Are You Ready For the Mac? Network Magic is!!!
We are pleased to make available the BETA version of Network Magic for the Mac. The Mac is becoming more and more mainstream (I am writing this on my iMac) and you, our loyal customers have made it quite clear that Macs are a critical part of your home network. You have also made it clear that, as if sharing folders and printers on a Windows network isn’t hard enough, adding a Mac to the mix makes things worse.
Until now!
We are taking the unusual step (for us) of making the BETA version of our Mac client generally available to our entire customer base. There are several reasons for this:
1. The demand for this is very high, and making it available, even in BETA form, will help our customers.
2. We want and need the feedback from you as to what direction we should take the Mac version of Network Magic. The Mac environment is different from the Windows environment, and we realize the needs are going to be different.
Let’s define what BETA means:
1. This is NOT a bug-free commercial release. If you download it and install it, you are doing so with the understanding that BETA is short for “May Not Perform Exactly As Expected”. (MNPEAE is hard to pronounce, so we use BETA)
2. We DO want your feedback. Typically we have a secure BETA forum for this purpose, but since we are opening this up to anyone, we will accept feedback either to this blog or to this public forum area. The usual blog response rules apply.
What does it do?
Our first release of the Mac Network Magic is not intended to be a full replication of Network Magic for Windows. We will eventually get there, but we wanted to get the most critical capabilities to you as quickly as possible. Therefore, this first release implements folder and printer sharing between the Mac and the PC. While the user paradigm is different on the Mac side, on the Windows side you will see your Mac on the map and shares will appear just as they do when sharing between Windows computers. On the Mac side, it has more of a Finder look and feel.
What doesn’t it do?
While we will eventually sync the Windows and Mac capabilities, for now you will not see the network map and you won’t see network repair or many of our other cool features in this Mac version. Since you still need the Windows Premium version of Network Magic on a Windows computer for folder and printer sharing, that is still the way to get those tasks done.
How much will it cost?
The Mac version of Network Magic will be free to our Premium customers, and of little value to our Basic customers if the free trial period has expired.
How do I get it?
Follow this link to download the Mac BETA:
http://www.networkmagic.com/mac
Comments
I purchased a D-Link Wireless Rouer in Mid-February from CompUSA for my home laptop. Network Magic was included on the CD. I have tried to locate the key to activate and purchase your product to no avail. Where should it be located? I have the CD and orginal sales receipts. What do you suggest I do to purchase your product? I do not want to have to configure another version of your product.
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Hi there,
The Network Magic software included with your D-Link router is a free trial of Network Magic Premium. After the trial ends, you can continue to use the free version of Network Magic, which includes many features but not all of the features. For a full feature breakdown, see - http://www.networkmagic.com/product/basic-vs-premium.php .
You can upgrade at any time to the full-featured Network Magic Premium by purchasing it through our Web site - http://www.networkmagic.com .
At the time of your purchase we will provide you with an activation key. You can then use that key to activate your version of Network Magic and upgrade it to Network Magic Premium.
Thanks for using Network Magic,
Mark
Posted by: Richard Rice | March 25, 2007 05:15 PM
Wow ! I've been waiting for the Mac version and now it's here ! You've made me really happy ! Thank you !
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You are welcome! That's our job.
Jeff Erwin
Posted by: Aleksandrs Losevs | March 5, 2007 02:55 AM
when i try to run network magic on my mac(osx 10.4.8), i get the message: " Connection Failure: network magic was unable to connect to the network magic monitor. Please quit and try again...etc." i have restarted many times, and retried many many times. no change. any help?
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Thank you for reporting this issue with the Network Magic for the Mac Preview edition. I have sent it to our development team to investigate.
Also, the best way to report issues with the Mac Preview Edition is through our Customer Support at http://www.networkmagic.com/support .
