[OS X] SL: Apple Mail not working after failed OS X update
A friend of mine is using a late 2009 iMac running SL 10.6.8 Today she ran the Apple update to get the latest patches for her system.
She started the update process and let it run. The download went fine but the updates did not install (there were 5 updates in total, two for iTunes, one for OS x, one for Java, and one for something else that she can't recall). [edit: the last package was for Canon printers, which she uses]
She restarted the machine and while it booted ok, Apple Mail started bitching when she attempted to launch it - "You can't use this version of Mail with this version of Mac's OS X. You have Mail version 4.6 (1085/1084). It can't be used on Mac OS X version 10.6.8 (build 10K549)."
She has a Time Capsule attached and hence has system & data backups on it. She also has a CCC clone of her system but the last time it was cloned was about 3 months ago.
What recommendations are there for fixing the Mail issues and any other issues that may be present as a result of the failed OS X patches?
download the 10.6.9 combo update and apply it, which should update everything to the same version, then reboot and see if that fixes the problem. If it does, try installing the rest of the updates again.
If that doesn't work trash the mail.app. Then insert the Mac OS X install DVD. Choose optional installs and launch the installer. Re-install mail and run the update again. That will definitely fix it. Used it many times for this issue.