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DevonThink: Template on Toolbar

Hans D. Baumeister — 2020-10-05T09:02:02+02:00

A feature of DevonThink version 3 that I just learned about is pretty exciting. I was looking for a way to generate a new, blank Word document in a group, as I prefer to take phone call notes in Word. My initial "workflow" was to start word, hit CMD-N to create a new, blank file, start typing my notes and then first save it to the DT3 inbox and then move it to the group I wanted it in. Pretty cumbersome, pretty annoying.

Fujitsu ScanSnap Manager v7

Hans D. Baumeister — 2020-08-17T12:23:12+02:00

Very unexpectedly, Fujitsu released ScanSnap Manager v7 for 64-bit Macs that supports older scanners.
I heard about it here. My S510M is many years old - if I'm not mistaken, I bought it in 2014 - but it still works just fine. Ever since switching to a 64-bit OS, I'd been running a VM of Mavericks (!) in Parallels in order to continue using the native 32-bit version of ScanSnap Manager to run the S510M. This was annoyingly cumbersome, however, as I had to find a way to get scanned documents from the VM to DevonThink Pro, running natively in Mojave.
Only a few weeks earlier, I had spent the money on ExactScan, an excellent software that supports a large number of scanners, including many legacy models no longer supported by their manufacturers.
End of Juliy, Fujitsu released said upgrade and, though they don't guarantee it, my S510M works just fine with it!
So now I'm happily back to scanning from the ScanSnap by just pressing the "scan" button with the document ending up in DevonThink and being OCR'd there. Beautiful!

Surprise: €12 vertical mouse

Hans D. Baumeister — 2020-06-16T14:03:06+02:00

Since the left button of my older Logitech M570 trackball spins, a replacement was needed. I'm actually a convinced trackball user - but mice are more efficient for many actions (e.g. to get across the screen quickly). One of the reasons for the trackball, however, was to try to avoid problems with the right hand that can arise from using the mouse for a long time.

At first I was interested in the Logitech MX vertical mouse, but the price put me off for an experiment. Many people write about longer settling-in periods. So I looked for alternatives. Actually, I had already ordered an Anker mouse, but I noticed that another product from "GeekerChip", matched the Anker mouse 100% - judging by the pictures. And for half the price! You can just try it for 12 €

The tiny box that I found in the Amazon packaging on the following day immediately caused my "Chinaware" alarm bells to ring. The box also looked like it had been opened before. I unpacked and connected the mouse anyway. There are also scratches on the underside of the mouse that make you suspect that it is used - but not on the top. Very strange.

The mouse is fed with two AAA batteries. In comparison to some reports, I could easily remove the battery compartment cover with my finger, even if it takes a little more power than with the trackball. The plastic is also clearly thinner - but we're talking about a 2.4GHz mouse for € 12, so please!

Plugged the USB receiver into a hub on the Mac and ... the Mac recognises a keyboard. Huh? With the (still connected) trackball clicked "Cancel" and mouse movements do not arrive on the screen. OK, the surface of my keyboard and mouse drawer is matt black - so tried on the desk (maple). Also nothing. USB receiver out and in again. Aha - something is happening. The mouse now recognized motion and fed it - as expected - to the Mac.

The matte surface seemed to present some difficulty to the mouse - sometimes it didn't seem to recognise motion at all. On the other hand, it works perfectly on the surface of the desk. Disappointment spreads - I want to use the mouse on the drawer (where a standard Targus mouse works perfectly, by the way). A miracle happened after 1-2 minutes - suddenly the mouse started to work perfectly on the drawer ... how very bizarre! As if a "learning process" had to run (certainly not, at that price). Anyway - I've now shut down the trackball and I'm only using the mouse - and it works great now.

In contrast to several reviews, I had no problems getting used to the ergonomics - it worked right away and, to be honest, is extremely comfortable! Maybe that comes from my long-time use of trackball, no idea. I think it's great and very comfortable. The surface doesn't feel so different from the (at that time quite expensive) Logitech trackball. This mouse does not make a "yogurt cup plastic impression", but quite a valuable one. At least a lot more valuable than I expected for the price.

The mouse buttons also work perfectly and - in contrast to one review - not at all loudly, but quite normally. Only the forward and backward buttons to be operated by the thumb are impractical. They are not sublime, i.e. you don't feel it when your thumb searches for it. On the one hand, this is a clear design flaw, but it doesn't concern me because I never used these buttons on the trackball. What is unusual is the need to "wake up" the mouse with the right button if you do not use it for more than 8 minutes. I know it differently, but again: 12 €. The shift key for the DPI is very practical and works well - so you avoid switching in the control panel.

Now I'm curious how long this mouse will last. One thing has already become clear after just a few days: the matte finish is very impermanent. It's already come off on the parts of the case that I touch with my hand, leaving black, dull plastic behind. I think this actually looks better than the original coating - and I'm really wondering where that coating has gone? I've probably absorbed it through my skin or something hideous like that.

All in all, I recommend this mouse, especially if you want to test a vertical mouse first before buying a € 80-100 mouse from a brand manufacturer. The price isn't to be beat and it works very well, after the initial, unexplainable issues.

Alarm Bug in iOS 10.3.3 Clock App?

Hans D. Baumeister — 2017-09-08T09:13:06+02:00

After my alarm on my iPhone 6s didn't go off a second time around, I decided to look into it.

As it turns out, there may be a bug in the way the Clock app handles having the alarm turned off after it goes off. When you hit the "Stop" button when the alarm rings, you're presented - for some bizarre reason - with the control screen of the alarm clock - at least on my iPhone. Here, you can then hit the "On/Off" switch for that alarm time to turn the alarm off. The switch pops back to on immediately, but the alarm is silenced.

I presume this popping back to on happens because the alarm is defined as "every weekday", though I don't know what happens on a Friday...

In any case, the next day the alarm won't sound, even though in the app it is turned on:

Notice anything about this screenshot? The alarm clock symbol in the title bar is missing! Even though the alarm is on!

Turn the alarm off and back on manually, and voila:

The alarm symbol appears and the alarm is going to ring the next time it should!
Has anyone had this issue? Is there a fix?
I've posted this to apple.com discussions here, in case you want to follow up.

Samsung Galaxy 8 Iris Scanner hacked!

Hans D. Baumeister — 2017-05-24T10:46:27+02:00

Samsung just brought out its newest phone, the Galaxy S8, touting the new "iris-unlocking" feature as one of the safest methods of securing a mobile phone.

Quite unfortunately, it is incredibly simple to fool this as "the safest way to lock a phone" method, as the Chaos Computer Club has found out.

Have a look at this video by German Hacker Starbug - it shows how simple circumventing S8 security really is. The solution: don't let anyone steal your S8 after they take a picture of your face!

Three months with Alexa

Hans D. Baumeister — 2017-04-21T12:08:11+02:00

At our annual sales kickoff in January, I was the lucky winner of an Amazon Dot. The Dot is the slimmed-down version of the Echo, and my expectations were high.
I was concerned that the device wouldn't function at all, as I live in Germany, but that concern was completely unnecessary - Alexa takes commands both in English and German!

You really have to define your query or command very clearly, however. Any deviation into dialect or changing the speaking rhythm leaves Alexa clueless.

While you can add new capabilites ("skills") to Alexa, many of these will likely be as forgotten as that odd app you installed on your smartphone but don't use because it is on the 5th app page…

All in all, I'm glad the device was free, as I would have been disappointed by a purchased version. Alexa (and speech command technology) has a long way to go, obviously!

WhatsApp App for iPad - a Warning

Hans D. Baumeister — 2017-02-06T07:45:32+01:00

If you use an iPad with an excellent keyboard as I do, then a strong desire to use WhatsApp on the iPad rather than on the iPhone with its completely unusable on-screen keyboard is a natural result.

Until recently, WhatsApp was only installable on the iPad using various tricks, as the communication software is supposed to be locked to a particular ID (the mobile number). With the advent of WhatsApp software on the Mac (and on Windows) that connects to the mobile phone via a unique 2-D barcode identifier, a mechanism was created to make an online version of WhatsApp possible.

This online version is accessed - from an iPad or any other internet-connected tablet - via https://web.whatsapp.com which makes the well-known interface available in the web browser (likely running on HTML5, but I haven't looked). The connection to the phone is made - just like with the software - via a 2-D barcode.

It works quite well, albeit being a bit slow in scrolling and selecting emoticons (on an iPad Air 2). So far so good. Of course, a thought crosses one's mind once the elation has ebbed back to normal levels: "if they can display all my message contents in a web browser, who says they can't read them, too?". I'll have to research that a bit more, I guess for now I'll have to believe that decryption is done on the iPad… hmm…

So if there is software for Mac (and PC), Facebook could have released an iOS iPad app, right? Off to the app store I went. A Facebook-authored app isn't available, but there are apps that bring WhatsApp to the iPad just the same.

I'm willing to bet that all these apps do is provide an iFrame-like mechanism to "beam" the web.whatsapp.com site into an app and add advertising (and an optional in-app purchase to remove it). Do you need that? No, certainly not. These apps do not add any value on top of what Facebook offers in the original http site. I'm sure the other, available apps work in the same way - they all have the exact same interface as the web app, sometimes with different colors (which you can change via CSS).

No value is added for the user, but there is plenty of additional value for the app developer, of course. Take this app as an example: "iPad Messenger for WhatsApp - Free by Internet Rocks Inc." If you go on the developer website (https://internet-rocks.com/), you will not find a company address ANYWHERE. Not even in the Privacy Policy or the Terms and Conditions. I'm not a lawyer, but I will bet a tenner that this makes these documents quite irrelevant.

