Mac OS update March 23
We received yesterday a new build of the driver for internal testing. So far it has proved more stable than previous ones on PPC machines so hopefully we’ll have a stable release of the preference pane GUI for you soon!
I won’t promise when it will be released, but we’ll be flogging it as hard as we can today.
Yehhhhh
Are we talking hours, days or months?
Not being rude, just want to know when to check back.
Hi
Have been waiting for the MAC OS driver.
On the MacBook Pro I have got the BP3-EXT modem working using
parallels and XP home ( not ideal) but it works.
The ethernet docking station sounds even better as then I will be able to use linux,XP, and MAC os’s without having to configure each seperately.
I’m happy to Test both Mac OS drivers and the docking station with my confuration.
please please please release the drivers today!
can we please hurry up and release these drivers….im sick and tired of waiting…arrrrrr.
If you call up Telstra and state that you are a Mac user, they will credit you your monthly access fees as you have paying for a service that you can not access.
Have you registered your interest here:
http://www.maxon.com.au/supportcentre_mac.php
There might be something coming through today
when are the bigpond drivers going to be available for the intel MACBook Pro???????? (OS X 4.8+ )
Is there any way to get the beta mentioned above (23rd March)???
I signed up three weeks ago they have not sent anything out since then.
The message at the top would have been nice.
And the files available for download are for the telsra modem not the bigpond BP3-EXT.
Today is April first It was promised in March
Let me repeat what I said above:
Make sure you have registered your interest here:
http://www.maxon.com.au/supportcentre_mac.php
Kerry, if you indeed signed up and haven’t gotten any emails from us regarding Mac OS updates, please send an email to projects@maxon.com.au and I’ll look into it.
Bigpond blue usb modem drivers for Mac OS… I swear if I have to try and chase this one more time, I’m going to go nuts…
First off you said you were releasing it, then you said you weren’t releasing it, then you said you were and it was a week away, then you called me a liar when i spoke to your staff and that you weren’t releasing it, then I spoke to Bigpond and they assured me you were releasing it, and that it was only a week or so away.
It’s been nearly a month since then.
Seriously people, what’s the problem? Bigpond Blue Modem drivers? where are they? I had to buy another computer just to get access to the net temporarily in the meantime…
Would you like me to give you the phone number of my local high school computer class? I’m sure in the 4 or 5 months that you’ve been ‘working’ on it, they could have come up with something!
Let me repeat what I said above twice:
Make sure you have registered your interest here:
http://www.maxon.com.au/supportcentre_mac.php
IF we for some reason were unable to post the latest information on to our website yet, it is possible that we might be able to release it to interested parties who had registered their interest with us via that email form….
Waiting on news of USB drivers for OSX suitable for use with the Bigpond product.
(Currently using Bigpond NextG PCMCIA card on old PowerBook G4 with home-brew wideband 8 element Yagi in the scrub) and waiting to purchase the Bigpond USB modem for use with the MacBook Pro which lacks PCMCIA support)
Thanks,
Phil VK7JJ
Well David, given I’ve been signed up to that support centre thing pretty much since you started it, and weeks before i sent the last post, I don’t have a lot of faith in you guys to communicate what you’re doing about the Bigpond Blue USB modem drivers / GUI or anything.
The ONLY communication i’ve had from it was about the bloody turbo modem 2nd round of drivers I you got to… Great, but how about a 1st round Bigpond drivers hey?
Where are they? When will they be out? They’re not hard questions given it is clearly no longer “early 2007″ – as was initially indicated, i think we’re owed an explanation, don’t you?
I’m not trying to be an arse here, but I’m not quite sure you guys realise how incredibly frustrating this is for those of us out here in the real world?!?
Hell, if I could have gotten an old CDMA usb modem at the time, i would have, Telstra wouldn’t sell it to me as they were phasing it out.
For those who have not spotted it Bigpond have listed the beta software.
http://bigpond.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/bigpond.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=12710
I have an iBook G4 and the orange telstra turbo modem. I won’t even go into how FRUSTRATING this whole ordeal has been, especially as I’m on a 24-month contract. I have had arguments with docile Telstra staff who still don’t get that NextG is providing an internet service now, and ask repeatedly for my Bigpond address. Bad communication at the major telecommunications provider!
