Apple yanks Snow Leopard Server 10.6.5 update

Updated Apple has pulled a Soviet-style disappearing act on its recently released Mac OS X 10.6.5 Snow Leopard Server upgrade — the upgrade has become an un-upgrade, pulled from Jobs & Co.'s download service.

Since the upgrade was released just last Wednesday, Apple's discussion boards have been crying out about the update causing problems with LDAP, DNS, email, external drives, and other headaches. (Thanks for the heads-up, AppleInsider.)

One poster, MackS, subtly voiced his displeasure thusly: "What a garbage release. Those packages should've NOT be released! DO NOT UPGRADE!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Of course, every time that an OS update appears — server or client — discussion boards light up with problems. And many problems, such as some of Snow Leopard Servers LDAP challenges, find fixes.

But pulling an upgrade less than a week after its appearance is an unusual occurrence — although, of course, doing so without explanation is in keeping with Cupertino's secretive personality.

The Snow Leopard Server turnaround comes in the wake of Apple's announcement last week, buried on its Xserve Resources page, that it would discontinue its 1U rackmountable server on January 31, 2011. It appears that Apple is, indeed, as Steve Jobs described it during his company's financial results conference call: "a very high-volume consumer-electronics manufacturer."

The Mac OS X 10.6.5 client version is still available for download, however — despite the fact that it bricked Macs that use PGP's Whole Disk Encryption, plus a flurry of other problems. ®

Update

Late Monday afternoon, Pacific Standard Time, Apple again made the Snow Leopard Server version 10.6.5 available for download. In a security notice published concurrently with the reposting, Apple noted in part that:

A memory aliasing issue in Dovecot's handling of user names exists in Mac OS X Server v10.6.5 (10H574). On systems configured with Dovecot as a mail server, a user may receive mail that was intended for other users. This issue is addressed through improved memory management. Dovecot is only provided with Mac OS X Server systems. This issue only affects systems running Mac OS X Server v10.6.5 (10H574).

No mention was made of any other the other problems that users have reported after installing the 10.6.5 update.