PowerBook stuck on an endless loop
Yesterday I applied the latest updates available from Apple to my PowerBook, and for some reason or another something went awfully wrong..
The updates that killed (temporarily) my PowerBook were: Security Update 2008-002 and the Safari 3.1 Update. After the combine 100MB+ download, Leopard asked to restart, like it always does. Thinking not much of it, I said go ahead and thats when everything went crazy..
The updates seemed to installed correctly, but one thing caught my attention: Instead of carrying out the install with the normal blue background, it was been done with the Leopard "cosmic" backdrop, "Odd".. I thought..
It took a while to restart..and then grey Apple screen, a restart, grey Apple screen, a restart, so on and so forth. Things didn't look good at all. Couldn't boot into Single User Mode, nor Verbose Mode. Things were definitely looking bad. Left it as it was overnight, decided to deal with it later on the next day.
Today I got my OSX Disk out and booted off the DVD. Did the usual repair disk/permissions savior moves, no dice. Only thing left to do... Archive and Install..
So I went ahead and took that route and I gotta say I'm happily back home. Sure I gotta install a crap load of updates again, and today, my internet is acting extremely SLOOOOOWWW. Nevertheless, its god to be back within OSX with all my files and apps intact.
What cause this? I am not too sure. I would say that mysterious "Safe Mode" boot that happened once out of nowhere had something to do with it. Hopefully it was just "one of those days.." Lets see if when I update back again everything is nice and dandy..
Labels: Apple, Computer problems, Leopard, OSX, PowerBook G4, Troubleshooting
Posted by Sebastian at 3/19/2008 04:32:00 PM | 2 comments read on
Photo Booth - The Turtle App from 10.5
With the release of Leopard, many of us that have old macs finally got access to features that the newer Macs are shipping with for quite some time now, namely Front Row and Photo Booth. One of the first things I did after I installed 10.5 was to test out these "new" apps and see how they performed on my PowerBook.
Front Row runs amazingly well. All the features from the current Apple TV software (not the one demo'ed at Macworld) are available for use. Although the lack of a remote to control it from a distance, kinda kills the whole point of the application. Don't get me wrong, I can navigate the Front Row menus no problem using keyboard arrows and the Escape key..but...it's not the same.
Then we have Photo Booth. The whole premise of Photo Booth is pretty cool, I must say It's basically the photo booth from the Mall brought home, meets the House of Mirrors from the fair, best of all: -Free!. Since my PowerBook does not ship with a built-in iSight, i had connect my Sony DV-Cam via the firewire port. The camera works great, sadly Photo Booth does not.
Blame it on the under-performing G4 processor within, but the real-time Core video filters proved too much for the little 12 in. PowerBook that could. And this is why, with this type of hardware, Photo Booth gets the Turtle App award. The machine struggles to keep up with the live camera feed and apply those nifty Core filters, it's a beach ball frenzy. Maybe Photo Booth performs admirably well on my PowerMac with dual G5 processors, but on this machine its just not going anywhere.
So there you have it, my first Leopard report: Photo Booth on a 12-inch PowerBook is a no-go.
Labels: 10.5, Leopard, OSX, Photo Booth, PowerBook G4
Posted by Sebastian at 2/04/2008 06:24:00 PM | 0 comments read on
