Apple
Iphone 3G memory and software issues
23/07/08 08:23
Now that I’ve finally gotten my hands on my own
iphone I thought I would give some of my negative
comments (there are certainly a lot of positive
marketing so good points should be easy to find.
Read
More...
Is the world ready for the iPhone?
08/07/08 22:22
Although the Apple iPhone is coming out this Friday
it seems that the overseas release might still have
some hiccups. When I went to a local Swisscom vendor
(Manor in Geneva) to ask about it they seemed to be
thoroughly confused on all points except the release
date. Read
More...
MacOSX online help can be dangerous
11/04/08 08:27
Usually, using a software package's help system is
pretty safe. You can normally rest assured that your
work is safe and untouched while you browse different
help options. However with MacOSX, some of the help
subjects under the main menu launch the menuitem you
are researching. This means that if you have a bunch
of text selected in Pages and search for how to do a
Table of Contents, the first item that shows up will
actually insert a Table of Contents where the text
selection is... essentially overwriting your text if
you are not careful.
Fortunately, these autostart items are marked "Menu Items" in their heading to give you a hint that they are not in fact help text.
Fortunately, these autostart items are marked "Menu Items" in their heading to give you a hint that they are not in fact help text.
iWeb 08 tested only for Safari
31/03/08 07:55
Assuming that iWeb 08 templates for MacOSX have not
been pre-tested with major browsers will save you a
lot of headaches. If your only visitors will be
MacOSX Safari users than you are going to be okay. If
you wish other browsers to view and print your
website than be ready to do some grueling tests and
dig into the source code. For example, using the
Comic template and visiting the site with Internet
Explorer 7 gives you graphics that are not correctly
aligned, printing that does not work and in some
cases jammed or inaccessible web pages.
After may hours swimming through the source code and trying different things (not helped by my MacOSX Leopard upgrade making websharing disfunctional) I finally discovered that it was the shadows in this template that were causing all of the problems in their DIV containers. After deactivating shadows in the inspector for every object and text box for every page the site could suddenly print in Internet Explorer. There were a couple of objects (some arrows) that I could not disable the shadows for so I simply took screenshots and saved those objects as jpgs to replace the objects with shadows.
So it is possible to have a compatible website with at least the Comic template but be prepared to test and test and test since it appears that Apple did not.
Note, since I am not a Apple employee I cannot guarantee that tests were not made on other browsers but if they were they must have been subcontracted to Microsoft.
After may hours swimming through the source code and trying different things (not helped by my MacOSX Leopard upgrade making websharing disfunctional) I finally discovered that it was the shadows in this template that were causing all of the problems in their DIV containers. After deactivating shadows in the inspector for every object and text box for every page the site could suddenly print in Internet Explorer. There were a couple of objects (some arrows) that I could not disable the shadows for so I simply took screenshots and saved those objects as jpgs to replace the objects with shadows.
So it is possible to have a compatible website with at least the Comic template but be prepared to test and test and test since it appears that Apple did not.
Note, since I am not a Apple employee I cannot guarantee that tests were not made on other browsers but if they were they must have been subcontracted to Microsoft.
Apple removes Heroes season from US store
08/12/07 14:18
Here I was, being a good iTunes user and buying
episodes of Heroes as I had time to watch them. Now,
halfway through the season I went to download the
next episode and received instead an error message.
Heroes is no longer available in the US store. What's
up with that? No warning nothing.
Normally I have been pretty happy with Apple customer service but if they could have at least sent an email to those who have purchased some of the season I would have been happy to purchase the rest before the deadline. Now I am halfway through the season and can't find where to get the rest of it to watch on a Mac.
Normally I have been pretty happy with Apple customer service but if they could have at least sent an email to those who have purchased some of the season I would have been happy to purchase the rest before the deadline. Now I am halfway through the season and can't find where to get the rest of it to watch on a Mac.
iChat Theater shared documents quality issues
01/12/07 02:44
So far I have not been too impressed with the quality
of MacOSX Leopard's iChat Theater. Whenever I have an
iChat to another Mac on the local network (that is
not running Leopard) the quality of the photos or
shared files is extremely low. The only hint I could
find was to increase the Quicktime streaming setting
on both sides of the iChat connection but that has
not improved anything.
The only other suggestion I have come across so far is that it works fine when it is a Leopard on both sides of the iChat. Hmm. Apple had promoted it as being usable with the Tiger MacOSX version for example but they meant to say "barely usable".
The only other suggestion I have come across so far is that it works fine when it is a Leopard on both sides of the iChat. Hmm. Apple had promoted it as being usable with the Tiger MacOSX version for example but they meant to say "barely usable".
Difficulty getting an Airport Extreme onto a WDS network
27/11/07 05:11
Since I already have a WDS network main station
(trendnet) that I thought it would be easy to use the
existing WEP hex password like I did with my Airport
Express (simply take the hex password and add a "$"
before it.)