Read the section 1.1 of the Privacy Policy on the website. The app collects data. Lots of it. Stuff that you don't want a company to know that doesn't even disclose their whereabouts on the planet. When you download the app they get even more data about you (such as your email address).

And they don't even have to keep your data to themselves! In section 2.2d you read that they may share your data "with third party advertising networks and analytics companies as described below." They do go on to state that no personally identifiable data is passed to ad networks or advertisers. Do you believe that, reading it in a privacy policy that doesn't even disclose the address of the programmer?

Honestly, I'm shocked this app slipped through Apple's quality check!

There is zero need for this app, as anyone with a halfway modern tablet (HTML5-browser) can use the website provided by WhatsApp.

Geotagging Photos - Part 3 - Choosing Mac Software

Hans D. Baumeister — 2017-01-16T15:42:28+01:00

Choosing Software for the Mac

As I've mentioned already, there isn't that much geotagging software available for the Mac. Some of the software is older and doesn't run on current MacOS versions (like El Capitan and Sierra).

Geotagging Photos - Part 2 - Choosing a Tracker

Hans D. Baumeister — 2017-01-16T15:42:04+01:00

Choosing a GPS Tracker

While Windows users have a few more options here, I use a Mac and the available software for geotagging is a different set than what is available for Windows. With the Mac, you're also somewhat restricted by the available drivers - not every tracker manufacturer has drivers for the Mac, while all of them have drivers for Windows (which doesn't mean they work!).

For a while, I considered getting the Holux M-241

Geotagging Photos - Part 1 - Introduction

Hans D. Baumeister — 2017-01-15T14:05:25+01:00

Why Geotagging?
I own two cameras that I am quite happy with: a Canon 60D and a Fujifilm X100T. Both lack a built-in GPS to geotag photos. While some of the pro models from Nikon, Canon, etc. can have GPS receivers attached (usually these are clipped into the flash mount and attached electrically to the camera via a short cable), these tend to be expensive, can only be used with a particular model and - well - need to be clipped into the flash mount. Since no such accessory is available for the 60D, that point is moot anyway.

The way out of the dilemma is to use an external GPS logger. After some (intense!) research, it turns out that the available models has dwindled over the years. Many of these loggers were primarily designed to be bluetooth GPS receivers for navigation app use ("GPS Mouse") with Logging of tracks and waypoints a "might as well add this since it's just software" sort of deal. And since the market for GPS Mouse devices is dying down with every modern Smartphone having a capable GPS receiver built in, the available models that have relevance for Geotagging photos has decreased to just a few.

There are also apps for Smartphones that use the phone's GPS receiver to put together a track for you. This would seem to be the best solution of all - for one thing, you don't have to take along another device (unless you're one of the weird ones that don't take your smartphone wherever you go) - for another, some of these apps work in close unison with PC or Mac-based geotagging software to partially automate your workflow. The dealbreaker (at least for me) is, unfortunately, the achilles heel of all Smartphones: the battery. Constant GPS usage will drain your battery rapidly, so while you might not have to take along a GPS tracker when you use an app, you would have to take along a power brick to charge your phone halfway through your trip.

Geotagging Workflow
What you need for Geotagging post-trip is one or more datasets of GPS locations (and auxiliary data such as elevation) that have time-of-day information associated with the location information (all loggers do this). By knowing the possible offset of your camera's time and the actual GPS time, you can then us a special geotagging software to add the GPS location data that is related to each photo (associated by the timestamp) to the EXIF data in JPG or Raw camera files, or have an XML sidecar file produced (which has the same name as your image file but contains XML data that photo or archiving software can use to get at the geotag information).

There are several key considerations in choosing a GPS logger for geotagging use:

1) Compatibility
First of all, are you going to geotag on a Windows machine, on a Mac on on Linux? This makes a difference, as some of these devices need special drivers to access the track information and these drivers aren't available for all flavors of IT.
Clearly, a device that connects to any PC, Mac or Linux system via USB as a USB drive is going to be highly universal, as you don't need a driver at all and - assuming the software you will use to Geotag can work with it - you can just drag-and-drop the track file

2) Adjusting the camera time
Somehow, you need to either adjust your camera's clock exactly to GPS time or you'll need some mechanism to figure out the delta, which you can use in most geotagging software to get the right geodata into your photos. Yes, a few seconds difference are not going to be much of an issue for most photo shoots (unless you're shooting out of a driving car or a plane, for example), but getting this right from the start keeps issues from popping up in your workflow.

3) How long will the battery last?
While it is enticing to get a logger with a Li-Ion battery (because, after all this is what we use in all of our equipment), you should be aware that the run time of a logger may not be long enough to cover your entire day trip. If you're on vacation and shooting the sights all day, then you may run into a battery problem. The way out, of course, is to have a second (charged!) battery with you, but not all loggers (think "China") use batteries you can get spares of easily. Some have fixed-mounted batteries that can't be swapped out - in this case, you may have to charge mid-travel using a portable power pack.

4) What format is the track file in?
I'm not a GIS expert, but I understand that there are several formats that geolocation data can be stored in. You need to make sure the software you're using to geotag can read (without errors) the file your logger produces. Need to convert that file first? Add more work and potential for error into your workflow!

5) Can you set waypoints?
While geotagging only requires a set of periodic data sets for position/time/elevation to work properly, the track files generated can actually be used for more: you can use the data to upload tours to Google Maps, for example, or if you're an avid mountain biker you can share cool trips with others. If you want to use your track information for more than geotagging images, you will likely wish to be able to set waypoints to highlight that million dollar view of the canyon or a particular fork in the road.

6) Do you need to need to navigate?
You're out in unknown territory, taking incredible pictures. You've got your GPS tracker with you. You get lost. If your GPS tracker doesn't have a display and a "track back" function, you're going to hate yourself for not spending the extra money. If you're only taking pictures out of a tour bus then that functionality is irrelevant.

In the next blog entries, I'll discuss my viewpoint on choosing a GPS tracker as well as choosing geotagging software for the Mac.

Fake free DVD software scam

Hans D. Baumeister — 2016-11-24T16:04:28+01:00

Since Apple has discontinued putting iDVD on Macs, I was looking for an alternative program to produce a DVD from my recently put together movie. Sure, I searched and found - amongst others - this blog entry at a company called iSkysoft. They make (or resell, not sure) various software for Apple and Windows, including video editing and DVD production software ("DVD burners").

In the blog entry, they to through 10 free DVD production programs for the Mac… conveniently putting theirs in first place.
"iSkysoft DVD Creator for Mac (macOS Sierra) provides all the features that all free DVD burning software has and works better with more new features"
So far so good.

As it turns out, though, the software puts a watermark on all DVD output… something you don't learn ANYWHERE (not in the description, not in the software itself) until you actually spend (quite a bit of) time to test it out.

Folks from iSkysoft, this is completely unacceptable! I would venture to say that this is borderline fraud. I feel scammed. If you advertise something as free, then it better work as described - and there is no mention of a watermark anywhere. Its a scam, clear and simple. All I can say is: I guarantee that I will never even consider looking at another product from this con artist company!

Video Editing Experiences

Hans D. Baumeister — 2016-10-23T15:23:01+02:00

OK, sure, I've used iMovie multiple times to put together YouTube videos or add together a few clips with fadeovers to a single movie to share within the family. Nothing complicated, and iMovie is great for that.

This summer, however, I agreed to film three different productions: a children's musical my kids both played in, the leaving-elementary-school musical my daughter played in and a play performed by the local junior acting group during our wine fest. I figured I could produce at least decent quality video with my Canon 60D, though I realized the built-in microphone would never cut the cake.

So I picked up a Røde SVM Pro and did some tests during the final practice session of the children's musical. Even with the excellent Røde mic, you run into some beams when you film using the 60D. For one thing, getting your levels right on the 60D with the regular firmware is really not easy, as you don't see the level meters while filming (why not, Canon - was it really that hard to program???). I did some research on the web and found Magic Lantern, an alternate firmware add-on for the 60D that gives you a lot of info on screen as you film. However, that add-on isn't flashed into the camera, it loads off the SD card every time the camera restarts. Which means once you swap SD cards with one that doesn't have the software on it, and you're SoL.

To make a long story short, I ended up reading a lot of articles and watching a lot of videos on different external recording devices and ended up buying the Tascam ___, which has a lot of nifty features and is made to be used in exactly such a setting. You screw your DSLR on top of the Tascam and it onto your tripod. Connect the Røde into channels 3+4 on the recorder and a stereo cable from the recorder DSLR audio output to the external mic jack on the 60D and you're all set to go.

One issue that even Magic Lantern doesn't fix is the 4GB recording limit on the 60D (or any other DSLR you care to use). Obviously so, as that limit, which gives you around 12 minutes of recording time, doesn't originate from some obscure law that doesn't permit longer recordings than 12 minutes on a DSLR (as some internet accounts will want you to believe) - the issue is that with all current DSLRs going by the DCF standard, the file system used for the 60D SD-Card is FAT32 (or some variant of that)! This damn format as been around since MS-DOS, folks! The problem is simple, of course: a standard Windows system (which, unfortunately, a good percentage of DSLR users are stuck with) can't read any modern file systems other than NTFS (which, in itself, is from the 90's). And FAT32 (or even ExFAT) simply can't deal with a file larger than 4GB.

So now there is an issue: after about 12 minutes, the camera recording just stops. There isn't an option to have it restart with a new file, either (in Magic Lantern, this can be selected). Not only would I have to be quite wary about the current recording to end, but also how would I fill the gaps between one recording and the next? Even if I cought the end of the recording immediately - or stopped it manually to restart, there would be a gap in the video of a couple of seconds. The need for a second camera became obvious. Keep vigilant to catch either the end of the recording time for a segment or stop it at an opportune moment and make sure the second camera was already running to make up for the missing material.

