Second Life Crashing

I'm getting this problem also with Second Life since installing Snow Leopard. I used to breeze through SL ultra graphics now have to use Medium setting or terrain and fullbright objects resolve black. Constant crashes where the graphics go weird and then freeze.

It's deeply irritating that I can't even find a route through to apple to discuss this issue.

I'm having the same problem. It started right after upgrading to 10.6.3.

My wife was having a lot of problems with Second Life as well. IT would crash within 5 minutes and not rez in her skin at all. After talking with other users, we determined that there was a problem with the Snow Leopard 10.6.3 upgrade. We think there may have been a change in the graphics drivers. Reverting back to 10.6.2 seems to have solved the problem. Reinstall the operating system from your Snow Leopard disk, or the install disk that came with the machine. Then download the Mac OSX 10.6.2 Combo updater (you download that from Apple downloads) and install that. Don't let the software updater install the most recent OS update.

It's deeply irritating that I can't even find a route through to apple to discuss this issue.

This is not an issue you need to discuss with Apple. You need to go discuss it with the developer of Second Life. It is their responsibility to ensure their software works.

This issue of Second LIfe crashing constantly on 10.6.3 involves Apple in 2 ways:

1. I heard from an insider that Apple gave the wrong specs to the Linden Labs developers. Now does this mean that Apple is aware of the problems caused by the wrong specs and/or 10.6.3 and working to fix the issue on a future OS X update?? SL runs very well on 10.6.2 and as soon as you upgrade to 10.6.3, it doesn't. That's a pretty clear indication to me that the issue lies somewhere in 10.6.3 and not in the application. Sweeping the bug under the rug and telling people to look elsewhere doesn't work in anyone's interest.

2. The uncertainty of not knowing if SL will run is preventing me from buying the newest MacBook pro, which REQIRES 10.6.3 or higher. No information means no sale.

Apple is touting high performance graphics heavily and apparently reaching for a larger segment of the gaming market... where Mac users are most definitely second class citizens. Second Life is a very popular virtual reality game and has many loyal residents. Silence by Apple doesn't help gaming market share or confidence. What would it cost to address it, and what might be gained?

Running SL on my macbook pro is now a constant struggle, at first I was amazed by how much smoother and faster SL would run on Snow Leopard compared to Windows, and now, no matter what viewer I try and use, I can be in world for about 5 minutes before SL decides to crash on me.

Tried the SL 1.23 Viewer
Tried the SL 2.0.1 Viewer
Tried the Emerald Viewer
Tried the Imprudence Viewer

anybody else got any suggestions or fixes on this?

Second Life - Viewer 2 - Preferences - Graphics - Hardware - Enable VBO - unchecked!!!!

Warning! Activating this feature will crash your Intel-based MacBook. In general, the OpenGL implementation for Mac OS X will make poor use of the VBO features.