Unfortunately the new Airport Extreme only allows 13 characters in its WEP Transitional Security Network so I could not get all of the long string of hexadecimal characters in from my old password. I could not use the old WEP password either for some reason.
Finally I thought I would make the new Airport Extreme's WEP Transitional Security Network and then take that hexadecimal code and put this into the old Trendnet device. My problem was that I could not find the hexadecimal equivalent of the password I typed into the AirPort Utility software.
I finally found out how to retrieve this hexadecimal code from the Apple support site. After you have entered a password into the Airport Extreme you can get the hexadecimal version of it with the following steps.
Now my DSL modem offers the Internet through my Trendnet wireless bridge at 54mbps and my MacBook can log on to the Airport Extreme at 130mbps with 802.11n to access the Internet and the rest of my local wired network.
Note: I have to use WEP for the WDS since I cannot get the Trendnet device to authenticate with anything better.
Unfortunately the new Airport Extreme only allows 13 characters in its WEP Transitional Security Network so I could not get all of the long string of hexadecimal characters in from my old password. I could not use the old WEP password either for some reason.
Finally I thought I would make the new Airport Extreme's WEP Transitional Security Network and then take that hexadecimal code and put this into the old Trendnet device. My problem was that I could not find the hexadecimal equivalent of the password I typed into the AirPort Utility software.
I finally found out how to retrieve this hexadecimal code from the Apple support site. After you have entered a password into the Airport Extreme you can get the hexadecimal version of it with the following steps.
- log onto the Airport Extreme using the Airport Utility software
- select the "Base Station" menu item from the top of the screen/ window
- select the "Equivalent Network Password"
- and voila, a little window will appear showing you your WPA Password/ ASCII WEP Key and it's hex equivalent.
- take this hex code and enter it into the other side of your WDS connection.
Now my DSL modem offers the Internet through my Trendnet wireless bridge at 54mbps and my MacBook can log on to the Airport Extreme at 130mbps with 802.11n to access the Internet and the rest of my local wired network.
Note: I have to use WEP for the WDS since I cannot get the Trendnet device to authenticate with anything better.
Leopard and Airport Disks access problems
23/11/07 05:07
Of course the first thing I did with my Airport
Extreme base station (7.2.1) was to try to share a
USB hard drive over it. What I found was that the
shared disk drive would not automount on my new
Leopard MacOSX system. Fortunately after much
searching I found my answer on the
Apple Forums. You basically had to remove the
Airport utilities and reinstall them from the Airport
Extreme Installation CDROM.
- In System preference > Acounts > Login Items, remove Airport Base Station Agent
- Reboot
- On the hard disk Macintosh HD > System > Library > CoreServices delete the Airport Base Station Agent and Apple80211Agent
- Reinstall the Airport Extreme software from the Install CDROM
- In System preference > Acounts > Login
Items, add Airport Base Station Agent from its
location in the hard disk Macintosh HD > System
> Library > CoreServices folder
Printing from Vista to Airport Extreme
13/11/07 12:50
Although Apple's Airport Extreme can share a printer
it was not quite so easy to use from my Vista
Business computer. The instructions from Apple had me
able to print only half a page to my USB HP Deskjet.
Then the print job would error out. To make matters
worse I could not delete the print job either.
So, here's what worked for me and hopefully for anyone else with this problem.
I don't know if it will work for every printer but I can now print from my Vista computer.
So, here's what worked for me and hopefully for anyone else with this problem.
- In your Printer Properties > Ports tab, disable "Enable bidirectional support". This allowed me to delete the print jobs.
- In your Printer Properties > Advanced tab,
disable "Enable advanced printing features". This
allowed me to print whole pages.
I don't know if it will work for every printer but I can now print from my Vista computer.
Great Customer Service Apple!
05/11/07 10:01
I was eligible and registered for a low price MacOSX
10.5 Leopard upgrade because I had bought my Macbook
in October. The upgrade would probably be sent a few
weeks after the Friday release date, I had thought. I
was still looking forward tothe new release and
followed it on their website for the release.
Late on Friday I received an email from Apple saying that my MacOSX upgrade had shipped and that I should receive it in a couple of days. Sure enough, I received it a few days later. I did not expect such great coordinated service, especially considering that I live in Switzerland. Way to go Apple!
Late on Friday I received an email from Apple saying that my MacOSX upgrade had shipped and that I should receive it in a couple of days. Sure enough, I received it a few days later. I did not expect such great coordinated service, especially considering that I live in Switzerland. Way to go Apple!
Airport Express just stopped working
01/07/07 02:32
In the morning it was working fine and in the
afternoon no lights, no signal, nothing. It just up
and died after a good 2 years of service. I have no
clue but I think it is simply a rock now. I was kinda
hoping for a little longer lifespan to my apple
product but it was also after about 2 years that our
ibook started smoking. Maybe that is the new Mac
low-end lifespan with the Applecare being so
expensive it is still cheaper than replacing the
device after 2 years.