That sounds complicated, but with a bit of practice, it actually isn't that difficult. I ended up running up to three cameras at once: the 60D, my Fujifilm X100T and a (borrowed) Panasonic HD mini-camcorder. That plus the Tascam recording from the Røde Mic. In one recording session (the musical was performed four times), I even plugged into the AV mixer to record the direct wireless headset mikes onto tracks 1&2.

I used a similar setup with the other two events (sans the direct AV mixer input), leaving me with three projects to put together into one contiguous video each. And this is where things got really hard.

The version of iMovie I have on my laptop is the newest one from the App Store. And instead of making things better, Apple apparently really dumbed this software down. I have seen YouTube videos of people showing iMovie 11 doing multiple camera editing… something the current version isn't able to do. Why, Apple??? Oh, I get it - to sell more copies of Final Cut Pro, of course!

I started researching again. There are actually quite a lot of different video editing packages available for Mac computers - from very simple (and relatively inexpensive) products to professional software costing upwards of €800. Final Cut Pro runs €300, so it is actually "reasonable" in comparison. I tried a software called Filmora Video Editor, which permits editing with multiple camera streams and even multiple audio streams. Unfortunately, this software failed for me as it doesn't how the waveform in the audio streams (required to sync up audio and video), and because - for some reason - it produced runaway audio with the audio track (i.e. audio that runs just a fraction of a percent faster than the video and subsequently gets out of sync more and more… sorry, there is probably a pro term for this, but I don't know it).

I checked into some other editors, all in the 20-100€ range, but none cut the cake. Most of them didn't permit multiple camera streams to be added and switched between.

Next, I downloaded the trial version of Final Cut Pro - I was getting desperate. Multi-camera editing is possible in FCP - along with adding separate audio tracks - something which, of course, is quite common in the Video Maker space out there. After seeing this enlightening video, it seemed that FCP would be the ideal solution, as it even syncs up the different streams by the audio content (along with your audio content). Unfortunately, FCP is quite complex (even though I'm sure Apple has done everything to make it as simple to use as possible) and I wasn't able to get the syncing to work. And then, there is the price, of course.

I'd discovered - again via a YouTube video I'd come across by searching for multicam editing - ScreenFlow previously, but hadn't tested it yet. After the first fail in FCP, I decided to give it a shot, even though it seemed more a software to produce screen cam movies. Talk about being pleasantly surprised! I'll report on my success (or failure) with this software soon.

Twitter Video Autoplay

Hans D. Baumeister — 2016-09-16T10:33:19+02:00

Not so long ago, my Twitter feed started to look like a souped-up version of the newspaper in Harry Potter films: going through the feed would show a video running in a tweet. Seeing as in Harry Potter's world - with all the magic in it - they're only able to do this in black and white, I would say we're a step ahead here.

These video feeds will load by default via Wifi AND mobile networks, which you might not appreciate, depending on how much monthly data volume is available on your plan. I stumbled across this blog entry, unfortunately the location of the setting has changed since January of this year!

To change the setting to Wifi-only, you have to do some digging. To save you some time, here is where you can find the settings in the *current* version of the iOS Twitter app:

Go to the "Me" tab to see your profile.
Next, click on the gear icon at the top middle, this will take you to a menu.
Select "Settings" from that menu
You'll be confronted with another menu, here you want to tap on General -> Data
in this section, you'll find Video autoplay, which will be set to "Use mobile data and Wi-Fi"
tap that and select "Use Wi-Fi only"

talk about a well-hidden option! Almost makes you think Twitter hid this so well on purpose…

Phishing mails getting more clever

Hans D. Baumeister — 2016-07-01T15:12:36+02:00

This is the second time I've received an email like this, and I wanted to point out a few things before people get caught by this rather clever phishing attempt:

As you can see, this email contains no linked images, which is completely unusual for Amazon but probably done to avoid being classified as Spam.
The URL that pops up when you hover over the button also looks legit at first… it is an email in German and it seems to point to a German amazon URL.

But of course it doesn't. What gives it away, of course, is the fact that there is a hyphen after the "www.amazon.de" with some further "legitimizing" text, after that comes some more mumbo-jumbo that has nothing to do with a server. When we look at line 4 of the URL, we see "ru/?". on the line above, right before the "ru" is a period. That is the country part of the URL. If we go back a bit to the previous period, that is the actual server name. Here: "hsdj…4735fdjshfdsas3234". Forgive me for smudging out a bit - that is to prevent anyone from keying in the URL to see what happens and my email being registered as "alive".
Everything before the server name is irrelevant information that is likely thrown away by the recipient http server process. What is relevant is the "/?id=…" bit, which identifies my email address in their database.

What tipped me off, too, is that I don't have an amazon.de account with the email address this was sent to.

However, I'm sure plenty of people will "bite" onto this phishing attempt.
Even with more legit looking emails, it always pays to look at the URL that clicking on something will activate just to make sure it doesn't go to some Russian server…!

—

Update: Amazon.de replied to my tweet about this topic and sent this link to further information on how to identify legitimate Amazon emails.

Bye, bye Evernote!

Hans D. Baumeister — 2016-06-30T08:40:04+02:00

I've been an Evernote user for years - in fact, my earliest notes are from 2009!
And I've been quite a fan of the application / service even though the GUI hasn't become any easier to use in the last years and note taking with bullets still breaks…

The drive to get users to move to the paid version of the service has been getting more and more annoying recently. To make this quite clear: I have no issues in paying for a service if I find the for-charge version gives me added value. With Evernote, I don't have that added value. I'd also pay something for the current level of service I have (which is sufficient), but not the full amount of the premium service (60$ per year). Evernote does offer a "Plus" level for 30$ per year, but honestly: I haven't figured out what advantage that brings me over the basic level.

Today, I read an email from Evernote that states that the basic level will be reduced to two devices synching with the cloud data. Now I understand who the "Plus" level is intended for: just about anyone. Because who doesn't have more than 2 devices to sync to? Well, ok, there probably are people like that. I sync to both my MacBooks, to my iPhone and to two iPads.

So instead of adding really cool features (like proper bullet list functionality or predictive search) to get people to subscribe to a paid account, Evernote is doing - in my opinion - the worst thing to users: they are reducing functionality for no-charge users.

This is politics I'm not willing to subscribe to. So I'm doing what I should have done long ago: I'm using the excellent Import from Evernote functionality of my DevonThink Pro. This, I can sync without the need for a potentially unsafe cloud service both to my other MacBook as well as my iDevices.

Sorry, Evernote, I'm afraid you've lost a long-time user and potential customer!
Bye bye!

AR, Hololens and the Future

Hans D. Baumeister — 2016-04-01T11:04:52+02:00

Just a few days ago, I watched a fascinating TED Talk about Microsoft's Hololens.
Sure, the device is huge and the real number crunching likely happens on an 8-core Windows PC connected via some sort of wireless connection.

This excellent blog entry brought me back down to earth.

iOS 8 - How to (potentially) fix a slow device

Hans D. Baumeister — 2014-10-14T14:23:24+02:00

One of the main issues I had when updating my iPad 3 to iOS 8 was a drastic issue with responsiveness. Especially Safari started to become extremely slow, but also switching between apps would keep me counting seconds between bursts of activity.

Surely, iOS 8 couldn’t be that bad of an operating system? Also, an iPad 3 isn’t the slowest of devices, so what gives?

I started researching the topic and came across a post on Apple’s own support board (i.e. where you write your issues into a “case” and other users respond). Apparently, folks had the same issue when upgrading from iOS 6 to 7 on iPads.

The key when experiencing performance issues right after doing an iOS Upgrade is to reset all settings to default. This includes data like WIFI passwords, etc. This may not sound very logical - we’re talking about various login data here, right? But apparently, there are settings from the previous iOS version that play serious havoc with the new version.

I tried it and - lo and behold: my iPad is, once again, as fluid to use as it was under iOS 7!!! Yeah!

Personally, I don’t think doing OS upgrades is a good idea in general - usually, I re-install the device from scratch when a major release comes around. This involves a lot of re-installation of apps and accounts, which makes the idea of a simple upgrade enticing. However, I’m going to stick to my story: when iOS 9 rolls around, I’ll reinstall, not upgrade.

If your iPad or iPhone is having performance issues, give this a try.
Open the Settings app and go to:

General --> Reset --> Reset All Settings

iOS 8 - Not really an improvement, part 1

Hans D. Baumeister — 2014-10-09T12:20:13+02:00

Okay, I’ve had some time to play with iOS 8, and unfortunately, I’m not as thrilled as I’d hoped to be.
My iPad (2nd generation) is still seemingly “getting” stuck periodically, especially when using Safari (horrible experience).

I’ll nag about a couple of real annoyances in this and follow-up posts.

One major annoyance is this message, which already tortured me in iOS 7:

This pops up whenever you start or switch to the Podcasts app when Airplane Mode is turned on. This is quite frequently for me, as I tend to listen to podcasts in bed (where I prefer to turn airplane mode on so as not to be bothered with frequent beeps or vibrations when emails come in over night) or on... you guessed it: an airplane!

Okay, I can understand that you’d want to let your user know that, you won’t be able to download podcasts unless you turn off airplane mode or at least turn on Wifi. Once. Users learn... there is ABSOLUTELY NO NEED to keep reminding me, every time I use the damn app! Whatever happened to usability, Apple?

I’d really been hopeful that someone at Apple would find this constant nagging annoying enough to get it done right in iOS 8. Unfortunately, not so. In fact, should you not have understood that the app isn’t able to download podcasts without a data connection of some sort (duh!), iOS 8 now presents you with this bit of intelligencia:

It will hit you with this AFTER it shows you the previous message. Sometimes, I get the feeling that the product manager responsible for the Podcasts App (is there one?) is getting paid off by other companies that make podcast players... not to mention any names, of course!

