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Owners of Mac portables have reported a swathe of battery-related problems, principally with iBooks. Apple's own bulletin boards carry posts from users who complain their batteries can only run their iBooks for minutes rather than hours, or in some cases not at all. The problem is embarrassing for the company, as it comes soon after Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, declared 2003 to be the year of the laptop, but Apple has yet to respond to the complaint.

However, Apple has provided a suggested fix to problems some OS X 10.2.4 users had in establishing or maintaining dial-up PPP modem connections. The company suggests deselecting the 'Enable error correction and compression in modem' from within system

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preferences.

Another OS X 10.2.4 bug affecting some users is where the Mac keeps resetting its clock back to 1969 or 1970. Apple has posted a workaround rather than a patch to prevent the problem: it suggests connecting to the Internet and using a network time server.

In one reported case, upgrading to 10.2.4 left the user completely unable to restart, logout or shutdown without resorting to the manual switches on the computer.

Apple has also released a security update for OS X 10.2.4 to prevent little-known Unix service sendmail, which if switched on could provide a way for a remote individual to access and take control of the Mac. OS X ships with sendmail switched off, and most users will never switch it on, but nonetheless Apple recommends that everyone using OS X install the update.

It is still possible to revert to OS X 10.2.3, by reinstalling 10.2 from your install CDs followed by the 10.2.3 combo update.

UPDATE: MacFixit has a lengthy feature on 10.2.4 problems - Mac OS X 10.2.4 Special Report.