The first time the 10.2.8 update was released I bid my time. I was wary about Jaguar updates after 10.2.4 made my Powerbook go wonky. With the second release of 10.2.8 there didn't seem to be a rash of problems so I went ahead and installed it. That was pretty dumb.
Just about every problem I had with 10.2.4 has resurfaced making me think Apple has some weird ritual they perform of updates that are multiples of four. Safari runs like crap. It takes longer to open than it did earlier today and beachballs for a second. I don't know what they did to WebCore but now scrolling down a page seems like an oppressive chore where previously it was an ethereal jaunt. When my Powerbook is hooked to an external monitor it starts getting strange redraw problems on the desktop. The foreground windows redraw alright but the background gets all funky. If I switch to mirror mode and then back the effect goes away.
The most annoying problem I had in 10.2.4 was the inability to unplug my VGA adapter while the Powerbook was asleep and have it wake up properly. In both 10.2.5 and 2.6 this problem did not exist. I was in fact impressed that they'd gotten it to work once more as it worked great in 10.2.3. Now the problem has cropped up again.
The battery reporting fix is a joke. All they did was use a smaller time frame to gather the average load from. To generate a report on the amount of time a system can run on the battery the system merely inventories its power load for a period of time. Based on the reported capacity of the battery and average load calculation the system can say about how long it will last on the battery. The variance in reporting comes in because the width of the sample window is typically fixed. Say ten minutes. If in that ten minutes you are pretty much letting the computer sit you'll get a very generous time remaining report. If you're using the system heavily in that ten minutes you'll end up with a very conservative report. The time remaining report is basically the computer saying "at the current power draw (usage) you'll get X amount of time with the juice left in the battery". If the sample window is too wide you'll always end up with a crappy report. Periods of inactivity end up averaged out and you end up with a very conservative report. Too small a sample window and the report will fluctuate wildly. If the sample window is a minute wide reading a file from the hard drive can make it look like you're powering Geneva in the winter time off your laptop battery.
I'm just really disappointed that this "update" has caused my system to regress to a previously crappy state. Maybe Apple is just giving me more incentive to upgrade to Panther, I'm not positive but I'm really annoyed. It feels like the time I installed a service pack on top of Windows 2000 and ended up unable to even boot the system because the Boot.ini file was messed up, pointing to a non-existant drive and partition.
Anybody else having these problems?
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