I posted a while ago about the crashes caused by Apple’s X3100 OpenGL driver, under Mac OS X 10.5.5. Having installed the 10.5.6 update, I am delighted to report that my test case now runs flawlessly, with no sign of a crash. I haven’t stressed the machine heavily, but after 10 minutes the test is still going strong.
On the down side, Apple didn’t fix the Blender crash, although it appears to occur less frequently, and the UI responsiveness is much improved. From what I have gleaned on the web, Blender seems to perform some obscure/outdated tricks with glDrawPixels and the front buffer, so the ball may be in their court to update Blender’s UI rendering. It is however irritating in the extreme, as Blender was previously my staple modeller, and I haven’t yet become comfortable with a replacement – suggestions are welcome for other free, MacBook-capable modelling packages.
swiftcoding 
I think there is a possibility that the UI rendering of Blender might get some update during the current release cycle aiming for 2.50. Most of the work is being done on rewriting the event handling system though.
As an alternative modelers you might want to check out Art of Illusion (http://www.artofillusion.org/), K-3D (http://www.k-3d.org/wiki/Main_Page) and especially Wings3D (http://www.wings3d.com/). Note that Wings3D suits especially for box modeling style. It does not support non-manifold shapes at all!
If you are willing to spend some money on a modeler, check out either Modo (http://www.luxology.com/whatismodo/) or Silo (http://www.nevercenter.com/).
Thanks for a nice blog. 🙂
Oops. I forgot to mention about gSculpt (http://gsculpt.sourceforge.net/) and Moonlight|3D (http://www.moonlight3d.eu/cms/). Particularly gSculpt looks nice.
Thanks! A couple there I hadn’t run into before!.
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