Apple today released Mac OS X 10.2.8. It features security fixes, “enhanced functionality and improved reliability for the following applications, services and technologies: Audio, Bluetooth, Classic support, Finder, Graphics, LDAP, Power Management, Safari, FireWire and USB device compatibility.” This version is not compatible with PowerMac G5s and is meant to be used with G3/G4s only.
Mac OS X 10.2.8 Released for Download
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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so does this mean that 10.3 is around the corner?
please please please please!!!!!
I need to move to a bigger HDD and I lost my install CDs!!!!!
This software update does not upgrade to 3.7.1 OpenSSH, so I would expect yet another small software update from Apple in the next few days that does so. This update seems to include mostly things related to bluetooth and usb2.0.
According to this, it does fix both sendmail and ssh:
http://macslash.org/comments.pl?sid=3737&cid=50188
Just installed the upgrade btw, it went smooth.
Currently downloading… Hope they’ve fixed this sucky Safari bug where you can’t use https sites from behind a proxy. I’ve been using Camino all this time, and it _sucks_ (No PithHelmet!).
in the german macnews forum (www.macnews.de) many people report that their external third party bluetooth dongle stopped working with 10.2.8 – so be careful!
Installed the update now computer won’t boot up. Booting verbose it registers mem and then says
**** PAS: got childiterator
then shuts down
ok – there are two posibillities:
You are an ADC member and you have downloaded Panther or you are a software thief.
Quicksilver DP800 with 1.5GB RAM and dual 80GByte IDE drives with 3 monitors – survived the update with no odd glitches except the arrangement of the monitors changed.
There is now a Mouse and Keyboard combined control panel, and System Preferences now has a snappy feel to it.
Safari continues to behave with my bank and investment company web sites (whew!).
This is the kind of update Apple is famous for 🙂
Does Safari still crash on all forums?
Does the FAT FS component still crash the OS when doing transfer of large files to/from USB LS-120 drives?
Does the Desktop now update its contents as they change?
Does OS X still ask me if it’s okay for applications to read their own config files?
Can I set mouse speed high enough that I don’t have to rely on the crappy Kensington driver I am using just so the mouse moves fast enough?
Do I still have to unplug and replug my LS-120 drive repeatedly to get OS X to recognize it?
Will my Desktop color/image settings keep failing?
Is focus changing faster?
Will it restart faster?
And on and on. Never had these problems with OS 9. I guess I will have to download the update to find out how useless it is to me. I hope it doesn’t break anything else. I still haven’t received the OS they claimed to be selling me (the world’s most advanced operating system, riiiight).
Why don’t you stay with OS 9?
Does the FAT FS component still crash the OS when doing transfer of large files to/from USB LS-120 drives?
Ugh, the FAT support is my biggest OS X horror story. I bought a 64MB SmartMedia card and reader while in Japan, and filled the SmartMedia card with photos from around the country. I got my iBook to recognize the reader, but when I stuck my card in after a bit I noticed that the FAT fsck which OS X automatically ran after I inserted the card was consuming 100% of the CPU. I pulled the card out, and when I stuck it back in the camera it said the filesystem was corrupted. When I got back home and tried to view my photos from a Windows machine and it too said the filesystem was corrupt.
This was all with 10.1, but the included FAT tools (which in 10.1 came from OpenBSD) are not production quality. Apple should not include a buggy program that gets executed automatically whenever the system recognizes a FAT filesystem with a production release of the OS. The manpage even includes this warning:
BUGS
The fsck_msdosfs utility is currently under development.
Bascule:
I didn’t know this!! Would this explain why it takes forever for the disk to even appear on the desktop? I have no problems with HFS disks, so I know it’s the FAT FS component of OS X.
Ralf.:
Well for starters, I was an idiot and I had hope and a little belief that Apple did things better than MS does them (since I am so fascinated with their designs for the classic OS – so much of it was done RIGHT, yet so many bad ideas burned away at the same time). I believed some of the hype of OS X. I was willing to not be a negative all-hating bastard. Turns out I was wrong to be positive and willing to try new things. What a hard lesson. Why not stay with OS 9? You might as well ask everyone else why they upgrade their OS every time the developer releases a new version. They’ll give you a hundred reasons of various merit. I say: “Same reason.”
well, I moved from windows (well not realy from, I still use it) to OS X.
