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http://www.macnn.com/articles/02/01/29/australian.isp/

Australian ISP won't support later Mac OS

updated 07:25 pm EST, Tue January 29, 2002

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An Australian Mac user reports that one of the largest internet service providers in the country apparently does not support Mac OS versions newer than v9.0.4. After contacting technical support, Aidan was informed by a representative that Telstra does not support his operating system (Mac OS 9.2.2): "He said 'can't help at all sorry' and ended the call to me." There is no notice of this policy on the Telstra website.

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geezer
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Sep 2001

0

01/29, 08:14pm | report spam | close Reply |
Hmm!

what is stopping poeple from saying, "um, yeah right mate! got that lovely 9.04 on the drive!", or some such thing when they call up their luddite ISP?

MacNN.com Reader
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Joined: Jul 2001

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01/29, 08:20pm | report spam | close Reply |
shouldn't be an issue

Get your choice of ISP to set up the connection and your account. All you need to do is configure your mac for TCP and/or PPP, and your email client with your info.

I never understood what support an ISP needs to provide anyways. The connection is either on or off. Their end doesn't even know or care what is connecting. Does one honestly need instruction to surf or email?

lavo
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Joined: Jan 2002

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01/29, 08:22pm | report spam | close Reply |
Its Telstra!

Anyone with half a brain knows to avoid Telstra like the plague! The amount of rebuilds of Macs that I have done thanks to those free install CDs......... :-)

MacNN.com Reader
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Joined: Jul 2001

0

01/29, 08:23pm | report spam | close Reply |
S-t-u-p-i-d

Well you know, I understand Telstra : Mac OS 9.1 is such a technology leap over Mac OS 9.0.4 that they have to cut their expenses somewhere.

Duh !

My guess is that the Tech Help guy on the phone was a Microsoft Borg/Mac Basher.

MacNN.com Reader
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Joined: Jul 2001

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01/29, 08:38pm | report spam | close Reply |
What support?

They don't seem to offer anything you might call 'support' anyway. The story seems to suggest that you can't use Telstra if you have a later OS, which is not the case at all.

rochford
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Joined: Jan 2002

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01/29, 08:56pm | report spam | close Reply |
Well, actually...

There is notice on the Telstra BigPond site. At http://www.bigpond.com/Home/Support/ there is a section "Support Boundaries" which clearly states that only "Mac OS 8.1 to OS 9" are supported. Why 9.2.2 was not supported, but 9.0.4 was is another question (I'd refer the operator to their own Web site).

By support, this means telephone support for configuration of your connection. You are still able to receive support for faults in the network.

It's worth noting that they also refuse to support Internet Explorer 6.0 (although how they support Windows XP without this is not disclosed!).

- M.

hamishb
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Joined: Mar 2007

0

01/29, 09:08pm | report spam | close Reply |
Teltra is wrong

A friend bought a *new* 600 MhZ G3 iMac the other day (Snow) - for discounted price since new G4 iMac just annoucned.

After the Bigpong CD stuffed up his configuration (upgraded IE 5 to IE 4.5!!), we range Telstra and got the number for their POP, IP addys, mailserver etc. Plugged them all into his TCP/IP, Internet and Modem control panels and were on the net in no time.

Then we booted into X, loaded the same info and now he is a happy camper, can dial up to Bigpong no probs.

So while Telstra don't support the Mac, the Mac supports Telstra!

aqsalter
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jan 2002

0

01/29, 09:12pm | report spam | close Reply |
So what to do?

(I live in Australia)
The question is not how hard or easy it is to setup PPP if you know how... Macs are supposed to be easy to use, but to a Grandma even clicking "Continue" might not be intuitive.

The real question is what can you do? Telstra, as one of Australia's major ISPs, should have a Mac helpdesk.

My father had a real gripe with Telstra at one stage because he wanted to use the bill pay website but was shut out by browser detection and, on calling, they basically said "You are not supported please leave us alone". Now I know that there are enough users to justify them supporting Macs and there is a form of "denial" going on... Similar to the Australian Aboriginal situation... Ignore the minority and hopefully they'll just disappear (of course Telstra are not the only culprits here).

But, what can we do?

