@AC

> Or the fact that you have to pay for every minor incremental update to OSX?

If you have 10.4, 10.4.1 to 10.4.11 is free. If you have 10.5, 10.5.1 to 10.5.6+ is free. There's significant changes in terms of added API and functionality between 10.3 and 10.4 and between 10.4 and 10.5.

Do you really need random renaming to know the difference? Should Apple rename 10.6 as Mac OS OMGWTF the same way WinNT 5.1 was called XP, and WinNT 5.2 was called Windows Server 2003? Does the product name really determine what's a major and what's a minor upgrade?

Back to topic, the OS is beta, and bugs that are fixed by the time of GM could have caused inconsistencies in the registry. Fixing the registry isn't as easy as replacing dlls, so the advice to nuke it from orbit and start over makes sense. I think the registry itself is a hideous design flaw, but it's not some vast conspiracy here. Reinstall the OS, get a fresh registry, and move on.