Apple, I don’t want to use my cellular data plan to download podcasts... I don’t have a flatrate as your programmers apparently do!

I’d really like to get this message through to Apple somehow: in the next update of the Podcasts app, PLEASE make these idiotic messages go away after the first time I’ve seen them!

I’m not the only one with this issue, as this thread on discussions.apple.com shows...

iOS 8 - The seeds of doom

Hans D. Baumeister — 2014-09-28T10:37:56+02:00

Since my move to an Android phone over a year ago, I’ve learned to dislike many of the functionalities of iOS, especially on the tiny screen of an iPhone 4 (the main reason I switched).

While the move from iOS 6 to 7 turned into a real disaster on the iPhone 4, it ran fine on the iPhone 5s I was issued by my employer this month. However, Apple still lagged behind the usability of the Android keyboard by a long shot. Predictive typing without being too pushy is a real boon in productivity on an Android device... the algorithm is language agnostic (at least in switching between English and German), even mixed language content in the same sentence isn’t an issue.

On iOS 7, Apple is still turning words around for you in its typical pushy way (which is the reason I had it turned off), so I was excited to hear about the new predictive keyboard in iOS 8. Sure, I switched over both the 5s and my iPad 2.

The keyboard is still “pushy”... I have yet to figure out how to prevent it from changing a word that I’ve spelled correctly into something completely different. Language agnostic? Nope. Again, iOS lags behind Android in technological prowess. Add Bendgate to that and you have a company that is rolling down Olymp into Hades on greased rollerskates.

Worse than the keyboard disappointment is the performance of my iPad. While this took a serious dip going from iOS 6 to 7, it’s now partially unusable! The TED.com App doesn’t work anymore... you get a black image instead of video (including all the buttons). The browser freezes frequently, not reacting to anything save being closed down. In general, performance is sluggish at best. If an app isn’t slowed down to a crawl, it crashes instead. iOS 6 was a very stable OS, rarely did I have an issue at all. Apps crashing is a daily occurrence now, partially in mid-sentence of writing an email, for example. And yes, I have 8.02 on there with all apps updated.

So where is Apple going? Issues with security, Bendgate, an iOS release disaster that left many iPhone 6 users in a state of close-to-unusable. If heads don’t start rolling at Apple, then I’m willing to predict the second decline of Apple. Woz, I think it may be your turn!

Phishing in the name of Apple

Hans D. Baumeister — 2014-09-12T08:17:27+02:00

I never thought it would happen - but it happened: a Phishing email “got” me.

I was reading emails on my iPad when I found the following message:

And you know what? They got me! I was sitting in the living room with a couple other people, talking about this and that and checking my emails while doing it. Failing grade for social competence there, and yes, I should have separated reading emails and talking into two separate actions... but - lets face it - the situation isn’t anything unusual, probably worldwide.

If I’d been concentrating on just one thing at a time, I would have noticed the odd structuring of text, I would have realized that it just plain isn’t possible to buy an album using my account on a device that isn’t registered, etc. etc. etc.

But I didn’t.

I panicked and clicked on the link. Here is what the real link - behind the fake one - points to:

Mind you, the screenshot above is done on my Mac... you can just hover the mouse over the suppled URL in an Email message and up pops the real URL that is hidden behind it. You can’t do that on an iPad! Why? Beats me!

It is beyond me that modern email clients (and I put all of them in the same bag, folks) don’t do a comparison check on included URL’s before showing a message. The only way to hide a bad URL behind a seemingly good one is to encode the entire email in HTML; checking for inconsistencies isn’t difficult.

Especially on an iPad, just flagging an email with mismatched URL’s would be helpful - in fact, I see this as an absolute MUST-HAVE function (Apple, are you listening?).

What is “kostexecutivesurabaya.com”? It is a Malay website that states “If you have any business purpose, visiting relatives, holiday or have important business in the area of Surabaya and require Kost / temporary shelter, KostExecutiveSurabaya.com is the solution.” (thanks, Google Translate!).

The URL is registered to a company called “mediatechindonesia” in Jawa Timur, Indonesia. Wether it’s been hacked or not is tough to tell; I’m not going to waste my time getting in contact with the admin-c.

Interesting is the modus operandi. Instead of adding a unique key to the hidden URL (which would associate with my email-address, giving the phisher a heads-up on its status), it leads to a form page made up to look just like one from Apple. The issue has been registered, apparently, because any attempt to call up the URL again leads to a forgery warning:

When I hit “ignore”, I get to an empty directory, so whatever the issue with the server was, it’s been taken care of.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take screenshots of the pages that were up, because they were shockingly well done - likely original HTML code from Apple’s website copied and used to make the Phish as believable as possible.

The first page asked you to enter your Apple credentials (Apple ID and password). This was followed by a form asking you to validate your payment information. This is where the fog in my brain was finally dispersed.

I immediately went to change my password for my Apple ID... you have to be VERY quick with this - if the Phisher is quicker, then you’ve lost your Apple ID to them. By the time you get it blocked, they’ve purchased all the musik, books and videos they need to entertain themselves for the next three years straight.

And here, I have to loudly criticize Apple: put yourself in my situation - you’re panicked. Your frantically trying to change your password. Go ahead, do the test. Put yourself in frantic mode, log onto the iTunes store and try to figure out how to change your password. Quick! Hurry! Too late...

Honestly, with the recent issues Apple had with iCloud - wether they are Apple problems or not - I would think security topics such as easy access to password changes or even to setting up two-factor authentication would be at the forefront of Apple management’s todo list.

Instead, even though I claim not to be an IT noob, I was unable to activate two-factor authentication without searching the web for instructions! And get this - you go to turn it on and... you have to wait three days! WTF, Apple? If I’m able to activate anything in my account, I already HAVE THE APPLE ID AND PASSWORD. Duh!!! Do you really think a three-day waiting period is going to make things more secure? I feel like I’ve applied for a divorce and the government is forcing me to think about my decision before concurring!

Steve, you went from us way too early!

Wherefort art thou Floppy?

Hans D. Baumeister — 2014-07-31T07:05:08+02:00

“A rose is a rose by any other name” - well-known words, but in this case, a floppy drive was a floppy drive. Period.

Here is how my morning started. I checked an online discounter for some laptops they have on sale, as friends of ours are looking for one. The online shop is well made, you get the basic model and a bunch of dropdowns to add options to it.

Then it happened. I stumbled across this one:

In case you can’t read German... the thing on the second line is an “external USB Floppy drive”. You can choose between a USB card reader and (drumroll, please)... a Floppy drive? Wait. Didn’t those go out in 1995? After all, even a single digital photo from a supermarket cheapo digital camera won’t fit in the 1.44MB a 3.5” Floppy offers...

So I checked Amazon, and lo and behold, the German Amazon store offers several models! Internal, external, your choice. And they are cheap: an external, USB Floppy drive will set you back €12 - that’s cheaper then the cost of an internal one in 1990!

And yes, the US Amazon site also offers these relics. You can buy the disks for them as well, of course, from well-known, trusted brands of the 80’s like Imation and Verbatim! Mind, these run anywhere from 6-10€ a 10-pack. Which makes it the MOST EXPENSIVE storage medium out there at cost per Gigabyte (I came up with €715 per Gigabyte...).

Folks, if you have a real-life application for one of these Drives that convinces me, I’ll go buy one. Might be worth it just to show the kids what storage looks like that would make my iPad cost a whopping €23.000, if we didn’t have flash memory!

The Floppy is dead... LONG LIVE THE FLOPPY!

Wifi gone on MacBook Pro

Hans D. Baumeister — 2014-07-28T12:35:01+02:00

Some weeks ago, and out of the blue, my 2008 MacBook Pro showed a strange icon in place of the usual Wifi one and - by clicking on it - was ominously reporting “Wi-Fi: no hardware installed”. Something broke.

As I was on the road at the time, I went to a local electronics store and picked up a Wifi USB dongle. While that actually works better than I expected, it does block one of the two USB ports, requires a separate piece of software to operate and gets excessively hot (heat = battery use).

I checked out this iFixit guide to see if - by chance - the cable might have disconnected from the Airport card... but no luck. So I ordered a replacement Airport card for the laptop (setting me back €30) and used the same iFixit guide to attempt the repair. There aren’t any relevant differences between the 2008 and 2009 MacBook Pros (except for the removable battery in mine), so the guide works fine.

The guide is really quite good, though there are small issues when putting the unit back together that I would like to have seen in the guide instead of making mistakes and (luckily) finally figuring it out on my own. Such as positioning of the Airport connector cable when putting the clutch cover back on.

After getting the unit back together, I fired it up; it had saved a previous session in a hibernation file (because the battery ran out), and - of course - no new Wifi hardware was found. Not an issue, I figured - after all, the running OS had been “alive” before I replaced the card. I rebooted.

The reboot didn’t help - the hardware continued claimed “uninstalled” by the system.

I reset the NVRAM. No Wifi.
I tried trashing the NetworkInterfaces.plist, which I found here - no Wifi.
I reset the SMC. Nada.

Checking the Network -> Wifi section in the System Information app clearly shows that hardware wasn’t found, only the Wifi software. On my work MacBook Pro, there is a section under “Software Version” called “Interfaces” that lists the Airport Extreme card - there is no such section on my private laptop.

It looks like the Airport card wasn’t at fault after all. Shame that. The “operation” was pretty difficult; not something I’d really want to repeat. The biggest question now is: is this a cable break issue or is there something broken on the mainboard?

