Sprint SmartView creates a high-speed Internet connection for your Mac anywhere on the Sprint Mobile Broadband Network with your Mobile Broadband Device.
Sprint SmartView includes:
One-click activation for supported devices
GPS features and services are available at the touch of a button for GPS-capable devices
Provides information on signal strength, network type and connectivity details previously unavailable to Mac OS users
Software update capabilities built in
Ability to set connectivity preferences to auto-connect when device is recognized by
Frustrating. I installed Smartview with a U301 3G/4G. It took awhile to get it to work. I messed around with Spint's website for quite a bit of time but the help there was poor. I finally called customer service to get help. It took them 45 minutes to discover my account wasn't set up properly.
When things are working its great, but trying to get it to connect is troublesome. I often have to restart the software several times and unplug and replug the U301 device. Sometimes I have to restart the computer.
When I tried checking for up dates it said I had the latest software, 2.28. Yet, here at MacUpdate I find 2.40.
Sprint SmartView is a prime example of poorly-conceived and -engineered software that pays no heed to Macintosh standards. While more-or-less functional, it features a terribly designed and quite ugly interface. Given how little the software does (or needs to do), the application window is HUGE and NON-RESIZABLE, measuring approximately 568 pixels by 212 pixels, most of that empty, wasted space (that still manages to use only super-tiny text in its difficult to read buttons) in an ugly layout. It could have done its job in a window easily 1/8th that size. To compound the problem, space is devoted to several pop-up buttons that serve, at best, questionable functions far better served through traditional Web sites/browsers/bookmarks or, at worse, features that are not yet even implemented (as admitted by Sprint).
In addition to the application window, it also gives you the option to place an icon up in the Menu Bar. However, that icon is essentially useless. A proper Menu Bar icon would be available 24/7 and then actually give you constant status information, such as bars of signal strength, or let you do something with it, such as click on it to launch the app and/or connect/disconnect, The Sprint icon only appears after you've launched the application from elsewhere (disappearing when you quit the app) and then is essentially just a big yellow bump in your Menu Bar. Unlike similar network-related Menu Bar icons, the Sprint icon offers no signal strength info or other status information until you click on it--and then the signal strength is reported, not in consumer-friendly bars, but in text form as signal strength measured in dBm, such as "-77dBm", info that will be meaningless to many folks. And it does not even function as an app launcher or connect/disconnect button. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
I could go on and on with specifics of how frustrating this application is, but it's just too much effort to document its vast idiosyncracies when I doubt Sprint will ever read this or, if they did, even care. Still, I would be derelict in my duties if I did not at least say, Sprint, all I want your software to do is let me click a tiny Menu Bar button to launch and connect/disconnect and then display a constant and passive visual report of signal strength in bars, both of which could be done through the Menu Bar icon but aren't. For the application itself--which I'd rarely if ever want to actually see--hire a designer to fix your hideous layout, preferably one that is Mac-aware.
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Sprint SmartView creates a high-speed Internet connection for your Mac anywhere on the Sprint Mobile Broadband Network with your Mobile Broadband Device.
Sprint SmartView includes:
One-click activation for supported devices
GPS features and services are available at the touch of a button for GPS-capable devices
Provides information on signal strength, network type and connectivity details previously unavailable to Mac OS users
Software update capabilities built in
Ability to set connectivity preferences to auto-connect when device is recognized by Mac
Supported Devices:
Sierra Wireless
AirCard 595
AirCard 595U
AirCard 597E
AirCard Compass C597
AirCard 598U
AirCard 402
Novatel Wireless
S720
U720
EX720
U727
U760
C777
Special Instructions:
This software does not support Phone-as-Modem handset connections to the Sprint Mobile Broadband Network.
+11
Maczillllla reviewed on 10 Jan 2011
When things are working its great, but trying to get it to connect is troublesome. I often have to restart the software several times and unplug and replug the U301 device. Sometimes I have to restart the computer.
When I tried checking for up dates it said I had the latest software, 2.28. Yet, here at MacUpdate I find 2.40.
+915
Misha reviewed on 18 Dec 2009
I still don't like the non-standard window they use, though -- it doesn't work with Spaces.
+1
+28
Bosskev reviewed on 29 Sep 2009
In addition to the application window, it also gives you the option to place an icon up in the Menu Bar. However, that icon is essentially useless. A proper Menu Bar icon would be available 24/7 and then actually give you constant status information, such as bars of signal strength, or let you do something with it, such as click on it to launch the app and/or connect/disconnect, The Sprint icon only appears after you've launched the application from elsewhere (disappearing when you quit the app) and then is essentially just a big yellow bump in your Menu Bar. Unlike similar network-related Menu Bar icons, the Sprint icon offers no signal strength info or other status information until you click on it--and then the signal strength is reported, not in consumer-friendly bars, but in text form as signal strength measured in dBm, such as "-77dBm", info that will be meaningless to many folks. And it does not even function as an app launcher or connect/disconnect button. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
I could go on and on with specifics of how frustrating this application is, but it's just too much effort to document its vast idiosyncracies when I doubt Sprint will ever read this or, if they did, even care. Still, I would be derelict in my duties if I did not at least say, Sprint, all I want your software to do is let me click a tiny Menu Bar button to launch and connect/disconnect and then display a constant and passive visual report of signal strength in bars, both of which could be done through the Menu Bar icon but aren't. For the application itself--which I'd rarely if ever want to actually see--hire a designer to fix your hideous layout, preferably one that is Mac-aware.
+1
+915
But they are both very non-standard, quite ugly, and overly large. There also appears to be no way to actually create your own skin or load others.
Having said that, you can use Sierra's own software in place of Sprint's. It's less obtrusive (although still non-standard).
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/25530/sierra-wireless-watcher
+1
+66
There, it's necessary to use for tethered phones, also. On Mac OS X, the phones generally work without extra software.