Thank you,
Mark
Posted by: cameron white | March 4, 2007 05:49 PM
I have a new MAC OSx laptop running on a home wireless network with several Win XP machines, and the latest premium NM software on all machines. I cannot get my MAC to find and configure the HP PSC 750 all-in-one printer that is attached to one of the Win XP machines. The printer is shared, and NM can see it on the MAC. The drivers to configure the HP printer do not appear on the NM pull-down list of available drivers under the NM configure button. I have disabled the firewall on the Win XP machine, and my MAC firewall has been configured to allow NM to communicate, per the NM instructions. The other machines on the network can see the MAC in the NM network map. What do I do now? Thanks.
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I had the same issue with my Mac at home. I have an Epson R2400 photographic printer and have a heck of a time getting it to share and be usable from my Windows machines. Recently Epson issued a new Mac driver and the problem went away..
My suspicion is that bi-directional printers (printers that communicate back to the driver in real time) present a problem as the communication from the printer back to the driver can't always make it back through both the Mac and the PC. Multi-purpose printers aren't supported by a lot of printer servers and NAS print servers for this reason.
No excuses though, we are working hard on this, and this is one of the reasons the Mac version is not an official release. These edge cases have to be solved.
Jeff Erwin
Posted by: Bill Charman | February 26, 2007 11:09 AM
I have tried to download and install the new version and each time I get a notice saying it failed right at the start.
I shut off both McAfee and Zone Alarm but this did not help. Any suggestions?
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Hi there,
Please contact our Customer Support team at www.networkmagic.com/support to get assistance.
Thank you,
Mark
Posted by: John T | February 26, 2007 05:01 AM
I am a premium member, I tried installing Network magic for Mac on a power Mac running tiger, error message comes up , sya nothing to install?
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Please contact customer support so we can get your log files and get this filed as a bug.
Posted by: Robert Johnson | February 19, 2007 07:29 AM
Great program! My XP laptop and XP desktop share printers and files OK. However, even with drivers installed, and following instructions (I think!), the mac and desktop pc will not share printers - either way. File sharing from PC to Mac works fine however. Everything does show up on map with no errors. Mac is Intel Mac Pro. Printer works fine when attached to either the Mac or the PC directly.
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Contact customer support so we can help you figure this out.
Posted by: Gary Ingersoll | February 17, 2007 06:56 PM
I have 5 PCs and two Macs on my home networ. I am more profecient with the PCs. One thing I have not accomplished is sharing a printer attached to one of the PCs with either Mac. Both Macs are running OSX 10.3.5. I dowloaded the Mac Beta version hoping to get this feature working only to discover that I would have to upgrade to Tiger. I don't want to do this because my primary Mac application is Digidesign's ProTools. I do not want to change to a newer version of this application at this time. Can Network Magic run on an earlier version of OSX?
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No, sorry. Apple tends to change a lot of things under the hood with their incremental releases, making backwards compatibility at the driver level very difficult, especially when trying to interact with Windows drivers.
Posted by: Rex Thompson | February 6, 2007 04:56 AM
Great, greatm I had my 3 PCs and 3 Apple computers up running in no time. I shall cetainly go for the full version once I have an idea of when the final mac version is ready. For now I am just a very happy computer user!!!!
Keep the good work going.
Erik
Posted by: Erik Olsen | February 2, 2007 10:38 AM
Congratulations on this new effort to make easier home networking. I have been working with Network Magic Premium for windows and it has been a great help so far. I just bought an iMac, and inmediatly downloaded the beta version of Network Magic for Mac, it works really good for a beta version. My only comment for future versions of Network Magic is about printer sharing from a Mac to PC, when you share a Printer from PC to PC there's an option where you click to install the printer's driver from the other PC tagged "Complete Setup", but since the drivers installed in the Mac are different to the PC's, an error occurs when you try this option from either way, and so I was wondering if you could figure something out about this so that both drivers may be available for both Operative Systems when trying to setup a network printer.
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Thanks for the great feedback. I believe this issue has been fixed. We will have the preview version of the Mac client available soon so you can check.
Jeff Erwin
Posted by: Vicente Carranza | January 31, 2007 10:28 AM
good stuff
Posted by: nick stur | January 13, 2007 03:55 PM