I started having some very odd problems with my powerbook a few days ago. It turns out that the latest airport software update can do quite a number on one's system. OK so this is the bad. With closed source there are no fast fixes to hunt down, and Apple pretty much denies that there is an issue with the update. Add to that that there is no clean way to downgrade this particular package. At one point my laptop stopped recognizing the battery and the airport card. Unacceptable.
The good came though... I learned of a cool feature of the Mac OS X install discs - there is an install that will basically tar up the user home dirs and re-install the system while preserving the users data. While I am not a big fan of reinstalling *nix-based systems (one should not have to after all) it was a cool experiment that went *very* well. Its a very nice feature to have.
After the install I upgraded everything but the airport software.
Posted by dmason at March 5, 2004 11:03 PM