I love the sound bugs make when you squish them under a solution.

AlexP, whose blog is also a great source for multitouch and the Sony PS3 Eye Camera and Windows drivers we used in the recent hackday, has been diagnosing his MacBook under Windows Vista. Hardware problems are often the source of sound blips on computers. I’ve talked previously about using the DPC Latency Checker to find this issue.

The good news: Alexander has found the problem (the Broadcom Wireless Adapter in some Apple MacBooks) and a solution (switching off Windows’ automatic wireless network search when you don’t need it). I actually wonder if a similar problem was culpable in early problems with network WiFi on Mac OS X Leopard. Whatever is going on, check out the fix here if you’re encountering this problem. And let us know if you’re seeing this on machines other than just the MacBook revision F; I’d imagine any PC with a similar wireless adapter might have the issue:

MacBook Rev. F Audio Skipping in Vista Analysis and Solution – Part 2

And yes, hardware/driver problems may frequently manifest as what Windows terms DPCs – basically, a symptom of hardware usage that can interfere with reliable audio performance. I’m curious whether WiFi connections specifically may be a cause in other cases. The problem is almost certainly not limited to computers from Apple – especially since, in this case, the MacBook is just behaving like any PC laptop with similar specs.

This is especially bad news for music users, who almost never upgrade operating systems the day they ship because of compatibility and support issues. (Sure, Logic will support Leopard from day one … and your audio interface will be around in, what, three months, with Pro Tools months later?)

Close reading of the user agreement in Boot Camp beta had given some users warning of this some time ago, which is prompting hordes of Apple apologists to somehow argue this is a good idea. I salute you for your positive outlook, but this seems awfully annoying otherwise (even if right now I’m keeping XP only on my PC boxes.)

Given that Boot Camp has been a huge publicity score for Apple, I’m hopeful Apple will reconsider, offering Boot Camp for Tiger at least as an unsupported download, or at least give Tiger users a grace period in which they can upgrade to the new OS. Yes, it’s a beta … but it’s a beta of Boot Camp, not Leopard per se, and it’s working for people, often a selling point for hardware and software far more profitable to Apple than the OS upgrade is. And because Boot Camp is really great, and Leopard promises lots of additional awesomeness beyond Boot Camp, it seems unlikely that people will need a self-destruct sequence in Boot Camp just to get them to upgrade.

On a bright note, at least Linux dual-booters have other options… and there’s always Parallels and VMWare.

Apple warns of Boot Camp expiration [MacNN]
When does Boot Camp Beta expire? [Apple.com Support, in a document curiously not answering when that is beyond obliquely suggesting "October 2007"]

Update: R Eunson and others point out some details Apple left out of their support document: only the Boot Camp Assistant should stop working, not the bootloader that lets you choose operating systems.

I still say, though, this isn’t exactly one for Great Moments in Customer Support. Is it a deal-breaking, press-stopping issue? No, of course not. But it’s niggling issues where customer satisfaction is won or lost — the difference between 9/10 and 10/10. We focus a lot on quality in terms of technical quality assurance — whether engineering got the code / gear working right. But a lot of cases actually come down to communications and support. Here, Apple could make basically the exact same decision, but communicate more effectively (a user license is not an effective communications tool) and clearly (telling you when the app stops working, not your legal license). I’m not trying to single out Apple here, by any means. This is something all tech companies could do better, not because they have to or because their business requires it, but because they’ll have happier customers. And happy customers do spend more money.