Egg Freckles

Searchpath

eggfreckles@me.com (Thomas Brand) — Thu, 16 May 2013 17:04:00 -0400

I promised I would not write too many entries about blogging, but I wanted to quickly tell you about a new feature on Egg Freckles I thought you might enjoy.

Searchpath is a new website indexing service being developed by Manton Reace. Aimed at tech-savy bloggers and developers, Searchpath offers website authors a new way to add integrated search to their websites without having to rely on the substandard tools packaged with most content management systems.

Searchpath is my first real attempt at search on Egg Freckles. Because Egg Freckles uses PieCrust, a static content management system, I have never had the option of offering integrated search before. All of the big third-party search services, like Duck Duck Go and Google, force visitors to leave your website when performing a search. Many inject ads into the search results. With Searchpath my visitors can search Egg Freckles without seeing an ad, or leaving the page. You can try Searchpath for yourself by entering a query in the search field at the button of this page.

Searchpath downloads pages from your web site and looks for links to additional pages. It continues this process until it can’t find any more pages to index.

From my limited testing, Searchpath does a good job indexing Egg Freckles’ content. I can control what pages get excluded using my robots.txt file, or the Searchpath web interface. Because Searchpath is hosted by Manton, there is nothing to install. All I had to do was paste a javascript snippet into Egg Freckles’ HTML template where I wanted the search box to appear. Searchpath does the rest.

Searchpath looks good on almost any website. Its popover behavior was designed to use the available space on your website, no matter where you put your searchbox. The style of its links and text are a direct refection of your design.

There are 4 directions for the .popover. pane that shows search results. Searchpath picks the best direction based on the position of the search box on your page. By default the links and text will get the color from your web page. You can customize this further by adding styles to your CSS file for the classes .searchpath_link. and .searchpath_summary.

I had to go a little further to make Searchpath match the aesthetic peculiarities of a Newton MessagePad, but Manton was supportive in my attempts to utilize unpublished CSS hooks to get everything looking just right. In the future I hope to see more customization possibilities included in the JavaScript snippet, and Searchpath administration website.

It is still early days for Searchpath. Searching is fast and fluid, and Manton is making regular updates. I would still like to see more information about what people are searching for on the Seachpath web interface..

Searchpath attempts to find just the text on a page, removing any extra navigation or footers that aren’t relevant for search results. It also keeps track of titles that have a common prefix or suffix, such as your site’s name, and removes those from search results.

As far as I can tell my Searchpath results still show my website’s name, “Egg Freckles,” in the title of every link. Only once during the past month did I catch Searchpath down, but my visitors never knew. If the Searchpath servers are unavailable the search box disappears from my website.

At $8 a month, Searchpath does not come cheap. It takes guts to go up against Google, the 800 pound gorilla of search, but I think Manton knows his customers are willing to pay a fair price for a good service without ads. The more he does to allow website authors to customize their search results, the better value Searchpath will be.

Will Searchpath remain on Egg Freckles? That is up to you. If you find it useful, keep searching, and I will continue to contribute the $8 a month to make my articles easier to find.

InstaPocketability

eggfreckles@me.com (Thomas Brand) — Mon, 13 May 2013 16:48:00 -0400

I was only half-joking last week on App.net, when I said I wanted to create my own read-it-later service. I have been an Instapaper user since 2010. Originally I didn’t see the point in saving articles to read later. My RSS feed reader was already archiving my favorite articles for me. But Instapaper opened my eyes.

Before Twitter, if I found an article on a site I wanted to read, I would subscribe to the RSS feed. If the site didn’t have a feed, I would have to decide if it was worth reading the article then and there. The explosive popularity of Twitter introduced me to hundreds of new people, and thousands of new sites. My feed reader could no longer keep up. I couldn’t subscribe to every site that had an interesting article I wanted to read, and I didn’t have time to read every interesting article on the spot.

Instapaper allowed me to read more by reading later. Instead of trying to follow every blog I wanted to read, I would pick and choose just the articles that interested me. My feed reader was no longer the final destination in my reading workflow, Instapaper was.