I’m not sure if it is really worth the trouble... after all, I can use Wifi with that USB dongle - annoying as that is. If it is just the cable, that would be easy to replace; I haven’t found one yet on ebay, though.

We’ll see.

Review of LastPass

Hans D. Baumeister — 2014-06-27T10:40:32+02:00

If you’re looking for password management, please read my review of LastPass, which I can recommend without restrictions.

I’d been using the same - albeit complex - password for nearly all the internet (and intranet) sites I use... with more and more news about cracked servers coming in on a daily basis, I finally decided to do something about the situation.

I researched several sites that reviewed password managers and finally ended up with LastPass, as it fulfills several requirements I have:

usability on Mac at least on par with Windows
usable on iOS
usable on Android
auto-fill capability
multi-level authentication for security

LastPass ended up covering all of these requirements with bravado. It will auto-fill most webpages you call up automatically; some, it struggles with (strangely enough: my m0n0wall firewall in my local LAN is a candidate), but this is rarely the case.

Also quite nice is the recent addition of autofill on mobile devices, which makes working with passwords a snap for most apps / websites.

When I first signed up (the service costs $12/year, apps are free for all platforms), the safest method for multi-level authentication was a grid (unique to each user) you printed out. To authenticate, LastPass would give you five letter/number combinations which - when followed up on the grid - would generate five alphanumeric characters as an authentication code.

Recently, they have moved to using Google Authenticator, which reminds me of the RSA SecurID Token used to sign into VPNs. It works like a charm.

To further increase security, you can severely restrict the locale of the IP addresses that can be used to log in. I.e. if you know you’re never going to be in China, you can just close down all Chinese IP addresses as log-in sources. Sure, a Chinese hacker can VPN to an IP address based in Germany, for example, but the mechanism helps.
As the name implies, you do have to give your LastPass account one “last” password that you can easily remember but qualifies for a “safe” password. I.e.: don’t use your cat’s name here, because if someone figures it out, they have access to all of your passwords!

On first installation, LastPass offers to import all passwords from your browser(s). Since I used the browser auto-entry feature extensively, I let LastPass do this. After the fact, I’m not sure if this is a sensible step if you’re using the same password over and over, because you really don’t have much added value. On the other hand, you get a huge list of entries, some of which had up to 10 duplicates in my case, because browsers just don’t do the database thing very well.

LastPass will generate passwords for you; in fact, if you sign up to some service on the internet, LastPass consistently adds a small icon to the right of the fields where you are to enter and confirm the password to be used. I find this quite fascinating, since these fields have all sorts of different labels, etc., but perhaps there is a standard marking used in HTML to designate an entry field for the password.
In any case, if you click on this icon, LastPass will pop up a small window where you can not only generate a random password, but also change the parameters to be used, such as length, wether to make the password pronounceable or wether it can use special characters or not.
Especially the length and special characters settings can be quite important, as there are still services out there that restrict you to, say, 8 letters and/or numbers.

Once you have generated a password for the new service, LastPass offers to save the site (which is something you obviously want to do). You can name the site as you like and also select it as a favorite (which will make it come up at the top of the list in the LastPass panel), as well as assigning a category (such as “Online Shopping”). The categories can be typed in (for new ones) or selected from a dropdown list. They are optional, but very handy.

Perhaps odd at first is the fact that there is no LastPass App for Windows or Mac - you use it from a browser (all relevant browsers are supported). The mobile operating systems do have Apps to make the use simpler on these devices. On the mobile app, you can search for a site, for example (by any of its metadata) and chose “copy password do clipboard” if you need to manually paste it into a service. While you can search for sites in the browser-based “App”, to copy a password you have to open the entry, reveal the password and copy it to the clipboard manually - a bit cumbersome, but you get used to it.

The experience with Apple Safari on the Mac wasn’t so good, but because this is true not just for LastPass, I’ve switched to Firefox a couple of weeks ago. In Firefox, I sometimes have an issue where the Vault (as the database is called in LastPass) doesn’t come up when I click on the LastPass icon in the browser’s menu bar. Restarting Firefox fixes this; I’m not sure if it is a Firefox or a LastPass issue. As I don’t use Chrome much, I can’t say anything about stability, other than it works fine when I test it.

In order to get all your passwords to sync to all your devices (which is absolutely fabulous!), you will need a LastPass account. This also means that your passwords are synced to the LastPass server farm (albeit encrypted). Wether or not this is an issue for you is your decision; I think two concepts are relevant to make it:

1. Nothing on the internet is safe. If you want safe, go back to writing letters on paper and posting them. Oh, and hope no one opens the envelope that isn’t supposed to read the content...

2. I’m quite sure that lastpass.com is one of THE target sites for hackers. Imagine getting your hands on a couple of thousand user records... up to date and as far as I know, no breach has been reported...

You can use LastPass as a local-only installation - in which case your data never leaves your PC (or Mac). This version is also completely free-of-charge! So there is no reason not to test the software. If you only use a single PC or Mac, then this is all you need.

Check LastPass out here.

Beware of Facebook Phishing

Hans D. Baumeister — 2014-05-18T20:36:01+02:00

All,

a quick word of warning, as there is a new batch of Facebook-lookalike phishing mails being sent out:

This is an attempt to - at the very least - verify your email address (in this case, it wasn’t the email address I use for my facebook account), possibly with additional attempts to gain details about your. I didn’t click on the button, so I couldn’t tell you what popped up... ;-)

Oddly enough, the sender didn’t try to mask the sending address; it came from directix@info.gamanetwork.com. Or perhaps it _was_ masked, though in that case I would have expected a service@facebook.com or similar...

Whenever you get an email with buttons like these - even if it really REALLY looks like it is from a legitimate source, always - ALWAYS - hover with your mouse over the button. Your mail software should show you the URL that button will call when clicked (if not, time to switch to something proper).

Bizarre phenomenon with flatbed scanner

Hans D. Baumeister — 2014-04-18T15:02:20+02:00

This is really weird. I wanted to scan a picture my daughter had made. Not a problem, after all, I have my trusty old Epson Perfection 1640SU that works perfectly with Apple Image Capture (without loading a driver, mind you). I’ve been using it to scan in old photos and - since I have a lightbox for it - old negatives.

The image quality off this device is absolutely sufficient for what I’m trying to do, and the images made are very clear and clean.

Up to now.

I scanned the picture in full color and looked at the result on the screen. Weird. Bluish lines coming from the drawing. Maybe the scanner wasn’t warmed up properly, though I don’t understand why this would be the outcome from a cold lamp... usually, you get a magenta tint to the entire scan if that is the case.

So I scanned it again. Same effect.
I scanned the white background of the inside cover, to make sure something wasn’t coming through.
Nothing. A plain white JPG.

Okaaaay... so I physically turned the picture by 180° and scanned again. If it was something coming from the paper, it should produce the identical result, just turned by 180° is the JPG. While the effect was there again, the fuzzy blue lines looked different:

What you see on the left is Image Capture with the scanned image of the butterfly looking left. To the right of that is Preview with the previous scan (where the butterfly looked right) but turned 180° to make the two point in the same direction.

You can see that the odd blue lines are similar, but certainly different, between the two scans. So my first guess, that perhaps the scanner is picking up something in ultraviolet that the human eye can’t see, such as finger grease, doesn’t seem to be the case here.

I’m really confused as to what this could be... perhaps there is a static buildup within the CCD due to the high contrast between color and white that is discharging somewhere else and causing the scanner to pick up a bit that isn’t on the paper? I haven’t the faintest idea.

Anyone?

Post on Mashable? Only for your firstborn...

Hans D. Baumeister — 2014-02-26T10:23:46+01:00

Yikes; all I wanted to do is leave a comment on this Mashable article. That you have to sign in is understandable - who wants to read the opinion of an anonymous reader, after all.

But seriously, Mashable, do you really feel it is appropriate to ask for so much just for signing in via Twitter, Facebook or Google+?

For a Facebook signin, Mashable will receive your public profile and your friend list. No thanks.

Really cool is what happens when you sign in with Twitter:

Wow- “see who you follow and follow new people”? “Post Tweets for you”???? Are you completely off your rocker? I call that pirating my Twitter account, I don’t know what you would call it!

At least with google+, I was able to reduce the circles Mashable may see to a bare minimum, so I went with that.

The audacity some of these sites bring to the table really gets my goat, folks!

Mavericks Update 10.9.2 and Mail crashes

Hans D. Baumeister — 2014-02-26T10:13:54+01:00

Wow, Apple’s first real security issue (the SSL GotoFail bug) and everyone jumps on the bandwagon to flog the company on not responding quickly enough.

Of course, I immediately updated both my systems with 10.9.2, which also includes some updates to Facetime, Mail, etc.

I had high hopes that my repetitive Mail crashes would be over after the update, but alas - Mail just crashed again. I guess it’s time to switch to Thunderbird...

FreeNAS Part 1 - bootable USB Stick

Hans D. Baumeister — 2014-02-24T12:41:09+01:00

As time goes on, storage needs grow.

My RAID-1 IcyBox with 3GB was filling up fast, with less than half a TB left. NAS storage was maxed out (okay, its an older Synology 207+ with 2x 1TB, so nothing to brag about). Something bigger needed to be put together.

As I’m also using a single-drive Synology NAS (DS110J) for Email storage, SMTP and Surveillance Station, I know what Synology’s current NAS OS 4.3 can do (and can’t) - really, it is quite good, even though it has some issues with Jave and uses Flash (of all things) in its GUI.

Needless to say, I find the cost of a four-drive Synology NAS (or any other reputable manufacturer, for that matter) almost prohibitive, considering what you’re getting. By chance, I happened across several blog posts describing FreeNAS being implemented on an HP ProLiant Microserver. Surprisingly, you can get the current model (N54L) of that server for under 200€ on Amazon!

