Enterprise Mac | Tom Yager | August 2007

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August 2007

August 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)

The unholy Apple/AT&T alliance has been undone, but iPhone is still a waste of money

If your biggest gripe with Apple's flagship media player is that it refuses to make voice or data calls on anything but AT&T's wireless network, you're officially free. But the price of freedom, in this case, is either a very steady hand and soldering iron, or a willingness to send money to Australia in exchange for a "Turbo SIM," delivery date unknown. Of the two methods, I prefer the third: Buy a real phone. Following an exhaustive comparison of alternatives, I have overwhelming backing for my early conclusion that iPhone is vastly outmatched by several devices in its price class.

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If you simply must buy and unlock an iPhone, use George Hotz's (forum nickname "geohot") 10-step hack, the one that requires soldering. If you need help with the soldering, go to a ham radio fest or sit in on a robotics club meeting. If you want to tackle it yourself, practice with throwaway surface-mount electronics, scraping conformal coating from circuit traces and soldering wire to them before you crack the case on an iPhone. George's method is the easiest possible hack to a surface-mount board. While George recycled his wire from a motor, I suggest you buy new magnet wire from Radio Shack. The thinnest wire in the three-spool pack is the 30-gauge Kynar insulated wire you need. Scrape or burn the insulation off the ends.

Posted by Tom Yager on August 26, 2007 06:56 PM

August 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Why Boot Camp failed, and how I fixed it

After months of trying and failing to get Boot Camp running on a MacBook Pro, I finally put my shoulder to the task and determined that I would either make it run or report to you why it would not. I can now do both. The issue, in brief, was a damaged Parallels Desktop virtual hard drive file, bits of which I believe HFS+ (OS X's filesystem) lost track of when power was lost or the system crashed while Parallels was running. Half-written changes to filesystem structures, and Parallels Desktop running on OS X creates two sets of filesystem structures to maintain, will do that. I was stymied by the fact that OS X's filesystem diagnostics reported no problems.

I tracked my Boot Camp problem with the help of a treatise on Amit Singh's (genuflect) osxbook.com site on the subject of HFS+ (OS X's filesystem) fragmentation, and his hfsdebug utility. My Parallels Desktop virtual hard drive (.hdd) file was splintered into thousands of fragments (extents) across my disk. Macheads gloat that OS X defrags for us, but it does this only for files smaller than 20 MB. I don't think I have any files that small. An Objective-C Universal Binary of "Hello World" is 86.4 megabytes. No it isn't, but my point that OS X's background defrag isn't much help remains.

Once Singh's hfsdebug pointed at the .hdd file, I tried to run Parallels Compressor on it to make a clean, condensed copy of the virtual drive. Compressor bailed. My heart sank. Yeah, it's Windows XP, but it's not like I had nothing on that virtual drive worth keeping. After trying Compressor, Parallels would not boot the virtual machine, and Finder couldn't calculate the file's size. Disk Utility still said the volume was fine, but I knew the .hdd file was a lost cause. I wiped it out, uninstalled Parallels Desktop (in case it held some erroneous state information) and rebooted.

Boot Camp Assistant ran to completion and set me up to install Vista Way Too Much Windows For You Ya Punk Edition on the first try, and this MacBook Pro now runs like it's had a CPU upgrade. Filesystem checks now complete in seconds, where they used to take more than a minute. Boot time? What boot time? Whoosh.

The lesson here is decidedly not that Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion is problematic. I recommend that you preallocate virtual hard drive files instead of letting virtualization software grow them dynamically. If you must grow a large file dynamically, check to see whether the software has the option of setting the size of each new allocation of disk space. Make that number as large as you can stand, as that will limit the number of fragments created as the file grows.

I sidestepped future virtual hard drive issues completely by pointing Parallels Desktop at Vista in the Boot Camp partition. I hold my breath while Desktop boots Vista with its warning of data loss if there's a power loss or reset (been there!), but as soon as the Vista login window pops up, it's all good.