Ever since Marco Arment announced he was selling Instapaper, I have been reevaluating my read-it-later choices. I still believe Instapaper is a top of the line read-it-later service. But in the past six months since Instapaper’s last update, competitors have been gaining the upper hand in both the features, and polish. Before contributing another $3 to my quarterly Instapaper subscription I wanted to make sure it was really the right choice for me going forward. What I found is that the read-it-later landscape is more diverse then it initially appears.

Each read-it-later service Instapaper, Pocket, Readability, comes with its own strengths.

Instapaper offers the best reading experience, and app integration.
Pocket has the upper hand when it comes to multimedia support.
Readability offers the most polished web and app experience.

Depending on your priorities there is something for everyone in the read-it-later space. Unfortunately for readers it is not only the features that determine your choice in read-it-later service.

Website authors have the choice to opt-out of a given read-it-later service. At least two of the authors I read on a regular basis have opted-out of a particular service. Ben Brooks has opted-out of Readability. Marco Arment has opted-out of Pocket. If I am using Readability¹, I am no longer allowed to save [The Brooks Review]((http://brooksreview.net) for reading later. If I am using Pocket, I am no longer allowed to save Marco.org for reading later. If I want to read something on either of these sites I must either switch services, or read it on the spot. An authors choice to opt-out of a read-it-later service has me revisiting the on-demand reading habits I thought I retired over three years ago.

The problem is made worse when you consider not all content discovery apps work with every service. Most work with all three, but some like Twitterific only allow saving articles for later in Instapaper, and Pocket.² And we all know The Magazine only allows saving content for later in Instapaper. I don’t want my choice in content, or apps to determine my choice in read-it-later service.

Read-it-later is bigger than any one service or application. Give me the choice of a self-hosted solution so my reading experience can’t be denied by a single content provider opting-out, or a service provider closing up shop. Give me an open protocol so that I can use any content discovery app that supports the open read-it-later API. There should be no reason that I have to view my Instapaper queue in Instapaper the app, or my Pocket queue in Pocket for iOS. With an open read-it-later protocol we could benefit from the same innovation in the read-it-later space, that Twitter benefited from in the early days of microblogging.

I don’t blame Marco for not opening up Instapaper to the world. If I was in his shoes I would try to sell off the service too. Instapaper is a great-read-it-later service. As I have said it has shown me the value of what reading later is all about. I just don’t want to be confined by the limitations of a single company. And would gladly pay the subscription fee for any service that can open up read-it-later for delivery on my own terms.

I am sticking with Readability for now, if only because I read a large majority of my archived articles using their highly polished website. ↩
Shortly after this note was published, Twitterrific for iOS was updated to version 5.2.2 with a ability to save articles for later using Readability. ↩

The Short Life & Fast Times of Fusion Drive

eggfreckles@me.com (Thomas Brand) — Fri, 03 May 2013 11:36:00 -0400

Fusion Drive, we barely knew you. Announced as part of an Apple event held on October 23rd, 2012. Fusion Drive combined the large capacity of a conventional hard drive with the speed of a 128 GB flash storage to create a single logical volume with the space of both drives combined. The operating system automatically managed the contents of the Fusion Drive so the most frequently accessed files, applications, documents, photos and other data are stored on the faster flash storage, while infrequently used items moved or stayed on the hard drive. Users benefited from the affordable large-capacity data storage Fusion Drive provided, while still experiencing the quick boot times and fast application launch speeds of an SSD.

Unfortunately many of Apple’s most popular Macs could not accommodate Fusion Drive due to a lack of space. Fusion Drive required space for a conventional 2.5 inch hard drive as well separate flash storage, and only the 2013 iMac and Mac mini could include one as a build-to-order option. Even the Mac Pro, with its boxy design and removable hard drive modules, could not take advantage of Fusion Drive.¹ In a time when Macs were getting thinner and lighter, Fusion Drive was pushed out of the nest before it could ever take flight.

