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Verizon PCMCIA Card Just Works
Apple God writes "I was a friend's house and he showed me his Verizion PCMCIA card for internet access. On a whim, I put it in my PowerBook, and it recognized the card and prompted me for authorization to configure the system for use with the card. I entered my password, and was surprised to see an icon in the menu bar for it. I clicked on this icon and selected connect, it worked! I had internet access. Here is a picture of the card that I used. When we checked Verizon's page, they only listed Windows compatibility. To make matters sweeter, my friend was shocked that it 'just worked' because he had to install drivers in XP before it would work."
Apple provides some pretty versatile generic drivers with the OS. If your hardware is somewhat standards based, there's a pretty decent chance it will just work weather it's officially supported or not.
I know my USB card, my mouse, and 2 of my ethernet cards are not officially mac-compatible, but that didn't stop them from working beautifully as soon as I pluged them in and powered on.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
I've found that I rarely have to actually install a drive on OS X, but it's not imediatly recognized I usually have a hard timefinding one. Same thing for Linux
When that box was designed, it was by someone who gave a damn about quality of the parts. I am not suprised that Apple worked. They really are better built boxes.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
If you don't use the cdma carriers, one of the gsm ones also have cards for OSX, and apple drivers included.
http://www.whateversclever.net/sereview.php
Its nice when you can have a choice on Apple, you dont have to be locked down to 1 carrier and hardware.
Good to hear about the VZW cards. I use one on my Windoze lappy (my work made me take THAT computer!) and have also played with it on Linux. As for OS X I love the fact that most handsets, CDMA or GSM, seem to work over bluetooth or data cables right out of the box. They do a really good job on the seamless syncing too. Now if they will just get on the ball with SyncML then all will be well. Hell, world peace may even ensue, starvation and poverty could become a thing of the past and, um, ok perhaps not. But it would be nice ;-)
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/verizonbroa dbandaccesssupport.html
Were you running 10.3.5? Since those drivers were released a month before 10.3.5, I suspect they were included in it, and that would explain the card "just work"ing.
FWIW
Every USB interface includes a class, subclass and protocol. There are several well defined combinations such as USB modem, printer, audio and all the HID stuff (joystick, keyboard, mouse etc).
Windows provides HID drivers, but does not provide drivers for any of the other stuff even though it could, which is why it needs drivers for almost any USB peripheral you plug in.
Mac and Linux have default drivers for a lot of the protocols which is why you can just plug things in and have them work.
And the relevance for this topic is that 5220 card is actually a USB controller with a USB modem and some other device (I forget which now) attached. Fortunately there are standard ways of talking to USB controllers as well.
So the real issue isn't being amazed at Mac/Linux not requiring drivers for this card, but why Windows is so damn broken by design that it does require them.
Hmmm, perhaps you're right. Plugging things into a Mac system and having it "just work" is terribly terribly common.
Now, when someone plugs something into a Windows XP system and it "just works", that's newsworthy. I mean, come on, that sort of thing only happens once in a lifetime!
i am rolling my eyes at you right now. everytime i have ever plugged any piece of hardware into my mac it has always just worked. This is rarely the case wtih my XP box. slashdot is not "apple biased" it's "anti MS.." get it straight.
I believe the Verizon drivers (/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/Verizon.menu, /System/Library/Extensions/IOSerialFamily.kext/Con tents/PlugIns/AppleVerizonSupport.kext) first were included in 10.2, but don't recall for sure. (AC 'cause I'm Apple.)
Can't say I have any apple hardware, but I know that those cards show up as two serial devices to the PC, it uses a Hayes AT command set.
In windows, they'll be hidden by the software package. When it connects, it opens the first serial port and dials an access number. That will answer with a PPP handshake. Authentication is CHAP. Once connected, the second port is opened, and AT commands are sent to poll the current signal quality.
On Linux, I need only plug the card in, and punch in the proper information to KPPP, and I'm up.
I've used unsupported ATM, SCSI and video cards in sun and rs/6000 workstations, and some driver in there made things work. Was also impressed when my SuSE install detected and setup a tokenring card that wasnt listed anywhere in Linux docs as supported.
Heres how it goes. Acme the semiconductor company as an ethernet design in its IP, and sells the design, or wafers to other places which integrate it into their own chips and boards. They name it different. They sell their stuff, make specific drivers, sometimes change PCI IDs, and hope everyone depends on THEIR drivers. Some hacker realizes the two chips are the same, and adds the PCI IDs of one in the other to make a unified driver in Linux/BSD/whatever.
