Blogging? Apple listens!

A couple of months ago I blogged about a way to crash Apple’s Mail reliably.

In about an hour, I had an email from an Apple employee. Dan Nolen said:

Hi,

I saw your blog post on crashing Mail reliably:

http://www.sparkplug9.com/index.php/2006/02/14/crash-os-xs-mail-reliably/

If you like, I’d be happy to review the crash log for Mail to see if I can spot the cause or at least make sure it’s logged in Apple’s tracking system.

The file is on your hard drive at:
~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Mail.crash.log

This is a text file that you can inspect. It contains your OS version and computer name, but no other personally identifiable information.

Looking forward to your response,

Unfortunately, though I corresponded with him a bit and gave him a few things, I was insanely busy at the time, and just about to leave on a couple of trips. So I didn’t help him out as much as I would have liked.

But a couple of days ago, I got an email from a Justin Garcia at Apple. While Dan was a quality control guy, I have the feeling that Justin is a developer on the Mail team. He went right to the point:

Can you still reproduce the crash described at:
http://www.sparkplug9.com/index.php/2006/02/14/crash-os-xs-mail-reliably/

If so, could you post your signature file? It’s in ~/Users/Library/Signatures/
Thanks

I sent him the sig file, and emailed Dan to let him know what was up. He replied that they seem to already be on the case. Hopefully we’ll see a fix in the next Mac OS update.

OK. I’ll attempt to consolidate efforts with him. I did file a bug on your behalf which was marked a duplicate of something we’re already investigating. I’ve asked Justin if he’s filed a bug too.

In terms of just this issue, it’s a fairly minor problem with Mail, and a fairly inconsequential exchange of emails.

But in the larger context of Apple engineers and employees working with actual customers, it’s very encouraging. This is how to work with the blogosphere!

Way to go, Apple! (Especially Dan and Justin!)