Snow Leopard from Amazon

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Cash for Clunkers

With some clever branding, this looks very much like an Apple site, but it isn’t. In fact, if I had to take a shot in the dark I’d say the whole thing is a joke, although I appreciate the humour!

According to the site, any machine running Windows is a “clunker”, and Windows is partly responsible for global warming because of the number of times you have to reboot your machine.

Check out the original site here, no promises it will still be around though!

A Conspiracy Theory

As some know, I’ve been having some really weird problems with my iPhone over the couple of months.

Firstly the problem: intermittently (2 calls in 3), a person ringing me would hear nothing at all for a good 20 seconds or so, then go straight to my answer phone.  My phone meantime would be on, displaying 5 bars of signal strength and yet would not show an incoming call at all, let alone ring.  This happened countless times, and it took a while for me to become aware of it – after all, how often do you ring yourself?

I tried all sorts of things to fix the issue – restoring the phone, swapping the SIM card to another phone, and on and on.  The SIM card would work perfectly in another phone, but not the iPhone.  So based on that evidence, it was off to the Apple Store, who agreed with my initial diagnostics, and decided it was a faulty phone circuit in the iPhone, and so swapped the iPhone for a new one.

And still my problem persisted. It became even more curious when I had the same problem when I then tried putting the SIM card into a Nokia 5110.

So then it looked to be a carrier problem – VirginMobile in this case (on the Optus network).  Tried to get VirginMobile (VM) on the case, but after fluffing around (and around and around), I got the TIO involved (Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman).  At least it finally got escalated into VM proper customer service circles (initial call centres are typically less than useful for telecoms)

We tried SIM swaps, and then again with one they had tested the guts out of in their labs.  Still no success.  Even a brand new SIM on a brand new account had the same problem.

Finally, one comment from them triggered me down a new path.  The comment was based on why in the world my account/SIM worked fine in old phones and not new ones.  It made even less sense since I have data (and 3G) turned off on my iPhone (don’t need the extra expense – there is WiFi everywhere!)  So the older phones work, but not modern?

Another web search, and I find a conspiracy theory that happened in the US, where AT&T colluded with Apple to cause owners to turn on data (unnecessarily).

So I tried – switch on 3G, phone works perfectly, switch it off, phone fails.  All since OS3.0 came out.

The point is – if that is the case, who wins?  Apple? Or the carrier who then gets to sell you data?

I took this new info back to the TIO, and they immediately said they were no longer interested in the case. If it is phone provider and not service provider (even if it is both), it wasn’t their problem.

I also took the issue back to Apple (Genius Bar in Chadstone), and not mentioning the 3G / 2G problem to find out what else they had to say. I put a Sony Ericsson, Nokia, HTC and iPhone in front of them.  The SIM works in every phone, except the iPhone, yet they still blamed the carrier.  They even went as far as telling me they see it a lot with Optus (and less so with Vodaphone) (and not with Telstra). Despite telling me just 2 weeks earlier they had never seen the issue. Even though I had the same actual person serving me.  They were happy for me to walk out of their store, despite the fact that 3 non Apple branded phones worked perfectly, and an Apple didn’t and yet were not interested in getting to the bottom of the problem.  A big fail for Apple customer service.

So that’s about as far as I can get.  Apple refusing responsibility, VirginMobile unable to solve the problem through their avenues.

An iPhone that doesn’t work with 3G switched off, and works with it switched on.  I don’t necessarily mind having 3G switched on, but it seems like yet another stuffup with OS3.0 . Remember the phone worked perfectly under OS2.x with 3G switched off.

So, is a conspiracy between Apple and Optus?  Forcing users to turn on data even though they don’t want to?

I hope not. But one way or another, either deliberate or accidental, IMO it is Apple who is responsible, and not prepared to accept responsibility.

A Dilemma

Letting go of old technology.

It’s not that I don’t know where to dispose of the old tech, but bringing oneself to actually let go of it, especially when it cost so much to acquire it in the first place.

Heading back chronologically, (including the current platform(s)) I have:

Apple McBook Pro running Leopard (OSX 10.5.5) and Windows XP (and Vista, and Apple ][e)

HP Desktop Pentium 4 running Windows Vista

Toshiba Tecra Pentium 4 running Windows XP

Apple Mac Mini running Tiger (OSX 10.4.10?)

