Sprint SmartView for Mac2.61.0033

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.

This new version works a lot more reliably under 10.6 and Sprint finally came up with a decent new interface. I still don't like the non-standard window they use, though -- it doesn't work with Spaces.

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.