There was also the problem of price. At $250 for 128 GBs of flash memory, Fusion Drive came at a premium compared to other third-party SSDs. The people most likely to take advantage of Fusion Drive’s simplicity were the ones least likely to pay for it. And shortly after Fusion Drive’s release, large capacity solid state drives dropped in price, giving power users other options.

Let’s not forget that most users no longer need the high-capacity storage the Fusion Drive provided. The Mac is no longer the digital hub is once was. As more and more content moves to the cloud, Flickr, Pandora, and Netflix have taken away the imprtance of having high-capacity hard drives on modern Macs. Users of today’s most popular personal computer, the iPad, make due with storage capacities half the size of affordable SSDs Why would they need eight times the storage a Fusion Drive provided? Fusion Drive tried to solve a problem most people really didn’t have.

Fusion Drive, no one needs your fragile combination of storage technologies anymore. If Apple had really believed in you, they would have made you the default storage system on a Mac, any Mac. Instead you were neglected to a build-to-order-option. Even the top-of-the-line 27 inch iMac never shipped with a Fusion Drive standard. Fusion Drive, we will always remember you for the fast plentiful storage you promised. A great idea whose time came too late.

A Fusion Drive should never be created from removable storage. ↩

2013 iMac

eggfreckles@me.com (Thomas Brand) — Thu, 02 May 2013 17:00:00 -0400

I have written about iMac Upgradability in the past, and defended Apple’s decision to use proprietary parts in the pursuit of a better performing Mac. I still believe the future of Apple’s computers more closely resembles the locked-down philosophy of the iPad, than the open-door nature of the Mac Pro. If you bought a 2013 iMac expecting to own an easily upgradable, future-proof machine, then you were mistaken. This year’s iMac is even more locked-down than last year’s model. You need a guitar pick, and a heat gun to get it open. And that doesn’t even cover the sticky glue-covered strips you will need to procure in order to put it back together. To make matters worse the 21.5 inch model does not even include a user-accessible door to get at the RAM. Let’s face it if you want a super-slim 2013 iMac. You had better configure it with all the build-to-order upgrades you expect to get for the life of the machine. Because you won’t be opening it up any time soon.

As a ex-Mac Genius, and even I am scared to open a 2013 iMac. For some people the desire to get a super-slim iMac makes the trade offs worth it. But I am not one of those people. I have been a big fan of the 21.5 inch iMacs in the past. I own the original 2009 model. But the lack of upgradability means the 2013 iMac is not meant for me. It is not that I feel the desire to get inside my machines and poke around. Quite the opposite. I am content to have my computers locked-down, just as long as I never have a reason to open them up in the first place. The problem with the 2013 21.5 inch iMac is that I am not willing to pay Apple’s premium RAM and Flash Memory prices to keep it closed.

The 2013 21.5 inch iMac suffers from a fatal design flaw. At 15 MBs a second, its default 5400 RPM hard drive is too slow for a modern computing experience.¹ Forget pro users, I wouldn’t recomnend it anyone. Initially you couldn’t get the base 2013 21.5 iMac with anything but this slow drive.² But now you can get a Fusion Drive at $250, or almost twice the market price of the Fusion Drive’s 128 GB flash memory. Today Apple announced a 256 GB SSD option for an additional $300, or a 512 GB GB SSD option for an additional $600. Almost twice the price of a competing third-party SSD.³ Forget the extra memory. Getting a comparable iMac with adequate performance is going to cost a lot more than the introductory $1,299 price tag.

People are getting used to the always-on, instant gratification of solid state storage. The iPad’s popularity proves this. The iPad’s popularity also proves people are willing to trade a great computing experience for a machine that is not as upgradable. The 2013 21.5 inch iMac aims to bring the iPad’s great computing experience to the desktop, but fails because Apple is unwilling to match its premium price with premium components. And with no way to upgrade the 2013 21.5 inch iMac, users who know better have no other option but to skip Apple’s computer for the rest of us.