Fortunately we still have our Trendnet access point which has been going strong for the past few years.
Fortunately we still have our Trendnet access point which has been going strong for the past few years.
Lowering Macbook memory use
02/05/07 01:35
If you picked up a 10.4.x macbook with the 512mb
thinking that it would be more than enough then you
probably found your MacOSX running a little slower
than expected. This was the case for me and when I
ran the Activity Monitor (Applications > Utilities
> Activity Monitor) I quickly saw that my system
had about 8mb of free memory.
Although the Activity Monitor will show you exactly what software is taking up your precious memory, here are the two things that I did to help.
1) disable all of my widgets
2) used the Font Book to deactivate all Asian fonts
That helped me free up about 100mb of memory though I am sure a better solution would be to dish out the $$ and get some more memory.
Although the Activity Monitor will show you exactly what software is taking up your precious memory, here are the two things that I did to help.
1) disable all of my widgets
2) used the Font Book to deactivate all Asian fonts
That helped me free up about 100mb of memory though I am sure a better solution would be to dish out the $$ and get some more memory.
Upgrading 700Mhz ibook hard drive is hard!
15/04/07 13:42
This is incredibly hard to do. With my Dell laptop it
is 1 screw and a removable drawer. With the ibook it
is 20 pages of instructions and about 1.5-2 hours of
work (PDF). There were so many
screws and thin metal panels that it would be
pretty easy to mess up too. Fortunately, since I
was not planning on using the ibook again (I
just wanted to extract the hard drive) it was a
bit less stressful but I would not recommend
doing this yourself. Pay Apple to do it and be
sure it is done right or upgrade your Mac.
Even an ibook can start smoking.
11/04/07 01:21
After a couple of great years with our G3 ibook, one
day the screen stayed black and soon smoke started
coming out of it. Hopefully the hard disk is okay but
what really scared me is that this computer is often
plugged in for long periods of time being charged. I
had assumed that it had been approved as a non-fire
hazard but looking on Google there seems to be many
other examples of ibooks burning up (along with other
laptops).
How much of a fire hazard are these laptop computers? Can I really leave them charging when noone is at home. I can easily see where airlines would want to ban them if they are a fire hazard, I mean if smokers cannot light up who would want a lithium battery melt down ocurring in the seat next to them.
How much of a fire hazard are these laptop computers? Can I really leave them charging when noone is at home. I can easily see where airlines would want to ban them if they are a fire hazard, I mean if smokers cannot light up who would want a lithium battery melt down ocurring in the seat next to them.
Airport Express extends a wireless network
22/10/06 08:04
Problem, one of my desktop systems has a bad wireless
card and I want to skimp on buying a new wireless
card. Available tools, my Trendnet 411BRP wireless
bridge and an Airport Express from Apple. Eventually
both worked but with a few quirks.
It seemed an easy fix, the Airport Express has an Ethernet interface and I could just make it a client of the main Trendnet Access Point and connect the Ethernet cable to the desktop's unused Ethernet interface. The little difficulties started soon afterwards.
It appears that the Airport Express disables the Ethernet interface whenever it is a client of another Access Point. However, it could be activated if it was EXTENDING an existing network. Normally extending the network is just to make the signal stronger because the two wireless devices work together using pretty much the same configuration.
Apple's instruction manual only mentioned this working with other Apple products but since it used a process called WDS (Wireless Distribution System) which the Trendnet device also supported I figured it would be worth a try.
After hooking everything up, the extension was not working but I could talk with the Airport Express device. On the Airport side I received an error saying that Channel Autodetection could not run with WDS. Okay, I set the actual channel of the Trendnet Access Point without any problem.
Fortunately the Apple side of things was pretty well documented. So I already knew I needed WDS to work to reach the Ethernet and now I had to pick the channel. I was getting worried about the Trendnet device because it's documented support for WDS was all of two lines of text in the manual saying it supported it. Since the Apple portion was at least funtioning I thought it time to look at the Trendnet side.
Sure enough, a hidden nugget of information surfaced. Although my device had next to nothing written about it and WDS, a TEW 450APB was clearly stated as NOT supporting WPA encryption over WDS links. I was using WPA on both sides. After reconfiguring everything for 128bit WEP in place of WPA, all worked fine.
So in summary:
A lot of work to avoid buying a new network card. On th plus side, nNow my Airport Express not only extends the coverage of my wireless network but its Ethernet port shares the remote Internet connection with my desktop computer.
It seemed an easy fix, the Airport Express has an Ethernet interface and I could just make it a client of the main Trendnet Access Point and connect the Ethernet cable to the desktop's unused Ethernet interface. The little difficulties started soon afterwards.