Since I’d done tests with FreeNAS, OpenMediaVault and NAS4Free in respective VM’s, I’d come to the conclusion that FreeNAS would be the way to go for my needs. It is based on FreeBSD and offers extremely simple boot from a USB stick image.

In this first part of a series of blog entries on FreeNAS, I’ll detail my first experiences with getting the software to boot from a USB stick.

1. Installation on bootable USB stick

Getting that image onto a stick and getting it to boot proved to be trickier than I expected. Reading several posts on the subject, the procedure that ended up working was as follows:

1) Extract run-time image from installation package

Download the IMG file for the installation package from here (make sure you choose the “Current Stable Release” on the right side).

There is an IMG inside the IMG used for a stick-based (or CD-based) installation that is the actual run-time image of FreeNAS. I.e.: open the IMG used for installation (which on a Mac is very easy) and copy the file FreeNAS-x64.img.xz to someplace where you’ll find it easily (i.e. the Desktop). The XZ format is a compression type used, for example, by

Then, pop the USB stick you want to install on (at least 2GB in size) into a port and open Terminal. First, you need to find out which disk device connects to the USB stick:

diskutil list

this should list the USB stick in a format similar to this (this is from my system, your device will be different).

/dev/disk3
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Untitled *4.1 GB disk3

Next, you’ll want to unmount the stick (don’t eject it!) using the Terminal so that it becomes overwriteable:

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk3

Again, your device name may be different.

Lastly, you’ll write the runtime image onto the stick using the dd command:

sudo dd if=path_to_img of=/dev/disk3 bs=64k

Getting the path to the IMG file right is really simple on the Mac: just type in “sudo dd if=“ and then drag and drop the IMG file onto the Terminal window; Terminal will enter the path correctly. The bs qualifier indicates the blocksize to use for the copy. You’ll have to enter the password of an administrator account to run the command.

Copying everything over will take quite awhile; we’re talking over 220 MB after all (and the usual slowness of a USB stick in writing), so don’t be discouraged if, after an hour, the command still hasn’t finished.

Now you can pull the USB stick and pop it into the ProLiant’s internal USB port (on the N54L it is at the bottom left when you open the drive bay door).

iBeacon vs. NFC

Hans D. Baumeister — 2014-01-27T09:39:38+01:00

This article by MotleyFool irked me. In it, two Fool guys are discussing the end of NFC, because Apple introduced iBeacon last year. Yikes, guys: you might be good at analyzing stocks, but apparently you don’t understand the technology and its uses quite that well.

To NFC or not to NFC, that is the question
First off, though, let me debunk a comment made by Rex Moore in the video linked to the article: “They actually used NFC in our badges this year, and it took a while -- like 5-10 seconds -- before you could get through the line”. This is how rumors are started.

I doubt that the tag used in the CES badges would qualify as an NFC tag, as this technology is quite specific. NFC stands for “Near Field Communication” and communication tends to imply that there isn’t just a monolog going on.

NFC was actually designed to get devices to talk to each other by getting them either very close or even touching them (initiating the bilateral communication by triggering the _ sensor in each device). NFC involves a somewhat complex protocol, which means that the circuitry that is used has to do a bit of work in formatting the communication. While there are unpowered NFC tags around, these, too, rely on very close proximity for activation, as they get the power for their chip from the device wishing to communicate with them (via induction).

For conference tags, I would generally assume that the much cheaper RFID standard is used. This, too, uses unpowered tags with a (much simpler) chip inside that are activated by inducing a current in the tag. Reading out an RFID tag takes less than a second; depending on the technology used (primarily the reader), you can read dozens of tags per second. In fact, RFID is used to identify items packed into crates that go into storage - by simply driving the crate through a high-power reader gate with a forklift.

If, as reported by Mr. Moore, getting past the conference entry gate took 5-10 seconds, then the problem isn’t reading out the tag but more likely an overloaded backend system that matches the information read from the tag with a database of valid badge ID’s.

NFC vs. iBeacon
In positioning iBeacon as a technology that will supplant NFC just shows how little understanding the two gentlemen from MotleyFool have of the positioning of each technology.

NFC’s primary reason-to-be is “willful” engagement of a transaction. I.e.: if you’re not bumping your NFC-enabled phone with the antennae pad of a vending machine, you’re not finishing the purchasing transaction of that bottle of water.

Technologies such as iBeacon, on the other hand, broadcast to and communicate with your device without your knowledge or even consent (though at least currently you have to install and activate an app to use it, which is consent in a way).

Yes, you could set up an iBeacon to transmit - to stay with Mr. Bleeker’s example - a “no chatting” instruction to an iPad used in the classroom. Unless students submit to device control software to be installed, however, that will hardly work. Also, since Bluetooth (the technology behind iBeacon) isn’t a line-of-sight transmission, it would also disable chat on any iPads used in the hallway in the vicinity of the iBeacon device in the classroom.

Personally, I believe using iBeacon to broadcast offers and special deals in stores (I wrote a business plan for such a scenario back in 2001!), or to use it for room-to-room services in hotels or even at home is a likely scenario. If NFC dies, it certainly won’t be because of technologies like iBeacon though.

------

Here is the comment I put on the MotleyFool site verbatim:

Comparing iBeacon and NFC as technologies that are very similar and suggesting that NFC will likely fail due to iBeacon shows you haven't understood the concepts behind the technologies that well.

To put it in just a few words: NFC implies a willful commitment to transact. That bottle of water won't be yours if you don't tap the vending machine's antennae pad with your phone. iBeacon (Nomen est Omen) is a technology to interact with your phone (or other device) without your consent, as long as you "opt in" by installing and enabling the required software.

These are two technologies are not competitors in any sense. If NFC fails, it will do so because the market doesn't want or need it, not because it is supplanted by iBeacon.

Oh, and the 5-10 seconds it took to get into CES wasn't because of a shortcoming of NFC, since the tags are RFID tags. These can be read out in a fraction of a second; the 5-10 seconds delay probably were due to an overloaded backend system trying to match the badge id to a database.

Samsung Kies - Just not Apple Quality!

Hans D. Baumeister — 2014-01-23T10:05:35+01:00

The connectivity software Samsung supplies (“Kies” - who thought of that name??? In German it means either “Pebbles” or “Money”) looks quite nice from the GUI but turned out to be a complete disaster.
There are two Mac versions you can download from the website: if you go to the direct download on the support site, you’ll get a version 3.0.1.14012_5 which shows a copyright of 2012 in the loading splash window and a copyright of 2011 in the “About” window. I hope product management does a better job with the hardware than with the software.
After several tries and finally doing a Tools -> Reinstall Driver (whatever that is supposed to do), I got the phone to connect. Connection is flakey - sometimes it doesn’t see the phone even though the phone itself shows that it is connected via USB, then you unplug and plug back in and it connects to the software. Weird.
The first thing I wanted to do is back up the phone, something the software seems to make extremely simple (just select “Backup all” and click on “Backup” and off it goes), unfortunately it just didn’t do anything.
You get a spinning symbol on the first item to be backed up, but no data transfers; not even after waiting for a good 15 minutes. The software isn’t hung up, however, as it is possible to cancel the backup, after which the software informs you that everything backed up (it didn’t). Deselecting the first item that is backed up (which isn’t the first item in the list, mind you) doesn’t change anything - the same issue crops up with the next item in the list.
Trying to select a Podcast then ended up crashing my Mac in a manner that was so fierce, the poor GPU didn’t even have time to clear the screen: the restart information got written over the display! The system forced an fsck and found a load of orphaned files and directories, which really made me nervous. Also, my desktop picture was changed to the Mavericks standard...! Crazy!
I tried the Podcast subscription again and the system stayed stable; Kies, however, didn’t do squat with the Podcast - the subscription wasn’t registered. Crap!
If you look in the download - files section of the website, you are presented with a version 2.x of the software, and a clear statement that the software is only available for MacOS 10.5 - 10.7! I send an email to Samsung support in Germany, asking wether this was a negligence on part of the web admin or if the software really wasn’t made for any Mac OS junger than two years old.
I quote from Samsung’s reply:
Derzeitig wird Kies, wie angegeben, nur für Mac OS 10.5 bis 10.7 unterstützt. Leider liegen uns keine Informationen über ein geplantes Update vor.
Translated, this means that the software really is only compatible with 10.5 to 10.7 and there apparently are no plans to update the software to run on current Macs!
So I fired up Windows 7 in a VM and installed the Windows version of Kies. It’s a workaround I can live with, since I would only use the software to back up the phone and update it to a new version of Android.
Unfortunately, the freshly downloaded Windows version of the software seems to be similar crap to the Mac version: while the download actually did start moving some data across the USB cable (veeeery slowly, mind), it stopped at the third item with the same effect as on the Mac: it just kept the rotating symbol on that item and would probably still be there now, hadn’t I stopped the software after about an hour.

Interesting is also, that after stopping, the software correctly indicates that finishing the sync was interrupted; incorrect is the statement that the data was successfully stored (“erfolgreich gesichert”).

