How best to answer this ... hmm ...
What I have looked for when I relay "No widespread reports of
problems" about an update is I look at what kinds of problems are
occurring and being reported. Say for example, an update comes out
and suddenly a major portion of the Mac OS-X using internet goes
silent. One would suspect that there is a serious problem, so bad
that it is keeping folks from even reporting on it, :^) (Uh, there
was a problem with one release of Safari when it first came out that
fell into this category, that release was pulled quickly).
Barring that, then next; are there groups of reports that can be
categorized into ones that affect certain models? If I only hear of
reports that are fairly isolated instances, then I mention the
update. One problem with this approach is that it needs (and relies
on) the reports of the early adopters (I am one of those), so if
folks do not update and report quickly, then a common problem may not
show up until later.
With all of that in mind I will tell you that I think it is okay for
you to do the updates, at least to the G4 Powerbook.
There are some caveats that come with Apple updates one should pay
attention to:
1) Disconnect external firewire drives and what not before updating.
2) legacy systems may not take the update well, especially the Blue
and White G3 Macs (these were not designed to be ran with OS-X in
mind at all it seems and it is a wonder that Ryan Rempke's patch has
managed to make OS-X run on these systems.
As far as your friends G3 iBook goes, I must ask which one is it? So
far, the ones that had the FireWire ports seem to run Tiger pretty
well (no they do not get the cool graphics and effects in Tiger), but
the earlier ones seem to be best with Panther. [The core *nix stuff
in OS-X will run on all systems, even the old PPC Macs, but the
graphics and audio add ons are the parts that break OS-X for the
older Macs.]
I suspect with Leopard, all of the G3 Books will formally join their
Blue and White cousin in the Legacy Lineup.
The Onyx problem is one that will always happen to small third party
developers and as a discussion topic would take us far from your
question.
Does that help or make things worse?
Jerry
On Nov 6, 2005, at 4:22 PM, Harry Jacobson-Beyer wrote:
> Jerry,
>
> I'm confused about this update!
>
> There has been a lot of cross talk about problems occurring after the
> update - some of which I understand and (fan issues) and some of
> which I
> do not understand re: Russell Preston's problem with AppleScript error
> 1762.... and OnyX maintenance suite - all geek to me.
>
> What I want to know is can I safely / should I download and install
> this
> update on my G4 Powerbook? What about a friend's G3 iBook?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Harry
>
> Wednesday, November 2, 200510:22 PMJerry Yeagerjerry at browseryshop.com
>
>> So far there does not seem to a large number of reported problems, so
>> if you missed the news, Apple has released a few more updates
>> recently including 10.4.3, but you will most likely want a high speed
>> connection to download it, as it is around 93MB in size.
>>
>> Get it via SUPP or from Apple's site.
>>
>> Jerry
>>
>> -----------------------------------
>> Someday, I will come up with a clever signature line. I am not sure
>> if I will use it or not, but I will come up with one.
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
> | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will
> | be November 22 at Pitt Academy, 6010 Preston Highway.
> | The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>.
> | List posting address: <mailto:macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu>
> | List Web page: <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>
-----------------------------------
Someday, I will come up with a clever signature line. I am not sure
if I will use it or not, but I will come up with one.
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