Please help! Software Update has screwed up my computer!

First of all, apologies if I've put this question in the wrong place or failed to locate the same question asked and answered elsewhere. I'm at wit's end here and need a point in the right direction from the panel of experts here assembled.

I switched to a MacBook about a year ago (a little over, since my warranties are expired). I'm running a unibody aluminum 13" MacBook (since rebranded as a MacBook Pro) with OS X v10.5.8. A little while ago I ran Software Update, and now half the apps on my laptop won't work.

I've identified that the following applications aren't working:

• software update
• google software update agent
• adobe acrobat reader
• ichat
• adium
• itunes
• vlc player
• transmission
• dashboard apps
• safari
• iphoto

I'm not sure if it's relevant, but I had run the Acrobat update utility around the same time as the Mac software update utility. (I heard other MacBook owners having trouble with the Acrobat updater as well, though they appeared to be experiencing different issues.)

I looked all over the Apple support site and through their forums for an answer as well, but keep on running into brick walls. Can anyone offer some advice? It'd be most appreciated.

What updates did you download? What are the apps that "aren't working" doing? Ya gotta give some clues!

Good call, toMACsh. I updated the latest security update, iTunes update and I believe the latest version of Safari.

I believe I saw a message pop up briefly during the update process, indicating that something didn't work with the Safari update. I didn't really catch it though.

Also, as I mentioned above, I ran the Acrobat update around the same time.

Now when I try to open those apps (itemized in the list at top), they just don't work. I get the message "The application ___ quit unexpectedly. Mac OS X and other applications are not affected. Click Relaunch to launch the application again. Click Report to see more details or send a report to Apple." [Ignore] [Report] [Relaunch]

Since you've presumably been using Time Machine, why not just go back to the point before you did this and restore?

chas_m said:

Since you've presumably been using Time Machine, why not just go back to the point before you did this and restore?

Click to expand...

If only presuming made it so.
Unfortunately I was, until recently, lacking a compatible drive with which to back up via Time Machine. So while I'd been periodically backing up vital files onto DVD, I don't have a Time Machine backup to fall back on.

Upon recommendation, I downloaded and installed Cocktail, but even that won't work! It's giving me the same message as I receive for the other apps that won't launch.

So even new apps suffer from this malady!

I suppose you should trash Safari and try again. Presumably you've Restarted a few times since everything went haywire, right?

it's outdoing

toMACsh said:

So even new apps suffer from this malady!

I suppose you should trash Safari and try again. Presumably you've Restarted a few times since everything went haywire, right?

Click to expand...

Well I'll be darned, toMACsh. That actually worked. Thanks!
All the apps are now working just fine, having trashed Safari and downloaded the new version fresh from Apple.

Much obliged

Makes sense. A lot of apps are reliant on WebKit, the rendering engine that Safari uses to display web pages. My guess was that the Safari install failed for some reason and this ended up effectively breaking a lot of apps that rely upon Safari.

NoJo said:

Well I'll be darned, toMACsh. That actually worked. Thanks!

Click to expand...

That's great! I'm glad you got everything back to normal again.