iPad?

Being the Apple fan that I am you may be wondering if i'm going to get the iPad. Despite the blog, i'm not a consumer of everything Apple produces. While products like the Lisa, Newton, AppleTV and others were innovative in ways, they show that Apple doesnt get every product right and there's a cost to their consumers for their learning. I bit on the Newton but skipped the Lisa (used it at work) and so far i've resisted AppleTV. So what is the iPad?

Normally i'd skip this one too. I either want something very small that fits in my pocket (iPhone) or a full blown computer (MacBookPro 13" or MacPro currently). Something thats too big for my pocket and not good enough to do everything isnt a fit for me.

But it just so happens my daughters PowerBook 12" is finally on its last legs. Its wireless broke years ago, its got a CD jammed in the drive, the batteries are all shot and she's beaten it to death. My wife inherited my MacBookAir but only uses it for facebook and email from various rooms in the house (mostly just before she goes to sleep). So i'm faced with upgrading the kid to a new Mac or using this as an excuse to get the iPad. Move the wife to the iPad, the kid to the MacBookAir and they'll both be happy and I get a new toy to play with. Seems like a plan, we'll see.

Meanwhile, my thoughts on this whole netbook/tablet craze is that it all just has to go away. The thing I want is a full computer/OS that fits in my pocket and has all my data. Then I want to wirelessly attach it to keyboards, mice, monitors wherever I go. That way my computer travels with me and is always with me and I avoid syncing data everywhere, getting used to new interfaces, etc. All these other products are just killing time until the technology can get there. 

Of course there's the alternate reality approach where Google has all your data and applications and you just use a web browser to get at it all. I dont drink that cool-aid. While online apps have come a long way and you can even get REAL games online now through a browser, I think we'll get to the real portable computer before everyone hands their data over google to take care of for us.

BluRay and OSX

Apple has yet to add native BluRay support to OSX. You can use Roxio's Toast Titanium with a $20 add-on package for BluRay to burn disks. Saving away 50GB at a shot is very nice but the disks are still $13+ each. The 25GB disks are a more reasonable price of $2-$3 each. 

Reading the BluRay disks is another thing. With a combination of MakeMKV (currently in a time-limited beta) and Handbrake you can copy/convert BluRay disks to a different format and with assistance from MakeMKV and VLC you can watch them by following a process that is outlined here and summarized below:

1) Open bluray disc in Makemkv and then click Stream.

2) Click http://192.168.0.180:51000 (for instance) to open your default web browser.

3) Navigate to the title, something like http://192.168.0.180:51000/stream/title0.ts

4) Then paste that link in VLC in the File | Open Network (command N) in the URL section and voila watch your bluray on Mac directly off the bluray disc in VLC.

5) Do not try to stream or play in Firefox or Safari it just won't work.

I confirmed all the above works although its all a bit touchy in terms of the quality of VLC and MakeMKV.

Your alternative is a long conversion process, or just go play them in a PS3 or other standard player. Steve Jobs evidently frowns on BluRay.

Been quiet, what have I been up to?

Hi everyone, i've been quiet over the last several months as work was crazy. I don't talk about work much except where it things from there relate to the Mac etc. But if you're interested, check out www.nasuni.com.

Needless to say, there's lots of Mac, Python, backups, storage and other fun things going on with a killer group of people.

Snow Leopard Server

So as you can tell from previous posts, we moved from Leopard Server to Snow Leopard server. The move wasn't without a TON of pain. The hope was that things would be significantly better on the new version. Some things (unlimited client licenses) are better, but most things are just.. different.

There's still plenty of signs that its a mostly untested piece of software from apple. The fact that there's a button in the mail configuration to enable antivirus but when you push it it doesnt work shows that basic testing hasn't been done. If you run into this, as we did, you can find solutions online.

There are other annoyances/totally broken areas, i'll list a few:

• Groups don't work as mail distribution lists anymore. Not sure how they broke this, but they did
• Calendar invites from outside your domain do not go to your domain calendar, and if you try to copy/place it on the right calendar you get: The server responded: "HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden" to operation CalDAVWriteEntityQueueableOperation.
• You still have to hack the server to enable RADIUS for VPN authentication. Apple has it fixed to do wifi auth and didn't think this through
• Mail aliases still are not supported so you still have to sudo vi /etc/aliases in the terminal to manage these. Then you need to deal with any races in it overwriting on its periodic updates as you edit the file
• They have not thought through the whole internal versus external naming/conventions around their web mail/management interface to the point that its almost impossible to make use of

Thats just the list from the top of my head. The main point being that if you're thinking about using OSX Server for your business, and as much as it hurts me to say so, i'd say don't and go use Exchange. Sure its more expensive, harder to manage, etc, but the thing works and Microsoft, unlike Apple, seems to care about it.