Last year’s models included a fast 7200 RPM hard drive. ↩
The 27 inch model has always been available with an acceptable 7200 RPM drive. ↩
If you consider the 1 TB 5400 RPM hard drive you are already paying for, but not actually getting. ↩

Scurtle

eggfreckles@me.com (Thomas Brand) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:20:00 -0400

When I turned eleven my parents let me have a pet. Not a dog or a cat, my mother was allergic, but a Red Eared Slider. Turtles don’t have fur.

I named him Scurtle because when I put him down, he scuffled across the floor. And because when you are an eleven year old boy, all good turtle names rhyme with turtle. We purchased him on our way to Maine during the summer of 94. He cost ten dollars and thirteen cents, but his tank, filter, light, heater, and food cost far more. A boy and his turtle. He was the best birthday present I ever recieved.

A turtle is a good fit for a shy kid who, who had trouble seeing at a young age. I could hold him close, press my face against the glass, or watch him slowly roam across the floor. Turtles move faster than you think, but both of us were content to take our time.

My childhood was defined by Scurtle. He was in my drawings. The narrator of my book reports. I took him to “Show & Tell” in the Fifth Grade. I wanted to become a “turtle expert” when I grew up. He probably outlived many of my teachers. Seasons changed, but Scurtle stayed the same.

Often left alone to swim and bask, but never forgotten. Scurtle stayed at home when I went to college, but came with me to my first apartment. He was there when I bought my first house, and welcomed me home after I got married.

Scurtle had roommates of his own. A fellow Red Eared slider from my 7th grade science class named Myrtle. A Stinkpot musk turtle I adopted from my friend Josh. A silver-dollar sized Painted turtle name Sebago, my brother took home from the lake. And a grumpy Red Eared Slider named Boo a friend’s mother gave me as a present when I got sick. Scurtle outlived them all except for Boo, but unlike the others he had true personality. It almost looked as if he was smiling.

As the years went by Scurtie started to slow down. He didn’t chase his food as vigorously as he once had, and the markings on his shell started to fade. Starting one day last year he stopped extending his left arm all of the way out of his shell. I could tell he was getting older. But turtles can live a very long time.

This weekend I lost my friend. My wife and I were returning home from the Zoo, when Amber noticed something was wrong. Scurtle was stuck underwater trying to get free. Weak and confused he had managed to get pinned underneath his basking ramp. I quickly freed him, but when I placed him back in the water he abruptly exhaled bubbles and I knew that he was in trouble.

I spent the next hour with him lying on my chest as I extended his neck trying to force the water out. He would open his mouth expel some water and then close his eyes. I got him a heating pad, I looked up treatments online, I prepared to take him to the vet, but in the end he just didn’t make it. I was rubbing his head when he let out his last breath. He died staring back into my eyes.

It might seem silly to shed tears for a turtle. But Scurtle was my friend, and I knew him for almost twenty years. I find myself wishing I had done things differently. That I could have saved him. But the most important lesson is to value the time we had together. Scurtle you were loved, and I will always miss you. A special part of my childhood has died, and I will never be the same.

August 27th, 1994 - April 27th, 2013

My First Three Apps on Windows

eggfreckles@me.com (Thomas Brand) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:48:00 -0400

Let’s face it, nobody likes working in Windows. Okay so maybe some people do, but they are most likely not reading this blog. My first computer was a Macintosh 512k. I have used Macs most of my life, but at MIT I work with Windows. I even prefer Windows to running a Virtual Machine on a Mac when administering PCs. But that doesn’t mean I have to accept the default Windows apps, or the PC way of doing things. In fact the very first thing I do when sitting down to a PC, is pin my Taskbar to the top of the screen. Giving me a more ergonomic view of my running apps, without looking down. The second thing I do is install these three applications no PC should be without.

Firefox

Firefox may not be your browser of choice, but it is mine. I appreciate what Mozilla is trying to do, keeping the web open and free to all. I also appreciate the way Firefox let’s me customize my browser experience with extensions, bookmarks, pinned tabs, and saved passwords; and sync that experience between computers using Firefox Sync. These days a computer is not useful without an open window to the World Wide Web, and Firefox is a familiar view even on Windows. You don’t need administrator rights to install it.

