the iphone does not play well with others (on wifi)

So… the owner of the macbook pro decided to join the iphone cult, grabbing a 16gig 3G iphone. Brought it home, connected to the home wifi – no worries, right?

Then she connected the mbp, and things just went to hell. The mbp refused to connect to the wifi at all… Pretty much anything connected to the network got booted.  Every device on the network had to be restarted or reconnected to the network. The router itsef had to be unplugged and hard rebooted.

None of this was happening pre-iphone; and everything works as normal so long as the iphone isn’t connected.

So, WTF? She googles a bit and finds a bunch of – as she put it – “infuriating” posts where people ask for help with this problem and just get the reply “oh… that’s weird”. For extra points lots of people suggest throwing away your perfectly good router and buying an airport, because, hey, the apple hardware you have already isn’t working so why wouldn’t you want to buy more of such quality product? Surely, all problems must reside in the non-apple hardware?

I have to say it, macheads: as a community you are incredibly unhelpful trying to bugfix things. If the machine deviates from the script, people throw up their hands and mumble things about going to see a genius or just buying some more apple products. I wonder occasionally if that’s just to appease the great god stevepjobs in the hope the devices will spontaneously start working again.

Just another day, sharing the mac experience.

So it goes back and forth, and it seems that what happens is that the macbookpro and the iphone boot each other off the network whenever they connect. Even worse, they manage to start booting off the PC which was minding its own business on ethernet; and pretty soon we’re having trouble finding a device that can still connect to the router to try to run some diagnostics.

Near as we can tell, the iphone and the mbp are just so aggressive in their search for connectivity that they kill existing connections. For some reason adding the iphone into the mix was the trigger to really mess things up.

A couple of reboots and some restrained profanity later, we seem to have found a fix: reserve IP addresses for every device you have. At the router level, that is. We started by setting the iphone to a fairly high address that hadn’t ever been  used, and manually setting the iphone to that fixed IP – not sure if that made a lick of difference, but we did it.

So far, so good. Wish us luck, we’ll see what happens tomorrow.

upgrading macs

Mac's getting an upgrade...

You can’t say it’s not true! ;)

time machine is a fussy eater

A quick trick/trap discovered by Roger Johansson: Reformat and repartition hard drives before using them with Time Machine | 456 Berea Street

Basically the problem is that the majority of external hard drives on the market come preformatted for use with a PC. This means it uses the Master Boot Record (MBR) partition map scheme, which Time Machine chokes on (technical term).

Formatting the drive prior to use will only fix this problem if you know to dig around in the settings tabs and specify the partition map scheme. Roger’s post includes step by step instructions on formatting a drive so that Time Machine will work properly, head on over there if you need the info.

Roger then ponders the same question that occurred to me when I read about his woes:

A question I asked myself after going through this trouble with reformatting, repartitioning and cloning hard drives is why Time Machine didn’t tell me that it doesn’t fully support the drive I connected. I hope there is a good answer since most hard drives you buy will use the unsupported MBR, and changing it when you’ve been using the drive for a while and start noticing problems is very frustrating and time consuming.

Why indeed? Macs are supposed to reap the benefits of a relatively controlled platform. But even though there was an easily detectable problem, Time Machine wasn’t set up to actually check that it had the type of hard drive it needed. Given how fundamental that is to its purpose, that really seems short sighted.

It is consistent with the problems I had installing things in the wrong place though. Mac software often seems happy to let you go ahead and fuck up, blissfully unaware that your backups aren’t actually working properly. Windows would probably fail immediately with an unhelpful error message, but at least you’d know something was wrong.

Bloody computers.

apple aluminium keyboard = not user serviceable

Mustard Hamsters: How To Take Apart Apple’s Aluminum Keyboard… it’s a cautionary tale!

Apparently if you spill stuff on that keyboard, the solution is to throw it away and buy a new one.

tips for mac users who have to use windows xp

I work in a PC-only office, with some dedicated Macheads who’ve been forced to transition to Windows XP. Not an unusual scenario, really.