I think it is fine, though I do not have the years of experience on OS < X so I only have Windows to compair to.
I always had problems getting OS X to recognize my flash card when placed in a USB flash card reader. Someone suggested that if OS X has not yet recognized the reader be sure to insert the flash card into the reader BEFORE you plug in the USB connector.
I tried it that way and it came up onto the desk in a much shorter time.
Just downloaded/installed 10.2.8 with no problems on my 800mhz G4 iMac (lamp). Took about 15 minutes to download and a couple minutes to reboot. Everything is working and maybe even just a little bit faster. But maybe not (on the faster part).
No problems with the update here.
Jace, it sounds like your Mac is really screwed up.
It’s also a non-constructive argument/criticism directed at one product. Aka ‘flame’. Perhaps a troll, or a commercial. Whatever your intention was, if you want to make a point you better work it out so readers can use it for something
I’ve never used OSX so i can’t comment on it. Wish i had! But when i look on internet for laptop (ie. http://www.apple.com has an advertisement) then it starts at $1200.
What i’d need is a portable multimedia desktop on which i can not only get input from audio/video et al but also create output like audio and video editting. Streaming, editting, tracking, and more.
What kind of box would you recommend for this usage, how fast, and which store (living in The Netherlands)?
Does OSX really differ from Classic, or is it just the look which got marketed like ‘innovative’ but actually isn’t?
Or perhaps a MorphOS + PPC? Or waiting for AmigaOS4? What do you artists and media people do, and why? Right now i’m doin’ the A1200 way which is pretty portable…
Just downloaded, here are my observations:
– Safari Opens in about 2/3 of the time, renders pages slightly faster
– System preferences opens in about half the time, opens each module 2-3 times as fast (whew!!!)
– Keyboard & Mouse preferences merged into the one module
– Menu bar appears at the top of the screen before the volume icon and clock (looks more clean)
– Volume on the top menu bar plays a sound, indicating how loud you’ve set it and doesn’t have the high resistance at the base (making it difficult to __mute__ the sound)
– Folders in the dock are cached (or so it appears) so that they open almost immediately
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61798
Sounds good – going for it now.
I think what this shows is that security is very hard to do. It is very hard to come up with a good protocol. It is very hard to code that protocol so it is secure. It is very hard to deploy the code so it is secure. The author is of course correct that security code should be left to those that are competent.
The first big difference between OSS and commercial products is often that commercial products want to either invent a new proprietary protocol, or, for marketing reasons, push an obsolete protocol as a new innovated protocol. Both of these leave end users insecure. However, since everything is proprietary, there is no way for the user to know the level of insecurity. And, if we may drop names like in the article, Scheier lists a new company nearly every month who tries to push crap as security, though he has gotten so annoyed that he has skipped months of late.
And to drop the name again, Schneier, has spent his time of late trying to convince people that security is so much more than protocols. The protocols must be implemented in code correctly and deployed correctly. Unless one is a huge national agency with a classified budget and decades of security experience, it is unlikely that one can create a secure product. It is much better to make the code public so that interested parties can investigate. It doesn’t mean they will.
The two of these combine in interesting ways in closed software. There are claims of 1,000,000 bit keys. There are situation in which security by obscurity is used as the first line of defense. There are situation in which the DCMA is used as the first line of defense.
Which is just to say that conclusion #1 and #2 does not follow from the text. Just because one finds a few packages that are out of date in OSS, does not mean that finding a few updated packages in closed source software are more secure. Conclusions #3 and #4 are trivially valid, and applies to anyone writing software in any model. All programmer should take the advice to heart, especially if they want to design a right management system using closed protocols.
I couldn’t agree more. Adding to your point if I may – what disturbs me the most is the assumption that with a new patch/version etc. that all previous working components STILL work. I can’t count the number of times where the corp. in which I work for shelled out big bucks to purchase the “must needed patch” to only find out that previously working components now no longer work. It would almost be nice for change-logs to first start out and state:
Everything that previosly worked in version X.Y has been verified that it still works, the bug fixes are as follows …
/rant
Don’t know if anyone has had the same experience, but the speed improvements of this update are great! Most everything seem faster.