At the time we just shrugged our shoulders and went about our business, but I am really getting sick of it... Macs are not some second-rate, idiot-only, PC-wannabe. They are design to save everybody time by making technical life as simple as can be I use them because I am sick of spending years of my life stuffing around with IRQs and DMAs and IDE for crying out loud!!!! Who uses Master/Slave now days? That was 20 years ago!!! I want to plug it in and get on with my work. Let those problems be worked out at the start, with forethought and finesse, by somebody who knows what they are doing and cares about the fine details.

...

...

nomad27yrs

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01/29, 09:22pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Ok...

If you don�t get satisfaction, escalate to a manager & get a tech that knows what he's doing to help you.

Other options are to use apple's help menu & the Internet control panel to work it out yourself as it's not that hard. Provided they are willing to give you the TCP/IP, RA & Mail settings. Self-education is a beautiful thing!

Move to an ISP that does support the Mac OS, there are a few good ones. Ask before you join if they support Mac's & what versions of the OS they do.

Or failing that if the Mac is under a year old buy an AppleCare Protection Plan to use's Apple's Call Center Techs to help you, as well as phone support for 3 years total from date of purchase, between 9am to 9pm Monday to Saturday it also gets the hardware warranty extended for an additional 2 year�s on top of the original 1 year H/W warranty. It�s not cheap but it may save you�re butt in times where you need help�. No I do not work for Apple or a reseller :P

If you want to scream about Telstra, look at there constantly changing charges for ADSL & Cable. Then you really have something to complain about! I have gone from $65 per month for an unlimited cable account, to $65 for a 3Gb download limit to now $87.95 for a 3Gb download limit! Got to love that clause in their contract that allows them to amend the contracts on the fly!

MacNN.com Reader
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jul 2001

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01/29, 09:27pm | report spam | close Reply |
True

If the guy is talking about Telstra cable, this is true. However, he/she should look at http://curmi.com/software/mac/launch - a client to make Telstra's cable work with OSX. Works well, and is totally free.

nomad27yrs

Joined:

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01/29, 09:42pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
tee hee... I do :)

Yep, use launch! here it rocks! Bypass Telstra S/W all together!

As Telstra expect you to use classic to run there java based app to conect to there network in in OS X.

Optus (not in my area) just give out client ID's much easier & no 3rd party app's needed. Just uses the components in the OS. They really are chalk & cheese opperations...

nomad27yrs

Joined:

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01/29, 09:49pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
LOL :) yep I do

Yes I know of & happily use Launch!

The official Telstra way is to use Classic & there Java app to make the connection... What is this the dark ages?

Thank god for curmi.com

bobbagum

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01/29, 10:19pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
my experience

I used to use telstra, I was having a problem with my dial-up turns out I have a wrong dial-up number, but before they could get to that once I heard "MAC" they just keep putting me on hold and refer me to the next guy, I think these guys just sit in front of a big flowchart of questions and appropriate response for the answer or something...

sleadley
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jan 2000

0

01/29, 10:22pm | report spam | close Reply |
OSX support

I was easily able to find a way to connect to Telstra big pond cable with an app called Launch from Jamie Curmie. (jamie@curmi.com) I find that Mac users are the ones to turn to. If a PC can connect to an ISP generally so can a Mac.

pmacleod

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01/29, 10:54pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
OSX and ADSL

Launch is fine for Cable users, but ADSL users can just use PPPoE. Can't remember where this is from, but it has worked for me.

---
Follow these instructions. Log in using your administrator account. Open a terminal window and enter the following command:

sudo pico /etc/ppp/ip-up

This will create the file /etc/ppp/ip-up. You now need to type the following into this file:

#!/bin/sh
/sbin/ifconfig ppp0 mtu 1492

Save the file and exit pico. Next you need to make the file executable. Do this by typing the following command:

sudo chmod 755 /etc/ppp/ip-up

Now activate your pppoe connection and run ifconfig ppp0 from a terminal to check your mtu size. It should be set to 1492.

froody
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: May 2001

0

01/29, 11:22pm | report spam | close Reply |
Telstra is teh suck

um, afaik, telstra ADSL works fine with PPPoE support in the System Prefs. Anyway, Telstra is really really bad, basically the Microsoft of the phone market over here. They own all the lines(except for the cable that Optus put down) and they rent it out. Getting broadband with Telstra is really expensive, and with really insane bandwidth limits(AU$340/mnth for 10GB limit, whereas Oputs is approximately the same limit for around $70/month). They recently changed these to be more friendly, but people didn't like them, and voted so in a ZDNet poll(don't have the link), then Telstra rigged a bot to vote in favour of the changes ~250 times, and they were caught. We need more competition over here in Australia, that's for sure.

