Snow Leopard Chews Up Wireless Broadband Cards
Richard Martin
11/13/2009
If youre a Mac user and youve bought a new machine lately, or youve upgraded your operating system, youre using the OS X Snow Leopard platform from Apple (AAPL). And if youre in Britain and use a mobile broadband dongle, as they say in the U.K., youre hosed.
Reports emerged this week that thousands of Mac users are unable to use their mobile broadband dongles known on this side of the pond as USB sticks or wireless cards will not work with the latest version of the Macintosh operating system.
Weve uncovered bugs that stop a range of USB dongles working with Apples latest OS, reported the ElectricPig tech news site. Its been just over two months since OS X Snow Leopard was released, accompanied by howls of anguish from users packing a mobile broadband dongle.
Apparently the problem is that Snow Leopard doesnt recognize the wireless devices because it lacks the appropriate drivers, which were included in earlier versions of the OS.
The unrecognized devices include USB sticks from ISPs 3, T-Mobile, Vodafone plc and O2. All of them are manufactured by Huawei.
"If you use the Mobile Broadband USB Stick 120 or USB Stick 620, you should not use this with MAC OS X 10.6, said a statement on the T-Mobile tech support site. It is currently incompatible and can cause serious issues with system stability."
Neither Huawei nor Apple has thus far commented on the issue, but the network providers have scrambled to provide fixes. ElectricPig reported this morning that it has tracked down solutions from all of the affected service providers.
Richard Martin
11/13/2009
If youre a Mac user and youve bought a new machine lately, or youve upgraded your operating system, youre using the OS X Snow Leopard platform from Apple (AAPL). And if youre in Britain and use a mobile broadband dongle, as they say in the U.K., youre hosed.
Reports emerged this week that thousands of Mac users are unable to use their mobile broadband dongles known on this side of the pond as USB sticks or wireless cards will not work with the latest version of the Macintosh operating system.
Weve uncovered bugs that stop a range of USB dongles working with Apples latest OS, reported the ElectricPig tech news site. Its been just over two months since OS X Snow Leopard was released, accompanied by howls of anguish from users packing a mobile broadband dongle.
Apparently the problem is that Snow Leopard doesnt recognize the wireless devices because it lacks the appropriate drivers, which were included in earlier versions of the OS.
The unrecognized devices include USB sticks from ISPs 3, T-Mobile, Vodafone plc and O2. All of them are manufactured by Huawei.
"If you use the Mobile Broadband USB Stick 120 or USB Stick 620, you should not use this with MAC OS X 10.6, said a statement on the T-Mobile tech support site. It is currently incompatible and can cause serious issues with system stability."
Neither Huawei nor Apple has thus far commented on the issue, but the network providers have scrambled to provide fixes. ElectricPig reported this morning that it has tracked down solutions from all of the affected service providers.
