As great as Apple can be, sometimes they just suck. (1 Viewer)

[JohnRice]

I say that because of their habit of crippling their hardware. The AppleTV has a USB port, but you can't use it, unless you hack it. It also has ethernet, which is a great way connect your HT equipment to the internet, but it doesn't do that.


My father needs to connect his OLD gigabit ethernet Mac through his wireless network (based on an AirPort Extreme) to the internet, and it would be cool to play music from his main computer as well. GREAT, I have 4 AirPort Expresses and they do both, so I took one over to set it all up. After all, it lets you share internet, play music through AirTunes, plus share printers and so on. Right!?! What they don't actually tell you, anywhere, is that it can play music through AirTunes OR share internet. Not both. No doubt it could do it but Apple chose to cripple the ability. The Apple web site page on the APX spells out all these things you can do, but nowhere does it say you can't do them all. No, for that you need to buy a second APX.


Steve, your company makes great stuff, but this crap pisses me off.

 

[DaveF]

So that's a strange and unexpected limitation. But some googling suggests a solution, albeit contorted.

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050102052426891

 

[JohnRice]

Oh, I saw that, but read on. You have to disable ALL security to get it to work, leaving you with a completely open, wireless network.


From later in that thread...

As you hinted the key for this to work is to disable all passwords (internet sharing as well as network security in Airport Admin Utility). But I was left with a totally unsecure internet wireless access point, less than an ideal solution especially if you live in a large city block as I do...

The poster goes on to explain a way to get 40 bit WEP to work, but the fact is that is a completely unacceptable situation, plus in my experience, the current airports do not function at all on WEP.