11511 My usual modus operandi with Apple system updates is to wait a week or two to see how the proverbial dust settles before applying the update, but in the instance of Mac OS X 10.5. Leopard I've been stoically struggling with its bugs and angularities for nearly three months now, and when Apple released the OS 10.5.2 update on Monday, the pent-up longing for some relief was too much to resist.

Software Update is not an option on my slow home/office dial-up network, and I wouldn't use it for an OS update anyway, even if I had broadband. I like to take a belt-and suspenders approach. At 343 MB, the OS 10.5.2 Combo updater was also not a viable download via dialup, so Tuesday morning I bundled up and drove 12 miles to the nearest WiFi hotspot, which is at the local library.

Parked outside in my truck in 19° F weather (the library was closed), it still took over an hour to download the Combo updater and the companion 50 MB Leopard Graphics Update, but aside from throughput that was fluctuating from about 50 kbps to 270 kbps, I finally got the files onto my hard drive.

I didn't get a chance to run the update until Wednesday evening, so it's early days yet.

First the good news. I had run a Repair Permissions/ cron maintenance scripts/cache dump routine with OnyX last weekend, so decided to dispense with that (although it's a good idea to do it if you haven't done a system cleanup for a while), but I did take MacFixIt's advice and boot into Safe Boot mode (hold down the Shift key during a reboot) before running the installer.

Incidentally, starting up in Safe Boot mode takes a long time because it runs a media scan during the bootup process, so be prepared to wait about five minutes or so before the login screen appears (which it will in Safe Boot even if you have automatic login configured).

However, one payoff for boot time patience may be a shorter install time for the update itself, which took a surprisingly brief 20 minutes or so on my not exactly speedy 1.33 GHz PowerBook G4. Some folks have reported it taking the better part of an hour on MacIntel machines.

I opted to not install the Leopard Graphics Update, at least yet. Apple says cryptically that "Leopard Graphics Update is recommended for all users and improves the stability and compatibility of your Mac," so I may add it later.

Anyway, the installer reported that the install had been successful, and after the familiar post-update double-pump reboot (also longer than usual) the Leopard Desktop appeared and everything looked reassuringly familiar.

Actually, you can now make it look somewhat different, since 10.5.2 now lets you turn off menubar transparency (via a checkbox in the Desktop & Screen Saver panel of System Preferences). Menus themselves are still somewhat but less transparent. I rather like the transparency, so that wasn't something I had been waiting for, but you now have a choice.

The biggest feature/functionality difference from OS 10,5.1 it that the almost universally-panned Stacks feature has been substantially reengineered. Each Stack/folder in the now has a contextual menu that is accessed with Option or Right Click to display a list of configuration alternatives, allowing you to sort contents by, Name, Date Added, Date Modified, Date Created, and Kind.

Moore importantly, IMHO, you can now display the stack as a normal folder, which will appear in the Dock with a regular folder icon or a custom icon if you've configured one. In Stack mode, the first icon in the respective folder is what gets displayed in the Dock, which means of the folder content changes or you change the display sort configuration, the identifying icon changes, which I find maddeningly confusing.

Best of all, when Folder mode is selected, you can get a real, hierarchical list menu and submenus. I still prefer the straightforward folder in the Dock motif of OS 10.4 Tiger and earlier, but this tweaked Stacks in OS 10.5.2 is a big improvement.

Now for the bad news, and there's a lot of it. If you've been following my OS X Odyssey blogs on my adventures with Leopard, then you know that I've found POP3/SMTP email performance over my slow dialup network (email has worked fine over the same connection in every previous Mac OS version I've used dating from System 7 on an old Mac Plus) is truly, hair-teasingly dreadful, and alas there seems to be no improvement with this in OS 10.5.2, in fact if anything, it's even worse. Bog-slow, won't work at all with my ISP account's SMTP server, and seems to put a lot of load on the processor whenever email is sending or receiving - or at least the processor heats up.

