Lack of Mac support
 

A friend of mine just recently bought a bottom of the line Linksys router for is home network. He toiled like mad trying to set it up and I even spent more than 2 hours with him trying to establish a decent network between 2 OS X machines.
Turns out he found out later that the router firmware had to be downgraded for it to work.
Of course as everyone knows Linksys does not offer any Mac support which leads me to an interesting conclusion. We've come so far in numbers (the Mac user community) in the last decade that we deserve to have support for our plateforms. If a company decides not to offer any or little support for the Mac users, than I don't think their product is worth buying in the first place even though we might be saving a few hard earned dollars in the process. Time is precious and I want to be enjoying my Mac experience not scraping bits of info off the web because a company exec decided that Mac users were not a factor in their profit margin.

Yeh..... I agree...!

from a personal point of view I DONT buy things that dont have mac support, from hardware to ISP... I dont buy things from websites that dont support macs (obviously!) I use their competitors that do!

I dont make a big deal of it... I just avoid narow minded companies

that is strange, since networking for the most part is pretty much standardized (tcp/ip) almost any router should work with pretty much any os. However, I do know there are issues like the one you mentioned that do come up from time to time. Not only with macs, but with PCs too.

As for mac support, you just gotta find someone who knows there stuff. This forum is one of the greatest resources for macintosh questions. Its way better than the AASP knowledge base, well its easier to find stuff here that is. I have a linksys router and my ibook not only works fine, but I can telnet into my router and configure it with safari. I have an older revision linksys router though.

I agree. Feel free to ask about any network issues - especially concerning Linksys routers and such.

I don't think I've ever done the initial configuration of a Linksys Router without a Mac... what model were you using?

I had a Linksys router and experienced the same kind of problem. My solution? I bought a D-Link. I will never again buy any product from Linksys unless they start advertising their support for Macs on their packages in large, bold print. Even then, I will wait until I have heard other people praising their Mac friendliness.

You must vote with your wallet. It's the only thing these companies understand.

Um, well, yeah. Bottom of the line often fails to meet expectations or needs. Maybe this is a lesson in why many other routers cost more.

It's a free market and the only thing we "deserve" is whatever companies feel they can turn a buck providing. It is not a question of equity or morality.

Clearly Linksys has segmented the available customers and decided they can best succeed by targeting the low end in terms of cost, compatibility, and quality.

If it costs more to make a muffler compatible with both BMWs and GMCs, should the GMC owners be punished by eliminating cheaper mufflers from the marketplace?

The point being, just don't rewad Linksys by buying one of their routers.

Also, if you bought it at a BestBuy or something, just take it back. If there is any doubt about whether a product is Mac compatible (i.e. the system requirements are ambiguous as written on the package) I always ask the salesteenager if it is. Trying to make a sale, they invariably say, "yes." Giving me a rock solid excuse for taking the product home, trying it out, and returning it for even the slightest irritation due to incompatibility.

The thing is, Linksys makes about the best routers IMO. They also are Mac compatible and ready since they program from a web browser. All Linksys routers can be flashed using either the browser loader (not available on lower end models) or MacTFTP Client.

It's also been my experience that retailers have no concept to what "Mac Compatible" means. I don't know how many times I advised a client to pick up a new hard drive, CD drive or other peripheral from CompUSA or Frys only to have them call me later telling me the salesperson told them it wouldn't work in the Mac and either let them leave empty handed or sold them a much more expensive product. Now, when I advise they purchase a product, I make it clear to them to ignore what the salesperson tells them and just buy I what I advised them to buy. Even to the point of not telling the salesperson that it's for a Mac.

In a lot of cases it's pure ignorance that drives the whole Mac un-support.

For example, someone recently had some troubles with Comcast broadband. Comcast's respones was.. Macs don't work with broadband. Uh-huh. Yeah, Macs don't work with the internet.

Comepletly untrue, but a lot easier to say then, I'm sorry, we simply don't have a clue how to do anything with a Mac, so you're on your own.

Although off the topic of Linksys but on the topic of Mac support... I had the recent positive experience of taking my laptop to Hampton Inn which advertises broadband access at most of their hotels. I tried following their 'windows' instructions and faild to make it work. They had a support number, so I called it. When I told them I was using MacOS, the person immediately had the exact set of instructions needed to make it work and it did work. So, there are actually people who do understand and support us out there! Hurray for Hampton Inn's system! Frankly, if I had realized how their authentication worked, it would not have needed the call, but I was impressed with their support.