Leopard Server = No Time Machine

In upgrading from Leopard Server to Snow Leopard Server our IT consultant made the assumption that Time Machine had his back on the upgrade. Generally Time Machine was backing up the Leopard server, but what wasnt obvious until we poked around in the backups is that on Leopard Server it does not backup mail. I had previously looked into mail backup and had mailbfr installed, but it hadn't run recently as he prepared for the upgrade. Apple fixed this major deficiency in Snow Leopard and now mail is indeed backed up with Time Machine on Snow Leopard server. 

It makes you wonder though, Apple claims to be making business class servers and software. They include their own backup software, but it has a major omission around mail backup. This is just another point that apple is not serious about running the servers for businesses.

OSX DNS issues

Is your mac behaving oddly with regards to DNS in that its not honoring the DNS server? I found out the hard way that apple, with its mDNSResponder service, broke tried and tested DNS on OSX. There are plenty of places on the net you can find this mentioned and its surprising and frustrating that Apple hasnt fixed it yet. Anyway, if DNS is behaving oddly on your mac, start with:

sudo killall mDNSResponder

It will restart itself and refresh DNS.

Google Voice - not moving?

I was excited by Google taking over Grand Central, I thought it was finally going to start going somewhere. There were some short term changes but after that... nothing. Google for many years behaved like a startup and its products and ideas moved quickly. In recent years Google has begun to stagnate with fewer changes around the applications it delivers to the consumers and more focus on monetizing its work. Sure, thats not surprising, they have to make a living. Buts its a shame that they had to slow down their innovation so much as they chase the precious dollar. Google Voice is just one more example of google slowing down. Disagree? Let me know.

Where'd I go?

Sorry folks, things got crazy all over. No, they're not less crazy yet, but there's a bit of light at the end of the tunnel. Its been fun though. Anyway, i'll try to catch up on some pending blog entries. Thanks for sticking with me!

I was at an airport recently for a delayed flight and on the laptop. The thing started cooking my lap. I looked and saw that spotlight was busy indexing my hard drive while I was on battery. This seems like a simple, "if on battery dont update spotlight" decision. Battery life is precious enough, to waste it for spotlight seems like a poor decision. Its a wonder some poor decisions like this last for so long in software.

Disqus

Switching over to Disqus for comment system for the blog. Let me know
(those few that comment!) if it bugs you.

DNS over VPN and Snow Leopard

Since upgrading to Snow Leopard DNS hasn't worked on VPN. A friend suggested a:

sudo killall mDNSResponder

And sure enough that fixed it. Poking around I found others suggesting that it gets scripted up to get killed every 60 seconds.

The fact that this helps and the fact that companies like Parallels have knowledge base articles on it would lead one to believe Apple should be fixing it.

At least the workaround is known until Apple gets in gear.

Call blocking

I have to say that i'm having a blast with Google Voice. No more
spammers and once I identify them from the "missed calls" log (since
no phones ring if they're not in my address book) I can block them so
they get the tone of disconnect. Love it, sweet sweet revenge on the
spammers.

iPhone 3.1 woes update

Since my last entry on the misery i've had with iPhone 3.0 i've made some progress. After much fiddling I found that turning off things like wifi, bluetooth, MobileMe, etc did not solve my problems.

The one symptom I could see is that with all accounts deleted and MobileMe sync turned off I still saw calendars listed in the iPhone calendar app:

Nothing I did (reboot, power off, reset) would get rid of them.

I resorted to the ultimate and completely nuked the phone and set it up like a brand new phone. This is a horrifically painful process since you have to re-lay out where your apps are, re-enter passwords/settings for each app etc. Perhaps a restore would have worked but I had read reports that it didnt and didn't want to do the 2 hour wipe part more than once.

The process worked. I've been good for 4 days and i'm declaring victory.

There are still some reports that even with Calendar sync off in iTunes people are seeing calendars "on my iphone" that they cant get rid of. I think the bug exists but there are some manifestations of it that are catastrophic like mine and others that are just annoying.

Regardless, for Apple to not have fixed it quickly is inexcusable. Their self-inflicted punishment appears to be giving people new iPhone 3G's unnecessarily.