Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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.

9 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. IPsec with AirPort by SiMac · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It would be sort of interesting if Apple added IPsec support to the AirPort base station (or at least the software base station.) It was shown a while ago that WEP was insecure, and IPsec seems like a much better way to secure a network, as long as the speed hit isn't too big. I've wondered why no other hardware vendors (with the exception of Cisco, with LEAP) have tried to make a more secure version of 802.11b...Perhaps Apple could lead the way here?

  2. Re:Sheesh by PeekabooCaribou · · Score: 3, Insightful

    OS X has been a dependable, full-featured OS since version 10.1. I'll be the first to admit that pre-10.1 was sluggish and not ready for prime-time. It's now fast, has a large base of native applications, and it's becoming increasingly mature with each release (as good software tends to do).

    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.

    As for people still stuck with machines that can't run OS X.. I don't know, I can't even imagine taking four or five years between buying new computer hardware.

    --
    "I'll say it again for the logic-impaired." -- Larry Wall.
  3. 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?
  4. How many of Jaguar's "150 new features..." by dpbsmith · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...are actually just OS 9's old features?

    --

    "How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!

    1. Re:How many of Jaguar's "150 new features..." by MalleusEBHC · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's getting tiring to hear about people saying "OS 9 could do this and OS X can't blah blah blah." This used to be very bad before 10.1 was released, but I do not blame anyone for this as 10.0.x was not truly a complete commercial OS. However, since 10.1 was released, there really has been no competition: for users with machines capable of running X (basically any G3 with decent RAM), OS X is an excellent choice. All major applications (or quality alternatives) now run native, there is no major slowdown as in 10.0.x, and you get to enjoy all the great things that are exlusive to OS X like Aqua and Unix. I used 9 for pretty much it's entire lifespan until X came out and even though I loved it, I'll never go back to an OS where I need to reboot bare minimum once a day and can't multitask. If you want to deal with this in order to use a couple minor features that aren't yet in OS X, go right ahead; it's your loss, not mine.

  5. Re:I wonder.. by seven5 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  6. 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

  7. Re:That's wonderful. by jkujawa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Actually, Microsoft sold their Apple shares quite a while ago.

    At a very healthy profit.

  8. More details at Apple.com by stevenprentice · · Score: 4, Informative
    http://www.apple.com/airport/swbase/

    Apple has a great page set up for this.