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# Unsanity - Shock and Awe: How Installing Apple's Updates can Render Your Mac Unbootable and How You Can Prevent it - apparently, while an update is "Optimizing System Performance", it is actually performing an operation called "prebinding". A bad bug occurs if two processes attempt prebinding at the same time. The file they're working on gets zeroed out, and can no longer provide whatever code it is supposed to provide. This can mean anything from a small glitch to an inability to boot. If your machine won't boot, you can hold down command-V during booting to display messages instead of just the Apple icon, and you may be able to determine which file is failing, possibly allowing you to restore that file. [tuaw]

Every single time you install an update to Mac OS X whether it be an iTunes update, a QuickTime update, an update for daylight saving time, a security update, an Airport update, or an actual Mac OS X update, you can be hit by this bug. In order to prevent yourself from being smacked in the face by this bug, follow this simple rule: When "Optimize System Performance" appears during the update process do not touch your computer and definitely do not launch any applications. Just back away from your computer box as if it were a swarm of bees. Yes, it does mean that if you install the Mac OS X 10.4.9 update, you may get hit by the bug.

# Shirt Pocket Software - SuperDuper! - "Heroic system recovery for mere mortals." SuperDuper makes it easy to clone your hard drive to a bootable backup. That you get for free. If you pay $28, it can also create a "Sandbox" copy of the system files, linked to the user applications and files on your main disk, do smart incremental backups, and allow scheduling and scripting. I installed it, but don't have a large enough external drive to do a backup.

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