Mac|Life Networking RSS Feed

iPhone Tethering on OS 3.1.2

Cory Bohon — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:58:30 -0600

Many iPhone users were dismayed when Apple released an update that killed the tethering hack for iPhone OS 3.1. Never fear, there's a new way to enable that good ol' tethering once again.

MobileCrunch has posted a series of steps that can help you get tethering on your iPhone 3G/3GS back in no time at all. It does require you to jailbreak and unlock your device (not for the feint of heart), but their post does a great job explaining exactly what to do.

Here's the basic steps:

1. Download blackra1n (Mac or Win) and jailbreak your device

2. Unlock your device with the blacksn0w application that's included on your device after the jailbreak

3. Install the custom carrier settings (IPCC) file from Mobile Safari

4. Enable tethering in the settings

MobileCrunch has the full tutorial with screenshots.

via LifeHacker

Synology DS107+

Johnathon Williams — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:38:15 -0500

This powerful system comes without a drive, but installing your own is a piece of cake.

Of all the NAS devices we tested, the Synology DS107+ promised the most extensive feature list, and the device consistently impressed us with its Swiss-Army-like capabilities on our network.

The enclosure ships without a hard drive, so your first task is to install one. The instructions for doing so are simple and easy to follow, and we were plugging the device into our wireless router within minutes. (Disclosure: Synology was kind enough to install a drive in our test model, so we removed it and installed a second drive to duplicate the standard user experience.)

After installation, a setup application included on the CD directs you to an administration page within Safari. And here is where you begin to get an idea of just how much this device can do. File sharing and backup are only two core services in a list that includes Web hosting, an iTunes server, a photoblog, and a download station that pulls files from the Web directly to the shared disk. The Synology can automatically back up its enclosed drive to an external USB drive or to another machine on the local network, and the included iTunes server delivers the contents of a preset Music folder as a shared iTunes playlist.

Unfortunately, all that power complicates the Settings page to a degree that will probably intimidate some users. The designers attempted to minimize this by making file sharing active right out of the box and by offering setup wizards to customize the most common services, but the sheer number of options remains daunting. Another drawback is the fan noise that comes from the enclosure, which registers somewhere between an old Power Mac G4 on the loud side and a Power Mac G5 on the quiet side.

Still, those complaints are smoothed by support for Mac networking standards such as AFP and Bonjour, which integrate the drive nicely into a Mac network. The drive appears as a shared device in the Finder’s network browser, and its shared folders can be configured for guest or account-based access. Its support for Windows networking standards should make it an excellent choice for mixed environments.

The bottom line. Although at times too complicated for an entry-level NAS product, the Synology DS107+ delivers reliable file sharing and a truckload of advanced features for the adventurous user.

COMPANY: Synology

CONTACT: www.synology.com

PRICE: $289

REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 9 or later

Huge feature set, including web hosting and iTunes server. Reliable, consistent performance.

Noisy. Setup may intimidate some users.

Martin Jahn iBackup

Johnathon Williams — Wed, 14 May 2008 15:23:21 -0500

iBackup’s list of default sources includes all the files that most home users will want to save.

iBackup’s Spartan interface may give the impression of a featherweight, but looks in this case are deceiving. Although it eschews the slew of options offered by ChronoSync, the application retains just enough power to best Apple’s Backup 3 at running regular network backups.

iBackup saves and organizes backup plans as profiles, each of which has its own set of options within the Preferences menu. For network backups, the application can automatically connect to network volumes by IP address, and can automatically disconnect when the backup is finished. Backup profiles can be scheduled to repeat daily or weekly.

Common backup sources, such as application settings, documents, and the user’s home folder, are listed in the application window, reducing simple backups to a three-click process. (Select a source, select a destination, and click the Backup Now button.) Although you can manually add the startup drive as a backup source, iBackup doesn’t support bootable backups.

Our most significant complaint is an occasional lag we suffered when browsing the contents of a folder in the application window. But on the whole, iBackup makes it simple to create and schedule common backup plans to local drives or a single network volume.

The bottom line. For simple backups to a single network volume, it’s hard to beat iBackup’s price.

COMPANY: Martin Jahn

CONTACT: www.grapefruit.ch/iBackup/

PRICE: Free for personal use, $25 for business use

REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.3.9 or later

Free for personal use. Simple configuration options. Reliable performance. Universal binary.

Occasionally slow and unresponsive. No bootable backups

Mapping Network Drives

Scott Rose — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 13:14:35 -0600

An alias to the network hard drive is sitting in the Dock, so it’s just one click away for easy access.

I have a mixed network of Macs and PCs, along with a network hard drive that all the computers connect to. On the PC, the network drive is mapped to a drive letter and is always accessible under My Computer. On the Mac, I can navigate to the drive using the Finder, but each time I turn on the Mac, I need to find the drive again. Is there a way that I can map the drive and reconnect at login without having to go through this process every time?

One of our favorite ways of doing this is to simply drag the mounted network drive (the globe icon on your desktop) into the right-hand side of your Dock, which is not only used for minimized documents but also for your favorite documents, folders, and volumes. Once you do that, you’re just one click away from accessing that network drive in the future. And if you tell Mac OS X to remember your password in the Keychain, you won’t even be prompted for the password.

There are other ways of doing this as well. You can add the network hard drive to your list of Login Items in the System Preferences > Accounts, so it always opens up at login. And if you connect to your drive through the Advanced > Connect To Server dialog in the Finder, you can click the plus sign to add your server to your list of favorites. And yet another way: If you browse your local network using the Network icon in the Finder, you can drag and drop any of the listed servers into the sidebar in the Finder.

