Re-installing an iPhone App

I was asked a question recently about re-installing an app on an iPhone, which while relatively straightforward does include a few steps which may not be obvious. So, using our favourite TodUhr

Unchecked apps don't sync. Tick that box!

application as an example, here’s how it goes. Note that the general procedure is the same whether you’re using an iPhone 3G/3GS/4 we just need to allow for the fact that the 3G/3GS phones don’t support the application ‘switcher’.

1. For iPhone 3G/3GS users, switch off the phone then switch it on again. This is just to make sure the app isn’t running when you try to delete it. iPhone 4 users can simply kill the app by double-tapping the Home button then finding the relevant app icon in the task list, pressing and holding the icon, then tapping the little ‘no entry/delete’ symbol top left of the icon.
2. iPhone 4 users should then tap the Home button once to close the app switcher list.
3. Now locate the application on your phone and press and hold the icon until it starts ‘wobbling’.
4. Tap the little ‘x’ symbol that appears at the top left of the icon.
5. You will see a pop-up message asking if you want to delete the app and all it’s data from your phone. Tap OK.
6. Press the Home button once to exit the application edit mode.
7. The next time you sync your iPhone with iTunes, the check-mark next to the application you have just deleted from the phone will also disappear. The app will still be in your iTunes library, however iTunes will assume that because you’ve deleted it from the device that you no longer want to sync it back to the device (hence why iTunes automatically un-checks it).
8. Making sure your iPhone is connected to your Mac or PC, click on your device in iTunes then click on the Apps tab.
9. Scroll through the list of apps to be sync’ed with your iPhone until you find the one that you deleted earlier. You should find that the little box to the left of the application name is blank.
10. Click the box once to make sure it is ‘ticked’.
11. Now re-sync your iPhone with iTunes and the app should be copied back to your device.

It is possible that the app may be damaged on your device, so this may help by effectively ‘re-installing’ it, and the above steps will be much the same for an iPad/iPad 2/iPod Touch depending on what version of iOS they are running.If the application file (ipa file) in iTunes itself is damaged, then you would need to delete the app from within iTunes and then re-download it. This is necessary because if you attempt to download it without deleting it first, the Buy/Free button in iTunes will simply say ‘Downloaded’ and not let you do anything else. For a paid app I am assuming you won’t get charged a second time for it, but that is something I’ll have to check.

Note that I’ve never experienced a corrupt application file first hand and I am assuming that if this did happen then iTunes or the iPhone itself would tell you there’s a problem.

PS… here’s one other thing you might try to nudge an app into installing/running if there’s a problem with the iPhone. It’s a soft reset which you can do as follows:

1. Press and hold the Home button.
2. Keeping the Home button pressed, press the on/off button on the top of the iPhone and keep it held.
3. After a few seconds the ‘Slide to power off’ message will appear – KEEP BOTH BUTTONS HELD DOWN.
4. After a few more seconds the iPhone screen will go blank and the Apple logo will appear.
5. Release both buttons.
6. The Apple logo will stay on screen for a while as the phone reboots. On my iPhone 3G that takes about 60 seconds.
7. Eventually you’ll be prompted to enter your unlock code or the Home screen will appear (depending on how your phone is configured).

There’s an Apple article on the technique here.

iOS 4.2.1 Airprint Frustration

Strangely enough I didn’t pay much attention to the release of iOS 4.2.1 even though I have a WiFi iPad, an iPhone 4, my old iPhone 3G and an Apple TV (2nd gen). Sure I was aware of the basics like improved speed on the iPhone 3G (I’ve yet to notice it), folders on the iPad, playing video from the iPad on your Apple TV, ‘multitasking’ and of course AirPrint.

So I decided to check out AirPrint and had a quick look at the Apple web site…

“AirPrint makes it simple to print email, photos, web pages, and documents right from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. A few taps is all it takes to go from viewing it onscreen to holding a printed copy. There’s no software to download, no drivers to install, and no cables to connect.”

Well that looks straightforward enough. I guess so long as my printer is switched on and visible on the network (it’s shared by my Mac Pro) then I’ll be good to go. I fired up my iPad, loaded Pages, selected Print and hey presto…. ‘No Printers Found’. What do you mean no printers found? I can see it. The little green light is on. In my System Preferences on the Mac it definitely says it’s shared. What’s going on? Time to Google the answer and discover the truth behind Apple’s rather over-simplified statement. That’s right, seems there’s a key phrase missing from Apple’s web page, so I have ‘amended’ the AirPrint feature point on Apple’s iOS web page for you. Hope it’s a little clearer now…

There, that's better...

Obviously my Canon ip4000 doesn’t qualify, and given that it prints great photos, letters, etc., I have no intention of replacing it. Maybe there are more AirPrint-enabled printers on the way. Perhaps Apple will push an update in the future that ‘enables’ a greater range of existing printers to be used, who knows. What I do know is that their glib statement about just ‘click & go’ is somewhat misleading. Judging by the large number of queries from people who have been asking why AirPrint doesn’t work for them, it seems like a lot of people were caught out by this. Now I’m an IT person of sorts and I should know better (and do my research more thoroughly), but you can’t expect the average Joe to read that statement and then go off hunting for clarification – they just want to print.

