Things That Tank OS X
Steven Frank had a discussion on his weblog yesterday about how the bad wireless connectivity at WWDC had a tendency to make OS X behave badly.
I personally never noticed that problem (most likely because I would just get pissed off at the lousy connectivity and turn Airport off), but his mention reminded me of another extremely reliable way I’ve discovered to hang OS X. I have one of those SanDisk PC Card Compact Flash adapters, which has become my preferred way of getting digicam photos onto my PowerBook. In some previous versions of the OS it would work flawlessly, but in more recent versions (I’m afraid I can’t say exactly when the cutoff occurred) inserting the adapter has become a sure fire way to render my machine temporarily comatose! And I’m not just talking about the Finder hanging or something—my computer (mouse pointer and all) literally stops responding for at least a few minutes.
Given the longevity of this bug, I can’t help but wonder if it has something to do with my specific make and model of camera or compact flash card (although I mostly use a Nikon Coolpix 990, which is probably one of the most popular digicams of all time, so I doubt that). Come to think of it, it may actually be fixed in Panther—I’ll have to check when I get home.
(Update: I’m happy to report that the CF adapter works flawlessy in Panther. Looks like yet another indication that 10.3 is going to be a great release!)