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<div class="center_top">Thoughtful, detailed coverage of the Mac, iPhone, and iPad, plus the best-selling <a href="http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/?pt=TB-TAGLINE" style="color:yellow">Take Control</a> ebooks.</div>
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<h6>Improve Apple Services with AirPort Base Stations</h6>
<p>You can make iChat file transfers, iDisk, and Back to My Mac work better by turning on a setting with Apple AirPort base stations released starting in 2003. Launch AirPort Utility, select your base station, click Manual Setup, choose the Internet view, and click the NAT tab. Check the Enable NAT Port Mapping Protocol (NAT-PMP) box, and click Update. NAT-PMP lets your Mac OS X computer give Apple information to connect back into a network that's otherwise unreachable from the rest of the Internet. This speeds updates and makes connections work better for services run by Apple. </p>
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<div class="featured_meta"><div class="meta_article">17 Feb 2003 | <a href="/article/7074?print_version=1">Print <span class="shift_up"><img src="/images/printer_icon.gif" alt="Printer-Friendly Version of This Article" border="0" width="9" height="10"></span></a></div></div>
<div id="article_box_5688"><P><STRONG>Do You Use Software Update?</STRONG> Apple's Software Update utility for automatically downloading and installing updates to the Mac OS and other Apple software generally works well. But some people choose not to use it because it can be a bit of a nag when you want to put off the installation of an update until you've heard what others say about its stability. For those with dialup Internet connections, the sheer size of many of Apple's updates can make scheduling long downloads with Software Update inconvenient. However, there's no question that Software Update is almost always the fastest and easiest way to get updates from Apple, which leads to our poll question this week. We're trying to find out whether our brief reports of Apple's updates are helpful even when we have no information to add beyond a summary of the changes. So, how often do you have Software Update check for new Apple software? Vote this week on our home page!</P><P><<A HREF="http://www.tidbits.com/">http://www.tidbits.com/</A>></P><!-- Do You Use Software Update? Adam C. Engst --></div>
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