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Jaguar Brings Back AirPort Software Base Station
EelBait writes "I'm surprised that few people have picked up on this, considering how much noise was made when Software Base Station was unavailable on previous versions of Mac OS X. But, as I was reading through the 'and more' section of the list of new Jaguar features, I came across the AirPort Software Base Station item. You'll need to scroll down to the Networking section. You'll also see things like IPv6, IPsec, PAM, and Active Directory." Bringing back this and USB Printer Sharing are two of the many good things about 10.2.
Apple probably includes this functionality as part of Rendezvous. (Rendezvous allows for networking with "zero-configuration"). Their site only mentions hardware options, where networked computers automatically find Rendezvous-aware printers, but given the nature of the interface I would think they could extend USB Printer Sharing to use it, also.
"I'll say it again for the logic-impaired." -- Larry Wall.
yes, they do. USB printer sharing is enabled with Rendezvous. There isn't a single thing to set up. In fact when going to print on my iBook, the shared printer was already there. I did absolutely nothing to set it up. Its very convenient, andone of my favorite technologies in 10.2. I'm really looking forward to the different ways devs use this.
Apple has a great page set up for this.
Not only does jaguar have Software Base Station for AirPort, it has a built-in DHCP server/NAT router for ethernet as well (both are in the sharing preferance pane). Two check boxes are all it takes to share an internet connection over AirPort and a standard wired TCP/IP connection. Isn't the mac great?