Mac OS X version 10.7.1 came out a few days ago, and I updated. It didn’t solve any of my problems, at least not any of them that I directly tested for. Mail was still crashing on the daily junk mail summary and the Safari rendering engine was still crashing on many internal websites. I didn’t try adding the IMAP server or the 802.11x profile.

But this morning, I ran across this new (though undated) notice, which is being prominently linked on some campus websites. I applied the proposed fix, and now most of my problems seem to have disappeared. The mail crash is gone, and Safari is no longer barfing (or infinitely redirecting) on internal VT websites. The fix makes me a little uneasy, as it disables some certificate trust protocols, but from what I hear about some of the root certificates that are trusted by all major browsers, I’m not sure any of us should be sleeping that well at night regarding SSL security, anyway.

Seeing that those two critical items were fixed, I tried to switch my email to IMAP (which requires adding a new IMAP account and then deleting the POP account) so that I could reactivate access via my phone. When I entered my email address into the auto-discovery form it didn’t crash…but it found the campus Exchange server, which no longer hosts my mail. Sigh.¹ After turning off the WiFi, entering the server details manually, and then turning WiFi back on, though: Success!

All that’s really left is to get 802.1x working again. But 802.1x is a mess on a good day. So, I think I’ll save that one for later.

Update: 802.1x is working now. I can’t tell, actually, if there was an actual bug before or if I was just doing it wrong. The trick, though, which I found on another university’s website, was to follow instructions designed to get 802.1x authentication working with iOS, rather than trying to follow instructions for getting it working for Mac OS X 10.5/10.6.