But has anyone else found their Mac is now really unstable now? Since installing the Beta version (I now have the latest version, which is still ridiculously incompetent), my computer will decide it needs to be restarted…if the modem freezes up and I remove it, my computer crashes, this modem has generally just been a giant pain in the a** for what was before a stable and efficient Mac. Anyone else experiencing the same problem (the screen will dull…and there’ll be a big multi-lingual sign saying something along the lines of “you need to restart your computer – hold down the power button).
me,
Did you read the documentation with the Telstra Turbo Modem Beta 2? You would have found that it also works with the BigPond branded modems.
jacqui,
The issue you are experiencing is on our known list, and we are looking into it further. Unfortunately that’s the down side of trialling beta software, there are still bugs in it!
why would i read the documentation for a modem I don’t have? As you’ve repeatedly said, they operate very differently, so why would i read it unless you expressly say ‘this driver works for the bigpond blue modem as well’…
This is an issue i’ve come up against with engineers, artists, and business leaders everyday in my line of work, you’re ideas and products might be great, but unless you COMMUNICATE the idea, concept, or in this case – application of what you’ve got then it’s useless.
An idea / product is only ever as good as your ability to communicate it.
me,
that’s a fair call. We did actually modify the email to include specificaly that it works with both Telstra and BigPond modems after the initial mail out. The reason we didn’t do it from the start was due to the fact that we have to be a bit careful what we release for “Bigpond” products, as technically we don’t provide software for them, BigPond does.
is the connection manager/drivers bigpond has released any less stable than the ones that Maxon has released for the bigpond usb modem for mac os. Or are they the same but with a different interface?
to be honest, I don’t know if either is “better”. They both use the same base driver, but different interfaces.
Well what a joke this is. Maxon jumping up and down saying “We’re working on this fulltime! We’re not getting any sleep”.
Uh right, so the Macintosh has been around for, uhh, 23 years. And you didn’t think to write drivers for it from the upstart? So you just release this Bigpond Blue Modem and do the typical Mum and Dad IT company thing and just release Windows drivers. AND THEN, and ONLY THEN you you realise, “Wait who are all these people jumping up and down wanting support for their, what do you call it… Mac..in..tosh???. Driver developers, have you heard of this computer before? You have? Well why don’t you start on getting something out for these 2nd class citizens and I’ll go on the forums and tell them we’re doing all we can to make them happy?”.
Are you guys going to learn from your mistake? The next time you make widget XYZ are you going to consider doing your jobs?
Hey Joel I think you should ease up and give Maxon a break.
First I am a Mac user since day one of using .. let me see think my first mac was a Classic or Classic II, we run macs exlusivley at work and have for the last 12 year so I talk from a Mac perspective.
First, is it frustrating whats going on … sure.
BUT in years gone by you simply would not have had “Mac OSX compatable” written on the box, it would be PC only so feel lucky that Macs have finally reached a point where developers feel they HAVE TO add mac support.
Second: You should really blame Bigpond / Telstra not Maxon. Maxon are only the provider of the hardware … it’s Telstra who decided to say on the box of their Telstra branded product that it would be Mac compatable “early 2007″
Now dont get me wrong , I do put part blame on Maxon for what seems a bit of a debarkle in the driver development and it does seem a bit strange that they chose to have the driver writters do it remotely from the US of A where they dont have access to any Next G network… but hey thats life. Better the drivers are getting written than not at all.
But at the end of the day be thankfull that Macs now warrant enough attention that your even getting drivers. Once upon a time Tesltra would not even support macs.
Go to any Dick Smiths (power house) , Harvey Norman, Domayne etc etc and Macs now have huge displays of hardware and software .. Shop assistants now (mostly if your lucky) know what your on about if you ask for a Mac.
Sorry for my rant but I think it’s all relevant when we are talking about driver delivery for Mac products.
We now have at least Beta drivers from Bigpond that at least work and allow us to get access … not perfect but at least we can get by till the final drivers arrive.
russell – What use are beta drivers that don’t work (not that don’t work very well. I’m talking not at all!). Have you spoken to any actual Mac user who has gotten this to work?
