Crash on the information superhighway
August 21, 2006 at 11:26 PM by Dr. Drang
I’m staying at a Marriott hotel this week on a business trip. The hotel uses iBAHN for its internet access. (I guess we’re to think of it as the autobahn of the internet, although that doesn’t explain the capital letters.) As with most of these access services, I connect by opening your web browser and trying to go to any page. I’m redirected to the iBAHN signup page for the hotel and…my browser crashes. I try again and it crashes again. And again. And again. There’s obviously something (probably Java or JavaScript) in the signup page that’s giving my browser fits, but I can’t avoid it because I’m always redirected to that page.
My computer is, of course, a Mac and my browser is Safari. There’s no way this behavior would be allowed with Internet Explorer. The injustice! Fortunately, I have a couple of other browsers on my machine. Firefox lets me connect and after I’m connected I can go back to Safari (the Mac version of Firefox isn’t my cup of tea). Tomorrow I’ll see if Opera will get me past the signup page. Update (Aug 22) Yes, Opera works, too.
I sent a crash report to Apple, even though I suspect it’s not entirely Apple’s fault. In any event, if you plan to use your Mac notebook at a Marriott, make sure you’re packing more than just Safari.
