Apple has angered thousands of Mac users with the release of Snow Leopard Mac OS X 10.6 because the new operating system has caused some computers to fail. After a startup failure, users are greeted with a continuous icon described as the “spinning ball of death.”
In most cases, a spinning color wheel or beach ball indicates that a system is engaged in a processor-intensive activity. The ball usually disappears after a few seconds. However, when the ball spins for a much longer period, as users of Snow Leopard have reported, it is referred to as the “spinning beach ball of death.”
Apple touted the Snow Leopard upgrade as refined. And Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster predicted Apple would sell five million copies of Mac OS X 10.6 through the end of this quarter. The OS was touted as having faster startup and shutdown times, higher resolution for iChat, and a more powerful Safari 4 browser.
But for some it has been nothing but a slow crawl after installing the upgrade.
Users are flooding forums complaining of a major glitch in the OS that was supposed to be — according to Apple — “better, faster, easier.”
Apple support forum poster Ravenx2012 said: “So many on so many different Macs seem to be getting the spinning wheel of death from snow leopard. How can so many people have their Macs bricked by this paid-for service pack?”
The upgrade bricked James Sheppard’s iMac 24, according to his post on the support page.
“I also have a MacBook Pro, installed Snow Leopard, and now have a totally non-functioning machine — just a spinning wheel and then black screen,” posted Jer78. “It won’t stay on or ‘lit’ long enough to try any remedies. The Apple phone tech told me as much after an hour of…