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

[William H. Magill]

On 02 Jan, 2005, at 23:01, Jerry Krinock wrote:
> Among other things, I'd say you believe that OS X should support file
> reading and writing to any flash-based camera or mp3 player.

It definitely supports reading.

Writing is a different story. While the physical device can be written 
to,
it will depend on a number of other issues as to weather or not the data
written can be read by the destination device (camera or mp3 player).

One example is a flash card for an iPac. Without an intermediary like
PocketMac, to do the conversions, simple drag and drop just results in
Mac files on the device, which are not readable by the device.

I've got a pair of readers, one for Memory Sticks and one for flash 
cards.
Both are "dumb" devices, they simply make electrical connections (both
via USB). And both allow me to read and write to either Memory Sticks or
Flash Cards as long as I'm using an appropriate software package.

For what it's worth, even though iPhoto launches when I plug in a 
Memory Stick,
I use "Image Capture" to read it.  I think somewhere along the line I
"unconfigured" iPhoto so that it wouldn't read the stick directly, but 
don't
recall why I did it anymore. I copy the images to disk and then import 
them
into iPhoto.

Eric covered the mount command issues pretty completely.

For "obvious" resource and marketing reasons, Apple itself only 
"qualifies"
certain options for OS X, even though the underlying Unix environment 
has
no problems with many others.

I was using Digital (DEC) SCSI drives directly on my 9600 under Darwin 
years
ago even though they "weren't supported" (and still aren't). Today, I 
still
use them under OS X on several different boxes ... SCSI is SCSI and it's
all in the use of the "disklabel" or formatting program, not necessarily
limiting oneself to Apple's GUI based Disk Utility.

In short, the issue is not so much the mechanical and electrical 
ability to
simply recognize and mount the media, the underlying FreeBSD code 
handles
that, but in having the appropriate "utility" to read and write the 
media
in a format that the destination device can understand.

Note that this same situation applies to removable, portable FireWire 
disk
devices, like a FireLite or an iPod, and the various USB "keychain" 
drives.
They all work. They can all work seamlessly from OSX to OSX box. Getting
them to work "cross-platform" takes a bit of knowledge. It's all no 
different
than back in the "good old days" of 7 and 9 track tape drives ... or 
even with
today's DLTs, AITs and the like.

Dealing with "removable media" cross-platform, is sill an "art form."

T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
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