Rumour has it that broader printer support was going to be included but that it got pulled at the last minute. Still, if Apple is able to co-ordinate the release of iOS 4.2.1 worldwide, then you’d think they could adjust a little bit of text in a web page just to make things clear? Well they do… IF you go to the iPad page, click on the AirPrint link, then scroll to the bottom of the page. That’s marketing at it’s best – big up the features in your headline and then hide the gotchas away – behind a door marked ‘Beware of the tiger’!

PS – I am aware that there is a ‘fix’ for this problem that involves downloading three files to your Mac and overwriting a couple of system files, but I’ll wait for the official fix – if it happens.

iOS 4.x = sloPhone 3G

iOS 4.x on the iPhone 3G

Every so often I have one of those dreams… you know the ones. You’re somewhere and you’re running, but for some reason you’re getting nowhere. It’s like you’re running in slow-motion or you’re waist-deep in treacle and hardly moving. You feel helpless. Eventually you wake up and if you remembered the dream you breathe a sigh of relief that everything is back to normal… until you go to use your recently ‘upgraded’ iPhone 3G that is.

You see I read about iOS 4.0 and all it’s neat new features and thought… well it can’t hurt to upgrade my two year old iPhone 3G. I mean Apple are really on top of their game when it comes to hardware and the operating system so what’s the worst that could happen?

Well, iOS 4.0 was duly installed and now my iPhone 3G is living that dream! It has made the phone so slow it’s no longer pleasant to use. Everything about it is slower, some things by a significant amount, for example:

1. The phone now takes at least three minutes to power on.
2. The whole interface ‘stutters’ when flicking from screen to screen, or re-arranging icons.
3. Tapping on the ‘Messages’ icon now results in a blank white screen for around ten seconds before the list of SMS conversations appears. (Previously it was instant).
4. Text input is much less responsive with about one in eight characters not even registering. The result is a lot of blank spaces which you then have to go back and correct (this never happened before).
5. Most applications take two or three times as long to load, and when tapping on the camera icon it’s a good ten seconds before the ‘virtual shutter’ opens.
6. Sometimes when taking a photo, the ‘shutter’ closes and then reopens but the photo isn’t saved.

Why even tonight I downloaded and installed iOS 4.0.1 in the vain hope it might make a difference, but all it has done is knock a couple of bars off my signal strength indicator so now I see just one bar on the O2 network in my house (where I previously used to see four or five bars).

So what about the benefits of iOS 4.x for us 3G users? Surely there are some plus points to offset this lardy performance? Well:

1. I’ve discovered that folders are a ‘nice to have’ but hardly essential. Perhaps it’s because I don’t have a huge number of applications anyway, so the benefit is limited.
2. Unified inbox – now that is worthwhile. I can now check my mail in one place instead of four, but it’s not worth the trade-off in speed.
3. The camera zoom facility is more of a novelty that anything else. Given that it’s digital zoom, I don’t see the benefit of zooming when the photo is taken, rather than zooming in with a gesture when you’re looking at it afterwards?

Beyond that I haven’t really seen much benefit in going with the 4th generation iOS software on the iPhone 3G. What’s more this isn’t my phone being old and cranky or getting ‘full’, seeing as immediately prior to the first iOS 4.0 upgrade it was still pretty sprightly. Furthermore, friends of mine who also own the 3G and who have upgraded, have also complained about subsequent lack-lustre performance. Of course it would be nice to be able to downgrade the phone back to iOS 3.1.3 but apparently this isn’t a supported option according to Apple, and while Apple Store staff and even tech support acknowledge the problem, there is no ‘official’ line from Apple on these problems.

So what can one do? Well as it happens… not a lot. If you search the web for solutions there are a few, but these seem to require jail-breaking the phone and there’s no guarantee you won’t just brick your phone for good! You could ring tech support but all you’ll get is a shoulder to cry on and perhaps a bit of sympathy. But there is one glimmer of hope. I am assured that Apple do read the feedback they’re sent, so I have posted this missive to them over at:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

…here’s hoping that they are taking notice and will do something about it quickly. If you’re having similar problems and your iPhone 3G is in the ‘slo-mo’ dream, then help the cause by leaving your feedback at the above link.

And if by some chance you haven’t upgraded your iPhone 3G to iOS 4.0 or 4.01. yet, then my recommendations is…. DON’T !!

Here's hoping...

I’m being tempted away from my Mac…

My step-mother has a Sony Vaio laptop that has to be about 5 or 6 years old and runs Windows XP. Her needs are simple, but she comes from a generation that really doesn’t get computers. She refers to the hourglass timer as a ‘christmas cracker’ and has no idea that Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer are entirely different animals. When I built the laptop for her I loaded it with all the necessary security software, but for someone who doesn’t have the intuition about what one should or shouldn’t do (or rather click on), then it’s a recipe for disaster (aka repeated ‘support’ calls).