Apple MacBook (PPC) running ?Tiger?

Pentium 3 733 running Windows XP

486 DX4 100 running DOS 6.22a and Windows 3.11

386 SX running DOS 5

Apple ][e running DOS 3.3

Sinclair ZX81 running CP-M

I think I have a problem!

Apple Error Codes

This goes way beyond what I normally wanted as less technical info on this site, but at least having it listed here might be useful one day.

I’m having problems with a backup harddrive and keep getting “Time Machine Error Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup directory.”  Really useful information.

So I decided to try to find out what is actually wrong, so step one was to try to create a directory myself on that drive.  “Error Code -50″ Now that was useful.

So I tracked down the Apple error codes, and found that it means “Error in user parameter list”.  Guess that is good to know.  Don’t know what it means (yet).

New iPods

Apple are releasing a new iPod Touch and iPod Nano.

New iPod Touch

The Touch now includes a built-in speaker and increased battery capacity (and up to 32GB storage), while the Nano has increased capacity (up to 16GB), and an increased range of colours for those who care about the fashion.

Strangely, in my opinion, the Touch still does not appear to have Bluetooth capabilities, which I would have expected given it’s ever converging role with PDAs (and its ability to have contacts, calendar, email etc), and the increasing range of bluetooth headsets.

New iPod Nano

Time Capsule & Airport Extreme

Now before saying these are Apple products, and scaring 90% of the readers off seeing as they are Windows users, they are applicable to both, with different degrees of functionality.

Firstly for all users:

The Apple Time Capsule is a 802.11n wireless router for both Mac and PC, and my recent experience in setting one up gave me the clear feeling that this was the easiest wireless network device I have ever set up.  I know I often sound like an Apple convert (yeah, ok, that is exactly what I am), but boy, did they nail the end user experience spot on for ease of use.

It would have been just as easy if I was setting up a brand new wireless network at home, but in this case I was replacing an existing one.  It configured itself, asked a few brief questions (the most complex being – is the computer you are currently on needing access to the wireless network?) and told me when to turn off the old device and plug the new one in (1 power cable, 1 ethernet cable).

This is the same as setting up the Apple Airport Extreme (and presumably the Airport Express) – and in fact it is basically an Airport Extreme that is built into the Time Capsule.

Now if I wanted, I could plug in an external (USB) harddrive or printer, and have them accessible to all the computers on the network (wireless or plugged in directly to the router.

So far, the experience for a Windows or Mac user is identical – in fact on my network I have a Mac and a PC laptop, and both are running happily on this.  In addition, my mobile phone, and iPod Touch are also configured to use it and surf the web.  I could (if I could see a point), give access to the Wii as well (which also has a wireless capability).

Now, for PC users (and pre-OSX Leopard users) the Time Capsule is also an external harddrive, and can be used with your own backup software for wireless backup.  Which is cool, but isn’t any different in functionality to using the Airport Extreme with a USB external harddrive (ok, perhaps a bit faster, and you’d have to factor the cost of the separate drive into the equation).

For OSX Leopard (10.5) users on Mac, the TIme Capsule comes into its own.  This device, with either 500GB or 1TB (1000GB) of storage works seamlessly with Time Machine to keep a running history of files on your computer, allowing you to go back in time to any previous point to find a since deleted, or changed file and returning it to the current time.  It is very very cool.  It keeps a lot of history (up to the point that the drive is full, and then deletes the oldest points), but what is nice is it is doing this quietly, without fuss in the background.  It backs up ever hour for a day, then keeps the last 24 hours of backups.  In addition, it keeps a daily backup for a week, and a weekly backup for ever (until the disk is full, and the oldest get dropped).

Time Machine

Apple Mickey Mouse

I’ve been becoming increasing disillusioned with the Apple (wireless) Mighty Mouse. I’ve been finding it to be significantly unresponsive in comparison to other mice out there (such as an old Logitech one that I used to do a side-by-side comparison). I’ve even taken the step of updating the mouse pad to try to provide a better (more responsive) surface for it to work on, but even that didn’t make enough of a difference. Am investigating if there is a better alternative out there.