Firstly, I’d like to apologize profusely for the delay. We honestly believed (each time we posted information saying it was only x amount of days away) that it really was almost there. Unfortunately, not having written drivers from scratch before, there were more complications than we expected.

Secondly, I’d like to apologize for the lack of communication. There are staff other than me who have access to our communication channels, but they will only use them in case of an emergency.
Thirdly, the beta drivers are here! YAY!

PLEASE NOTE: These drivers will only work if you have a Telstra branded modem, this is DIFFERENT to a BigPond branded modem. (The Telstra ones are orange, the BigPond ones are blue). This is because the two systems use different authentication methods. BigPond themselves will be releasing the software to be used with their modems. (I know the installation currently mentions the BigPond modems, but trust me, they will not work).

There is also one important step that is not currently in the installation instructions (I’ll get that amended ASAP). YOU MUST DO THIS BEFORE IT WILL WORK. The USIM cards by default come with PIN request activated. The driver does not currently provide the functionality to change this. So, you will either need to install the modem onto a Windows computer, and disable the PIN request through the windows software, OR you will need to put the USIM card into a mobile phone, then disable PIN request through your phone (how to do this will depend on your phone model).

You can download the driver from here:

http://www.maxon.com.au/udrivers/Mac_Drivers_Beta_090207.zip

The usual disclaimer applies, as this is BETA software. Use at your own risk.

A GUI is on the way, not sure of the timeframe for that yet.

Finally, we are very keen to hear any feedback / issues / feature requests for these drivers. Please use our forums for this (rather than posting comments here). Official Mac OS thread: http://www.maxon.com.au/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13

We expect to have a beta driver available for Mac OS tomorrow afternoon. Keep an eye on this space!

Thank you all for your patience!

Getting this device working on Mac OS has certainly been a hot topic. We’re working as fast as we can to get at least a beta of this available. We made significant progress over the weekend, finally removing the last of the major obstacles to actual connection with the modems.

We are in the process now of tidying up a couple of minor bugs (very minor!), and doing some code tidying up.

We will hopefully have a beta available VERY shortly.

I will post more details tomorrow (promise!), and will try to actually have a firm date at least for the beta release.

On friday last week we finally were able to connect a Next G MiniMax to the internet on Mac OS!  We ran some initial FTP and web tests, and were downloading between 1.4mbps (web) to 2.4mbps (ftp).

After much head banging, we finally ironed out the last bug in the connection.  It’s been a tough process, with the drivers being created by a Mac OS guru in the US, even though he didn’t actually have access to a live network to test on!

With the final tidying up of the code for the drivers to go, and the creation of a User Interface, we should only be a couple of weeks away from the release of the Mac OS support for MiniMax.

Thank you all for your patience so far.  We’re pleased that although it took a bit longer than expected, the final outcome will be a quality solution.

Approaching d-day with the MiniMax, and things are looking good.  There are a couple of versions of the modem that we are working on, with one of them being completely finished, and the other only needing a few more fixes.

We now have WHQL (Microsoft) certified Windows drivers for the modem, which will make the installation process even more streamlined.

We’re also hearing good news from the Mac OS driver developer, he’s online with the modem! (which is more exciting than it sounds).  He has indicated that he might be able to provide support for older versions of Mac OS (eg 10.2 and 10.3).  No promises at this stage, but it’s looking good.  In terms of development time we realistically won’t have it at launch, but it should certainly be available not long after!

By the middle of last week we had made excellent progress with Apple US on driver development for the MiniMax. It was completely unexpected when we received the crushing news at the end of the week that Apple would not be able to provide drivers until earliest January next year.
As Mac support is a must for this product, we scrambled to find what other options we had. A brief spark of hope that Qualcomm might have a reference driver was soon extinguished, leaving us once again at square one for Mac OS MiniMax support.

All is not lost though, as our Mac interface developers have been able to contract a 3rd party US developer to create a driver specifically for us! At this stage we still hope to have a working Mac OS driver and GUI for the MiniMax at launch, allthough it will initally be as a separate download, rather than included with the product.

Over the past week we have come up across a few difficulties with the Mac OS support for the Next G MiniMax. Primary among these was the fact that Mac OS does not yet have USB drivers that are compatible with the chipset which MiniMax uses (Qualcomm MSM-6280), without these drivers it is impossible to create connection software.

Following discussion with Apple (in Australia and the US), we are very pleased that the Apple hardware development team are working on providing USB drivers for this chipset. It will be tight, but we are still aiming to have Mac OS support for the Next G MiniMax at launch!