Every so often I completely rebuild the laptop, but it’s only a stay of execution and it’s becoming obvious that she needs something a bit more modern, a bit more simple and a bit more robust. So I’m thinking about an iMac, a Mac Mini or perhaps even an iPad. Email, a very small amount of web browsing and online shopping, being able to look at photos and the odd brief document are all she needs and it seems that any one of these devices will serve her well. To this end I picked up an iPad for her, the thinking being that it was the one device that would do all of the above, be intuitive to use and free her up from locking herself away in a room (much to my dad’s dismay) when she needs to ‘compute’.

It’s a 32Gb WiFi model and I’ve been using it to see what it can do before offering it as her new computing partner (of course she’ll still need a PC/Mac running iTunes plus a wireless router, but that’s another story). I have to say that having had no intention of buying one myself, as I already have my Mac Pro and iPhone 3G, I am now rapidly changing my mind. Firstly, I read a lot of RSS news feeds using Vienna on the Mac. I do occasionally use Google Reader but Vienna gives me the clean interface I want and if you want a free (and ad-free) news reader for OS X then this would be my recommendation. But then there’s NewsRack on the iPad. I can laze on the sofa in the lounge and flick through my RSS feeds so easily, browsing in detail the articles I’m more interested in, or adding them to InstaPaper for later. Yes there are other news readers for the iPad, but NewsRack has a clean and intuitive interface that just seems really natural when you’re coming from an OS X (or even Windows) based reader. What’s more it does this whole Google Reader sync thing if you feel the need to read news feeds on multiple devices, plus has many other features besides.

Then there’s the mail app on the iPad. It works exactly the way you think it should and I find I can process 95% of my mail here, just resorting to the Mac where I need to do something a little more complicated. The result is that I can now go for days without using the Mac to do these routine things. There’s other things too… Weather Pro HD gives me detailed weather forecasts rather than having to use WeatherDock on the Mac. Osfoora HD on the iPad is now my preferred way of monitoring Twitter, while Nambu is my choice when on the Mac, and if I want to read a PDF I’ll generally be doing it in GoodReader on the iPad rather than in Preview on the Mac.

It’s not that the apps on the Mac aren’t any good, in fact they’re the best ones I’ve found in my years of Mac usage. It’s just that I don’t have to go and sit upstairs in front of the Mac to dip my toe into the computer world. What’s more, I’ll often find that when I start using the Mac just to do a quick email for example, I’ll often get sidetracked and then ‘waste’ an hour or two doing something I hadn’t intended to. With the iPad I pick it up, do the email or read the news then put it down. Having said that, the games on the iPad are pretty distracting!

Now don’t get me wrong, the Mac Pro is still great, and for content creation the iPad doesn’t come close. For starters, the WordPress app for the iPad is a bit of a lame duck if you ask me, and I’d far rather use the WordPress dashboard on the Mac to create or edit blog posts. Similarly, for photo editing and processing, long documents, spreadsheets, downloading, listening to music (even though SnowTape and Spotify can run on the iPad), and for many other more involved tasks, the Mac is still king.

So, when my step-mother takes this iPad off my hands will I be tempted to spend the money on getting one myself? Do bears sh*t in the woods?! Hell yeah…  Of course I could just recommend she gets a cheap Windows 7 laptop for her needs and keep this one, but I suspect the whole Windows support cycle thing will just start afresh, and I’m not sure my nerves could take it. Besides, if she has the iPad then there’s always AppleCare to ease my burden 😉

By the way, in case you’re interested here’s a few of my favourite iPad apps (note, clicking on links may prompt you to open iTunes):

• WeatherPro HD – detailed weather for your location for the next seven days.
• Pages – I’m just a sucker for being able to write stuff wherever I am, and as a Pages user on the Mac…
• Life Browser – iPad Safari is good, but in many ways I prefer this.
• Instapaper – great way to save web pages for later consumption.
• NewsRack – elegant and intuitive RSS reader with all the right features.
• Evernote – wouldn’t be without it, whatever device I’m using. (I think my brain is backed up to Evernote!).
• DropBox & SugarSync – love ’em both and can’t decide which I prefer.
• Osfoora HD – does all a Twitter client needs to do for me on the iPad (and lots more besides).
• Magic Piano – I’m no impresario but this makes me sound like one!
• GoodReader – is to PDFs what FireFox is to the web.
• IMDb – how cool to watch a film and be able to learn more about it as you watch?
• eyeTV – let’s me wirelessly stream recordings on the Mac to my, ahem… the iPad. It can do live TV too, but I’ve got a TV for that. (Note, you need eyeTV on your Mac for it to work).
• tChess Pro – attractive and challenging chess game with all the features I need to remind me I’m rubbish at chess!
• Angry Birds HD – ok you have to catapault various types of birds into pigs. Sounds daft, but it’s very entertaining and the sound effects are just lovely.
• Words with Friends HD – sort of a multi-player (across the web) Scrabble clone. (Multi-player as in my friends can mock me with their prowess!).
• Real Racing HD – first person racing game with incredible graphics and gameplay.
• Hexius – a bit like Bejewelled but perhaps more challenging and complex… and with multi-player capabilities.
• Soosiz HD – a platform game where gravity isn’t always what you’d expect. Good fun.
• Monkey Island 2: SE – Monkey Island meets the iPad, this game is entertaining, funny and looks fantastic.
• Osmosis for iPad – mesmerizing, challenging, addictive, relaxing, a must if you have an iPad.