aidanblest

Joined:

0

01/30, 05:55am | report spam | close Reply | delete
More info on my issue

Hi there, I am the person who started this forum with my posting to MacNN. Just to clarify a few things, I used to be an Apple Computer technician and know how to configure my computer. Yes you could lie and say that you had 9.04 but an average user wouldn't do that... ie gradnpa who has just got a new computer. In my posting i was referring to a dial up 56K account not a DSL account (I used to have an ADSL account with Telstra which worked fine). My current housing location doesn't allow for an ADSL connection at this time. My problem was that I could connect, ping and retrieve data but it would always disconnect after less than 1-2 minutes. (Account in order)
I know it is not the computer as I dial up to numerous other services for work and play and all of them stay connected for hours on end. When I am continually disconnected after 1-2 minutes from two different locations and two different operating systems to one out of 4 different internet connections, I some how think that it is no longer my issue. Adjusting MTU packet size also had no bearing on the issue as I had tried various reductions to no avail. I am making this issue known to the wider community so that this sort of thing can be squashed. As Apple says, there are really only two mainstream operating systems and the Mac OS in any form is one of them and in this day and age it isn't really acceptable for this sort of thing to happen. We are after all talking about one of Australia's largest ISP's, so one would imagine that a large percentage of first time new mac owners would sign up with them. All a new Mac owner needs to hear is that if you had windows we could support you...That's what I am on about. Thanks for your time and support.

MacNN.com Reader
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jul 2001

0

01/30, 06:33am | report spam | close Reply |
Politics

Telstra is just annoyed with Apple because they chose iPrimus as their default ISP.

Plus, Telstra blows anyway.

PS... Hi ROD (lavo)!!!!!!!!!

zimen
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Mar 2001

0

01/30, 07:47am | report spam | close Reply |
Just to let you know

Hi, I live in Milan, Italy and I subscribed to the superfast fiber optic connection available in our city. It's a 10Mbit connection.

What we discovered, testing it in 4 different homes and more than 15 computers is that speed goes down from a maximum of 900k/s to 250k/s with any os later than 9.0.4

Tests have been done by downloading large files directly from their website. We tried iMac, G3, G4, Powerbook titanium and Cube, OS 9.0.4, 9.1, 9.2.1
, OSX 10.1 and OSX Server 10.1
They say it's apple's problem, and apple says it's their problem! Fortunately things go fine over OSX

The provider is called Fastweb - http://www.fastweb.it

I'm writing from my office where we have a multi user version of this service, and since it's a publishing company we need hi speeds and OS9, we had to stick all the computers to 9.0.4

thanks

macman@rochester.rr.com

Joined:

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01/30, 08:26am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Support vs. Function

Please remember that "Support" only means they will answer questions. It doesn't necessarily mean that it won't work.

Here in Rochester, Road Runner doesn't "support" OS X, but it works just fine.

Caledwvech
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jan 2002

0

01/30, 05:46pm | report spam | close Reply |
Interesting...

I have never really had any problems with Telstra (apart from them being unreliable, more often down than up, and all the rest) but they have never really messed up my computer. I use 9.1 at work and 9.2.2 at home and bot arent that bad.

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Australian ISP won't support later Mac OS

updated 07:25 pm EST, Tue January 29, 2002

Hmm!

shouldn't be an issue

Its Telstra!

S-t-u-p-i-d

What support?

Well, actually...

Teltra is wrong

So what to do?

Ok...

True

tee hee... I do :)

LOL :) yep I do

my experience

OSX support

OSX and ADSL

Telstra is teh suck

More info on my issue

Politics

Just to let you know

Support vs. Function

Interesting...

Login Here

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Australian ISP won't support later Mac OS

updated 07:25 pm EST, Tue January 29, 2002

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Hmm!

shouldn't be an issue

Its Telstra!

S-t-u-p-i-d

What support?

Well, actually...

Teltra is wrong

So what to do?

Ok...

True

tee hee... I do :)

LOL :) yep I do

my experience

OSX support

OSX and ADSL

Telstra is teh suck

More info on my issue

Politics

Just to let you know

Support vs. Function

Interesting...

Login Here

Register for our weekly email newsletter:

Connect tools:

Subscribe

to our RSS

Follow us

on Twitter

Most Read

10 Most Discussed

MacNN Marketplace