Subsequently I’ve grown to appreciate the sadness and almost physical pain this can cause, particularly for people who’ve never used a Windows machine before. Just like the other way around is hell for Windows users ;)

So although this blog is usually about transitioning to mac, I thought it might be nice to share my common tips for people transitioning to Windows XP.

Now, I can’t make your windows machine deliver The Love Of Steve Jobs but co-workers have found these tips helped keep their sanity a bit.

So… in no particular order…

1) Microsoft Outlook’s search tool sucks, you should replace it.

If you are lumped with MS Outlook, you will no doubt have noticed the built-in search tool just doesn’t work. Thankfully there are two easy options here.

First, you can install Lookout: Install Lookout On Outlook 2007 – Lifehacker Australia.

Install it, then you’ll see the extra search tool in Outlook. Click Options next to the Lookout search box and make sure your archive folders are ticked. Allow time for it to index your email, then after that you have real, functional email search.

A second option is Xobni: Xobni – Search Your Outlook Email Inbox, which does a whole lot more than just search.

2) The default alt-tab isn’t especially pretty. You can replace that if it bothers you.

This is kind of bling, but kind of useful too. Grab the alt-tab replacement powertoy, which gives you a preview of the windows when you alt-tab.

3) When you stick in a CD or thumb drive, that autoplay thing is annoying. Yes, you can kill it.

1. Click Start → Run
2. Type: gpedit.msc [enter]
3. Go to: Computer Configuration → Administrative Templates → System
4. Double-click the item "Turn off autoplay"
5. Select "Enable" (yeah the wording is arse-forwards)
6. Select which drives to disable autoplay from the dropdown, I went for "all drives".
7. Click OK

4) Get a leaner, meaner file system search.

The XP file system search sucks, what with the hyperactive dog animations and all the extra clicking. The one in Windows 2000 Pro looked utilitarian but it was much better. You can enable that in XP.

1. Install the Tweak UI powertoy
2. Run Tweak UI (you’ll find it under the start menu)
3. Go to: Tweak UI → Explorer → Use classic search in Explorer

While you’re there, check out the Group Policy editor as it gives you access to lots of settings.

5) Got two monitors? Get Multimon.

Multimon is a neat little UI extension that lets you easily move applications between your two monitors, and extends the Task Bar across both screens.

6) Want a really fast graphics viewer?

Get Irfanview (and install the "all plugins" extra). Let it take over all of your graphics formats in the file associations (you might prefer to disable PSD if you’re a designer, of course).

Irfanview loads really fast and has useful batch tools, lets you edit the IPTC metadata and so on. Basically I find it quicker and easier than using XP’s film strip or thumbnails or whatever.

7) "I can’t drag a file onto the Taskbar!"

While you can’t drag and drop a file onto an application on the Taskbar, you *can* drag the file down and hover over the application on the taskbar (don’t let go of the mouse button), then the application you want should open up, then you can drop it onto the application. Yeah it’d be nice to just drop it on the app, but XP doesn’t do that.

Note that this tip works for apps that are already open/running, it doesn’t apply to dropping a file onto a shortcut icon for an app that’s not currently running.

8) Yes, the keyboard shortcuts are different.

Some basic keyboard shortcuts that you should know:

• Use alt-tab to switch between applications. Use alt-shift-tab to switch in reverse order.
• In most apps (particularly browsers) ctrl-tab will switch between windows/tabs. ctrl-shift-tab will switch in reverse order.
• Use windows-m ("Minimise all") or windows-d ("Desktop") to minimise all the open apps and take you to the desktop (there’s a subtle difference in what they do, but unless you have multiple monitors you’ll probably never see it).
• Use windows-e to launch Windows Explorer.
• Use windows-f ("find") to launch the Windows Explorer search tool.

9) "I need to open a zip file…"

Zip files are supported natively. Just use your context menu – right click and hit "Extract all".