And one final word on usability. The father of a friend of mine has Parkinson’s disease and finds it extremely difficult to interact with the world around him. Trying to show him photos on a laptop and to let him feel he has any sort of control was frustrating for him, and printed 4×6 shots were just too fiddly (let alone time consuming to create). It was great to put an iPad on his lap and to see him smile and enjoy the photos in a way in which he can be in control.

PS – Both iPad wallpapers are from VladStudio, a talented artist whom I heartily support.

Dear O2… Why should I stay?

Dear O2, I have been a loyal iPhone 3G customer of yours since August 2008. I paid for the handset and dutifully paid £35 a month to you for an 18 month contract, and indeed I’m still paying. For my £35 I was given an allowance of 600 minutes, 500 text messages and unlimited mobile data. Even though reception was not always that good (there are many parts of Sussex and Kent where I can’t even get a signal, let alone 3G) for the most part I was able to use the phone as I wanted.

Now the shiny new iPhone 4 is out and no doubt Mr O2 you would like to keep me as a customer. Why then are you pushing me away by making life more expensive for me? Surely if you want to keep me as a customer then you would at least offer me a deal which is comparable to the one I’ve got? But I’ve had a look at your tariffs and this is what I’ll now get for my £35 a month:

Inclusive minutes – well you will REDUCE my inclusive minute by 50%. That’s right. Instead of getting 600 inclusive minutes a month, I will now only get 300. I guess you figure it’s not good to talk.

Inclusive texts – well my previous tariff that got me an allowance of 500 text messages a month. On the new iPhone 4 tariff that changes to ‘unlimited’ text messages a month. But wait a minute, I know for a fact that handling text messages costs you ABSOLUTELY NOTHING already (yes there’s a reason why text messages are limited to 160 characters in length). So you’re giving me something which is essentially free to you already and you’re just passing it on. Pardon me if I feel underwhelmed.

Unlimited mobile data – well here’s an interesting one. You’d plan to move me from unlimited mobile data (subject to fair usage) a month to a 500Mb cap. Yes I know you plan to move existing users off unlimited data too (probably because of the strain it puts on your network), but it’s hardly improving matters is it. Ok I’ll call it quits on that one but only because I doubt I’d exceed 500Mb of data a month anyway.

Picture messages (MMS) – now here’s the real sting in the tail. With my current £35 a month plan, any picture messages I send come out of my monthly allowance of 500 text messages. Ok, you apply a ratio of 1 picture message equals 4 text messages, but it still means I could send 125 picture messages a month… for free. Now you propose to charge me 20 pence per picture message. No allowance. No nothing! In the past I have sent as many as 60 picture messages in a month (for free) but with your new tariff that will cost me an extra £12 in a month. Not nice.

Visual Voicemail – well it’s a service you provide (most of the time), and calls to voicemail under the new tariff are still free so no change there.

WiFi – unlimited free WiFi at various hotspots and that continues with the new tariff, so again no improvement there.

International Traveller Service – I have to admit I’m not a great one for travelling, however with my current £35 a month for 18 month iPhone 3G plan, you provide this service to me for free. But… you take that away with the iPhone 4 unless I increase my payments to £40 a month?!

So Mr O2, in case you were getting lost in all these figures, let me summarize for you. For the same £35 a month, 18 month tariff with an iPhone 4 you are:

• Reducing my inclusive minutes by 50%
• Giving me ‘unlimited’ text messages
  
• Capping my mobile data at 500Mb
• Charging me 20 pence per picture message
• Keeping Visual Voicemail the same
• Keeping WiFi the same
• Taking away my International Traveller service.

To make it really easy, I have colour-coded the services. The ones in red are worse than I am getting now, the ones in green are better, and the ones in black are the same.

Now I appreciate times are hard, but they’re just as hard for me as they are for you. What’s more, the iPhone 4 is now unlocked and available on any network, so for the first time you have competition in the iPhone segment in the UK. Strikes me that you really aren’t that interested in keeping me as a customer seeing as you aren’t offering to at least match deals from other providers. Heck I’d even be happy if you let me buy an iPhone 4 but kept me on the same tariff/allowances as I currently have.

But… I am but one customer among tens of thousands (who may also be considering leaving O2 for a better deal). Shame – you had the opportunity to come up with a cracking deal but you didn’t seem to want to.

So all that’s left is for me seems to be to get in touch with you to obtain my PAC code…

UPDATE – I did contact O2 and raised the above with them. Their response was to send me a link to the iPhone 4 tariffs and to say basically ‘take it or leave it‘, and to be honest I didn’t really expect anything else. It’s a shame that companies are so complacent these days that they really aren’t that interested in retaining customers. I guess they also rely on a good percentage of customers being complacent too and not bothering to switch carriers.

O2 Advisor: Click here to check tariffs for iPhone 4.

Me: Yes, my iPhone 3G 18 month tariff gave me 600 minutes for £35, but that’s been halved to 300 minutes on the same  tariff with the iPhone 4 by the looks of things. I’d either have to increase my monthly fee to £40, or sign up for a two year contract.

