iPhone tethering causes mbp to hang

Hi all

First some versions and stuff:

2009 MBP running Mavericks 10.9 and iTunes 10.1.3 (8)

iPhone 4S running iOS 7.0.4

Since updating the MBP from 10.7 to 10.9, I've been getting these weird freezes that seem to be related to networking.

So I start up my MBP, and everything's fine

>80% of the time, if I plug my iPhone in via USB and its configured for tethering, the MBP will hang

This can also happen even if the iPhone isn't plugged in via USB (though I have to admit I can't confirm right now that when this happens, the MBP hasn't decided to connect to the iPhone's tethering via wifi - so could still be triggered by tethering, just via wifi instead of USB)

So, the hang:

Network connections hang - some apps are responsive (like Chrome) but can't connect to anything, some apps (like iTunes) give me a pinwheel of death and hang (my guess is that these are apps which use blocking IO handlers to less good effect)

If I try to open up the wifi symbol in the menubar (next to the clock etc), it isn't responsive to mouse clicks and I end up with pinwheel of death

Shutting down or rebooting the MBP hangs too - more pinwheel of death

The only solution seems to be to turn off tethering on the phone and do a hard power down of the MBP.

I've done some Googlefu and come up with donuts. Is anyone else experiencing this? Does anyone know of a fix for it?

Thanks folks