Howdy Riverguy,
Although I do understand that you believe Apple should offer a fix (and who knows, perhaps they yet will, this only just happened, what, today?), and hopefully they will, let's not assume that they won't, since this is still so very, very new.
I also understand that it's a major effort to resolve this issue, especially if you don't have a handy clone or Time Machine backup made just prior to this updater being installed.
However, I do not agree that "Apple should have warned everyone of the consequences of using the update.", any more then they already have, and do, as I'm sure they did not know about this bug (how can you warn of something you don't know about?), and not everyone is having the issue, some are reporting that their PPC apps work fine on 10.6 after installing this update, so, it's not everyone that is having the issue.
Indeed, Apple does correct advise folks on their documents such as "About the Mac OS X v10.6.8 Update" document where it starts off with :
"Updating your system: You should back up your system before installation; you can use Time Machine. Do not interrupt the installation process once you have started to update your system. You may experience unexpected results if you have third-party system software modifications installed, or if you've modified the operating system through other means."
Also, Apple does indeed have instructions for how to update your software:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1338
They do update some details about what issues it addresses:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5130
Also: Software update, upgrade--what's the difference? http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1444
Any update, from any company, can cause problems, and can affect running applications, I don't know why you would think otherwise.
It is indeed a system update, not upgrade (an upgrade would be for example, going from 10.6 to 10.7, or, to quote Apple : "Mac OS X v10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, 10.6 and OS X Lion themselves are not free updates, they are reference releases, also called upgrades."), and as always, I'm sure if you read all the instructions on updating OS X software, it probably always says that you should first make a good backup, and also remove any 3rd party items that may be incompatible, etc...
At the very least, before installing or updating ANYTHING, you should always make a backup just prior to doing so, and probably also run various disk utilities to make sure all is well BEFORE you install or update anything. Do it any other way is risky, which is fine, as long as you know the choices you are making.
If something goes wrong, you restore from your backup, and then it's easy to fix.
No one is forcing you to install updates immediately upon their release, and it is frequently wise to not install updates right away, and sometimes not for a long time or at all, depending upon your circumstances, needs, etc... You might want to also double check that you've disabled auto-updating, as these issues can happen.
Cheers,
Daniel Feldman
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