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Jaguar Brings Back AirPort Software Base Station

Posted by pudge on from the one-of-many-things dept.

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.

5 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Sheesh by BandwidthHog · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Remember folks, it *does* run on older hardware, and very nicely I might add. I'm on a Umax S-900, a machine that first hit the market six years ago this month. I've got a bunch RAM in it, a big, fast SCSI drive, a dual head Radeon, and a 400mhz G3. Counting the initial purchase price of the machine, I'm still under $500 total.

    And flame away, but this thing's as smooth and responsive (in most ways, but not all) as Win98SE on my P3/733 at work.

    --

    Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
  2. Re:Sheesh by BandwidthHog · · Score: 2, Interesting

    > I have Windows XP running great on
    > a 166 Mhz Pentium with 64 MB memory.

    Shouldn't that be spelled 'grate'?

    --

    Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
  3. Re:IPsec with AirPort by Ster · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Newer Base Stations (or maybe even newer versions of the firmware for all Base Stations) support LEAP. Also, IPSec is part of 10.2. I would imagine that, if it's not already in the GUI, making IPSec work with AirPort would be a matter of configuring some stuff in /etc or NetInfo.

    Or not. ;-) I'm just talking off the top of my head here.

    -Ster

  4. Re:Sheesh by King+Babar · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I don't think OS X should be weighed so heavily against OS 9. For every feature that we lost in the transition to X, we gained two improvements.

    I agree with you in many ways, but...

    Alas, the two things *I* lost going from OS9 to OS X were USB printer sharing and Airport basestation, and correcting those were (potentially) big ticket items. I did go out and buy a WAP to solve the Airport issue (Mac OS9 software base station was always a bit quirky), but the lack of USB printer sharing was pretty annoying unconditionally.

    To put it another way, if you want to increase adoption rates for Mac OS X among the SOHO group in particular, a really bad strategy is to break parts of printing and wireless networking. Yes, we survived, but I think the gripes here are legitimate. (Compare with: "I need more RAM to run OS X; wah!" and the like that we did see back in the day.)

    --

    Babar

  5. Yah, but what about serial ports? by Mr.+Protocol · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Apparently the beta version(s) of OS X had support for serial ports, and it was ripped out.

    Getting access to the serial ports, via a USB-to-serial converter, is the sole reason I still boot OS 9. My Newtons need it. My GPS needs it. Just because Steve thinks serial is dead doesn't mean all other devices disappear. The day I can't get at my serial gear, by booting OS 9 or otherwise, is the day I quit upgrading my Apple gear.