Incompatibility: Mac Os + Dropbox + Internet sharing.

After so much struggle, I have finally found the biggest of my problems, so we are going to relate the feat, in case someone else finds this information useful. The whole story, after the jump.

It all started with circumstances that forced me to depend on my iPhone's internet connection. This is why the internet sharing option was of vital importance to me. Then, one fine day, I lost the internet connection, leaving the iPhone "in a catatonic state" or, as some would say, "toasted" and I had to restart it and reconnect it to the Mac. iPhone, did not offer connection to the computer, although in the following ones it did not remain blocked, but the upper blue band appeared and did not disappear when disconnected, as well as not allowing access to iPhone preferences. I tried via bluetooth and cable and nothing ... I tried to delete network connections in system preferences of my Mac and neither ...

From that moment on, my search for the problem began. The first thing I did was to make a duplicate of Movistar's MicroSIM, since, coincidentally, the area where I live has little coverage and, since, moving the computer equipment, everything worked perfectly. Was the internet sharing function working perfectly on my Mac? Yes, indeed, it worked. And it was not that the connection of any Wifi or anything similar arrived. With Airport disabled on Mac Os and iOs.

The next thing, since there was no luck with this duplicate, was to test the connection on another computer. A pc, with Windows 7. Then I understood that the problem did not reside in the iPhone, since I was able to connect to the internet with that Windows 7 and my iPhone. The same iPhone that got toasted on my Mac.

But, just in case, and to rule out possible hardware incompatibilities (unlikely), I contacted Apple and, arguing that my iPhone was failing, they agreed to change the terminal (worth mentioning the incredible, incredible, incredible interest of the Apple staff for fixing my problem). So now I found myself with a new iPhone 4 and the same computer. Obviously I updated it, but, in case the problem could remain in the backup of my old iPhone, I decided not to load the old backup. But here you are, oh surprise !, oh pain !, oh fields of solitude, musty hills !, that when connecting the option to share internet, the browser of my Mac, does not load. Pissed off, rebound, anger, cursed ...

All of this made me get rid of the idea that the iPhone was the problem. With which my concern began, since I have been with the same operating system, since I bought the computer, except for a reinstallation, due to a gaffe, shortly after buying said laptop. This means that, on the same Mac Os X Tiger operating system, I loaded a Mac Os X Leopard and, on the latter, a Mac Os X Snow Leopard. All this without deleting data and, although many are surprised, everything works perfectly. This means that I have, to date, more than 150 applications, plus their settings, plus system settings, etc., etc. A headache if you had to erase everything and start from scratch. At this point, I reflected, and decided to install a backup copy of Time Machine, from the month of May, the month in which the iPhone 4 had not yet been released. That would definitely remove the problems if they were the iPhone 4 or the current version of iTunes.

There was no success. After going back to the May backup, I continued with the connection issues, so I went back to the backup of the day. Since then I was reviewing some system options little by little, browsing forums, looking at Apple technical support, until I saw the light. Perhaps the problem was a simple application ... I opened the system activity monitor and left it stripped of programs, leaving only the root processes. Eureka! Hurrah! It works! This means that it is an application that was running at the time, so I rebooted the machine, and each time I rebooted, it eliminated an application from startup. This is what gave me the problem: Dropbox. The fact that this application was latent on my Mac was the cause that with a bad connection the iPhone crashed.

After this, you look like a fool, well, I could have noticed before. But no, we do not always realize things, from the first moment. What leaves me calm is to think that, with the people who have helped me, to try to solve this, nobody has come up with anything that could give me a clue to the problem.

I just hope that, if someone has the same problem, this helps them and that they save all the steps that I have had to follow.