Me: So it looks like I’m getting a worse deal with the new phone?

O2 Advisor: These are the deals available for iPhone 4 at the moment.

Getting ADSL to your Airport Extreme

Apple is famed for it’s “it just works” technology, and for the most part that’s true. However, when it comes to the Apple Airport Extreme Base Station, it’s lack of a built-in DSL modem means you have a little figuring out to do if you want to use the Airport Extreme as part of an ‘internet connected’ network.

When my Netgear DGN2000 DSL wireless router expired a short time ago I decided to replace it with a Linksys WAG120N DSL wireless router. Great little device (so far) but it’s one drawback is that unlike the Airport Express which has three Gigabit Ethernet ports (1,000Mbps), the Linksys only has Fast Ethernet ports (100Mbps). Now I do large backups every day to two Synology NAS devices and they, like my Mac Pro are equipped with Gigabit Ethernet ports. Connecting them via the Linksys alone would just create a bottleneck and slow down my data transfers ten fold! Enter the Airport Extreme – the objective is to use the Airport Extreme as the centre of my wired network, but to also have internet access at the same time. Sure, I’m lucky enough to have two ethernet ports on the Mac Pro so I could connect one to the Airport Extreme and the other to the Linksys, but that’s messy plus not all Macs have two network ports. At it’s simplest, what I wanted was this…

Basic Network Configuration

The first step is to set up the Linksys DSL router as normal, so connect the Mac to it via a cable and log in to it as per the manufacturers instructions. Give the DSL router your ISP details and configure it with an IP address of 192.168.1.1 and a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0. Next it’s a case of configuring the network settings on your Mac to talk directly to the DSL router, so enter System Preferences, choose Network and make sure that your Mac has an IP address (e.g. 192.168.1.4) on the same subnet as the DSL router, and tell it that the router it should talk to is at address 192.168.1.1. At this point you should have a simple network of your Mac and the DSL router and you should be able to surf the internet. Next I connected an ethernet cable to one of the Linksys routers four ports with the other end going to the ‘WAN” port on the Airport Extreme. Now it was a case of firing up the Airport Utility and manually configuring the Airport Extreme.

Connect your Airport to your modem/router

In the Airport Utility, once it finds your Airport Extreme Base Station, highlight it and click on the Manual Setup button. Now click on the Ethernet tab at the top ans select Internet Connection. You should set Connect Using to Ethernet, and Connection Sharing to Off (Bridge Mode).

Internet Connection settings

Now click on the TCP/IP button and choose to configure IPv4 Manually. Now it’s time to gve the Airport Extreme an IP address and tell it how to talk to the outside world.

Give the Airport Extreme an IP address of 192.168.1.2 and a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 (same as the Linksys). For the Router entry, enter the address of the Linksys, i.e. 192.168.1.1, and for the DNS Server(s) do the same. Here you are telling the Airport Extreme that any traffic that is not for something on your home/local network (e.g. internet traffic), send it to the Linksys router.

TCP/IP settings

At this point you should be able to save the settings and apply them to your Airport Extreme. The next step is to disconnect the network cable from your Mac to the DSL router, and instead connect the Mac directly to one of the ethernet ports on your Airport Extreme. Now you should find that you can still surf the web but your Mac is only connected to your Airport Extreme. You can then add devices (in my case the two NAS boxes) directly to the Airport Extreme so that they can talk to your Mac at gigabit speeds, rather than just the ‘fast’ speeds of the DSL router.

If you want to use a service like OpenDNS then there’s no reason why you can’t and it’s simply a case of adding the IP addresses of the two OpenDNS servers to your Network settings on your Mac, like so:

OpenDNS settings on the Mac

I have since extended this setup with wireless and I currently have an XBox 360, a PS 3 Slim, a Nintendo Wii, a Mac Mini, an iPad WiFi and iPhone 3G, plus my Panasonic Viera TV all talking to the internet via this little network. The Linksys DSL router is currently providing the (802.11n) wireless service, but I’m looking at ways to use the Airport Extreme’s ability to provide 5Ghz wirelss to enhance this setup (i.e. avoid interference from my neighbours on the 2.4Ghz band).

More on that in another post…

QuickBitz – Windows, Minis, iDefrag & Adobe

I’m not usually one for an outpouring of comments about the way of the world, probably because the internet is already rich with folk who can express their opinions much better than I. Nevertheless, I do encounter ‘oddities’ on my computing travels, and have assembled a few quickies below for posterity.

Aperture 3 – What, no Windows version?!

I was idly browsing through PC Magazine the other day, a magazine that often covers Mac hardware and software. Within its pages I found a review of Apple’s latest and greatest photo offering – Aperture 3. The reviewer was very complimentary about the product, but in the final reckoning marked it down because… there is no Windows version. No Windows version of a Mac  OS X product? Shock horror. Of course the magazine often hands out five star ratings to Windows software without knocking off a point because “there’s no Mac OS X version”. Good to know that double standards are alive and well, and talking of double standards…

New ‘Mid-2010’ Mac Mini pricing in the UK

The svelte new all aluminium (that’s ‘aluminum’ for my US friends) Mac Mini can be yours for just $699 plus sales tax (on average 5%). Here in the UK that translates to a base price of £475 , which with good old Value Added Tax (VAT) at 17.5% would come to £558 . But check that price in the UK Apple Store… £649. Ouch, I hope the extra £91 is going to a good cause.

iDefrag – Great but… unneccessary?

