Just to let you guys know..

One of the updates that popped up post WWDC is a Thunderbolt update to support the new FW800 and Gigabit ethernet adapters. I thought it was odd that I saw it, given my system already has FW800 and Gigabit ethernet (latest generation iMac) but, you know, what ho..

It absolutely trashed my system. I let it do the update and it popped up a window saying it couldn't with a 'restart' button. I clicked it, nothing happened. For about 10 minutes. So I think 'OK, that's not coming back' and power cycle it. On power up, the boot fails. Really early. Complaining about a missing kext. The usual things didn't fix it (obviously one of the config files was screwed) and in the end I had to reboot to the recovery partition and recover the whole thing from a time machine drive.

I'd suggest unless you actually think you're going to use one of those adapters, don't install the update.

I did actually have a Thunderbolt drive plugged in at the time, which may have been an issue. But frankly I'm not about to install the update again to find out.

Jonathan

Hmm, we've just had 3 new 27" iMacs installed at work yesterday and ran Software Update this morning to get everything bang up to date before we start to use them - one of those updates was the Thunderbolt one (the other two were iTunes 10.6.3 and an Airport update). No problems as yet, but now you've got me worried!

Have you got anything plugged into the thunderbolt ports? I suspect the issue was I had a mounted thunderbolt hard disk and it couldn't complete the driver update for some reason because of that. In the process it managed to point some part of the config to a kext that it hadn't got around to copying into place and as a result.. fail. if you've done the update already you're fine - it killed mine pretty much immediately. Plus if they're brand new, there's little chance of any accumulated cruft on them (in terms of permission or etc) that might cause a problem.

In any case, I don't think the Thunderbolt update is a necessity - I'd dearly love it if software update made a distinction between 'mandatory' and 'optional' updates, although software update isn't long for this world anyway - unless you're planning to use either of the new adapter cables they've put out.

Jon

Yep, think you're right on both counts. Nothing attached to the thunderbolt ports when we did the update so hopefully all is well. I agree, Apple really need to make a decision on where Software Update is going, we found a a bit confusing as there were a few iLife updates waiting in the Mac App Store and various other updates in Software Update. For example, iPhoto, Garageband and iMovie updates were offered in the Mac App Store, but the iTunes 10.6.3 was offered in Software Update (despite it being an iLife app!).

It doesn't make much sense at the moment. It would make more sense if you bought iLife apps in the Mac App Store and then Software Update took over the patching of those apps later - or just kill off Software Update and handle everything in the App Store itself.

That is actually what is happening, as of Mountain Lion.

Looks like I wasn't alone.

Also , apparently the package has now been pulled from Software Update.