Keeping Leopard caged

I am not an early adopter of new technologies, and that includes software upgrades. It's one of the reasons I still use an Apple II: having used the same revision of the same OS for 15 years, you can bet it's proven pretty stable.

Granted, I'm somewhat unfamiliar with the whole upgrade process, as I usually just run a computer so long that it's easier to buy a new machine than a new OS. This was the case with an 8.1 Wallstreet that lasted until the cusp of Panther's release. Six years on one laptop is pretty good mileage for my money. The exception was Tiger, which I bought upon its release but calmly waited to install until 10.4.3 had been released. By that point, I had confidence everyone else's headaches wouldn't prove my own -- and I was right.

I was resolved to follow this same practice with Leopard, released just three weeks ago. I wasn't ready to make the jump, especially after hearing of the OS's spotty record. When a friend pointed out that 10.5.1 had been released, I told him I was still waiting. "ROTFL" was his response: "They've fixed all these bugs, and still you want more?" But the keyboard malfunction hadn't been resolved, I pointed out. "Coward," said another. Unfortunately, the issue was soon to be forced out of my hands.

In sticking with Tiger, I allowed the 10.4.11 update to be installed. The biggest change this otherwise minor update introduced was the installation of Safari 3, previously optional to Tiger users. It replaced my Safari 2 application, but not its functionality. Indeed, neither I nor several others could get Safari 3 to run in 10.4.11 for more than two seconds without crashing.

Both Ken Mingis and Gregg Keizer recommended manually extracting Safari 3 from the 10.4.11 upgrade package -- but that didn't work for me. So I restored Safari 2.0.4 from a backup, but now its autofill didn't work. Had I known there was a patched Safari that might've resolved any WebKit conflicts I was experiencing, I would've tried that. But I was impatient. Figuring it was inevitable, I sighed and upgraded to Leopard.

Bad move. Before, it was only Autofill that was broken. Now, not only am I back to Safari not working at all -- but neither is my MacBook Pro's keyboard. Not intermittently. Not just before or after a restart or a shutdown. It doesn't work AT ALL. I can't even run the 10.5.1 upgrade patch, or boot into safe mode, as both actions require me to TYPE my password. If it wasn't so damn frustrating, it'd be funny.

I've restored from a backup to 10.4.10, where keyboard, Safari, and autofill all function in harmony. Call me a coward; call me a stick-in-the-mud. I call myself someone with a working computer -- two, if you count the Apple II.