Some Sage Advice

In our previous report where we discovered after applying the latest Quicktime and Security Updates from Apple, Photoshop CS3 would crash at launch. Adobe Photoshop CS2 was unaffected, however. So, we began digging through the crash logs and watching what happened during the crash. We narrowed it down to a crash during “Loading ScriptingAdditions.” So we opened the Library… ScriptingAdditions folder and starting moving things in and out of the folder and launching Photoshop. We found the culprit to be “MacPackToolbox.osax.” Removing this system file allowed Photoshop to launch! However, some scripting no longer functions, but at least we can launch Photoshop.

I have been very diligent about updating my Apple Leopard OS 10.5 to be sure that I can eliminate as many problems as possible. I have also been running the Adobe Updater more than usual hoping that Adobe fixes things with Creative Suite 3 along the way. Well, as software would have it, Photoshop CS3, which had been working just fine, now, all of a sudden, won’t launch. The only thing I can think of are two Apple updates lately, namely Quicktime 7.3.1 and the latest Security Update for Leopard. I suspect that Quicktime is the problem. Since it is so close to the holiday, I have been busy getting ready for Christmas so I haven’t had much time to troubleshoot the problem. But I plan on using Time Machine to revert my system back to last week so see if it fixes my Photoshop problem. The strange thing is that the “unsupported by Adobe” Photoshop CS2 works fine so I am using it for my image editing tasks right now just to get them finished.

The scrooges at Intuit have taken away Christmas for untold numbers of Quickbooks 2006 and Quickbooks 2007 for Mac users. Seems a bug in their update code automatically deletes ALL files and folders on a user’s desktop! The worst part of the problem is Intuit’s slow response to fixing the problem and even slower response to help those affected by the bug. A page on Intuit’s site asks Mac users who are affected by the deletion to fill out a web form and that an Intuit tech support person will call them. This is on a first-come, first-served basis. The irony: the form on the Intuit website asks for only a name and email address!

In the meantime, if you use these programs, disable automatic updates in the Quickbooks preferences, move all your files and folders off the desktop and into a folder on the hard disk (a good idea anyway since the desktop was never meant to hold lots and lots of files), and most importantly, if you see the Quickbooks updater launch itself, immediately force quit the program (and if you can’t do that quick enough, pull the power cord in the Mac!).

You can read more about this on Intuit’s forums and various other Mac troubleshooting websites.

One thing that I have noticed with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is the improvement in speed with networking, especially with SMB shares. I mount a couple shares from a Windows 2000 server using SMB. Under Tiger, accessing these shares was pokey, at best. The connections were reliable, but viewing a folder that contained lots of files in icon view resulted in a slow screen draw.

Leopard has improved upon this greatly and the icons are downright snappy when they draw. Copying is also much improved. BUT, and this is a big one, I have had to restart at least three times in the past three weeks to gain access to my shares. And in one case, my Mac totally crashed with the multi-language “You must restart your Mac” message while trying to access a share. So while speed has been improved, reliability has not. The typical symptoms are that the shares may disappear from the sidebar and trying to access the share results in no response at all and trying to log back into the server results in the crash.

Other users are reporting loads of problems with wireless networking, especially accessing Airport networks. The Apple Discussion Boards are tracking hundreds of posts of users who are having trouble with their Airport networks. We don’t use airport base stations and our Leopard Mac isn’t airport-equipped so we can’t comment on this.

New reports from users are suggesting a problem with Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 and Adobe InDesign CS3. By opening an InDesign file from the File… Open menu, the application will crash. On affected systems, this crash is reproducible. Simply double-clicking a file in the Finder to open it allows the file to open normally.

Adobe has a tech note on this subject with some suggested workarounds. Adobe claims “After you install the Adobe Version Cue CS3 3.1.0 update, the following Creative Suite 3 products may crash when you attempt to save, open, or place a file on Mac OS X:

• Adobe InDesign CS3
• Adobe InCopy CS3
• Adobe Illustrator CS3
• Adobe Photoshop CS3
• Adobe Flash CS3 Professional
• Adobe Bridge CS3″

They have a file update available which solves the problem for some, but not all, users. People have tried using Disk Utility, repairing permissions, and deleting the Adob prefs. Some have also reinstalled 10.5.1 using the combo updater without improvement. One trick to try may be to delete the InDesign folder in home/Library/Cache/Adobe.