My early 2008 Mac Pro that shipped with Leopard 10.5 has only ever been rebuilt once and that was to do a clean install of Snow Leopard 10.6. So for however long I have been messing with hundreds of thousands, if not millions of files on my four internal 1.5Tb drives. So how badly fragmented do you suppose my boot drive was when I asked iDefrag to take a look? Well the Volume Contents showed 0.2% fragmentation, and the Volume Catalogue showed 0.0% fragmentation! So then… not an awful lot for iDefrag to actually do?

iDefrag showing my boot partition

Adobe, Apple and that whole Flash thing

I watched the Steve Jobs interview on D8 and I read various commentaries (from both sides) about Apple’s decision to exclude Flash from the supported technologies on the iPad/iPhone. You can probably see where my sentiments lie if I give you this analogy…

A large motor manufacturer in the US decides to launch a new model of car, and they choose to make it an electric car. The largest oil company in the US then publicly complains that the car manufacturer won’t support the use of their fossil fuel in this new car. They argue that fossil fuel allows car users to enjoy seeing a great many parts of the world, and that there’s a huge infrastructure supporting the use of fossil fuel, so really this is unfair. The car manufacturer on the other hand says that it’s their choice to make an electric car, and that they’re just trying to make the best car experience they can for those that want to buy it.

Well that’s my way of looking at it…  😉

What’s on my iPhone (3G)?

It’s fair to say that I take a certain amount of stick for being a Mac user, and in particular for being an iPhone user. Many of my friends seem to think that using an iPhone is more about it being a fashion statement than of any real practical use. That couldn’t be further from the truth because it’s the apps that make it what it is for me. As phone’s go, I’d be the first to agree that it does have it’s shortcomings – not so great battery life (and a battery you can’t easily change yourself), ‘only’ a 2 megapixel camera, limited Bluetooth support, the albatross that is iTunes, etc. However for me it’s the apps that are a real part of my life, and it’s wanting to continue using these apps that will see me upgrading to the iPhone 4.

So, what are these great apps that make the iPhone so worthwhile?

• Maps – yes the built-in Maps app is actually really useful. Only the other day I was out with the family and faced with a diversion in an unfamiliar area, I was able to use Maps to help navigate the driver back to somewhere familiar, and even take in a few new interesting sights on the way.
• Shazam – hardly needs any introduction. Numerous times I’ve heard something I like and have been able to use Shazam to find out what it is. The Record industry should be paying these guys commission!
• Trains – live arrival & departure information. Sadly you can no longer download it (you’ll have to get  National Rail’s own offering), but it still works just fine for me.
• MyBus – if you ever need to catch a bus, this little app is indispensable. Tells you where the bus stops are, what buses stop there and what time the arrive.
• ATM Hunter – need to find a cash machine when you’re somewhere unfamiliar? This app couldn’t make it easier. It’s not perfect, but worth a download as it’s free.
• DropBox – while I don’t do much file processing on my iPhone, but this at least keeps me in the loop with my Mac Pro and Mac Mini and even my Windows laptop (that I have to use for work).
• Evernote – being able to take a note and have it sync’ed to every other device I’ve got is a real marvel (especially for someone as disorganised as I am).
• Flook – tell others where the great places are. Find somewhere great to visit, a fantastic pub or restaurant, some hidden local secret? Just Flook it! Discover the great places that others have found nearby, and collect/follow your favourites.
• 1Password – allows me to sync passwords and other secure info between my Mac(s) and iPhone. If I’m away from my Mac and need a password, e.g. to log in to a website on a friends PC/Mac, then it’s all in there in my pocket.
• WalkMeter – fascinating app that logs where you’ve walked, how long it took, how many calories you burned, and even emails you a Google map of the trip! In fact it does even more, so best way to find out is to use it.
• ConvertBot – if you’re old school like me (remember feet, inches, miles, ounces, etc.?) then this makes life a whole lot easier to deal with. Superb interface too. Note – I still can’t think in kilometers!
• Postage – Take a photo of a scene, dress it up and send it to friends for fun. Kids seem to love this one.
• RAC Traffic – very handy for spotting traffic jams before you become a part of them!
• RedLaser – I have saved a few quid while out shopping thanks to RedLaser telling me I could buy something cheaper online.
• Facebook – while I’m not a huge Facebook user, I can still dip my toe into that particular social quagmire when I need to thanks to this mobile app.
• Osfoora – until recently my Twitter client of choice on the iPhone was Twitterrific. It’s still a great app, but Osfoora looks just as good and is taking the lead on features.
• Doodle Jump – the most addictive game there is for the iPhone, and the best 59p you’ll spend. End of story!
• Wurdle – cool little word game for when I want to tax my brain a little.
• Frenzic – marvelous for getting the old hand/eye co-ordination back to full strength. What I would love to know is how the global high scores are so… high?!
• t Chess Pro – I have always found chess fascinating, and if I’m feeling cerebral, then t Chess gives me a mental workout (and usually reminds me that I really should practice more).
• FlightControl – such a simple idea, that very quickly gets completely out of control. Love that old style music as well.
• Angry Birds – the sound effects alone make this worth it. Even so, it’s a great game.
• Diamedic – a great way to track your blood sugar and other related info, and then have it easily to hand when the doctor needs it.
• WiScale – paired up with the Withings WiFi Scale I purchased a while back, it’s a fun and informative way to keep your weight & BMI on track. Ok the app is free but the scales cost £100 – even so, they look really cool and work a treat! In fact if Apple design a bathroom scale, they’d probably look like this.