PuTTY

After sitting down to a PC, and opening my window to the web, the next thing I want to do is go outside. PuTTY is my door to the world outside of Windows. PuTTY is a Telnet and SSH client for PCs. It is open source. It lets me access my Linux, and Mac servers from Windows. It may be my favorite PC application, because it takes me outside of the PC. Always reliable, never crashing, PuTTY exemplifies the best of UNIX by doing one thing well, while looking and behaving like a Windows app should. More Windows applications should follow in PuTTY’s lead.. No need to install, at 472 KB PuTTY runs as a drag and drop application even on a network share, USB key, or compact disc.

Notepad2

Everybody thinks they know Notepad.

Notepad is a simple text editor for Microsoft Windows. It has been included in all versions of Microsoft Windows since Windows 1.0 in 1985.

What people may not know is Notepad is a terrible text editor when it comes to working with files from other platforms. Unlike WordPad, Notepad does not treat newlines in Unix- or Mac-style text files correctly. Notepad offers only the most basic text manipulation functions, such as finding text. Find and Replace in Notepad is a “new” feature. Up to Windows Me, there were almost no keyboard shortcuts in Notepad, and no line-counting feature. In fact one of the best known uses of Notepad is stripping out embedded fonts, foreign line endings, obscure Unicode characters and style codes from formatted text so that it can be used in other similarly limited Windows applications.

My answer to the limited feature set of Notepad is NotePad2. Notepad2 is perfect for sharing text files back and forth between platforms. It is fluent in all dialects of my favorite language, Plan Text. Notepad 2 is fast and light. It supports syntax highlighting for a handful of languages, auto indenting, bracket matching, and regular expression-based find and replace. At 305 KB, you can fit both it an PuTTY together on a single floppy disk. No need to install, distributed with a BSD license, I include a copy of Notepad2 with all of my documentation and code targeted at Windows users.

Firefox, PuTTY, and Notepad2 may not be the most powerful PC applications, but they are fast, free, and light. All three help me feel at home in an unfamiliar place like Windows, and I would never venture onto the Dark Side without them.¹

All three are available as PortableApps so that their preferences, settings, and configuration files are as mobile as your are. ↩

Workgroup Backups

eggfreckles@me.com (Thomas Brand) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:30:00 -0400

At MIT I am in charge of the technology management for a small department of about 150 people. Data preservation is one of my chief responsibilities. I take advantage of a multi-tiered backup solution to guarantee both fast user accessible data recovery, and long-term off-site incremental backups.

All Windows PCs are backed up every night to a local Windows server using the Backup and Restore utility available in Windows 7. All Macs are backed up every hour to a local Mac server using Time Machine. Both Mac and Windows servers utilize redundant RAID storage, and are backed up nightly using an off-site enterprise cloud backup solution.

If data loss occurs, users can restore their own data using native OS backup utilities, without requesting assistance from a System Administrator. The storage capacity of the local backup servers is large enough to allow all users immediate access to the last 30 days worth of file revisions. The local network is fast enough to restore a complete multi-gigabyte backup snapshot in 60 minutes or less. Because the server is local, we can even restore data over USB 3 or Thunderbolt in a pinch.

Roaming laptop users backup to the off-site enterprise cloud backup service directly, but may connect to a local backup server when they are on the MIT campus. By paying as little as $65 a month per backup server for 10 TBs of off-site storage, we come out saving money compared to the hassle of registering each client machine individually. Not suitable for everyone, this solution gives workgroup administrators a centralized backup solution that is as fast as Thunderbolt, and as low cost as even the cheapest off-site cloud backup solution.

2013 Boston Marathon

eggfreckles@me.com (Thomas Brand) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:15:00 -0400

The Boston Marathon is not just a race, it is the culmination of countless hours of training and preparation. Not just for the runners who must endure each of the Marathon’s 26.2 miles, but for the thousands of volunteers, spectators, civil servants, and family members who help make that journey possible. It is a personal story for everyone involved. And no matter which part you play, you have a story to tell.