Joe Schmoe plugs card it, is impressed and posts a slashdot story.
Really makes me wanna post a slashdot story on how I ran Windows 2000 on a 21164 CPU.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
I plug in my digital photo camera to my iBook, and iPhoto already has the drivers for it, and it just works. I plug in my friend's brand new digital video camera through firewire, and iMovie accepts it just fine, and it just works.
On Windows I have to install a crapload of drivers to get these things to 'just work' on there. And Apple's iPhoto and iMovie actually work easier than the software that I have to install by the product makers on Windows.
Whether or not a piece of hardware "just works" depends on what drivers were included in the OS. It's quite likely your XP installation(/media) is much older than your OSX one.
Nevertheless, nearly every piece of hardware I try on my XP box works first go. I certainly don't expect exotic hardware that wasn't released before XP, like my digital TV tuner, to work without installing drivers. But by the time the next Windows release is due, I expect this hardware to be not so exotic anymore, and that drivers will be included.
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
I think much of the "Not supported on OS X" talk is related to companies not wanting to pay for a cross-platform support staff.
Sprint does this. With their cell service you can get PCS Vision. You're not supposed to use it to go online with your computer (official response is that it's an unofficial feature), but you can. On top of that, it's not supposed to work for Mac, but it does. There's even a PCS Vision modem script built into OS X that ends all the hassle.
The ever ellusive, unsupported feature within an unsupported feature! I imagine companies save some money by just saying "not supported" instead of training a Mac Support team (or rather, hiring one), but I'd be surprised to learn exactly what works on a Mac that isn't supposed to. Makes you wonder...
Like Teddy with an elephant gun.
"This is rarely the case wtih my XP box. slashdot is not "apple biased" it's "anti MS.." get it straight. "
Pity it isn't pointed out enough that if *nix/OSX doesn't have the driver, they're typically SOL until somebody cooks up one.
I'm going to get scorched pretty heavily for saying this, but there are upsides to MS's monopoly.
"Derp de derp."
Thanks Steve
Join the Free Software Foundation
Jeeze, the thing just worked, to quote the key phrase of this thread. At that moment, I knew I'd not be going back to solaris or linux anytime soon. After a year with the box, I've yet to plug in anything and find it not working right away.
Apple wants you to think that the GUI is the best thing about their OS, but that's wrong. The GUI is OK, mind you, but it's more awkward than GNOME in some respects. But the hardware support, that's the jewel.
A lot of hardware also "just works" with Linux and BSD. In fact, I suspect a lot more hardware "just works" with Linux than with Macintosh because Linux includes so many drivers out of the box.
The reason for why hardware "just works" on all those non-Windows platfoms is simple: if OS vendors don't ship drivers with the hardware, you have to ship drivers with the OS.
Note that a lot of "driver CDs" contain a lot more than drivers: they contain documentation, setup utilities, etc. So, built-in support, whether on Macintosh or Linux or BSD, is often not as good as what you get from vendors. (OTOH, vendor CDs often install lots of garbage in addition to what you need.)
In the long run, we need more standard hardware interfaces, so that the low-level suff works for all hardware out of the box, but we also need to get vendors to support non-Windows platforms more.
Actually I think the nature of this article is a bit different. More like "this rather expensive piece of hardware that has no official Mac support actually *works* with no hassle. So you can go buy it with little risk of it not working". I've been looking at these cards myself for a while, but none of them have Mac compatability listed on their websites. Its nice to know I could go get one, pop it in, and not worry about having wasted $300. (c:
I noticed this a lot with my new Mac. After eight years of using Microsoft products, I buckled down and bought a dual 1.8Ghz G5 a few weeks ago.
:)
Every time I plug something into it, it just works. I bought a Formac TVR video capture unit, and plugged it in. No drivers, it recognized it just fine and Toast even let me capture off it. My new mouse worked perfectly. I plugged in my USB printer, and it didn't even bother prompting me about it - I was simply suddenly able to print documents from anywhere.
I love this thing
Mike
You're better off getting a data cable for the Vision phone you probably already have. The cable for my Sanyo 8100 was $20 (plus mandatory $20 for the shitty SnapSync software). When I plugged the phone into my iBook, it detected it and Internet Connect asked for all of the authorization info and I was up and running at 250 kbps in less than 5 minutes. I'd like to see Windows do that!
Or it may only have an Amiga driver... and the joke is on both of us.