Has anyone else noticed this?
yea, i did notice… but i m wondering if it is b/c other people told me if it is really faster… u know, a placebo effect…
one thing is true that at least accessing my hd is much faster and smoother than before… i wonder what they did to the filesystem to improve the speed (at least i guess it is the filesystem; could be i/o kernel improvements… meh..)
i sure this doesnt spoil panther’s speed improvements for me!
can someone post and tell us if panther is still faster than even this??? or am i under placebo and just dreaming the speed… oooo, speed <makes the mind on a different level>…
Email address is all spelled backwards… SPAMbots be fooled!
I’m getting MacOS X 10.2 in a day or two and plan to do a combo update to 10.2.8. Does anyone have a system like mine (I now have 576Mb of RAM) and can tell me what kind of usage performance I can expect? I’ve only got the stock Rage 128 PCI card in my rev. 2 B&W, so I’m not expecting really anything close to blazing performance, but… I’d like some kind of idea what to expect when I install it.
I’m assuming it doesn’t have a problem installing/running with RAM brands (I have a one Crucial (stock Apple PC100 64Mb), one ValueRAM (PC133 128Mb), and one OWC (PC100 128Mb) DIMM installed), as long as they’re PC100 or PC133? Or should I prepare for problems with the RAM mix I have?
Luposian
Bascule,
Have you ever tried reading the MAC file system on a windows box?
It’ll probably ask you if you want to format it. So why would you expect it
to work on your MAC.
I use both PC and MAC and I never expected it to work on both systems.
Maybe you should use one system for all your work.
Just my 2 canadian cents.
ummmm… hsf+ filesystem doesnt work on windows b/c ms refuses to support it…
however, ever since i can remember (all the way back to system 7.5, when i was a youngin’), macs have always flawlessly been able to read fat filesystem… however, as soon as os x came it, the fat access is mind-numbingly slow, painful, and just out right disgusting… b4 i used os x, my os9 seemed to work absolutely fine with pc disks… now it sucks arse…
speaking of filesystems and drive access, how come floppy drive access is soooooooooo slow in os x while nearly 10x as fast in os 9??? whatz the deal??? I am still forced to use floppies in my daily work and it just pains me to use the external floppy access…
i sure hope they fixed that in panther… and how bout giving my dvd-ram (which came built-in to the gigabit ethernet g4s) some support in os x!!! i cant even burn discs from apples own dvd-ram based computer system!!!
c’mon!!!
Sideliner,
The Mac OS, including OS X, has built in support for FAT 32 file systems. I HAVE NEVER HAD ANY PROBLEMS reading and writing to external FAT hard drives, zip disks, card readers, or whatever else. In fact, I even keep my iPod in FAT format so I can use it on both my Mac and my Windows box. Flawless, and there is no speed difference that I can notice. I have a Lacie 80 GB external Firewire/USB 2.0 drive that I keep in FAT format, again so I can use on both systems. Flawless. I agree with others here that floppies are terribly slow compared to OS 9 or Windows, but seriously folks… floppies??? Let me introduce you to the 21st century…
Boot time seems a little slower, but the update seems to be running smoothly. Just ran Logic Audio with it for approx. 4hrs. Program can be demanding. The System was familiar transparent friend. Subjectively, things seem smoother, and slightly quicker.
Hope to make music that is this elegant.
i hope Safari will one day join Mozilla and IE in supporting this feature:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/flash/ts/documents/wmode.htm
I have to agree, Accessing PC disks on the Mac with OS X has gotten slower and more painstaking. It takes 2 to three times as long to writ a file to a PC disk under OS X compared to OS 9. Dont even get me started on external floppy access.
Roberto J. Dohnert (IP: —.dialsprint.net) – Posted on 2003-09-23 09:58:13
I have to agree, Accessing PC disks on the Mac with OS X has gotten slower and more painstaking. It takes 2 to three times as long to writ a file to a PC disk under OS X compared to OS 9. Dont even get me started on external floppy access.
Unfortunately even if there was an agreed disk standard, there will always be Microsoft refusing to play ball. They’ll come up with 1000s of excused why they shouldn’t support. Unfortunately it is just another price to pay having to do business with Windows users.
“Unfortunately even if there was an agreed disk standard, there will always be Microsoft refusing to play ball. They’ll come up with 1000s of excused why they shouldn’t support. Unfortunately it is just another price to pay having to do business with Windows users.”
why blame microsoft on this, when apple’s that is not competent?
why blame microsoft on this, when apple’s that is not competent?
So I assume from that statement, you have written low level file system drivers.
