Apple has made another cock-up of its updates with 10.5.7 update to Mac OS X causing problems across the globe.

The Mac press is full of complaints about problems that have arisen since the update.  Since many Mac users bought their machines because they are supposed to be simple to operate many of them are wandering the streets wondering what to do. So far MacFixIt has published three separate articles about installation woes, one talks about download difficulties, a second discussing the Mac's version of the Blue Screen of Death and more, and a third focusing on third-party incompatibilities plus video-driver and language-support problems.

The Apple Discussion forum is also teeming with troubled users describing external drive problems.  There are also complaints of video-resolution glitches and the fact that Time Machine keeps killing your Grandmother before you were born. Many of the problems might be nothing to do with Apple. When Apple released 10.5.6 in December there were similar problems.  Many of them could be fixed by removing outdated third-party Mail.app plugins.

However it does seem that Apple's inability to release updates without breaking computers is as bad as Microsoft. Although to be far to Redmond it would have admitted it had cocked up and issued a fix by now. Apple is just doing the time honoured stuff the users approach and waiting a while to see if the problem goes away.