Except this year’s Boston Marathon was different. Instead of a story of endurance, triumph, and glory, terrible bombings cut this year’s Boston Marathon short. The victors were overshadowed by loss. Dozens were brutally wounded. And three spectators were silenced, never to tell their stories again.

Normally I like to take this time, a couple days after the race, to recount my marathon experience, and learn what I could do better next year. I would tell you how I set the goal of finishing the Boston Marathon in under three hours. And kept that pace until mile twenty-two, when my legs gave out, and I faltered during the final downhill miles of the course.¹ I finished the race in 3:13:33, and went home with the hope of returning next year But by the time I got to my house the race didn’t matter anymore, and Boston may never be the same.

The Boston Marathon is a tradition. Begun in 1897, inspired by the success of the first modern-day marathon competition in the 1896 Summer Olympics, the Boston Marathon is the world’s oldest annual marathon. It is the World Series of running events, and part of that tradition is retelling the tales of past races. The challenging course. The inclement weather conditions. The surprise victories. And the spirit to overcome. I am afraid all of that tradition will be lost if we choose to remember the Boston Marathon as the tragedy that happened in 2013. That is why I pledge to run the Boston Marathon again.

May we never forget the tragedy of 2013 Boston Marathon. Never forget the courage of the victims, or the heros we saw running into the face of danger that day. I know that in the years to come, if I am asked if I ran the 2013 Boston Marathon I will say yes. But the more important question is if I come back to run again The Boston Marathon is too good a tradition to be tarnished by terrorism, and no coward can keep me from coming back to race again.

Training starts today. See you next year.

Running a 18:52 the day before was not a good idea. ↩

The Old iMac G5 of the Month

eggfreckles@me.com (Thomas Brand) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 11:42:00 -0400

Very rarely do I publish a link post around here without considerable critique, but this guest post by Jordan Merrick on 512 Pixels’ Old Mac of the Month column has me speechless.¹ Everything I would want to cover in an iMac G5 article is here. From the evolution in design of the iMac lineup. To the iMac G5’s new technology and super hot processor that required three fans to keep it cool.

As an ex Mac Genius, I especially appreciate the mention that “the iMac G5 was the most user-serviceable machine Apple shipped under Steve Jobs’ second reign.” In my opinion the iMac G5 was the most user-servicable machine Apple ever shipped, PERIOD. It included a color-coded screw system so customers could easily replace components at home with a Phillips screw driver. Major parts were all isolated in their own customer replaceable modules, and even the entire logic board could be replaced by customers as a single component called the Midplane Assemply. It is a shame more Apple hardware isn’t easier to open, but as a former Mac Genius, who repaired hundreds of these iMacs with bad logic board capacitors, I can tell you most customers weren’t ready to get their hands dirty.

I used to see iMacs returned to the Apple Store put back together with screws in the wrong place, and missing components that were never supposed to be removed at all. Customers weren’t ready to repair their $1,299+ computers, and as the popularity of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad replacement programs has shown, all they really wanted was a new one.² The iMac G5 was the great experiment in customer serviceability that failed. We can thank the availability of the Genius Bar, the disposable nature of modern technology, and the desire for the thinnest possible computer for why we have locked down machines like today’s MacBook Pro with Retina Display. Maybe it was inevitable, but the iMac G5 will always hold a special place in my heart as the Mac that dared customers to ‘Think Different’ not only about what their computers look like on the outside, but about the inside of their computers as well.