Why doesn’t Microsoft provide HFS+ support. The source is open, the specifications are there, there is nothing stopping them.
My sound card keeps going out on my Dual G4 quicksilver. Don’t know why the upgrade did this, but it started when I upgraded so I believe that caused this. It works for a bit, then I have to pull the plug to the speakers and put it back and the sound comes back. Anyone else
Why? Because MS does not have to. I don’t expect them to add support for UFS. This is the effect of MS dominance on the desktop. So in this case manufacturers of CF, zip, floppy whatever have in mind the majority of users. Who is going to take care of low % of filesystems? For server it does not matter as networked FS can be recognized by any decent OS. Probably MS would support HFS+ if this could became a problem. If one format floppy using FAT, any OS can read it. If one would try to use anything else then it will be not accessible for most of the OS’es. I remember Apple’s CD format “standard”. It was not readable by any other OS (of course one could burn ISO but that was not a default FS). At that time burning CD (in default FS) on linux, BSD or solaris or MS was easily accessible by other OS. So leave FAT as it is. Besides are you arguing that HFS+ is the best of the breed? Definitely no. Your accusations of MS unfriendliness is as good as my accusation that OS X can not read local ReiserFS.
I understand that everybody (except MS followers) hates MS but this is becoming ridiculous.
Boot up seems be faster, definitely did not slow anything down at least on my system(FW800 1.25X2). Will try with a G3 Powerbook and G4/466 today.
Well, I’m close (B&W G3 400 Rev 2 512 MB Stock Rage 128) and 10.2.6 runs very well on my machine. I’ve got a 30 GB 7200 RPM drive, that may help a bit over the stock HD. Of course okay for me may be painfully slow for others…
works great on my 700 mhtz iBook. No complaints. Nice tweaks.
My 466 MHz iBook (320 Mb RAM) is working well under 10.2.8 so far
I think this is the first OS X update I’ll be sitting out, now that Yellow Dog Linux is running all happy on my iBook. Good luck with it, y’all! 🙂
My aren’t we naggy.. well…
Does Safari still crash on all forums? Never had this happen to me. Safari’s been pretty stable since it’s 1.0 release. Not crash free but I haven’t even had a forum crash it.
Does the FAT FS component still crash the OS when doing transfer of large files to/from USB LS-120 drives? No LS-120 drive so no clue.
Does the Desktop now update its contents as they change? If finder’s highlighted it does. Not perfect, but hardly a pain.
Does OS X still ask me if it’s okay for applications to read their own config files? You mean to read the keychain after an update? Damn right. If it didn’t ask this any app could steal your passwords/what-not. It’s a security feature to protect your privacy/identity/etc.
Can I set mouse speed high enough that I don’t have to rely on the crappy Kensington driver I am using just so the mouse moves fast enough? I’ve never had a problem with the mouse being too slow myself.
Do I still have to unplug and replug my LS-120 drive repeatedly to get OS X to recognize it? Once again, I don’t have a drive like that. But I haven’t had any such problem with any of my USB devices.
Will my Desktop color/image settings keep failing? Never happened to me.
Is focus changing faster? It’s not really slow here, not BeOS but no different than Windows or Linux in my experience.
Will it restart faster? The only times I’ve ever had long boot ups are the first time after an install or major update. Aside from that they’re not all that long.
Out of curiosity what are your system specs?
It’s good to hear you can read your devices under OS X, but you shouldn’t expect it to run perfectly since it is still a “microsoft” file system. I am all for compatibility but the fact is Microsoft is the one who is ignorant. Don’t blame it on Apple or OS X because it can’t read or screws up the Memory card with the wrong file system.
The only valid point Bascule has is the fact OS X screwed memory by reading it and he couldn’t access it under windows. I guess stuff like this wouldn’t happen if you would stick to one platform.
Font conflicts can cause application crashes in OS X since it handles the fonts differently from OS 9.x. I would recommend reading:
MacWorld (October, 2003 – pages 82-84)
Safari still freezes up when trying to use message forums (I was responding to a message at TBJ and when I hit preview, that was the end). Piece of crap. Happens to me constantly, so I stopped using Safari for forums. Still, it will freeze on me on other sites randomly, too.
Doesn’t ANYONE ELSE have this problem?????
I’ve never had a crash problem, but I still have an issue that’s been there for awhile (I reported it, but I guess Apple either can’t replicate it or doesn’t care about it).
