> Break Mac apps by copying them with Snow Leopard to a Windows file share

Those who have set up a Mac for use in the business world have more than a few horror stories under our belts regarding connectivity of Macs to folders shared with Windows (usually using the Samba or SMB protocol). It's one of those desperate, hanging bridges spanning the edifices of two technological giants (Apple and Microsoft), that neither of them seems particular concerned with upgrading or fiixing the planks on.

OS X Tiger was probably the high-water mark for SMB connectivity. Before that it was still too flaky — as of Tiger, connecting via SMB had begun to get vaguely useful, at times. But then, with Leopard, it suddenly took a turn for the unconscionably slow. Faced with hourslong+ copy times, I just bought a bigger USB key.

Now, beginning with OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Apple appears to have innovated yet another new way of rendering SMB shares useless to the Mac community: sudden, instant regression to the 1990s, when simply copying a Mac app or complex document to a foreign server would usually destroy it.

WORKAROUND: If you aren't sure whether a foreign file server will mangle your Mac files, you can always 'zip' them. If you haven't heard of Zip, it's an ancient little third party plugin that appears to be smarter than Windows and Snow Leopard, combined. It comes pre-installed — just rightclick a file, then select 'Compress', and then copy the zipped version, instead.