mikeash.com: NetAwake

Posted at 2008-09-15 02:28 | RSS feed (Full text feed) | Blog Index
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NetAwake

by Mike Ash

I just wanted to make a quick post to note that I've released my first iPhone app, NetAwake. It's a Wake-on-LAN program with a fancy ZeroConf-based MAC grabber to make it accessible to people who think that MACs are the computers you buy from APPLE. Credit should also go to my partner Joshua, who did all of the work on the GUI.

I wrote this app partially out of personal desire (although two other Wake-on-LAN apps showed up in the time between conception and shipping) and partially out of curiosity as to whether any money could be generated from it. In hindsight, the development process was considerably more painful than I thought it was going to be. The actual APIs and such are quite reasonable, but all the extra hoops that Apple forces developers to jump through to test code on the actual hardware and to submit it for approval just made it a bad experience. In hindsight, if I were to go back in time to two months ago when I came up with the idea, I probably would not do it again. Look for another post in a couple of days with all the details on that.

Anyway, I encourage you to check out the app if Wake-on-LAN is something you could actually use.

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Comments:

Roland Dobbins at 2008-09-19 10:05:23:

Can you share details of the 'extra hoops'? Thanks!

mikeash at 2008-09-19 10:06:57:

Certainly can. Check out my other blog post which talks all about it: http://www.mikeash.com/?page=pyblog/the-iphone-development-story.html

Tim Sparling at 2009-11-04 07:01:38:

Brilliant app Mike. Much appreciated your efforts in producing and app that is not only free but does what it says on the tin !. Keep up the good work.
Cheers
Tim

P.S Any chance of an app that sleeps it also !!

mikeash at 2009-11-04 16:47:55:

Sleeping is much more difficult. There's no "Sleep-on-LAN" protocol to implement. It would have to use something like SSH or remote Apple Events to trigger the sleep, which is a lot more complicated. Probably not going to happen.

stephan at 2010-08-27 08:21:08:

very nice app. i wonder tho, why it works when allother wol services on the internet do not with my computer at home. what makes this app so special?

mikeash at 2010-08-27 15:04:07:

Sending wake packets over the internet is a much harder problem than sending them over the LAN. That's probably why NetAwake works but these internet services don't.

stephan at 2010-08-30 09:09:30:

obviously. is there any chance you are publishing the app in a browser compatible format?

thx for your effort anyway.

richy at 2013-01-09 12:19:45:

love the app, works great with my roku lt. but - it only seems to wake my mac mini for a minute or so, then it goes back to sleep even though my sleep settings are set at 1 hour - does this app not fully wake the machine?
thanks

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