. Just before that I installed Logic 7.2 and ten 7.2.2. Hopefully I won't have to revert to my back-up.

But I have to say that so far everything seems to be working. The stand-alone V.I. Player launches in 55 seconds on my machine.

One strange thing did happen, though - my qwerty keyboard and mouse stopped working and I had to restart twice right after launching the Player to check whether it was going to take forever to launch. I hope there aren't any weird things to do with 10.4.9 and Syncrosoft...

@Nick Batzdorf said:

I'm working with the Apogee Ensemble, which needs 10.4.7+, so I figured I'd just let Software Update take me to 10.4.9. Just before that I installed Logic 7.2 and ten 7.2.2. Hopefully I won't have to revert to my back-up.

Nick, I'm curious to hear if Soundflower is continuing to work with VIs after your 10.4.9 update. Mine seems dead in the water and the only thing I can think of is that it may be related to 10.4.9.

Thanks!

Yup, it's working fine - thank goodness.

As someone who is switching to Mac for music work (Mac Pro, 2.6GHz quad core, 5GB RAM), what is this "Combo Update" and how is it done? Why is it safer than just going to the software update and checkmarking "OS X 10.5.0" and updating that way.

I'm going to be very nervous upgrading to Leopard. [:)] At least with Windows XP service packs, I know they've been solid and have caused zero issues for me. Being new to Mac, I'm a little apprehensive.

Sam, Leopard will be the equivalent of upgrading to Windows Vista. You don't have to worry about that; it's not even going to be available until this autumn.

***

About 10.4.9: since switching, I've had USB issues when first starting up, namely the mouse and keyboard aren't seen until I plug them directly into the Mac (instead of the monitor's built-in hub) and wait a little while. My guess is that the machine is having a hard time sorting out the individual IDs.

I wonder whether this is related to the Syncrosoft dongle issues?

If I weren't lazy I'd start up from a 10.4.5 backup and see whether this is only 10.4.9, but alas.

@Nick Batzdorf said:

Sam, Leopard will be the equivalent of upgrading to Windows Vista.

Well.. that sounds kinda scary. I've heard tons of Vista complaints and upgrade nightmares. So I'm not sure what you mean by this statement. [:)]

Edit: Nevermind, I remember now. OS X has an "archive and install" option where it backs up all your previous stuff into a folder, and installs the new OS, then you can copy whatever files you need from your old install. Very cool.

Question on that: say I'm on 10.4.9, using Logic Pro, other software, etc., and I do an archive/install of 10.5. Do I reinstall Logic Pro? Or can I copy it over from /Applications and copy its data from /System/Library/Logic(?)

And I'm not sure what you mean by what do you mean by this statement. [:)]

This is an OS that won't even be available for at least six months, so clearly there's not much point in worrying about it today. When it becomes available, you'll have plenty of time to research what is and isn't available and working in it before changing over - just as you do with Vista now. I haven't read reports of people flocking over in droves yet, by the way.

One thing about Macs is that you can start up from whatever drive or partition you want very easily (in the Startup Disk preference). So if you want to test the waters before jumping in, just install the new OS on a FireWire drive and see how it works.

Even before then, it's always a good idea to make a bit-for-bit disk image of your present startup drive in trouble-free condition onto an external one in case something goes wrong. That ensures you don't have to spend time troubleshooting. In the case of a new OS installation you can just go back to your previously working set-up - auths and all - if it doesn't work out.

Crossed posts.

The answer is no, you don't have to install anything over again (assuming the old v. of Logic is still compatible, which it probably is). To me the worst thing about Windows is that it wants to wipe your whole fricking drive when you just want to reinstall the OS.

I like my Windows slaves when they're working, but they drive me nuts when something goes wrong. The entire crew on VI-Control couldn't help me the last three times I got stuck, in fact either could the guys at VisionDAW.

Awesome, thanks for the response, Nick. Looking forward to going Mac [:)] I've had it with Windows. Not that Mac won't have issues, of course, but I expect far fewer.

I plan on using SuperDuper to make clones nightly (it handles incremental clones too, very cool). That will be my failsafe as well, in case anything goes wrong with the Leopard upgrade later this year.

SuperDuper is great for making incremental back-ups that you can boot from - I use it every day - but the clones it makes aren't bit-for-bit copies, i.e. they aren't guaranteed to restore your software auths.

So I keep two kinds of copies: everyday clones made with SuperDuper, and actual bit-for-bit image files made with Apple's Disk Utility (inside the Utilities folder).

@stevesong said:

I have had some issues since installing OS 10.4.9 - the one that affects Vienna Instruments software is a change in the amount of time it takes to open (initially) a a single empty instance of the VI plugin. Prior to installing 10.4.9 this took 1' 10" but afterwords, it took 6 minutes to accomplish this.

[[:|]]

Launching the VI standalone on my C2D MacBook/10.4.8 takes 22 seconds. If, then, you quit and relaunch VI, it will start again in 7 seconds.

Opening a single VI instance in Logic Pro 7.2.3 takes approx 4 seconds.