Samsung Galaxy S4 Active - First Impressions

Hans D. Baumeister — 2014-01-23T09:36:51+01:00

Since updating my company iPhone 4 to iOS 7, the thing has basically become unusable. Since even the new iPhones sport a screen size that isn’t of much use to me, I finally decided to go for a 5” Android phone.
My first experiences with Android were - with the exception of the greatly underdimensioned Xperia Pro hardware - quite good, after all, so I wasn’t afraid of the switch.
After getting my contacts (that I had moved back to iCloud after switching back to the iPhone) moved to Gmail, I was good to go.
A colleague has a predecessor of the Note 3 and is very happy with it, so I was swaying in that direction, but when I saw that there was an “Active” version of the S4 with a slightly “smaller” screen, that seemed the ideal solution.
The Active has the same internals as the regular S4 but with an LCD screen instead of an AMOLED, as the latter is often too dim for use in bright sunlight. Also, the Active is rated IP67, which means you can actually take pictures under water (down to 3 feet). It also has a metal frame, which - I would hope - will make it a bit sturdier in case of a drop. On the negative side, the camera in the Active has a lower pixel count than on the regular S4.
Also, the Active is available in orange, which to me seemed a nice complement to the red case of the Xperia Pro. Speedy as always, Amazon Prime delivered on the day after it was ordered.
My first day with the phone wasn’t, however, so positive.
See my separate review of Samsung Kies, the connectivity software available for the Active.

Burning through the Battery

The main problem I had with the phone on the first day was an android service called CloudAgent, which apparently is used for all cloud sync activities such as backup to the Samsung account as well as Dropbox. This ended up using a major portion of the battery’s juice:

Just before the phone gave out (which wasn’t much after this screenshot was taken; don’t be fooled by the “3h 53m on battery” - it was charged in-between), CloudAgent had kept the CPU active for over 2 hours! Needless to say, the phone could have been used as a pocket hand warmer the entire 3 1/2 hours it stayed on.

Luckily, I got that fixed relatively quickly: I turned off all dropbox syncing and the problem went away.

GPS Fix
The second issue on the first day was that it wasn’t able to get a GPS fix - seemingly at all. One of the reasons for wanting a phone with a bigger screen was to replace my 2005 TomTom XL (shelling out 70€ for a new map for a device this old really bakes my cake!). My colleague had shown me a free-to-use navigation software that stored its maps on the device SD card, and this was one of the reasons for me to switch to Android.

However, the phone simply wouldn’t get the GPS fix. Okay, I was indoors, but right next to a very large window wall; the iPhone likely would have gotten the fix quite quickly.

On-Phone OS Update
One of the settings (About Device -> Software Update) showed that an update was available for installation. It turned out to be a 192 MByte download, quite a sizable package, considering I’ve read that Android 4.4 is “only” 56 MByte in size.

Comparison to iPhone 4

Besides the screen size (which is the reason I left the Apple universe in the first place), there are other, major differences to the iPhone 4 (and 5c, which I’ve used quite a bit).

For one thing, the phone is nicely and completely unexpectedly light in comparison. I’m not going to bother with gram figures; it’s the haptic experience I’m interested in. This thing weighs nothing in comparison to the iPhone 4!

The screen is great; one thing Android really does much better than iOS (even version 7) is to provide selectable font sizes that really work. Great for someone that needed his glasses on to use the iPhone - with the larger fonts and the larger display, I can read everything on the screen without glasses!

The display is, of course, much brighter and “prettier” than that of the iPhone 4, but that isn’t a fair comparison. But even comparing it to the 5c, it stands out.

Moving contacts from iCloud to Gmail on Mavericks

Hans D. Baumeister — 2014-01-21T10:26:06+01:00

Yesterday, I ordered a Samsung Galaxy S4 Active as a replacement for my iPhone 4 - the latter of which just isn’t fit enough for iOS7 (and an attempt to revert to iOS 6 failed).

While my calendars have been - since my bout with a Sony Xperia Pro - on Google, I’d reverted my contacts back to iCloud when I switched back to the iPhone. Since my Mac Mini is running Mavericks and a local set of Contacts apparently doesn’t fit Apple’s grand plan anymore, I searched for a simple mechanism to transfer all my contacts from iCloud to Gmail. I was able to find these excellent instructions.

Interestingly, when I first attempted to export my contacts, iCloud crashed (!) with an error:

Here are the first few lines from the Details section:

ERROR
'undefined' is not an object (evaluating 't.objectAt(0).get'). The calling function is download@

FILE
https://www.icloud.com/applications/contacts/1U.114861/en-us/javascript-packed.js

Oddly enough, it worked on the second attempt without a hitch.

However: if you do the transfer this way, then you will loose all contact pictures, as those are not transferrable via Vcard objects.

Perhaps much easier and less error-prone is to set up the Gmail contact connection as described, make sure you have no contacts in Gmail at all (you can delete them in 250-unit bundles by clicking “select all” and then “delete Contacts”) and doing a copy-paste of all iCloud contacts to the Gmail contacts.

You can’t use Select All in the Contacts app, as this will also select any other contact accounts you may have set up (including the Gmail one). You’ll have to select the first contact in the iCloud list and scroll all the way down to the last, hit Shift and select it - this selects all contacts in iCloud.

Then, just drag the entire contact list to the Gmail account on the left and let it rip - depending on how many contacts you have in iCloud, this may take quite a while (my 1,600+ contacts took hours!). Don’t be shocked when your system doesn’t respond properly anymore; this process uses all CPU cores you have and the scheduler definitely seems to prefer the Addresses application, at least while it is copying the contacts locally.

Once all the contacts are copied over (you can tell by the spinning thingie next to your Gmail account on the sidebar disappearing), you can go into system settings to remove the checkmark next to Contacts in the iCloud account setup and be left with all-Gmail contacts on your Mac.

When I did it this way, pictures were transferred. The only issue I came across was this error after about 240 contacts having transferred out to Google:

I quit Contacts and re-started it, and it continued uploading contacts. This happened a couple of times. With every re-start, Contacts seemingly re-uploaded already uploaded contacts again.

Running a “combine” in Gmail did remove the double entries, but - strangely enough - they were then uploaded again by Contacts. This didn’t affect all contacts, only certain ones; I have no idea what triggered a duplicate upload. Really odd is: the duplication only happened in Gmail - luckily. No duplicates were synced back to my Mac.

After combining the double entries a few times, I gave up on that until the transfer was through, as it seemed to slow things up, caused by the re-transfer of duplicates.

When it finally got done, I ran the “combine” on Gmail and forced a re-sync in the Contacts app (by removing the checkmark from Contacts in the Gmail account setup, quitting contacts, re-enabling and re-starting Contacts). Contacts did the sync back very quickly and I ended up with the same number of contact entries on both sides.

------------------------- Update 2014-01-22 -------------------------
here is a comment by Jimmy Obomsawin, who wrote the article I linked to at the top of this post:

Contact pics are included when exporting using Contacts in Mavericks, but I wanted instructions that worked universally, since many of my readers use Windows computers. When exporting from Contacts, just make sure that you go to Settings > vCard, and turn on “Export Photos in vCard”.

Internet Appliance Botnet-Attack

Hans D. Baumeister — 2014-01-21T08:51:09+01:00

This article by Proofpoint seems to indicate that everyday, connected appliances such as TV’s, Media Centers, Network Routers and even a Refrigerator have been “assimilated” into a Botnet to send out Spam Emails.

While a Media Center likely has a full-blown Linux (or Windows, in the case of Microsoft devices) on it, a Router certainly will not. I’ve used a number of different Internet routers in the last 15 years, such as a simple D-Link device, an AVM Fritzbox and, in the last couple of years an appliance with m0n0wall installed.

I can’t, for the life of me, imagine that these offer the ability to install a botnet. Sure, give an experienced hacker a device that is open to the WAN side (none are when you pull them out of the box!) and enough time, they will likely gain access to at least the admin menu. Using that, I would imagine it is possible to install a different, roll-your-own firmware that would render the device into a “Borg”. This would, in all likelyhood render the router incapable of doing “it’s thing”, which would obviously uncover the heist very quickly.

That said, botnets aren’t installed by a human taking an hour to hack into the device and load a new firmware (or install malware), but by automated mechanisms run - usually - on other “assimilated” bots.

TV’s and refrigerators will likely also have slimmed-down Linux OS’s that would probably require replacing at least the Kernel to function as a bot; in the case of a TV, that should make using the device spotty at best.

Also, don’t forget: generally, these devices are all in a private network of some sort, protected by IP filters. Again, hackable by a human (given enough time) for sure, but likely not by an automaton.

I’m not a botnet expert, but this sounds too outlandish to be more than a highly interpreted piece of marketing...

Phishing wird "intelligenter"

Hans D. Baumeister — 2014-01-15T14:14:13+01:00

Die Zeiten von “I am the brother of the president of Nigeria” sind zwar nicht vorbei, dafür werden die Phishing-Betreiber “intelligenter” was die Aufmachung ihrer Emails angeht.

Heute ist diese Email bei mir angekommen:

Ich habe explizit die Bilder nicht geladen, da in Bildaufrufen oft eine Kodierung versteckt wird, die Rückschlüsse wie eine Empfangsbestätigung ermöglicht. Zum anderen aber, um aufzeigen zu können, dass die Bilder tatsächlich von telekom.de gezogen werden (die gelb hinterlegte Anzeige kommt beim Mouse-Hover über dem Bild und gibt die Quell-URL an).

Lediglich der Link für den Download zeigt nicht auf die Telekom, sondern auf die URL http://581khg.nuusi.net/telekom/ (bitte nicht testen!!!).

Wäre ich Telekom-Kunde, hätte ich ggf. ungeprüft draufgeklickt. Um so wichtiger ist die Funktion, die jeder moderne Mailclient bietet: via Mouse-Hover sich ein Bild von der URL zu machen, die tatsächlich beim Anklicken aufgerufen wird. Oft werden nämlich http: URLs angegeben, hinter denen sich ganz andere URL’s verbergen.

Check your router!

Hans D. Baumeister — 2014-01-13T10:19:58+01:00

I was pretty surprised to read in this article, that a number of brand-name routers offer a “backdoor” via their WAN IP, Port 32764. Via this port, it is possible to read out various variables and settings, the knowledge of which greatly aid a hacker trying to get into the private network behind the device.
In some cases, it was apparently possible to change settings in the router via this port!!!