Second, there are companies that always support the Mac from the upstart. The modem manufacturer for Unwired has always supported the Mac. So do you mind explaining what the difference between them and Maxon are?
Anyway, I’d better get going. It takes a lot out of me to be this thankful for Maxon/Bigpond to acknowledge that I exist. In the meantime, I’ll go and spend $79 on an Apple USB dial up modem just so that I can use this Internet thing I hear so much about.
“russell – What use are beta drivers that don’t work (not that don’t work very well. I’m talking not at all!). Have you spoken to any actual Mac user who has gotten this to work?”
Um we have 3 computers all using the beta drivers no problems, as long as you remember to turn off the modem before plugging in and turn of before unplugging we are happily using them.
PS The bigpond install instructions are useless.
I think the key is (and someone correct me if i’m wrong)
After installing the even the bigpond beta you have to go to your network pref’s and then you will get a new network device detected.
From memory the bigpond install skips this step and I think thats why it cant detect your modem….. anyone else found this ?
In terms of pure economics, the percentage of Windows users VASTLY outweighs the Mac OS users. Even so, if you check back on some of the CDMA history in Australia, you’ll see that we were pretty much the ONLY CDMA company that provided Mac OS support. We don’t think you are 2nd class citizens at all.
To be honest, we expected to have Mac OS support from the word go… However it was only later that we discovered that there were no drivers whatsoever in existance for this chipset on Mac OS (normally either the OS provider or the chipset provider has developed a driver). Hence we all of a sudden found ourselves in the position of having to create a device driver from scratch – something we hadn’t done before – and it proved to be a fair bit more complex than we’d anticipated. What was meant to be a 3 week process to create a simple client interface turned into a 4 month long development cycle, and even now we’re still troubleshooting a couple of remaining bugs!
Regarding the BETA not working, we’ve got a couple of hundred users for whom it’s working (at least our BETA, I don’t know about BigPond’s one). You do need to carry out the step that Russell mentioned for either.
I am using the Bigpond beta ok. Yes, had to figure out the step Russell mentioned myself. (The second Tier Bigpond Support guy who had a mac in front of him just simply refused to get involved until the final drivers are available – so I bumbled around till I worked it out)
Where can I download the Maxon drivers that will work with the Bigpond blue modem?
I am using the Bigpond beta ok. Yes, had to figure out the step Russell mentioned myself. (The second Tier Bigpond Support guy who had a mac in front of him just simply refused to get involved until the final drivers are available – so I bumbled around till I worked it out)
Where can I download the Maxon drivers that will work with the Bigpond blue modem? I am getting a bit irit at it dropping out. (Feels like dial-up days)
Hi all
I’ve used the beta 2 driver on my macbook pro
its a little touchy when being installed but is installable
It mucked up my parallels usb interface but otherwise generally worked fine – it did crush the OS a number of times when I remove the the usb plug to the modem. But I did notice that you couldn’t eject the modem like you do for memory sticks and disks. or for that matter usb devices in XP
as I can use the windows drivers in parallels which are more stable I unstalled the macOS driver (the hard way) and had to also uninstall/reinstall parallels to fix the USB driver interface. Alls fine at the moment as I research the USB interface to find out whats going on.
it is a beta release – it would be nice if they included the driver source code and an uninstall script with the package.
for those who want to know I have the BP3-ext modem which has been generally OK – be aware that it can take just over a minute to access an IP address atfer the connection is made.
Until it gets the IP address nothing happens!
I get 3 to 4 bars on signal strengh where I am when it drops below 3 bars and below the speed of the service almost dies.
the only way to fix this is to get an external areil to bring the signal levels backup ( idealy no less than 4 bars )
the beta driver shows the signal strengh under internet and network section of the system preferences on the MAC or in the bigpond driver interface SW on XP
hope this helps
what’s this about an expresscard for the Mac?
did you change your mind and and release one for telstra/bigpond?
kerry,
No, we haven’t. We won’t be (nor have we) releasing an express card modem. BigPond have released an expresscard modem, however that is by a different manufacturer.
I tried the magical step that Russell mentioned. I guess I must have the only two Macs in the world to not like these drivers. Gees – what are the chances of that?!