This reminds me of a time when I went to a music store with my friend who is a drummer in a band. He asked the guy for a certain size drum bolt, used to put together as bass drum. The guy behind the counter said it was manufacturer specific and that he would have to have them customer made. So, my friend walked over to their display drum kit, took off a few bolts and handed them to the guy, and said, this is what I need. The guy was like, "Oooooh, those bolts, yeah I got some in the back."

It kind of irks me when people say oh gosh i hate macs we should just get rid of all of our mac labs. Oh man, I hate PCs we should just go all mac.

WHATEVER! A computer is a computer is a computer. Soon macs and pcs will be so similiar when macs turn over to the x86 architechture. I am actually pretty excited about that.

They're already "so similar" since they all use DVI or SVGA video, PCI and AGP, USB and Firewire, ATA or SATA, etc. The only difference in PCI cards is if the card has Plug-n-play firmware it has to be in the format the computer expects, BIOS for PC and OpenFirmware for Mac and as the ATI 9600 demonstrates, can be supported for both in the same card.

My D-Link is about three years newer, so that may be partly why I like it better, but I do. As for being Mac compatible, I don't believe that working with Macs is enough to qualify. If your tech support department refuses to make any effort to help, you're not compatible.

How is linksys not making any effort to help? They have instructions and a link to MacTFTP on their site. D-Link has none of this. Just because one Tech Support guy doesn't have a clue (as most don't) doesn't mean the company is against Mac.

The last time I called them, and I admit it's been well over a year, it was company policy that they did not support the Mac. If they do now, but aren't publicizing it, then it's a bit like a back handed compliment. It seems nice enough, but it isn't really helpful.

Linksys products still don't really support Macintosh. In reality, they don't support PCs either. They support networking. Modern networking protocols weren't written for any specific platform. Why are firmware updaters usually written for PC? Because it's easy and it works. As for Linksys products, they could have written a flasher for Mac, but why? There was already a suitable flasher.

Newer Linksys routers don't use flasher applications anymore. Instead they have a JAVA flasher built into the router's OS that runs through HTTP. Again, this isn't PC or Mac support. It's networking support.

As I said in post #5, they don't say that they support the Mac on their boxes. I do remember seeing something about Windoze on their boxes though, and I've never seen any posts raving about how helpful they were to Mac users.

If I'm going to spend money on a product, I demand that I not be treated as a second class citizen when it comes to support, that's why. This alone is reason enough to boycott them.

Through the Linksys website I sent this to their tech support staff:
What is your policy about supporting your products when used with Macintosh computers?

and I just received this:

******
Dear Valued Linksys Customer,

Thank you for contacting Linksys Technical Support.

Linksys devices are compatible with Macintosh computers. However, the support is limited to providing idea on what fixes the concern rather than guiding them step by step towards the resolution. There is no training for the operating system environment so some of the technicians only based their procedures from an experience with clients with ample knowledge of their system.

We hope this answer the questions.
******

This response is not just grammatically incorrect, it's downright pitiful. If you want to waste your money on their products, that's your choice, but the only way they'll get another of their boxes into any property I own is if they give it to me.

It might be helpful to distinguish between products that work with Macs and those where the absence of drivers or another-platform-only software prevents you from using it.

In the case of a router, some basic networking knowledge is desirable anyway unless you want to risk exposing your network to attacks.

I highly doubt that the "tech-support" you might be entitled to by some script-reading callcenter-monkeys is exactly what you really want to base your buying-decision on.

I'd rather prefer a router-maker with a good security record and open-source alternative firmware.

While I am entirely with those saying that computer-stuff still is too complicated to use, as of today, networking 101 is required to run a secure network connected to the internet.

Actually, it is an important part of the buying decision because as a Mac user, it limits my choices in the future.

If we are to continue to have Macs as an alternatives to PCs - and I mean over the long term, or at least 50 years - it cannot be acceptable that a company making what amounts to a generic piece of equipment can relegate our choice of platform to second-class status. One company successfully doing it encourages others to do it, and that's a very bad thing.