Griffin radio SHARK 2

Zack Stern — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 13:13:35 -0500

We expect a 2.0 product to be deep with features, but the radio SHARK 2 lives on the surface.

Digital video recorders radically changed the way people watch TV, so why not apply those tricks to radio? Griffin’s radio SHARK 2 is a USB AM/FM radio tuner that lets you record and play radio content on your Mac. As DVRs do with video, the radio SHARK 2 buffers the audio so you can rewind and pause live shows. But it lacks other important features, such as solid Internet radio integration and dual tuners.

When it comes to scheduling recordings and regularly capturing radio shows, the radio SHARK 2 works as advertised. After each recording, files in AAC or AIFF format are added to iTunes in a special playlist for easy syncing to an iPod. Unfortunately, the over-the-air reception is merely adequate, pulling in most commercial stations clearly but suffering way too much fuzz on stations with less powerful signals.

The included iFill utility adds Internet radio recording, but it works as a stand-alone application, which is less convenient than if that feature were integrated with the radio SHARK software. iFill captures streams from a thousand SHOUTcast choices, storing songs directly on an iPod, which is required. iFill can even dice the files into individual songs with track information.

Overall, the radio SHARK 2 left us wanting more. There’s a PC-only utility for adding track information to AM/FM recordings. It would also be nice if the software could chop radio shows into individual songs, rather than recording each one as a single file. And we’d like a dual-tuner option to record two stations simultaneously.

The bottom line. The radio SHARK 2 fulfills its basic promise—recording scheduled AM/FM radio shows—but little else. iFill, normally $19.99, is a nice surprise and adds value for iPod users, but doesn’t make the radio SHARK 2 worth 50 bucks.

COMPANY: Griffin Technology

CONTACT: www.griffintechnology.com

PRICE: $49.99

REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.3 or later, USB

Schedules and records AM/FM radio programs. iFill utility captures Internet radio. Sleek fin shape.

Merely adequate reception even with included external antenna. Doesn’t split radio shows into individual songs.

AirPort Extreme Base Station

Leslie Ayers — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 02:50:33 -0500

The new AirPort Extreme Base Station looks like a Mac mini.

The first thing that setting up the AirPort Extreme Base Station at home taught us is that instant gratification is possible. Getting the base station set up so we could surf the Web wirelessly with our AirPort-card-equipped MacBook Pro took less than 10 minutes. (Networking our USB printer and an external hard drive took a little longer, but more on that in a bit.)

The second thing we learned: Our home DSL connection is painfully, embarrassingly, unacceptably slow. The fastest throughput we got was 1.2Mbps, a fraction of the speeds the AirPort Extreme - which has 802.11n, the fastest Wi-Fi standard, built right in - is capable of. Third thing we learned: Your broadband connection speed can be a performance bottleneck.

Time to head to the office to test the AirPort Extreme on the T1. Now, we know this is a bit of a cheat, since home T1 connections are rare. But not trying it, we figured, would be akin to being loaned a Lamborghini Gallardo and not taking it above 65 mph because, well, that's the legal speed limit. Plus, Apple tells us that the new AirPort Extreme is capable of throughput speeds of five times those of the previous model, which used the 802.11g standard. That translates to about 100Mbps. Our office T1 only hits 40Mbps on a good day, but we had to see if we could achieve that wirelessly. Connected directly to the network via Ethernet, we clocked 39Mbps (download). Unhooked, and seated about 20 feet away from the base station, we ran the test again (www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/). We lost less than 1Mbps in throughput, clocking in at 38.4Mbps. Our upload speed averaged about 24Mbps.

Now for range. Apple has made much of the AirPort Extreme's ability to operate in the 5GHz channel for 802.11n, but we found that 5GHz offered neither better range nor faster throughput. So we stuck with 2.4GHz mode. At 50 feet from the base station, the signal appeared strong, but we experienced some loss in throughput, down to 32Mbps. About 75 feet away (and around a corner, so we were no longer in the line of sight), our signal fluctuated between full and medium strength, and throughput choked down to about 7Mbps. For larger houses, and to go through floors, you'll need a repeater. But the AirPort Extreme is all you need if you do most of your computing in one room, or even in a smallish single-story home.

The ability to network USB printers and external hard drives is a huge plus. The only hurdle we encountered during the printer setup came when Bonjour (the utility that allows you to network Macs and other devices) didn't have the driver for our Epson printer preloaded. Selecting the correct file from our driver disc wasn't painless, but we finally figured it out. If you want to network both a printer and an external drive, you can use a USB hub since the AirPort Extreme only has one USB port - just buy a powered one, such as Belkin's Hi-Speed USB 2.0 4-Port Hub ($29.99, www.belkin.com). File transfer was fast enough: Copying a 42MB image from our hard drive to the wirelessly connected external drive took 22 seconds, compared to 10 seconds to copy the same file to our office network.

As for security, the AirPort Extreme offers lots of choices, including WEP, WPA and WPA2, MAC address filtering, and NAT firewall. It's best to use security that requires, at minimum, password authentication.

The bottom line. In our tests, the AirPort Extreme's much-hyped capability to operate on the 5GHz spectrum didn't pan out. But the fact that 802.11n is built in sends it to the head of the pack, allowing throughput rates that equaled the speeds we got with a wired connection.

COMPANY: Apple
CONTACT: www.apple.com
PRICE: $179
REQUIREMENTS: Mac with Ethernet and/or wireless networking capability, Mac OS 10.4.8 or later
Fast setup. Mac and PC compatible. Fastest Wi-Fi standard (802.11n) is built in.
Bonjour utility doesn't preload all printer drivers for printer sharing.