[X-Unix] "Macintosh Compatibility" of Flash Disks

[William H. Magill]

On 02 Jan, 2005, at 09:27, Jerry Krinock wrote:
> The world is full of cameras, MP3 players, etc. based on flash memory. 
>  Some
> are advertised as being compatible with the Macintosh and some are not.
>
> What does Macintosh compatibility mean?  I understand that non-Mac 
> devices
> will make a mess of .resourceFork files, .DS_Stores, and not mount in
> iPhoto, iTunes, etc.  But as long as I can get it to show up in 
> /Volumes
> when I plug it in, I am happy.
>
> Should _any_ flash-based device show up in /Volumes, or does the
> manufacturer need to do something special to make in "Mac compatible"?
>
> If the answer is very complicated, I'd appreciate a pointer to a book 
> or
> other resource.

Usually the statement means that the manufacture has never tested their 
device in a Macintosh environment and has neither the ability, 
capability or interest in doing so. It is rarely a statement made for 
any reason other than to avoid the necessity of answering support 
questions (i.e. liability).

The classic examples are any USB or Firewire disk drive. I am unaware 
of ANY USB or Firewire disk drive that operates on a PC which will NOT 
run on OS X (Mac OS 9 is a different story), just as it will operate 
with virtually any version of Unix or Linux which supports USB or 
FireWire ... They are Formal, International Standards, and if the 
device works on the PC, it will work on any other platform -- usually 
with far less trouble and less intervention on the part of the 
manufacturer, especially, without the need for the manufacturer to 
write and support really weird proprietary drivers.

I would assume that any which are truly NOT Macintosh compatible are 
using some kind of proprietary formating which can only be read by a 
program available on some other (probably XP) operating system.

In General, Mac compatibility has nothing to do with Resource Forks, 
because the SOURCE of the data is NOT the Mac, but some external entity 
(Camera, phone, PDA, etc.); but everything to do with the adherence to 
REAL Industry Standards, not just de-facto ones.  The data encoded on 
the device may be in a proprietary format, but the device itself can be 
re-formatted ... unless the source device requires that same 
proprietary format.

Any media which conforms to ISO standards (I forget which ones) in 
their formatting, can be read by OS X with no problems (again, Mac OS 9 
is a different story). You may not be able to do anything with the data 
on the device because it is in a proprietary format, and you do not 
have a decoding program. This is not unlike the issue with iTunes music 
downloaded from the iTunes music store. The files can be transferred to 
any MP3 player with no problem -- but because the format of the data is 
Apple's proprietary "iTunes format" those MP3 players can not interpret 
the data.

Similarly, the Mac (both OS 9 and OS X) has always had a superior 
ability to read files from the PC, but the PC could never read Mac 
files.  Also the Mac has always had the ability to write data in 
formats which were compatible with the PC. It took knowledge and effort 
on the part of the Mac user, but it was always easy to do. I used to 
regularly translate files between our Windows 95 users and NT users ... 
my Mac could read and write formats for either, but they couldn't read 
each others!

T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
# Beige G3 [Rev A motherboard - 300 MHz 768 Meg] OS X 10.2.8
# Flat-panel iMac (2.1) [800MHz - Super Drive - 768 Meg] OS X 10.3.7
# PWS433a [Alpha 21164 Rev 7.2 (EV56)- 64 Meg] Tru64 5.1a
# XP1000  [Alpha 21264-3 (EV6) - 256 meg] FreeBSD 5.3
# XP1000  [Alpha 21264-A (EV 6.7) - 384 meg] FreeBSD 5.3
magill at mcgillsociety.org
magill at acm.org
magill at mac.com
whmagill at gmail.com