My old digital camera worked out like that... It was a Fuji FinePix 1400. Not fantastic, but it got the job done.
Anyways, it always seemed to have issues with my XP machine. I'd have to install drivers to begin with, but every once in a while it just decided to not work at all when I plugged it in. It ended up becoming a chore to get pictures off of the damn thing.
Then I tried plugging it into my iBook. I saw a "no name" drive instantly show up on my desktop, iPhoto opened and everything was perfect. I didn't even have to think about if it would work when I plugged it in again, it just always did.
Needless to say, I stopped using that camera with my XP machine and always pulled pictures off of it with my iBook. I use the past tense form there because I have a new camera now, so that one's not in use anymore.
How fast is this service? I've used my T-Mobile phone with my PowerBook over bluetooth (irda a few years back) and it has always been dirt slow. Is this card faster than modem speeds?
I bought a playstation 2 adapter to USB for my G5. It said it was only compatable with Windows XP. It also came with a floppy disk full of drivers.
I plug it into my Mac.... And it worked. *shrug*
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i was a little concerned when I hooked up my printer to my mac because it was kind of old. I hooked up the usb cable and nothing happened. I thought, oh crap. I hit print and... it just spit out the page. i couldn't believe it. in fact.. it did something that i thought was so smart... it printed the pages in reverse order so when I took them out of the printer they were in the correct order. Always when i print on xp it prints page 1, then 2, then 3... so i have to rearrange them... not the case in osx.. they printed out reverse so I didn't need to arrange them.. that is one of the many things that always impress me when i use osx.
On the Mac, I've had the same problem with the HD, but I didn't get shunted to some TUI to download the latest version before I could use the GUI.
I'm a Verizon subscriber and I got curious a couple of weeks ago as to how to connect my TiPB to the 'net through my Nokia cell phone. The solution seemed to be a $50 cable and some modem scripts. Best speed would be 14.4K. This looks way better. The card pictured by the original poster is an Audiovox PC 5220 card. Here's the Verizon page for it:
Verizon Audiovox PC 5220
The card is currently available (to Verizon customers) for $99 with a 2 year contract ($15 activation fee). If you choose to keep your voice phone, then you'll get a second phone number for the card.If the link doesn't work, I found the card by googling for "audiovox pc 5220" and scanning the list (it was on the first page of hits) for the Verizon link.
I'm a bit hazy on the availability of the service and what if any charges there are beyond the activation fee. If you follow the links to "create a wireless package" you get sidetracked into a Verizon broadband coverage map where I stopped clicking. I may call Verizon tomorrow to see if a customer service rep can clarify this.
What's so impressive with this article? "Guy buys computer where things Just Work, tries it out, learns that things do indeed Just Work. Film at 11."
At my job, we have two managers with Powerbooks and these Verizon cards, and have been using them to little fanfare for perhaps a year now, maybe longer. The only glitch I can think of was that the cards didn't work with when 10.3.3 came out, but they worked fine again with 10.3.4.
Things usually just work with Macs. Why bother making a headline out of what should be obvious to anyone that uses these computers ?
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
I hear this all the time, and I call bullshit.
Prove that you can make a top of the line PC for $500.
Find a place, and link to it, please, where you can get parts to build a PC with a P4 3.6 GHz/AMD 64 FX with an 800MHz front side bus, 4 GB RAM (or more if you can find a motherboard that supports more), full tower and power supply, GeForce 6800 Ultra/Radeon X800 (with max RAM available), the largest Serial ATA hard drive on the market at 7200 RPMs, a gigabit Ethernet card, and a SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro--all for $500 or less.
We'll not include a monitor or speakers, keyboard and mouse in the pricing. Nor will we include the price of an OS.
But those parts are what will make a truly top of the line non-server PC. You said top of the line, now show me how you can build that for $500 or less.
Low high-end != top of the line.
Top of the line means biggest, best, fastest on the market.
The Radeon 9800 Pro, while an extremely good card, is no longer the top of the line from ATI. 1 GB of PC3200 RAM is not top of the line, when you consider most boards that support that much can support up to 4 GB of RAM. A P4 3.0 GHz is not top of the line from Intel, the 3.6 GHz is. Etc.
"Top of the Line" is not subjective, it means the top of the line products available by the manufacturers; your list does not include them. And to build a PC is to build one from scratch, not transfer old parts to it.
So you've got $439 spent on a non-top of the line PC, you have $61 left for everything else on my list, minus shipping costs, so figure $41-$51 left.