Mac OS X 10.3.7: Myst IV compatibility problems

MacFixIt reader Greg Piper is among a handful of readers reporting that Myst IV Revelation crashes frequently after installing Mac OS X 10.3.7:

"Right after the update to 10.3.7, Myst IV Revelation crashes shortly after going to the 'book menu' of the game... every time. A peek into the crash report sending to Apple shows many instances of the ATI 9700 drivers and kernel problems. I have a Quicksilver 733 with an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Edition AGP card, and a Radeon Mac Addition (PCI) card with a second monitor, and a Gig of RAM."

All of the users reporting this problem are using ATI graphics cards. Cards from NVidia seem unaffected.

The problem is especially prone to occur when the user is accessing the "Book Menu" of the game.

MacFixIt reader Scott Harmon (who uses an ATI Radeon 9000 card) was able to resolve this issue by deleting the the "default.m4s" and "options.m4o" files that are stored in the Myst IV "Save" folder.

Others have been able to resolve the issue by applying the most recent Myst IV patch, released on Decemeber 2nd by UbiSoft. The patch is labeled myst4_v1.00_to_v1.01.

MacFixIt reader Greg Piper wrote Ubi Soft -- the creators of Myst IV -- regarding the above issues, spawning an interesting discussion that reveals how at least some Mac game developers deal with Apple's incremental Mac OS X release:

Customer: I know your "fix" (for Myst crashing in 10.3.7) is to drag the game folder to the desktop to get around the OSX 10.3.7 incompatibility, but this WONT work if your boot drive doesn't have the room to do that. What is your next solution to your incompatibility problem? When will this game be updated so I can continue my game?

Ubi Soft Response:Unfortunately the game is only supported on OS 10.2.8 to 10.3.6. The work-around has helped some users with OS 10.3.7 and is the only suggestion I can provide. The 10.3.7 OS was released well after this game was developed and released to the market. They might patch the software to allow 10.3.7 compatibility, or they might not support 10.3.7. Currently the only suggestion I can give is to downgrade your OS.

Customer: If you were saying that it won't work under 10.4.x I'd understand completely, but the 10.3.x updates are NOT optional upgrades to the OS! These are security and bug FIXES to the OS. You should be supporting the entire 10.3.x OS regardless of the security updates Apple provides... Yes, even if that means having someone troubleshoot the problem and work on it for 6 hours or so to fix it. OS X 10.4 will be an optional upgrade, and not an upDATE to the OS. You can tell this because Apple offers updates to 10.2, 10.3, and will offer them to 10.4 simultaneously and doesn't force you to upgrade to the newer OS. A 10.3.7 patch is not an operating system upgrade, but an update! Apple doesn't force you to upgrade. [...] You're telling me to scrap future compatibility with software from possibly thousands of other vendors just to fix your one game? Please understand this. I'd like a refund on this game if you can't give me a better answer than to 'downgrade' back to put insecurities and broken parts back into the OS.

Ubi Soft Response: Refunds can only be provided by the Retail store since technical support does not retail to the general public. As I had stated last email, we may come out with a patch. The fix may or may not be easy. The main problem with creating software for the macintosh is compatibility issues with the ever changing Mac OS. The video game companies cannot keep up with Apples changes every couple months. It means you will need development teams always present working on a certain piece of software. Some companies who create one or two products can keep up with these changes. Video game companies will have development teams work on a project, then after release, the team is sometimes disbanded to work on other projects or they may keep just a few people to work on after release issues. If Apple would stop releasing upgrades and work on one OS release that will not have to be patched with a security update every couple of months, this would not be a problem. I can understand the frustration, but this is how the situation has been and will probably will be with a Macintosh. Myst, Riven, Myst III, Myst IV, Dogz, Catz, Chessmaster...etc. These are all products that we have released that will not function correctly due to OS revisions. This is just a tiny list of games released in the past that will no longer function due to OS updates. This update for the OS was not initiated with the release of Myst IV, this problem was caused by the release of the new OS. I believe your frustration should be pointed towards the OS update rather than the item that was stable before the update release.

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