This post was originally going to be about using a mobile phone (in my case, a TyTn II) as a modem over Bluetooth in OSX. To my somewhat untrained eye, it doesn't exactly seem in line with the rest of the Mac experience, but I could be missing something obvious.
With my previous (Windows) laptop, I installed ActiveSync + Bluetooth drivers (which were missing initially - I'd disabled Bluetooth in the BIOS as I'd never needed it before) on the laptop and things seemed to work ok. There were a fair few steps required to get up and running with this solution:
First I'd run the Windows Mobile Internet connection sharing app, then Ignore warning "If this is the first time you've used this then the device must be made visible, do you want to do this now?" message which I didn't seem to be able to turn off. Next switch to the laptop, and activate the HP's "wireless" hardware function - turn off WiFi if it was enabled, to save power. Still on the laptop, right click the Bluetooth systray icon, select my Device name, choose Network Access, then click connect. Wait a little bit… Done!
It wasn't exactly elegant but it worked well enough for me to use it pretty solidly on the train for about 6 months.
Track forward to trying to get the TyTn II connected to my Mac, and I'm wrangling with an OS that I don't know too well as well as realising that ActiveSync was probably doing a lot more work than I ever gave it credit for on my Windows box. All my googling seemed to point me to posts which seemed a little too convoluted for my liking – oh, and they didn't seem to work for me either. I'm definately pretty new to OSX, but this stuff is supposed to "just work" (tm), right?
This is where the post is no longer about getting my TyTn II to work as a modem over Bluetooth in OSX, because it didn't take long for me to remember WM WiFiRouter. I mentioned this briefly a while back, however back then the Bluetooth + Windows combo was working pretty well so I didn't ever get around to testing it despite the fact that it sounded pretty neat.
Shame on me. This morning I installed the product, configured it, and got the Mac connected in about 10 minutes while I was eating breakfast. It's quick, simple, has some neat features and it *feels* faster when it's in use. All I need to do now is run the app and click a nice large icon, and my Mac will automatically find my TyTn as a known preferred network and connect.
The only downside to this is that the wireless connection can only be encrypted using WEP. It's not exactly ideal, but it's probably going to be good enough for the locations and situations I'll be using it for – besides, it's not as if WPA is really all that much better, and securing the use of your phone's Internet connection using something such as a Radius server is slightly overkill – even for me. a few more options for monitoring and security would be nice, but maybe that's a task best left for tomorrow's breakfast. Power consumption stats for Bluetooth vs WiFi is also something I need to do a bit more research into as well.
So far I'm pretty impressed with WM WifiRouter and after 12 hours of my trial period I know I'll be buying it shortly.
On another note, it's always a weird feeling when the solution to a problem is right under your nose – but it's an even weirder feeling when you actually wrote about the solution to your own problem months before you experienced it. Hmm.