Around July last year, I purchased Charlene (The Simpsons, "Dead Putting Society"), my 17" MacBook Pro with the nice glossy high-res screen, etc. As part of this purchase I added a Sprint AirCard, in this case the SierraWireless 597E ExpressCard device that fits perfectly in the slot on the left side of the computer. It's always worked well (save for certain hotels in Las Vegas and Chicago who obviously want you to buy the overinflated hotel access) but one feature was always left out on the Mac side - GPS. It also really stunk that I could even boot up a Windows session in VMWare and the GPS data would appear perfectly. In other words, it was simply a matter of sending the right commands to the card to activate the GPS data. I did spend quite a long time fiddling around trying to find the necessary sequence to activate the GPS functionality, but to no avail. Much like other little projects I've come up with, this got moved to the back of the list for later consideration.

Today I was reading an article about running OS X on one of the new Dell Mini 9's, something I've contemplated myself several times. This was full of fairly useful information, including a note about a program called Sprint SmartView for any of their AirCards, that also enabled GPS functionality on a Mac. Unfortunately while pleased with Sprint's EVDO service, I have less than favorable things to say about their customer service (*WHY does the forgotten password web functionality not realize that you can't accept an SMS message on an aircard? And WHY does support not realize that them doing the same operation not help?....*) I chalked up the fact that I had never heard of this new release to similar behavior, but quickly put it behind me after I downloaded and installed the app (Here if you need it.) Other than an irritating reboot likely required due to a kext, the software works perfectly and even lets you access the GPS data in NMEA form - on one of the serial ports created when you use the card. Nice job Sprint!

One final note, if you do pick up an ExpressCard and then get irritated when you realize you want to use it in a non-ExpressCard equipped system, all is not lost. At the base most AirCards are actually USB devices in a PCI Express / ExpressCard form. On a Mac, the easiest way to determine if your card is like this is to open the About This Mac and click on More Information to open the stats about your computer. Under the Hardware: USB section you should see a USB Bus with the AirCard device listed. If so, you can actually use a USB to ExpressCard adapter. There are more expensive options available too if you want to buy direct from Amazon (ie, this.)