An interesting thing that I have noticed. I have a MacBook Pro. Recently I reinstalled my OS, and the first thing I did was put Planeshift back on. Before reinstalling the OS, I had the same issues. After reinstalling, they were gone. The only difference was that instead of running OS X 10.4.8 (where the graphics bugs existed) I was running OS X 10.4.6. So I think the problem might lie more in the 10.4.8 update than the hardware.

EDIT: After updating to 10.4.8, the graphic bugs returned

Also, I am not using 3.017, I am using 3.018.

Same problem on my MacBook Pro. I also can't get pssetup to stay open long enough to use.

I have come across something very curious, a way to run the new version of planeshift (although, it is kinda annoying to run it this way)
First, you need to have Xcode installed (I have only tested this on the newest version)
In /Developer/Applications/Performance Tools, there is a program called Shark. This is what you use to run planeshift.
Open Shark
From the left-hand drop down menu, select Malloc Trace
In the right hand drop down menu, select Launch...
In the window that pops up, select the executable (this will be psclient in whatever directory you put it).
Select OK, now planeshift should run.
You have to do this everytime until the PS team fixes the problem.

---michael