You can also compress things this way by right-clicking on a directory and hitting Send To → Compressed Folder.

Formats other than .zip do need a third party addon like 7-zip.

10) I miss (insert OSX feature here)

Honestly someone else probably does too and made an app to reproduce the effect. Without wanting to sound flippant, whatever it is you can probably just search for it on Google.

For example you can re-skin Windows XP to look like OSX and there are various Expose replacements:

• DExposE2 Like Mac Expose but Better – Lifehacker Australia
• Get the MS Mouse software and map something like your scroll wheel’s click to "Instant Viewer"
• Search for windows xp exposé and you’ll find heaps of results

Like it or not, the user base for Windows is truly massive; so no matter what’s going on you’ll probably find someone has already fixed/changed/hacked things the same way you want.

This goes for fixing problems too: search for error messages verbatim and you’ll probably find some guy on a forum who went through the same problem six months ago.

If you maintain the machine yourself…

If you’ve never maintained a PC before and you have to do it yourself, keep in mind that you are now in a whole different target group for malicious attacks. You might enjoy unprotected internet on your Mac, but if you do that with a PC you’ll regret it fast.

You need:

1. Firewall, like Zone Alarm (or you can use the default Windows firewall – but personally I like Zone Alarm)
2. Anti-virus, like Symantec Antivirus or a free option like AVG Free
3. Anti-spyware/anti-malware, like Ad-aware, Spybot or Malwarebytes Antimalware

Once you’ve got it, you need to actually update and run the antivirus and spyware software. A good routine is a full scan monthly and enable the memory-resident autoprotect options. If you buy the software you’ll find most programs have scheduling features – it’s really only the freebie versions that don’t.

Sure, this isn’t convenient but the sad fact is that it’s required. There are millions of Windows machines out there and endless thousands of people and scripts trying to break into them. You can feel smug and superior about Mac security all you like, but you should do it after you’ve protected your Windows machine ;)

Thankfully if you follow these tips you should be ok, assuming you don’t do anything daft like click on attachments from spammers.

Updates

Obviously you also need to keep Windows updated, just as you do with OSX. Run Windows Update and in the settings enable automatic downloads.

Note that if you are installing Windows from scratch, do it offline (unplug the network cable!). During installation the system is still unpatched and hence extremely vulnerable. Burn the service packs to a DVD ahead of time or at least install your firewall before you go online to install them.

Overall tips…

Just as macheads regularly criticise me for "wanting the mac to work like a PC", I have to remind you it works both ways. If you try to use a PC like a Mac, you’ll get frustrated. The two platforms are just different and each has its own random quirks and tricks. Don’t fight it, you won’t win ;)

I should also note that for a couple of the tips I’ve mentioned here, if you’re in a super-locked-down corporate environment you might need admin access or a friendly tech support guy (bought them a beer lately?). That’s not about Windows, that’s about your work environment, ok? :)

Anyway, these tips have helped people at work. I hope they’re helpful for you too.

a quick note about wordpress

I just thought I’d throw in a quick note about WordPress. When I decided to write this blog I thought “hey, it’s all about trying new things…” (I run other blogs with Blogger).

Man, WordPress has some seriously annoying quirks. I mean, what’s with the line break thing? This line won’t wrap in the inline editor. I haven’t done anything differently from the first paragraph, yet here we go… Switching to the code view doesn’t help, either. Oh look, a new line finally.

The stats tracking is nice, the comment handling is ok, although a little verbose. Having to pay to customise the CSS is irritating, but I guess they need to make money somehow.

I can’t truly evalutate WP without installing it myself or ponying up the cash to edit the CSS… which is a catch-22 since without giving it that test drive I don’t know if it’s really worth the money. I don’t really feel like paying just to satisfy my curiosity ;)

So I guess my advice would be: if you’re thinking about WordPress for your blog, either plan to install it on your own server; plan to pay; or plan to use a default template with zero design mods. Depending on your needs it might be totally fine.

