Probably so that they could install the new ethernet adaptor in a way that OSX could officially recognize. What's the big deal? Nothing to get freaked out about. It's not the first application I've installed that required a restart.
I fear apps that require a reboot of my machine, as my experience is that those that need to interact with the OS at a level requiring a reboot upon installation tend to cause the nastiest crashes.
That may be true, but this is one of those apps that basically has to interact with the system at a very low level. Either you trust it or you don't.
FWIW. Beta 6 for me is the most stable beta yet. Previous betas were much more prone to crashes. Sometimes, just after a couple of minutes, I experienced a kernel panic. For me that resulted in some data loss on my FileVaultet home directory. I'm running beta6 now for more than 10 hours straight and apart from the documented network problemss, I haven't seen any crashes yet. The reboot probably suggest that a driver or kext needs to be replaced which is currently in use by the operating system. Nothing to worry about.
Thank you for clarifying what level of trust I need to use this software. I was afraid I might need to sorta trust it or something.
Anyone with any concern for their data should be backing up before using any beta software, period. And back up on a regular schedule as a matter of principle, whether using beta software or not.
So, you've installed anywhere from one to five previous betas and never noticed the kexts it was loading (and I suppose never noticed that it required the password to an administrator account to install), and now that you've got to reboot, you no longer trust it. You're a clever one, aren't you?
