Snow Leopard ate my broadband
BRITISH USERS of Apple's latest Mac OS X, Snow Leopard, have been complaining that they can no longer use their broadband dongles in their fruity machines.
According to Electricpig.co.uk, many dongles of the broadband devices being flogged in Blighty are not compatible with Snow Leopard. It warns that punters have to be extremely careful and do shedloads of research before buying anything that plugs into their shiny expensive machines.
While some broadband dongles are advertised as working on a Mac, Snow Leopard doesn't recognize them because it does not have as many drivers as prior releases yet, the article warns.
So far dongles being supplied by 3, T-Mobile and O2 can't cope with Snow Leopard. T-Mobile's support site states: "If you use the Mobile Broadband USB Stick 120 or USB Stick 620, you should not use this with MAC OS X 10.6. It is currently incompatible and can cause serious issues with system stability."
T-Mobile even warns people against upgrading to Snow Leopard, but that's useless advice to people who have bought a new Apple machine.
Vodafone has supplied a software download, which it says will fix your dongle to work with Snow Leopard.
O2 has a complicated work-around that involves deleting and reinstalling its mobile broadband dongle support drivers, which most "it just works" Apple users will find too complicated and out of their league.
Meanwhile, Orange says that it will release software next week that will fix the problem.
The dongles causing the problem are all made by Huawei. It is keeping a low profile at the moment, but with so many of its broadband dongles being used in Blighty it is surprising that no one at either Apple or Huawei got around to upgrading the drivers for Snow Leopard before it was released. µ
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If they have enough for a Mac then buying a new dongle should be no problem. Better still buy a new Mac and keep Mr Jobs' sweat shops in employment.
i think that companies offering these dongles should update drivers, snow leo has been out for some time and beta versions been out even longer and every single update is always seeded to developers in beta stage so they can work on their stuff and make sure that once final version of update is out in the wild it works with their hw/sw.
I don't really see this as apple problem but dongle manufacturers problem. it's the same like in windows world - there are devices which simply won't work on vista or win 7 because there are no drivers for them.
So blame manufacturers of these devices.
About time Apple learnt its not always the product at fault but those that supply accesories with bad drivers.
Vista had this problem but M$ were to blame, Apple will no doubt kick off nowt to do with them and keep quiet as much as possible.
M$ and Apple have same problems just M$ don't have fanbois to protect them.
Made me chuckle
M$ and Apple have same problems just M$ don't have fanbois to protect them.
Microsoft has plenty of fanbois to protect them; you obviously don't get out much.
How about Paul Thurrot?
http://www.winsupersite.com/
- Matt
The answer's in the question:
<quote with so many of its broadband dongles being used ***in Blighty*** it is surprising that no one at either Apple or Huawei got around to upgrading the drivers for Snow Leopard before it was released.</quote
Apple doesn't give a stuff about the paltry volumes represented by its UK market share. That's why it's a low priority.
I said it a long time ago, and I'll say it again; apple is exactly like microsoft, they just have a different logo and the support of (once) being the underdog.
Apple is still bitter it lost its precious windows system to MS...why is it that some people have this brand loyalty? apple did nothing particularly chivalrous do earn it...if anything apple is even less honest about its software/hardware than MS.
Just another proprietary software company.
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but does Snow Leopard auto-update third party drivers automatically like Windows does?
For example, in Win7, Windows Updater auto updates my d-link wireless card drivers and my razer mouse drivers.
If Mac's cant do this, it doesnt sound very user-friendly for alot the more simple users who might just end up thinking their adapters are broken.
The Mac Os has a auto update though drivers are released with point upgrades. These are the equivalent to Windows Service packs except there are usually a lot more of them.
Currently we are on System 10, release 6, point release 2. Or 10.6.2.
The last version of Mac OS is currently on 10.5.8 and will likely hit 10.5.10 before it moves on to only security patches.
The Previous version before Leopard(10.5) made it to 10.4.12.
With about 18 months in between major releases there is plenty of time for driver updates and such to make it into a point release.
10.6.2 for example brought with it new Nvidia drivers and was released only last week which is about 6 weeks after 10.6.1 so any manufacture that wished to send Apple new drivers had 6 weeks since the last point release to submit them for inclusion.
exactly as Jeri stated. And before every point release makes it to customers there are few beta versions seeded to developers and developers are testing their apps.
So i guess as i mentioned earlier it's Huawei's fault really, as obviously they haven't done much to support new OS and haven't updated drivers.
Apple creates drivers for hardware they sell, hence the updated kexts for ATI HD4xxx series in recent 10.6.2 update.
Does nobody ever just sit back and think 'Geez Im a loser for caring SO MUCH about the battle between Mac and PC'.
You are all such sad losers!
You know on South Park when a crowd gathers and everybody goes 'Rabble rabble rabble!'... That IS you.
You do understand this is a tech blog?
Same as you go to myspace you will read about teens moaning about how horrid there spots are.
If they searerrousley cared about teens moaning about how horrid spots are, then they'd be booting for usa vaxine for Snoleo. But NOooooh! It's all sum mumbo jumbo on about these whine flues from united airlines, innit?
Do I smell a Creative?
Either I was very lucky that all of my custom kexts still work in 10.6 or Huawei just did a bad job.
Btw it's still Microsoft's fault for changing too much in Vista so pretty much everything broke.
Apple have been releasing beta versions of Snow Leopard for nearly 9 months. Hunwei should be registered as a Apple developer and should have been developing drives alongside Apples 10.6 development.
Not having drivers ready is Hunwei problem, its not like they did not know that 10.6 was being released!!!!!
Guess Apple will just have to ban 3rd party companies from making Mac dongles and go back to overcharging their users for the Mac branded dongle. $150 would seem like a good price to start the price gouging. Then again, they might be able to get $500 and a piece of the broadband carriers monthly fees like on other products...
So i guess that's one peripheral device isolated in a single county/shire in a single country manufactured by a single company that is currently incompatible with MacOSX 10.6, because the manufacturer hasnt updated their drivers(despite having ample time and support to do so).
That versus, the fiasco that was Windows Vista which rendered how many peripherals, from how many manufactureres, in how many countries incompatible ? (The driver model in Windows 7(aka Vista SP3) is identical to the model in the Vista of 2 years ago) Or have yyou(the author) given up trying to keep count ?
So pardon my math skills, but i'll gladly take the OS which apparently has one outstanding driver issue as opposed to a system with hundreds(if not thousands) of driver/incompatibility issues.
I guess the Windows Fanboi author of this article found out that the Mac isn't perfect (big whoop). Too bad for him, Windows is still magnitudes worse than the Mac, even in this aspect of device drivers for the customer base.