Posted by Tom Yager on August 13, 2007 02:14 PM

August 08, 2007 | Comments: (0)

iPhone: iTunes 7.3.2 (iPhone firmware 1.0.1) update does not mess up "activate and cancel" iPhone

For those buyers who wish to use iPhone solely as a media player and Wi-Fi Internet tablet, I have advocated the use of an activate and cancel method to escape AT&T's monthly charges. My method leaves iPhone functional for emergency calls, and unlike the activation crack, iPhone's Youtube application continues to work, and I figured that you shouldn't need to worry that future software updates might return your iPhone to its out of the box, wholly unusable ("bricked") state.

It turns out that I was right. Apple's recently-released iTunes 7.3.2 update overwrites iPhone's firmware with version 1.0.1. I installed the update, and even after cycling power on the device, iPhone continues to work exactly as it did before the update.

An iPhone with cancelled phone service can still place emergency calls.

Posted by Tom Yager on August 8, 2007 05:42 PM

August 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Apple Town Hall; New iWork (Keynote, Pages, SPREADSHEET) $79

Keynote beautiful new animations, incl. Custom A to B motion paths.

Pages: Now layout and word proc modes. Word-compat change tracking.

Numbers: Interactive print view, multiple sheets on one view, easy format, import and export "almost all Excel documents."

Change charts by dragginng image.Use column headers for formulas, like "sum(purchases)".

Posted by Tom Yager on August 7, 2007 11:04 AM

August 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Apple Town Hall: iLife $79, free w/new Macs; .Mac same price, 10 GB storage

IMovie. Drag and drop editing. Send to Youtube or .Mac with one click. .Mac Web Gallery hosts "better than DVD quality." Too nice to describe in one sentence.

IWeb: Google Adsense, Google Maps drop-ins. Pointers to .Mac from external site, switch themes after posting.

Magic Garage Band: Canned loops with ability to select instruments by clicking around on stage full of instruments.

Posted by Tom Yager on August 7, 2007 10:40 AM

August 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Apple Town Hall: .Mac Web Gallery

.Mac service now does Web 2.0 image galleries. Upload images to.Mac gallery from anywhere by browser or e-mail. Both iPhoto and iPhone now have "send to Web Gallery."

.Mac Photo Gallery Web page has iPhoto-like event skimming.

Posted by Tom Yager on August 7, 2007 10:29 AM

August 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Apple Town Hall: iLife '08 (iPhoto)

New events (e.g. Wedding, birthday) view in iPhoto.All photos taken on a given day or range of dates. Split and merge within event groups. Hide photos in image browser. Better image editing.Jobs is demonstrating now.

Skimming shows all images within a single thumbnail image.

Posted by Tom Yager on August 7, 2007 10:15 AM

August 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Apple Town Hall: New iMacs, keyboard, PRICING

Aluminum and glass. ATI Radeon HD. Thin aluminum keyboard, new key layout. Gorgeous.

Up to 4 GB RAM.

20" 1199 2 GHZ

20" 1499 2.4 GHZ

24" 1799 2.4

Config to order for 2.8 GHz.

17" iMac goes away.

Avail. Now.

Posted by Tom Yager on August 7, 2007 10:07 AM

August 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Apple Town Hall: As it happens

From the look of the microwave trucks parked outside, and the fact that Apple let journalists bring still and video cameras, there won't be any chance of being first.

The lights are dimming, and "Can't Get No Satisfaction." Let's see if there's a message in Steve's choice of walk-on music.

Posted by Tom Yager on August 7, 2007 09:53 AM

August 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Apple Town Hall: Steve is in the building. I repeat...

I'm with the throng herded in the lobby outside Apple's fabled Town Hall at 4 Infinite Loop. The air is abuzz with wild-ass guesses about what we'll see. I saw Steve Jobs' limo, so my day is made.

It looks like we're in. I'll keep you posted.

Posted by Tom Yager on August 7, 2007 09:43 AM

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