After many years of relying on MacFixit for help, I abandoned it when Ted sold it to VersionTracker, so have not been aware of the changes. I now rely on four main sources.
MacSurfer for a great overview of mac news and help.
MacIntouch for reasonably intelligent dialogue on mac issues, with reader feedback generally useful.
Apple forums for the next level of help, but there is a great variation on actual help and a lot of useless whinging which is of no help at all except for the whinger.
Applecare, which I have for all of our Macs for when things go really nasty.

At least Macintouch makes it obvious that they simply relay all the comments they receive, so you know to take the contributions with a grain of salt. I have no problem with that. They also don’t charge subscription fees for essentially running a list server.

Invariably, an update will trigger a “Mac OS X 10.x.x has killed my first born” response on Apple Discussions the day of release. As the evidence mounts, someone has not followed these steps to the letter:

http://www.macmaps.com/upgradefaq.html

Unfortunately until Apple Discussions is able to moderate out all the threadjacks, and new posters who can’t post a new topic, similar problems that have different causes will always mask the severity or lack thereof of any problems which surface. Big long threads develop as stubborn users refuse to believe anything other than the update could be to blame. Occasionally a smart user listens to the Level 4 people, and starts providing enough detail to find out was it a third party software, hardware, RAM, or some logicboard issue that was to blame. Unfortunately the Mac press avoids those shorter threads and looks for long threads, not realizing the vast majority of them are rants, and/or users who resubscribe as a different user to make the extent of the problem look worse. Even with the vast numbers of posts, not even 1/10th of one percent of the updaters even post there. And an even smaller percentage of the people who upgrade with success post there of the percent of people who do post there, since it is a troubleshooting forum.

Too bad it isn’t mandatory for success stories to post themselves, to offer a ballanced point of view saying that success is far more likely than failure.

Again, the comment I made yesterday about language changing is an improvement. I hope that it signifies more improvement to come, but as Macfixit is no longer run by a dedicated aficionado, I have my doubts to say the least.

Having said that, many of the fixes they publish do, in fact, work. If I am experiencing a problem I don’t know how to fix, I do search their site for a solution. I then consider the likelihood of it working and may try it out. I did this as a Mac Genius and had many very pleased customers as a result. What I do not do anymore is follow the front page as a source of “now appearing” bug reports as I used to do.

Now I am back in software QA. The introduction of new bugs when fixing existing bugs is higher than you may think, especially when you don’t control the environment (in this case every single Mac in use) that the fix will be applied to. Because of this, the “Apple can’t know/test every configuration” point is not only valid, it is critical to understand, especially if you intend to modify your system. I am a big fan of TinkerTool, Onyx, FruitMenu, WindowShade, Quicksilver, and various terminal hacks. I understand, though, that every time I use one of these hacks, I introduce more risk of my system acting/reacting badly. The first thing I do before a major OS upgrade (10.4 to 10.5 comes to mind) is undo all of these things.

In the case of the Tiger to Leopard upgrade I was not certain that I could remember all of the hacks I had applied since so many of them became “natural” enough over time that I viewed them as OS features. In that instance I cloned the drive to an external hard drive, did an “Erase and Install” of Leopard, and then used the Migration Assistant to bring my Users and Apps (but not the System Library) over to the new environment. It worked like a charm. I was attempting to avoid the APE system manager flaw (not an OS 10.5 bug as reported by Macfixit) but since I update my software regularly I would likely have not been effected. None of the features that APE enabled would have worked (I’m still waiting for some to come out of beta) but my system would likely have been usable.

As I said, I am a former Mac Genius with training from Apple (not perfect training but training) and a former and current software QA professional. I understand all of these things. Most of the Mac using populace does not. Unfortunately these are also the people most likely to put blind faith in sites like Macfixit to bail them out.

My biggest concern, though, is that Apple doesn’t monitor the discussion boards on their support site very well. I see more dangerous procedures posted by well intentioned Mac users there than anywhere else. Because you get to them buy going to http:www.apple.com/support they look like fine, vetted, and even official fixes. They are not. Many of them are great, but not all by far. The fact that Apple doesn’t have enough moderator staff (very expensive) to vet these comments is even more dangerous. Yes, they point out that these discussions are not Apple sanctioned, but it’s “fine print” to most people. When you are desperate for a solution you are no more likely to read that warning than you are to read a EULA. That’s dangerous.

My $.02

Adam

Back to the topic, MacFixit bills itself as a one-stop shop for answers, but they’ve been criticized before for the very same issues you mentioned, Gene. The premise of a site like theirs is great, but I wish there were one that was “done right”. If you learn of one, let us know!