These aren’t the only apps on my phone, just the ones I use the most and there are many more I could mention like – CalenGoo, Tube Deluxe, Air Sharing, The Good Beer Guide, National Trust, FlickIt, ShowTimes, Family Tree, Road Trip LE, Skype, AirVideo, Spotify, Snowtape, SnowRemote, Glyder/Glyder 2, Crayon, Traffic Rush and Tap Tap to name a few.

It’s the sheer wealth of apps, many of which are very high quality, that make life just that little bit easier… and if you ever needed an excuse to buy an iPad, well many of these are available in iPad-specific ‘HD’ versions too.

Entourage and Google Calendar, (still) all sync’ed up

Back in late 2008 I wrote a post about how I kept my Entourage and Google calendar in sync using a utility called Calgoo Connect. The process worked really well and the post generated quite a bit of interest from people who were in the same boat. A year and a half later and things have moved on, the most notable change being that Calgoo Connect for the Mac is no longer available. Not to worry though, if you still use Entourage and Google Calendar and you want to keep the two in step, then there s another way to do it using a neat utility called Spanning Sync.

Now the important thing to note here is that what we are doing here is taking your Entourage calendar and your Google calendar and effectively combining them into a single unified calendar. Unlike BusyCal (another great app I use) which lets you publish and subscribe to calendars so you can update them in multiple places, Spanning Sync keeps things neat by letting you ‘merge’ your Google and Entourage calendars into one. It’s actually a lot more powerful than that, but we’ll keep it simple for now. Like before, this method actually uses iCal on your Mac as a ‘conduit’ for the sync process, however you don’t need to be an iCal user of even open it up, except perhaps initially to check that everything is working ok. So, an overview of what  we’re looking at is as follows:

Keeping Entourage and Google Calendar in sync

Basically you keep Entourage and iCal in sync using functionality built in to Entourage itself, then you keep iCal and Google Calendar in sync using Spanning Sync. So how do we do that?

Well the fist step is to configure Entourage to talk to iCal by going in to the Preferences in Entourage and under General Preferences select the Sync Services heading just like in the picture below. Then it’s as simple as ticking the box that says ‘Synchronize events and tasks with iCal and MobileMe’. Don’t worry about MobileMe for now, if you don’t have a MobileMe account it will just be ignored.

Getting Entourage and iCal to talk to each other

Ok at this point your Entourage calendar should be visible within iCal and you can check by launching iCal and under the Calendars heading on the left, make sure there is a check mark against the entry labeled Entourage. You should actually see any entries from your Entourage calendar showing up in your iCal calendar in whatever colour you’ve chosen (mine seems to default to purple). At this point you can forget about iCal and close it down again as the next step is to configure Spanning Sync.

Ok you’ve downloaded and installed Spanning Sync so at this point you need to tell it how to sync the Entourage calendar on your Mac with whichever calendar in Google you have chosen to sync with. Let’s assume you have already set up a Google calendar which you’ve called ‘Entourage’. Open Spanning Sync by going to the Apple menu and choosing System Preferences and then under the Other heading at the bottom of your System Preferences window choosing Spanning Sync. The first thing you need to do is tell Spanning Sync about your Google account by giving it your Google user name and password. Once you’ve done that it will go off and find your Google calendar(s). Now click on the Calendars tab in Spanning Sync and you should see a list of your iCal calendars on the left and your Google calendars on the right.You will see from my example below that I’ve got multiple calendars on both sides, and that my Entourage calendar in Google is actually called ‘Entourage (2)’.

Specifying which calendars to synchronize in Spanning Sync

Tick the box that says Sync Calendars then choose your Entourage calendar under the iCal Calendars heading. Now you can choose which Google calendar you want to synchronize with, so look for your Entourage calendar under the Google Calendars heading and choose that one. You should end up with something like the entry highlighted in blue in the picture above. Remember, because the two calendars you choose to will be synchronized, they effectively become a single calendar (which is actually what you want). Obviously you need to think about any entries you already have in the two calendars.