My impression was that Finder responsiveness had also taken a hit with the 10.5.2 update, in that I never perceived 10.5.1 to be more sluggish than OS 10.4 Tiger, but version 10.5.2 seems draggy - there is a noticeable lag when opening folder windows, in Save dialogs, and in responses to menu commands.

Also, while like I said, it's early days yet, the PowerBook's cooling fan seems to be cutting in more frequently than it had been in 10.5.1, although that hasn't been adequately established yet.

[Update: The processor heat/fan cycling issue is much deteriorated with the installation of the Leopard Graphics Update. As I noted, this aspect has improved with Leopard 10.5.1 compared with Tiger 10.4.11. In 10.5.1, with the processor speed of my G4 PowerBook set on "Automatic" in the Energy Saver preference panel, the fan would only cut in during farily busy processor activity, and it never spooled up with the speed set at "Reduced." Things were not as pleasanr after I installed 10.5.2, and now, with the Leopard Graphics Update installed the fan cycles continuoisly even at the Reduced setting when I'm connected to the Internet (internal modem). In Tiger, with the speed at "Reduced," the PowerBook processor runs in the nid-40°s C. IN Leopard 10.5.2 with the LGU, it hunts between 55° and 58.5° (the fan cut-out/cut-in marks). Bummer.]

And worst of all, something that is definitely worse is the problem I have been plagued with in 10.5.1 with Spaces crapping out after varying intervals of uptime, refusing to respond to clicks on application icons in the Dock, and requiring a reboot to restore function. This happened twice in just over the first 24 hours of running in OS 10.5.2.

This is all profoundly disheartening, and could prove be the tipping point that sends me back to Tiger, which fortunately I still have installed on another partition of my hard drive. I have found that Spaces - when it works - is a tolerable substitute for WindowShade X (which isn't supported by Leopard thus far), but I can't abide doing production work without one or the other, and having to reboot daily or more often to restore Spaces function is simply unacceptable.

Last Thursday evening, after the second post-10.5.2 Spaces malfunction, I decided there would be nothing to lose in running the Leopard Graphics Update. I first ran another Repair Permissions/ cron maintenance scripts/cache dump workup with OnyX, then the graphics update, which only takes a few minutes.

Happily, that seems to have helped. Finder response is noticeably snappier, and even email throughput seems faster [Update - that was illusory] . Go figure. Apple is typically inscrutable as to what's in the Leopard Graphics Update, which is ostensibly a bunch of driver updates, but possibly it also includes some last minute bug-patching and optimization of the OS 10.5.2 update.

[Update 2 - Well, as of Sunday evening, Spaces has not glitched up since running the maintenance routines again and installing the Leopard Graphics Update on Thursday. This is encouraging, although based on prior experience I'm not ready to declare the bug squashed. Email performance is as bad as ever, unfortunately. I'm guessing that this must be due to some deficiency in Leopard with respect to communicating with my various email accounts' servers over a slow dialup connection (26.400 bps connection speed), but it does seem a bit absurd. Not only OS X 10.4.Tiger, but even my antiquarian 8 MHz Mac Plus with 2.5 MB of RAM running System 7, both move email several magnitudes faster over this connection than Leopard does. I'm no programmer, but how hard can efficient email support be?]

Update 3 - Monday noon: I'm still running on my Thursday reboot, and Spaces is still behaving, so it looks like running the Leopard Graphics Updater has had the desired effect on that issue. On the other hand, as uptime lengthens, the cooling fans are howling more constantly than ever and POP3 email has slowed to nearly the rate of continental drift. CM


We'll see how things go. I'll update this column as events unfold.

___

The OS 10.5.2 updater file is a whopping 343 MB and requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later. To update to Mac OS X 10.5.2, use Software Update or (My recommendation) the standalone installer which can be downloaded here:
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosx1052comboupdate.html

For more information, visit:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307109

The 48.9MB Leopard Graphics Update, which Apple is recommending for all users and says "improves the stability and compatibility of your Mac" requires Mac OS X 10.5.2 to be installed first.

You can download the update here:
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/leopardgraphicsupdate10.html


Charles W. Moore

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