There is no single dialogue box that strikes fear into systems administrators like a user being prompted to update their own software. Whether it’s the Mac OS itself, Adobe’s Creative Suite, or Microsoft’s Office products, updates have a history of breaking almost as many things as they solve.

If you were to list all the Windows features Macintosh users have wished for, you’d never see the “Blue Screen Of Death” among them. Which is why it’s such a shock when restarting an OS X machine to see the Apple logo, followed immediately by a frozen field of bright blue. Unlike Windows, there’s not even any diagnostic information to accompany the colorful rebuke.

If you support a design department of any size, various font problems have long been a thorn in your side. If your organization hasn’t felt your pain and moved to an expensive server-based solution, that means there’s a good chance you’ve been running some version of Extensis’ Suitcase as your font management tool. Like it’s competitors Font Agent Pro and FontExplorer, Suitcase has had a checkered technical past, but the new Suitcase Fusion 2 seemed to be a well designed and stable product. Then Apple shipped Leopard 10.5.6.