Spanning Sync gives you a lot of control over how the synchronization takes place. You can sync from your local calendar to Google, from Google to your local calendar or both ways (which is probably what you want). Here you also choose whether you want to sync alarms and items in the past. Once you’ve entered the settings you want, just click the Sync Now button and let Spanning Sync do its stuff. The final step is then to go back to the Account & Schedule tab in Spanning Sync and choose how often you want the calendars to sync, and that’s pretty much it. There are other options in Spanning Sync which you can explore, for example under the Advanced Settings tab you can elect to start over or overwrite one of your calendars if you’re having a problem. Personally I’ve never had to do this as Spanning Sync has just quietly got on with things, but if you do get stuck you can get help from Spanning Sync themselves or on the forum, or even just by Googling your problem.

Ok, the one thing you need to know is that unlike the old Calgoo Connect solution, Spanning Sync is shareware and so needs to be paid for. Essentially it works by registering your Gmail address as being enabled for synchronization and you have a choice of paying $25 annually or making a one-off payment of $65 for life which is what I chose to do (I’m not planning to ditch my Mac or Google calendar any time soon).

There you have it – your Entourage calendar should now be in perfect harmony whether your using it locally in Entourage on your Mac or via a browser in Google calendar. Spanning Sync will do other things, like sync calendars between multiple Macs as well as syncing contacts (although I figure Google knows enough about me already without knowing who all my contacts are as well). Yes there are other tools that may be free or that go about things differently, but Spanning Sync does what it does nicely and has been pretty much ‘set & forget’ for me. I have to admit that I don’t use Entourage 2008 much these days as I’ve gone back to using Mail.app (because of its unified inbox) and BusyCal (which gives you nice features over and above what iCal does), but Spanning Sync still fits in nicely with my BusyCal usage. I’ve also got MobileMe Sync running in the background, so my calendars are everywhere. I can even access my Entourage calendar via CalenGoo on my iPhone 3G!

I’m also hoping for great things when Microsoft release Outlook for the Mac as part of Office 2011 – could that be what makes me switch back to using a Microsoft mail client?

Taming the new NetNewsWire adverts box

I’m a bit of a news junkie and I waste far too much time reading RSS news feeds. It doesn’t help when there’s apps like NetNewsWire which make it all so easy. I’ve been using NetNewsWire since I got my Mac and it’s one of those apps I’d install on any new Mac (note to self – no you can’t afford that new 15″ Macbook Pro you’ve been lusting after).

Anyway, for all this time I’ve been happily using NetNewsWire with its clean, uncluttered interface and happily keeping it in sync with my iPhone and with FeedDemon on the one or two Windows machines I find myself obliged to use every so often. And then the holy grail of features comes along in NetNewsWire 3.2beta… synchronization with Google. That’s right, you can now sync NetNewsWire with Google Reader making it even easier to satisfy your news feed habit wherever you are. Unfortunately there’s a catch and that’s adverts – that’s right, in order to support the free version of NetNewsWire, you now have adverts popping up in a little window at the bottom left of your news reader.

I HATE ADVERTS! Every time I tune in to a commercial TV station I seem to get the start of a 5 minute advert break. A 30 minute TV show is actually 10 minutes of adverts, 2 minutes of credits and only 18 minutes of actual TV. And the web is becoming saturated with adverts now, there’s barely a web page you can look at now that doesn’t try and sell you something (including the very page you’re reading if WordPress has anything to do with it).

Now I know you’re going to tell me that the adverts make a lot of this free software viable, and enables a lot of great content to be free and you’re probably right, but it doesn’t stop me from running Firefox extensions like NoScript and AdBlock Plus to try and minimize the amount my eyeballs get fried with animated banners trying to sell me something I don’t want or can’t afford. Ok, enough of me ranting about the commercial world, how did I get rid of the adverts in the latest version of NetNewsWire? Simply by using LittleSnitch to block where NetNewsWire is getting its advert content from.

What you need to do is to deny NetNewsWire access to http://www.northmay.com, either just on Port 80 or on any port to that site. You may need to go into LittleSnitch and delete the rules for NetNewsWire to then allow LittleSnitch to recreate them by prompting you for what access NetNewsWire is allowed when you next launch it. So far this workaround has worked a treat. The advert box is still there in my reader, but thankfully it doesn’t contain anything distracting that changes every 30 seconds or so.

Look Ma, no adverts!

I was fortunate in that I picked up LittleSnitch as part of a MacUpdate Promo Bundle last December, so I got it for a great price, but it’s well worth the full price as an extra level of security and control for your Mac. If you don’t have LittleSnitch and want an alternative, then I’d highly recommend the free and opensource news reader called Vienna. I’ve been using Vienna for less than twenty four hours, however the look and feel of it is just as good as NetNewsWire, and it’s got the functionality to match – apart from the sync features that the NewsGator products have of course.

When NetNewsWire 4.0 is released in however many weeks time, I guess it’s going to be a choice of a free version with adverts or a paid version without. Whether or not the above trick will still work remains to be seen as I’m sure the NetNewsWire developers are well aware of this sort of workaround already. Will I upgrade to the next free version of NetNewsWire or end up buying an ad-free version? Maybe, maybe not. I have been trying out Vienna and apart from sync’ing it ticks all the boxes for me, and in fact anything that helps ween me off spending hours reading newsfeeds by not offering sync between multiple devices, might actually be a good thing!