Old 802.11b/g Airport Extreme removed support from 10.8??

[coius]

I went over to help my dad on his computer. Picked up a few viruses he was unable to get rid of and I was setting up a new Roku box and for some reason the Airport Extreme 802.11b/g base station wouldn't allow devices to join the wireless network.

I went to reset it, pulled out my MacBook Pro (2008) with 10.8 and tried to set it up. Surprise! the tool said I needed an older tool (I think Airport Utility Tool 5.x.x)

So I went to download the tool, and all I could find was for lion. I figured I would try to install it. And I was in for a bigger shock "This tool will not work on this Operating system"

I did see it was a Universal Binary/Intel64 compatible and it still wouldn't even install. I was lucky to have Windows 7 on it, so I downloaded the Windows tool to config it, but it strikes me as odd that an Intel native tool (aka it was compiled to work on Lion) all of a sudden was completely blocked from installing, let alone launching. Strikes me weird that apple would do this.

Yes, I understand that the apple airport that my dad is old, and it will be replaced, but why did apple go out of their way to specifically block an application with no PowerPC coded needed from even installing? Seems odd...

 

[trag]

It's part of Apple's continuing plan to drive us all to purchase Windows machines....

 

[gobabushka]

The heck with that. I traded my 1st gen macbook for a 17" Toshiba Satellite with Crunchbang Linux installed, and haven't looked back. I just couldn't stand their planned obsolescence.

 

[IPalindromeI]

The main question: is there a web UI (or even telnet) like every other router since the 2000s? This can end the BS of proprietary applications.

 

[LCGuy]

Nup, no AirPort base station has *ever* featured a web GUI or telnet access, though I think some support SNMP.

 

[Gorgonops]

If you're willing to go to heck and back there's some Java programs for configuring Airports:

http://bamajr.com/2011/02/01/kubuntu-configure-an-airport-base-station-in-linux/

Granted I merely know of them, never used them, they may burn your house down.

(edit: Actually I guess that's not true. About 11 years ago I used a Java app to config original grey basestations, this may be descended from the same codebase. At the time it... worked.)