IT has been found that if you do the following, the mac-based itether client will stop crashing:
1. IF you are using Printopia, go into you System Preferences and turn it off
2. If you have pring-sharing checked in your SHARE in System Preferences, then Uncheck it.
This should fix the problem. This was reported in Macrumors.com on 12/4/2011
thanks for the suggestion