How Apple Solved My Internet Problem

Question

Greeting! Let me tell you about my internet problem and how Apple (kudos to them! Still the best customer service around!) solved it. I updated to Snow Leopard and, suddenly, whenever I tried to use the internet, my computer acted like I was playing Russian Roulette. The airport was working fine, and the diagnostics said as much. My computer did, too, showing me a powerful, full-bar, airport signal. But when I used Safari I often got: "Cannot connect to the server." I'd see the pages on the grid of pages, but when I clicked on one of them, I might get the page, or not. If I clicked on something else on the page (like say, replying to a topic on this forum), it might go to that link or not. Sometimes mail would come in, sometimes I'd get the exclamation mark telling me "NO!" Dashboard widgets that rely on an internet connection might work...or not. Nothing internet related was reliable.
I could hit and hit and hit the reload button on Safari, and get nothing. Then I'd hit it again, and the link would appear. Pictures wouldn't show up, and pages often looked wrong. Re-load and maybe I'd be back to "cannot connect" or it would all come in fine. Very frustrating.
Oh, and my computer was running very hot! Much, much, much hotter than usual. Alarmingly so.
I tried all solutions recommended here. None worked or, rather, they might work for a while, then fail. Re-starting the computer seemed to make things worse. Finally I called Apple. The first representative tried her best, but couldn't solve it. The second spent a long time talking me through all kinds of fixes--dumping caches, special re-boots, re-starting the modem. Still the problem persisted. Finally, I was passed onto the third representative who had me send a profile of my computer to Apple.
"Did you use migration assistant when you first got this computer?" he asked.
"Yes, I did."
"Go to library>contextual items>..." he went on and led me to a thing called "Openbase." Which I then trashed. What is Openbase? Well, it's part of a program I happen to like and use called Soho Notes from Chronos company. It connects me to their server which has the information I put into the notes. Unbeknownst to me, this program, the "old" version that I had (which worked with Leopard, but was fighting with Snow Leopard), was getting in the way. Even though it wasn't technically "running," its widget in the dock would shout out "dibs" on the internet, especially after a re-start, and interfere with everything else.
Once "Openbase" was in the trash, ta-da! Internet working perfectly. Brilliantly, in fact. Super-fast, super-good. Not a single glitch. And Soho notes? Seems they had an update for Snow Leopard, I just didn't think to update (nor would I have. I use the program sporadically, and even if there was a note from the company telling me to update, it might have been a while till I saw it).
In short, if you're having this sort of problem, you might want to think of programs you've got that connect you to internet data bases. Maybe they need updating (if there is a Snow Leopard update for them?)? Or they're getting in the way somehow? Leopard was and was not the problem here. It caused the problem by getting tangled up with this program, but it didn't have a bug. It and the old program just couldn't play nice together.
Hope this helps those of you still looking for answers to find one. If not, by all means, call Apple. They were great. Oh, and my computer is running nice and cool again

Answer 1

Apple hierarchy system does make sense in that the majority of problems people have are often simple ones with common solutions. Like, "did you turn it on?" or "Is the box check marked?" So you start with the tech who might say, "Is the printer plugged in?" (duh! problem solved!), before you ever reach the guy who'll instruct you to "open the activity monitor and type this in..."
The only frustration with it is that you kinda have to start with the low-rung person, and if you've already tried all sorts of wise advice from this forum as I did, they might take you through it all again, as they are kinda required to make sure all the obvious, easy fixes have been tried. I was actually surprised that all the suggestions of the low-rung person were different than the ones I'd tried, though still simple and low-rung (we pretty much stayed in the preferences "network box"). I must say that rung two on the ladder was a very savvy techie. She had all sorts of tricks, but as you can see, someone really had to take a look at what was on the computer to fix this particular problem. So that's how I ended up on rung three.
I did ask the second person just before she passed me onto her supervisor if there was any chance that I might get to Steve Jobs if this went on long enough. She said that was unlikely, but not impossible