Thursday 25 October 2007

Leopard and 10.4.11

Sorry for the lack of updates recently, there just hasn't been any progress in making the GPS-CS1 work with PPC Macs.

However, Leopard is out tomorrow and the latest version of Tiger, 10.4.11, is due any day now.

I will try the GPS-CS1 on 10.4.11 as soon as it is available, if someone else could try it with Leopard and post the results I'm sure many PPC owners will be grateful. And not just PPC owners - since Apple don't appear to have deliberately fixed GPS-CS1 support on Intel machines, it's possible that Leopard or 10.4.11 could break that support. So Intel owners, please let us know if that happens.

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15 comments:

Matthew Kanwisher said...

I haven't been able to get mine to work on leopard any luck?

Tony Webster said...

Mine doesn't work on Leopard either. In fact, I think Leopard thinks it's an input device. My keyboard and mouse stop working when I plug it in, but as soon as I unplug it, they start working again. The GPS-CS1 doesn't show up in Finder or manually in /Volumes in Terminal.

Stephen said...

I finally got a reply to the bug I raised with Apple the other day, saying "This is a follow-up to Bug ID# 4898558. Engineering believes this issue has been addressed in Mac OS X Leopard." Seems like this might have been premature.

Hypermatt, Tony, do you have PPC or Intel Macs?

Anonymous said...

Hello,

I try too on my PPC and no result with Leopard when I plug the CS1...

JC.

Tony Webster said...

I'm using Leopard on an Intel MacBook. I have yet to try it on the PPC PowerBook or the Intel Mac Pro, but I expect similar results.

Stephen said...

Thanks JC, still not working on PPCs then.

And Tony - that's worrying, looks like Leopard may break GPS-CS1 support for Intel Macs. That was always a possibility given that the 'fix' with Intel 10.4.9 didn't appear to be intentional.

Matthew Kanwisher said...

I'm running an intel mac no dice, under panther I used to use it in parralels. Maybee we can have parralels or vmware grab the usb device, has anyone tried that?

Anonymous said...

Hi!

Just tried it on an Intel iMac with Leopard and doesn't work.

Paralles 3 can't see the USB device since the Mac doesn't really see it either, so you can't use it.

The only possibility seems to be BootCamp, but who wants to go for BootCamp to get the data.

Anyway I think the origin of the trouble is Sony. Why the heck are they using a non standard Flash to USB chipset. Every $5 memory stick is detected but the Sony stuff isn't.

What I will do:

Sell it on eBay and get something better.

Holger

Anonymous said...

Hi!

I ordered now a i-Blue 747 device.

It has a few advantages over the Sony:

+ Better GPS detection: 32 satellites and better GPS chipset.
+ Configurable (how often to save data et.)
+ Uses Nokia comaptible rechargeable LiIon battery lasting longer then the Sony AA.
+ Can be used as GPS receiver via Bluetooth (With a little soldering also two way to configure via bluetooth otherwise only USB).
+ There seems to be mac software for it, I read some forums claiming it works on the Mac.
+ It costs like have the price of the sony device...


Drawbacks:

- Half the memory of the Sony: 16 instead of 31 MB.
- Less slick and compact casing


When it arrives I post some comments.

Stephen said...

Holger,

I'll be interested to hear how you get on with the i-Blue 747.

You may well be right about Sony producing a non-standard implementation. However the GPS-CS1 works on Windows, it works on my PPC Mac if I run Ubuntu Linux on it, and it worked on Intel Macs running Mac OS X 10.4.9 and 10.4.10. So Apple can fix this problem with a software solution.

As a loyal Mac owner it pains me to say that all attempts to get Apple to pay attention to this keep failing. The comment from Apple support saying "Engineering believes this issue has been addressed in Mac OS X Leopard" is shocking when you consider that Leopard appears to break GPS-CS1 support for Intel Mac owners.

It's one thing not to devote time to looking at a minority, possibly non-standard device. It's another to claim your new OS adds support for it when it does the opposite. Did anybody actually test it before making that statement?

Tony Webster said...

Anyone have an update on Leopard compatibility with the GPS-CS1? I don't know/care if it's Sony's or Apple's fault, I just want someone to fix it! I'm tempted to go dig my PC out of the garage and set it up just to copy the data off the GPS.

Seb said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Seb said...

Where do I find the contact info for Apple to get them to support this in both Leopard and Tiger?

Especially with their recent addition of geodata functions inside Preview they have no excuse to ignore this. How are we supposed to use those functions if we have to jump through hoops to tag the images to begin with?

Stephen said...

Tony, I use my GPS-CS1 but have to download the files using my Windows PC at work. As I only use the device after travelling on holiday, I don't have to do it very often, but as a Mac owner I find it annoying each time.

Seb, there are many ways to contact Apple but I have yet to find a way to make them take any notice of what you say.

Gene said...

I have new MacBook Pro with Leopard and the latest 10.5.1 update.

It's not seen at all in Leopard. I also run XP in Parallels (Bulid 5540) and I have had no problem connecting to the GPS-CS1 vis USB.

In Parallels with the VM stopped:

Configuration Editor
Connect to Guest OS chosen under connection options.