In general, WP’s interface feels a bit more polished than Blogger; it has some better features out of the box. But it doesn’t offer as much customisation – Blogger is free with near-total control (the limits are still annoying).

…and can anyone tell me how to fix that bloody line-wrap problem? So far I’ve only found posts about code formatting problems. Not plain text problems.

why the mac can’t write to your external hard drive

I’ve seen this problem a couple of times now – someone trying to write onto an external hard drive with a mac. The mac can read files off that drive, but not write to it. PCs can read and write to the drive with no issues. It doesn’t matter which user account you try, it still doesn’t work on the mac. It makes no sense!

You can waste many many hours trying to fix permissions, which seem like a likely culprit. But first you should check the formatting of the external drive. Particularly if the drive was initally formatted for use with a PC.

If the external hard drive is NTFS, you’re out of luck. Macs can read files off an NTFS drive, but they cannot write to an NTFS drive. You will have to reformat your external hard drive, or create a FAT32 partition for the mac and just write to that partition.

This does indeed suck.

Actually there’s on last hope before you embark on reformatting. Some people report success using NTFS-3G Stable Read/Write Driver (also see the wikipedia entry: NTFS-3G | wikipedia), which should let you read NTFS drives using an OSX system. However I can’t personally comment on this as I’d already reformatted my drive before I heard about it.

So give the NTFS drivers a go. But if that doesn’t work, you’re stuck reformatting to something like FAT32. Depending on the system you use to reformat the drive, you might need to use a third party hard drive formatting tool like Partition Magic to get around FAT32 size limits. Have fun doing a round trip to your system drive with your backups…

Of course there are plenty of other reasons why your mac might not write to an external hard drive, but you should eliminate this one first.

mac trojan

You should have heard about this by now… but just in case, here’s a randomly selected link to info about a trojan targetting Mac users: Mac trojan in the wild – Boing Boing.

It’s a social hack rather than a system hack – ie. OSX isn’t really to blame, it’s the user. But the interesting point is that it exists at all. Mac security is heavily influenced by the “not a big enough target to bother” category.

That may be changing. This is just one instance, but it’s a sign that not all attackers think Macs aren’t worth the trouble. Could it be the increased market share? Or maybe the attackers just really hate Macs ;)

getting RAMmed

When we bought the MBP, I was stunned at the price of RAM. Of course who am I to object, since I’m not in the Mac Brotherhood. Maybe it’s magic RAM.

Anyway, I’m not the only one who’s noticed:

In configuring this MacBook at the online Apple Store, it struck me how much Apple *still* charges for RAM, and gets away with. This is not a new phenomenon as it’s been happening for many, many years, but the total cost difference between Apple-installed RAM and third-party RAM now stands at a whopping $730 for 4GB of RAM! Note that they are both third-party products, from a manufacturing standpoint.

In other words, to max out my MacBook’s RAM, Apple charges me $850, while if I go through my trusty RAM comparison shopping site DealRam, I am pointed to NewEgg, which ships me the same amount of RAM for $120. As a point of comparison, Dell charges $465 for an extra 4GB… still outrageous, but not a 700% markup!

…

And I don’t want to hear any arguments about quality of RAM either. If you happen to get some bad RAM, you can always exchange it (note: I’ve gotten bad RAM from Apple before too… it can fail no matter who makes it).

Mike Davidson – RAM Arbitrage

700% markup… don’t tell me that’s good value. When I say “Macs are expensive” this is the sort of thing I’m thinking of.

Of course Apple aren’t the only manufacturer to put a hefty markup on RAM. As ever, my point here is that Apple are bastards just like the rest of them.

leopard upgrade disables firewall

If you’ve upgraded to Leopard, apparently you should check to see if your firewall got disabled without notification.

Upgrading to the latest version of Apple’s operating system, might make a Mac less secure, say experts.

A test of Leopard revealed that installing it led to the firewall on a Mac being turned off and its default setting changed to leave it disabled.

[Leopard upgrade hits Mac firewall | BBC]