So, Microsoft, Sony, and Apple are basically the only tech companies that I really loathe. Microsoft and Sony are pretty much irredeemably awful. Apple does some cool stuff (hint: not iPod) but they're surrounded by such an insufferably smug attitude and I hate the frickin' Steve Jobs personality cult.
Anyway... I'm at my grandparents' house for the weekend, and they have an iMac connected to a DSL modem. No router. So how the heck am I supposed to get my notebook online?
Well, it turns out that Mac OS 10.2+ has a really nice Internet Sharing feature... turns the computer into a Wireless Access Point and NAT router with DHCP. Slick! It "just works" too. Windows XP has an equivalent feature, which is just awful and barely usable with a wired connection. In Linux, you can turn your computer into a full-fledged router, of course, but I don't know of any easy GUI for it.
By far the best part about the Mac OS sharing is that it actually puts the wireless adapter into Master Mode, so that it can present itself as a genuine AP-based network. Works waaaaay better than an ad-hoc computer-to-computer network like Windows sets up... those are always very slow and flaky, if they work at all.
I'm posting from the iMac's shared wireless connection right now, and I get good signal strength and bandwidth that's about 80% of what they get upstream.
So, nice work Apple. Good feature!
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