Scenario: After posting a message, I get redirected back to the main page. Then, I’ll check out another message; if I don’t have something to add, I just hit the “Back” button – but somehow, Safari thinks I’m trying to send my post again, and I have to tell it “No, don’t submit again” and use a forward-moving link to get back to the main page again.
All in all, Safari’s cool – but this is a pain in the @ss problem that should be taken care of, IMO.
Because it USED to, damn it! Apple sells OS X as the “Upgrade” to classic Mac OS. Therefore, it should BE an UPgrade. Not a DOWNgrade.
I appreciate the other posters here who are confirming that FAT and floppy support sucks on OS X. It ISN’T just me!
And it’s great, Neo Wolf, that you aren’t bothered by any of the problems I described. Great for you, that is. For me, it’s a pain in the ass that I deal with this crap on a daily basis and no one acknowledges the problems. I would appreciate not being told that these problems are “not problems” and I would appreciate not being treated like I’m just a whiner.
There is NO reason that the OS should ask the user for permission for a program to read its own config file!! This has nothing to do with protecting anything for the user. It is a side-effect of bad design! The Desktop behavior, once again, wasn’t this bad in OS 9.
To answer your question about our Mac: Apple G4, 450MHz. 256MB RAM. I don’t know what model it is. That’s another fine feature of the “New Apple” is that you have to guess what kind of machine you have. Even “About this Mac” doesn’t tell me anything more. Nothing retarded has been done to it. It doesn’t run Linux. It’s not been hacked. Its only extra non-apple piece of internal hardware is a sound card made for OS X. All external hardware was made for Mac (like my LS-120 drive).
As for those of you complaining that some of us still use floppy drives… knock it off. It’s the most universal media, still. Not everyone has the money and OS support to walk around with memory sticks all the time. How do you transfer data with people who don’t have OS support for these devices? Do you beat them over the head with comments about how they need to come into the 21st century? I don’t LIKE floppies, but at least I’m using LS-120, which is much more tolerable.
I can use the gentoo forums, macuser forum, machtechnews forum, osnews forum …….
all with Safari. Now with 10.2.8 a little bit faster :-))
Sorry Jace, but no application asks for a permission to read its own config file here.
Only Mail.app asks for access to the keychain once every reboot. And that is no bad design, or whatever.
FAT support:
For refernce only, I use a 256MB memory stick (USB) without problems with Mac OS X, Linux and Windows. And a Fuji DigiCam FinePix A204. I never had problems with it.
I know, you all think I’m crazy mad. Come over to my place and watch how this Mac behaves…
As for the memory sticks… do they work in BeOS? I’d love to use them, personally. I like the idea of no moving parts. I was under the impression that memory stick usage is something I will need to wait for Zeta to use. Do all of your friends and family have memory stick support? Do all of your own computers? It isn’t that easy for some of us who interact with a lot of systems of various age (being as I’m the support person for several people and I have several machines that don’t have memory stick or USB support)
3rd party ext. floppy drives are probably, in all liklihood, not officially supported by Apple, nor should they be. Floppies are outdate crap hardware. They’ve had their time. Now it’s time to move on. Transfer your PC files to a more modern disk format, like ZIP100 at least! Gee, I’m having all SORTS of problems with my G3 B&W reading a PC formatted ZIP100 disk… NOT!
If you would pony up about $50-$70 (less on eBay), you could own a USB Zip drive that, to my knowledge, IS supported on Apple’s 3rd party hardware roadmap and can allow you to transfer files to and from PC’s with ease…
Unless your PC’s are so old and antiquated as to not even *have* USB ports (or PCI slots to install a USB card).
And what’s that talk of BeOS? Oh, yeah… BeOS DOES allow you to transfer Mac floppies (one feature I’ve always loved about it… a lot of different file formats that no other OS supported)! So… transfer them over via BeOS, and save them to a PC hard drive and then use that new USB ZIP drive to get them over to your Mac… or whatever!
Luposian
jace, your right it should work. Reformat your fat device on MacOSX and then put it into your digital camera or whatever to reformat it. Worked for me when I had problems. It really should be a nonissue. Sorry that you are having so many problems.
Floppy
Total waste of time. Get yourself a USB key. Floppies are totally unreliable.
