Two Slashes

Well, I’m both happy and displeased to announce that there is a small problem with the installation writeup I created to help install iLife ’08 on OS X-based systems that didn’t meet the requirements. I’ve recieved several e-mails about the problem, but if you experience it yourself, let me know.

A user by the name of derbochennag has traced through some of his logs and discovered what may very well be the culprit: Quartz. From what I can tell based upon my discussions with him, and a bit of creative theorizing, the problem lies in the Quartz packages not being suitable for use with earlier versions of OS X. (Speculation: Perhaps this is the limiting factor in why Apple doesn’t officially support installations on prior versions of the operating system.)

The symptoms of the “Quartz bug” include some of your applications no longer working, and a Spotlight icon that flashes in the corner of the screen, but remains useless the entire time.

For now, I would like to perform some experimentation in attempting to avoid installation of those packages; perhaps the iLife suite will work fine.

I also realize that it’s been a very long time since I’ve posted content of any kind; school’s been getting into the way of me doing much of anything productive but unrelated to education lately. But we’ll see what I can do in the near future.

Update (9/18):  I have modified the posted shell script to SKIP the Quartz installation (it’s commented out in the script, so you can take a look at it if you want to experiment or try installing it against recommendations), until more testing can be done.  In the meantime, running a repair installation of OS X over your screwed up installation should fix everything up.