If you are looking for other great Old Mac of the Month articles try mine, The Mighty Cat. ↩
Even if that “new one” only looks new, and is actually refurbished. ↩

Dial-up iPad

eggfreckles@me.com (Thomas Brand) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 09:28:00 -0400

You would think that the iPad, with all of its fancy Bluetooth, Cellular, and Wi-Fi networking technology, would be able to handle a simple call to a dial-up internet service provider. After all the Newton could do it, and it only had a 20 MHz processor. More of what we do on our iPads and Macs these days requires an always-on Internet connection than ever before. That fact does not go away if you find yourself living outside the bounds of a conventional broadband connection. But no matter what white piece of shiny plastic you buy, nothing short of alien technology can get your iPad surfing the Internet when dial-up is the only option. Luckily for those of you who find yourself living in the woods, Apple was in the business of manufacturing 56k-equipped flying saucers as late as 2007. And if you play your cards right, you can capture one of these little alien hotrods for less than the price of a $30 lightning adapter. The secret is knowing what to look for.

The original AirPort (known as Graphite) features a modem and an Ethernet port. It employs a Lucent WaveLAN Silver PC Card as the Radio, and uses an embedded AMD Elan processor. It was released July 21, 1999. The Graphite AirPort Base Station is functionally identical to the Lucent RG-1000 wireless base station and can run the same firmware. Due to the original firmware-locked limitations of the Silver card, the unit can only accept 40-bit WEP encryption. Later aftermarket tweaks can enable 128-bit WEP on the Silver card. Aftermarket Linux firmware has been developed for these units to extend their useful service life.

A second generation model (known as Dual Ethernet or Snow) was introduced on November 13, 2001. It features a second Ethernet port when compared to the Graphite design, allowing for a shared Internet connection with both wired and wireless clients. Also new (but available for the original model via software update) was the ability to connect to and share America Online’s dial-up service.a feature unique to Apple base stations. This model is based on Motorola’s PowerPC 855 processor and contained a fully functional original AirPort Card, which can be removed and used in any compatible Macintosh computer.

An updated AirPort Extreme was announced on January 7, 2003. In addition to providing wireless connection speeds of up to a maximum of 54 Mbit/s, it adds an external antenna port and a USB port. The antenna port allows the addition of a signal-boosting antenna, and the USB port allows the sharing of a USB printer. A connected printer is made available via Bonjour’s “zero configuration” technology and IPP to all wired and wireless clients on the network. The CPU is an AU1500-333MBC Alchemy (processor), and it supports up to 50 wireless clients simultaneously.

All three models resemble a flying saucer, and even though you won’t be cruising the Internet at 54 Mbit/s speeds it is worth getting the AirPort Extreme for the additional features and compatibility. Unlike most wireless routers, AirPort Base Stations do not have a web-based administration page. They require special software to get them configured, and only the AirPort Extreme supports configuration on both a Mac and Windows PC. The Graphite and Snow models require a Mac to get them configured, but there are some hacks for configuring these base stations using Java. None of these base stations can be configured using the AirPort Utility for iOS.

You can easily identify the AirPort Extreme model by looking for the shiny mirror-finish Apple logo on its fusalauge. The Graphite model’s Apple logo is Graphite Grey. The Snow model’s Apple logo is Snow White. Just be careful that the AirPort Extreme you buy includes a 56k modem, because there were two similar AirPort Extreme models that shipped without it.[^1] None of the currently shipping square-shapped AirPort Extreme or AirPort Express base stations support dial-up networking. So your best bet for procuring a lightly used flying saucer is off of eBay.

Once you have your flying saucer in hand, the next thing you are going to need to do is configure it. Of course you will want to configure it to connect to the Internet using the built-in 56k modem, but you will also want to enable Automatic Dialing. Automatic dialing ensures your AirPort Base Station will automatically call your Internet Service Provider and connect to the Internet without being prompted by a computer. There is no way to prompt a AirPort Base Station to call an ISP using an iPad. Automatic Dialing MUST be enabled. The downside of Automatic Dialing is that your iPad assumes an always-on Internet connection. Expect for your AirPort Base Station to be tying up your phone line as long as your iPad is in range. It is best to unplug your AirPort Base Station from the phone line when it is not in use.

So there you have it. Dial-up networking on the iPad. I don’t expect you to get very far downloading apps, movies, and music, on 56k, but maybe you can take a stab at surfing the web, checking your email, and staying up to date on the latest social networks. Let me know if this guide works for you, otherwise good luck in the woods.