Wow… I can’t believe the volume of problems that people are having using OS X. I was an early adopter and started with 10.0(Kernel panicked everytime the fridge turned on…I am not kidding), I have not had a single problem since 10.0 that have not been related to my own screw ups. I do a lot of tweaking and playing with the guts of the UNIX layer in OS X and can honestly say, any time I have had something bizarre happen it was due to a change I had made somewhere. Or a rogue app I created running amuck in the system.
I have not had any safari issues that cause crashing, I have had a quicktime screw up that would not allow me to stream… but I found that it was due to a plug-in I was using and not QT itself, I never had an app ask permission to use it’s own config files.
I update my mac every time an update is made available, I use my PB G4 in a heterogeneous networked environment with Windows 98/NT/2000/XP, Linux, Mac OS 9 and even an old HPUX. It never killed an NFS, FAT, FAT32 or HFS+ volume.
This is all interesting to hear about, but brings to mind that maybe third party apps, plug-ins and even themes (Themechanger and Duality) may be the cause of a lot of these problems.
The 10.2.8 update rocks, I am glad it takes care of the SSH hole (I can safely return my home computer to it’s station as a server for me when I am at work), things do “feel” a bit snappier, but it may be placebo. I look forward to every apple update and upgrade and hope I continue to not experience any of the nightmares that some of you guys are experiencing.
It’s horrible to take tons of photos and have them rendered un-recoverable, never had this happen to me tho (Not that Jace or anyone else is crazy, I just think the problem lies elsewhere).
Good luck and remember Panther is on the way… more Apple Chewey Goodness to come.
Maybe you need to update your OS X? Is your filesystem intact?
ok, i said that i am FORCED to use floppies because of my work… not out of willingness but because bastard old hardware has nothing else for me to get my files off at work…
so u see, i would really like better floppy support b/c until my workplace gets outta the dark ages, i will be sitting here with my floppy drive…
Have you thought about using a USB flash key instead of floppies? Floppies are yesterday’s technology.
Until now I had complained about the fact that Mac OS X had these ridiculously low refresh rates on my monitor, a Mitsubishi Diamond Plus 91 which I knew accepted much higher rates than just 85 Hz. Even worse, the ideal resolution to use in a 19″ monitor is 1152×870, because 1280×960 makes text too small (except the menues, which are gigantic) and 1024×768 makes everything looks huge, but Mac OS X didn’t let me use 1152×870 at any other rate than 75Hz, so I just couldn’t use it. I was really angry because in my 3 year old Dell, using the same video card my Mac has, an Nvidia GeForce 4, I was able to go all the way up to 110 Hz and even a bit more, so it seemed absurd to me that in a PC I could use my monitor to its best but not on the Mac.
After updating 10.2.6 to 10.2.8 with the combo updater, after booting the screen resets to 800×600@60Hz. So I go to the display prefpane to change it back to what I was using, 1280×960@85Hz, and I gladly see that there are a bunch of new refresh rates, including 100 Hz for 1152×870, which I began using since then. So finally Apple did something positive about this. Now, if they’d only set a preference to change the font size of the menues, which are so ridiculously huge, that’d be really neat.
Sebastian
Update? I update every time Apple releases one. File system intact? I don’t understand. Do you mean I may have hard drive corruption or something? I’ve run the disk tools and there’s nothing to be found. Besides, whenever the machine is forced off by power failure or some other unintended shutdown, it does a FS check, right? I mean that is the reason it takes forever to start, right?
Heh heh… this is ALL yesterday’s technology, really… 😉
Yeah, I’ve considered a USB memory stick.. I just don’t think I could use it all the places floppies can go and I believe none of them work on BeOS R5. If someone knows one that does, let me know so I can get one.
Apple pulled it due to major problems.
Just as a FYI, in Sweden floppy is one of many requirements for goverment purchase. Apple have to include a usb-drive because of this.
Example: http://www.bostream.nu/hem/pix/pix3/nicator/mac.gif
Have you tried any of the OS X native drivers for BeOS? The flash memory would be a boon to your productivity. Be sure to update your system and make sure your filesystem is intact.
I use both PC and MAC and I never expected it to work on both systems.
Maybe you should use one system for all your work.
Just my 2 canadian cents.
Apparently you missed the fact that I was trying to read a SmartMedia card from my digital camera, which uses the FAT filesystem to store photos.
The camera does not support USB, thus I had no other way to access photos from my iBook.