It appears that the Airport Express disables the Ethernet interface whenever it is a client of another Access Point. However, it could be activated if it was EXTENDING an existing network. Normally extending the network is just to make the signal stronger because the two wireless devices work together using pretty much the same configuration.
Apple's instruction manual only mentioned this working with other Apple products but since it used a process called WDS (Wireless Distribution System) which the Trendnet device also supported I figured it would be worth a try.
After hooking everything up, the extension was not working but I could talk with the Airport Express device. On the Airport side I received an error saying that Channel Autodetection could not run with WDS. Okay, I set the actual channel of the Trendnet Access Point without any problem.
Fortunately the Apple side of things was pretty well documented. So I already knew I needed WDS to work to reach the Ethernet and now I had to pick the channel. I was getting worried about the Trendnet device because it's documented support for WDS was all of two lines of text in the manual saying it supported it. Since the Apple portion was at least funtioning I thought it time to look at the Trendnet side.
Sure enough, a hidden nugget of information surfaced. Although my device had next to nothing written about it and WDS, a TEW 450APB was clearly stated as NOT supporting WPA encryption over WDS links. I was using WPA on both sides. After reconfiguring everything for 128bit WEP in place of WPA, all worked fine.
So in summary:
- Apple Airport Express will deactivate its Ethernet port if it is used as a client to an Access Point
- The Airport Express network extension feature can work with non-Apple products
- When making a WDS wireless extension make sure that the radio channel be manually configured as the same channel on both wireless devices (and possibly the SSID are configured to be the same too which the Apple manual said should be the case and so that is what I am using in my working setup)
- Some versions of Trendnet products (my 411BRP for example) do not support WPA over WDS extension links
A lot of work to avoid buying a new network card. On th plus side, nNow my Airport Express not only extends the coverage of my wireless network but its Ethernet port shares the remote Internet connection with my desktop computer.
Skype trying to release video on MacOSX
03/08/06 14:36
Skype has at last released a MacOSX version with
"Video Preview" as they call it or "Video Chat" as
others call it. We have been waiting for this
integration since we have lots of networking issues
with the integrated MacOSX iChat and would like to do
video chat between Windows and MacOSX (as easily as
possible).
However, while we were able to receive the video fine on the Mac platform, each time we tried to activate our Logitech camera in the MacOSX Skype, the whole program crashed in a puff of smoke. Here is the link to try it yourself. HERE .
However, while we were able to receive the video fine on the Mac platform, each time we tried to activate our Logitech camera in the MacOSX Skype, the whole program crashed in a puff of smoke. Here is the link to try it yourself. HERE .
How to iChat with a USB webcam
09/07/05 17:35
After spending a good amount of time trying to figure
out MacOSX's iChat, a quick check on Google showed
that it does not support USB webcams, even if you
have the proper drivers for them (Logitech for
instance).
Fortunately there is a low-priced solution with the aptly named iChatUSBCam from http://www.ecamm.com/mac/ichatusbcam/. This software allows iChat to use an existing USB webcam instead of those much more expensive firewire cameras. Also, they have a great list of suggestions where to find MacOSX drivers for many USB webcameras (you still need a USB webcam that will work with MacOSX).
The existing version 2.0.2 does not work with 10.4 MacOSX Tiger but there is a beta version that supposedly does. I don't know if it was us but using the original version 2.0.2 on out 10.3 MacOSX system we had problems making an iChat to a 10.4 MacOSX. After loading the beta version of iChatUSBCam the problem went away.
Don't forget to be sure your firewall will let the video through. Until we changed our firewall rules we could not accept an incoming call. Apple describes the needed changes here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93208 .
As a side note a PC user can also communicate with the iChat video client if they use a Windows XP computer and download the latest AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) software from http://www.aim.com/. The video quality will not be as good as between two MacOSX systems.
Fortunately there is a low-priced solution with the aptly named iChatUSBCam from http://www.ecamm.com/mac/ichatusbcam/. This software allows iChat to use an existing USB webcam instead of those much more expensive firewire cameras. Also, they have a great list of suggestions where to find MacOSX drivers for many USB webcameras (you still need a USB webcam that will work with MacOSX).
The existing version 2.0.2 does not work with 10.4 MacOSX Tiger but there is a beta version that supposedly does. I don't know if it was us but using the original version 2.0.2 on out 10.3 MacOSX system we had problems making an iChat to a 10.4 MacOSX. After loading the beta version of iChatUSBCam the problem went away.
Don't forget to be sure your firewall will let the video through. Until we changed our firewall rules we could not accept an incoming call. Apple describes the needed changes here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93208 .
As a side note a PC user can also communicate with the iChat video client if they use a Windows XP computer and download the latest AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) software from http://www.aim.com/. The video quality will not be as good as between two MacOSX systems.