The Mac OS 10.5.6 update saga continues

Apple suggests fix for Mail suicides

By Rik Myslewski in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in PCs & Chips, 23rd December 2008 16:59 GMT

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Apple is hoping that its latest support bulletin will calm down some of the uproar over problems caused by its latest Mac OS X upgrade - in this case, the propensity of Apple's email client to unexpectedly quit.

As we reported first one week ago and then again last Friday, the Mac OS 10.5.6 update has gone less than swimmingly for Apple - or, we should instead say, for Mac users who run the most recent version of the company's operating system, Leopard.

As we and many others have discussed, Mail.app has been particularly problematic. Point your browser to MacInTouch's 10.5.6 discussion, for example, and seach for "Mail" - as of this morning, you'd find over 100 references.

Apple's support bulletin confirms what many users have suspected: that Mail's unexpected serial suicides are the result of "outdated third-party Mail plugins." Apple also allows for the possibility that the errant behavior might be the result of a "copy of Mail that wasn't updated properly."

The fix? First run Software Update to see if your copy of Mail is, indeed, up to date - which we're assuming it is, because no Mac user smart enough to read The Reg would be dumb enough to not keep their apps up to date.

Then review your Mail plug-ins to make sure you're running the most-recent versions. Apple suggests that two particularly problematic offenders may be Christopher Atlan's OMIC and Sente's GPGMail.

If all your Mail plug-ins are fresh and healthy, try moving them all out of ~/Library/Mail/Bundles and/or /Library/Mail/Bundles anyway - hey, you never know where file-corruption might lurk.

If all is still not well - and if you've been around the Mac for a while - you know what Apple suggests that you do next. Correct: back up all your files, perform an Archive and Install reinstallation of Mac OS X 10.5 (preserving settings), then run the Mac OS X 10.5.6 Combo Update. Again.

Hey, it's the holiday season - you've got plenty of free time, right?

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