Filed under: Accessories, Universal Binary
Griffin Updates PowerMate Driver to v1.6.4
I've had my PowerMate for quite awhile and it remains one of the
coolest accessories attached to my Mac. It's not quite as spiffy as Hubzilla, who provides me with extra firewire ports, but I use
my PowerMate often for volume control while watching TV on my Mac (via a Miglia capture card) or when I'm listening to
iTunes. The problem is that since I upgraded my main Mac to Tiger, my PowerMate hasn't been working very reliably.
Sometimes it just isn't recognized by the OS and I'm forced to reboot to make it be recognized again. Other times, it
drops off after waking from sleep. I love my PowerMate, but it hasn't been as useful to me since my Tiger upgrade.Today, however, there's hope. Griffin has released an updated driver for the PowerMate which provides better integration with the iLife application suite, GarageBand, and Microsoft Office applications, and also brings universal binary support for Intel Macs. Here's hope that the new driver will help with the problems I've been having. I'll install later tonight and update this post when or if the problem recurs or vanishes.

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
kc! said 9:00PM on 3-22-2006
I have seriously wanted HubZilla for years now!!! Is it really as cool as it looks? Is it worth $80? Say the word... my finger is on the "buy" button as I type! :)
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Rob said 9:32PM on 3-22-2006
According to the included documentation, the only change for version 1.6.4 is that it is now a Universal build. So, regarding the issues that you mentioned and that I too have encountered, don't get your hopes up.
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Dan said 2:58AM on 3-23-2006
Do not install this yet.
I just did on my intel mac mini... and won't restart or shutdown correctly.
When I try to reboot, that screen whith power button(equivalent to blue screen of death) comes up saying that, I would have to restart by holding on to the button... Because of this problem, I reinstalled the whole mac os x. but samething happend second time...
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Natrino said 3:05AM on 3-23-2006
I would love Hubzilla as well, too bad it is no longer available.
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dalton said 5:21AM on 3-23-2006
we have a hubzilla at work. it is really, really cool. I can't speak about the performance of the thing, but it definitely gets the job done.
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Casey said 11:55AM on 3-23-2006
PowerMate users may also want to look at this new project we've been working on. More information on my site here:
http://griffin.somegeekintn.com/
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Damien said 12:30PM on 3-23-2006
I've both updated the driver and deleted my the preferences and the problems I was having haven't recurred yet. Good news so far for me.
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