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Now Cleared For Takeoff (10/2/00)
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In other news of why the Mac OS X public beta isn't the solution to world hunger, rampant homelessness, and why bad things happen to good people, you've probably heard that it doesn't support AirPort yet. We find that rather odd; since Apple has gone to great lengths to make its entire product line support the almost magical wireless networking architecture, we naturally assumed that AirPort compatibility would have been a top priority for the feature set of the beta. Instead we find that while something as seemingly low-priority as iDisk support is built in, our AirPort-enabled PowerBook is grounded on the runway whenever we're testing Mac OS X.
What's stranger is that many, many people have made it clear that AirPort was supported in the last developer preview release of Mac OS X-- which means that Apple removed it from the beta on purpose for some reason. Presumably it was deemed too unstable or quirky for general consumption. But luckily for us, just as we thought we were condemned to work tethered to a desk instead of on the couch, faithful viewer David M. Putney pointed out a helpful discussion thread over in the MacNN Forums: some clever folks discovered a workaround to re-enable AirPort capability in the beta. All it takes is "about twenty lines of XML code" to get the bits flowing wirelessly again.
Interested viewers should note that this hack is pretty limited in what it can do; essentially it just allows the use of AirPort as an alternate Ethernet-type connection, so don't expect to be able to use your Base Station for dial-up. Oh yeah, and don't expect to be able to send any email, either, since there appear to be "issues" with SMTP when the hack is active. Still, it's just the fix we need to let us "test" Mac OS X while watching TV in the living room. Unfortunately, our test bed PowerBook is currently in between a couple of real airports, as Katie, AtAT's resident fact checker and Goddess of Minutiae, takes it to Seattle on non-AtAT-related business for a week-- so it'll be a while before we can give it a spin. It'll also be a while before AtAT gets its fact checker back on duty, so if you notice any glaring factual errors before Katie gets back from Idaho, blame her.
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SceneLink (2585)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 10/2/00 episode: October 2, 2000: The "B" word is back-- but at least Apple's dragging the rest of the industry down with it. Meanwhile, though Apple's combatting the Megahertz Threat with extra chips, the public beta of Mac OS X isn't exactly the multiprocessor paradise many expected. Luckily, at least some clever hacker-type individuals discovered a way to restore its AirPort support...
Other scenes from that episode: 2583: The Monday Body Count (10/2/00) Here we are, facing yet another Monday-- the first day in a brand new week. After a somber weekend, those investors who took a bath on AAPL after it shed half its value overnight are back at work and nursing some nasty hangovers (assuming they reached for the Jim Beam instead of the Drano)... 2584: Too Many Chips Spoil The OS (10/2/00) Meanwhile, the true Mac geeks of the world were less fazed by last week's earnings warning than by Motorola's status in the Megahertz Wars. The fact that the company's G4 processor tops out at 500 MHz while the competition has at least announced chips running at three times that frequency leaves us with an unshakable image of German tanks rolling into Poland in 1939...
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