So: you may do well to make sure your router isn’t affected. Heise Verlag of Germany offers a free scan service that - using your IP address (which your Webbrowser knows about) - scans your router from the outside to see if it can find any open ports (that shouldn’t be).

For all you non-German-speakers out there, just click the “Ich bestätige, dass ich berechtigt bin, die IP-Adresse x.x.x.x zu scannen.” Checkbox (which indicates that you’re permitting the port scan to happen, and that you have the right to have that address scanned) and select the “Router-Backdoor” radio button. Then hit “Scan starten” and you get a result nearly instantly.

You may also wish to run the “Router” version of the test, which checks more ports as well as the just discussed “backdoor” port:

If the result is green, you’re good to go - if it is red, well then you have a problem.

If you’re versed in IP ports, you may also want to do the check with either the “Windows standard” or “UNIX standard” radio buttons selected - these do extensive port scans based on wether you’re using a Windows or a UNIX-based (MacOS, Linux, etc.) computer.

Gartner-Study: Borderline Rediculous

Hans D. Baumeister — 2014-01-09T09:34:46+01:00

Here is a new study by Gartner that really gets my goat. Who on earth thought of putting operating systems for different types of equipment into the same study?

Matching MacOS vs. Windows or Android vs. iOS is ok, but what’s the point of throwing them all into the same pot? And: why is Linux missing? Linux is - in one form or another - likely to be the most-used OS anyway.

Most NAS units, plenty of IT-Appliances (Routers, Access Points, Firewalls, etc.), Car Radios, consumer equipment, some Smartphones, etc. run Linux. Had Linux been included, my educated guess would be that it beats all of the named OS’s hands down.

Ah, by the way Gartner, did you forget that both Android and Chrome are based on Linux?

C’mon Gartner, don’t you have better and more intelligent things to do?

Reformat that SD Card? Think again!

Hans D. Baumeister — 2013-12-19T15:50:02+01:00

I recently came across a small piece of utility software provided free of charge by the SD Association: the SD Formatter, which is available both for Windows and Mac operating systems. For the Mac, compatibility up to Mountain Lion is listed, I have used it successfully with Mavericks, however.

You may think think that this is some sort of marketing gimmick, but then I read this in a Wikipedia article (see section “”):
----------------

Risks of reformatting
Reformatting an SD card with a different file system, or even with the same one, may make the card slower, or shorten its lifespan. Some cards use wear leveling, in which frequently modified blocks are mapped to different portions of memory at different times, and some wear-leveling algorithms are designed for the access patterns typical of the file allocation table on a FAT12, FAT16 or FAT32 device.[77] In addition, the preformatted file system may use a cluster size that matches the erase region of the physical memory on the card; reformatting may change the cluster size and make writes less efficient.
SD/SDHC/SDXC memory cards have a "Protected Area" on the card for the SD standard's security function; a standard formatter may erase it, causing problems if security is used. The SD Association provides free SD Formatter software to overcome these problems.[78] The SD Formatter does not format the "Protected Area", and the Association recommends the use of appropriate application software or SD-compatible device that provides SD security function to format the "Protected Area" in the memory card.
----------------

How many times have I formatted an SD card? Dunno - quite a number of times. I’ve done this on digital cameras directly (though I believe they don’t actually format the card but rather, just erase the contents, since the process is extremely quick) as well as from my Mac.

This is probably something one should keep in mind, especially with highly optimized Class 10 cards used for HD Video, etc. I would think that erasing the card (often called “formatting” on the camera itself is okay, doing so via the formatting program on a PC or Mac likely will cause issues.

Lord, won't you buy me a Windows PC?

Hans D. Baumeister — 2013-11-24T09:06:29+01:00

Ok, maybe I’m not quite there yet.

But honestly, the quality of Apple’s latest updates, Mavericks and iOS 7, is so lacking that I’m considering dumping my remaining Apple stock ASAP.

My plea to Apple: “Guys, while you’re all frolicking about, dreaming up new products and GUIs - please do remember that quality control isn’t something a designer wants to think about - but it’s just as necessary at Apple as it is anyhwere else!”

I’d taken the jump and updated my Mac Mini to Mavericks... the result is broken software, crashing apps and a Safari browser that has made me turn to Chrome (and that, folks, is a bad sign).

Luckily, I had a HDD crash in my MacBook (it’s pimped with an SSD where the HDD goes and an HDD in place of the SuperDrive), so that I had to revert it to a TimeMachine backup (which was Mountain Lion). And believe, me - that HDD crash was all but lucky.

So I’m stuck with just one Mac acting up - the Mac Mini. Something is funky with this HW anyway - not sure what, but recently, while tracking down a software issue, I noticed a distinct and uncomfortable tingling in my fingers while touching the metal part of the USB cable going to my desktop scanner - but that’s a different story.

Starting the Mac Mini up is excessively quick (it, too, has an SSD in place of the original HDD, with that moving into the SuperDrive slot). Once you log in, however, the molasses starts pouring. There is essentially no load on the CPU, but starting up DropBox and DevonThink Pro Office is worth going downstairs to get a coffee AND drinking it.

The latter registeres in Activity Monitor as “not responding”, all the while there are crashed Safari WebContent processes popping up like fireworks. Quitting Safari doesn’t take these away, mind you - they sort of “fizzle out”. Very strange.

The DevonThink Pro Office eventually “comes up” - and after everything has slooooowly started to work, the machine is fine to use (with the exception of Safari 7.0, which is one of the most unstable Apple software pieces I’ve ever used).

All in all, what has Mavericks really given us that is of essential benefit? The iCloud Keychain was what convinced me to upgrade, but with my reluctance to upgrade the MacBook, that’s “for the cat” (as we say here).

I’ve done the “clear all caches” bit, by the way - I use TinkerToy System for that, which makes it easy. Didn’t help in the slightest.

Also, what’s with this annoying, constantly repeating message:

Unlike all other message types in Notification Center, I haven’t found a way to turn this off (it keeps reminding me to update iWork, which I don’t want to do).
----

If you haven’t upgraded yet, I strongly suggest you really think about not bothering!

Update on iOS7 - GUI and Gripes

Hans D. Baumeister — 2013-11-23T11:39:59+01:00

When iOS 7 first came out, I was quite shocked - as were, I would presume, a substantial part of the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad users. Human beings don’t like change for the most part, and what a change it’s been from iOS 6 to 7.

In the meantime, I’ve managed to digest the shock and am using iOS 7 on my iPhone and the newer of the two iPads. I’m quite convinced that the move to a less bubble-gummy GUI was the right way for Apple to go; I don’t miss any of the saturated colors and graduated buttons of the previous version.

In fact, when I do something with my iPad 1 (primarily used by the kids), I get the “eeck” Effekt from the garish design.

I will say this, though: both on the iPhone 4 and on the iPad 3, both - of course - with quite a bit less CPU horsepower than current devices, iOS 7 really takes a beating, performance-wise. In fact, it seems that without the periodic reboot, performance seems to drag more and more.

This article confirms my experiences:

“Those who haven't picked up either an iPhone 5C or iPhone 5S and who have instead installed iOS 7 on their current iPhone - or iPad - are likely experiencing a downgrade in speed, with hoards of angry iOS users slamming Apple for the slow-down they are experiencing.
The V3 team has installed iOS 7 on a third-generation iPad and an older iPhone 4, and the dip in performance is very noticeable. This is likely due to the updated operating system's fancy new motion effects, design features and reworked applications.”

I’m quite sure, though, that Apple is using propagating specific hardware capabilities of newer devices in “7”, which task older HW to excess. That, too, will convince a decent percentage of users of older hardware to upgrade, which - lets not forget - is what Apple “pays its rent” with.

Oddly enough, the App that shows the most annoying responsiveness - especially on the even-older iPhone 4 - is the Podcast App - this has such lengthy delays that it feels like a satellite-based phone call - you do something on the screen and you’re not sure if the system registered it. Very annoying.

This article contains a large collection of different issues and resolutions for them - unfortunately, none of my issues are covered...

VoIP with m0n0wall

Hans D. Baumeister — 2013-10-30T10:37:21+01:00

Let me give some details about how I (finally) got VoIP working with multiple phones behind m0n0wall, which is a popular, open-source firewall appliance.

My setup here at home is quite normal: Cable modem for internet access, providing a single, changing internet IP address. Behind that, I’ve placed an ALIX-based m0n0wall version 1.34 with a private network (let’s say it is 192.168.1.0/24).

We have three physical IP phones, two Grandstream GXP2200 and one DP715. Also, there are two separate sipgate.de accounts with multiple phone numbers each to route. For clarity’s sake, lets call the accounts SIP1 and SIP2.

Configuration information for sipgate.de, especially in respect to routers, is very sparse and sometimes unnervingly opposing. You’ll find infos on how to use STUN, you’ll find infos recommending not to use STUN.

You’ll find lots of people asking for help with setting up VoIP, with very few answers. A couple of really good content is linked to at the end.

We had a very strange issue with an older Grandstream (GXP2000) dropping calls after a few minutes (consistently!) - I’m still not certain wether the phone itself has a defect or what the problem is.

In any case, the setup I ended up using was to assign different RTP and SIP Ports for each phone and line that is configured.

Some basics:

GXP2200-1: 192.168.1.30 (only SIP1 numbers)
GXP2200-2: 192.168.1.31 (mixed SIP1 and SIP2 numbers)
DP715: 192.168.1.32 (only one SIP1 number)

I assigned the following ports:

GXP2200-1 RTP / SIP:
Account 1: 5004 / 5060
Account 2: 5008 / 5062
Account 3: 5012 / 5064

GXP2200-2 RTP / SIP:
GXP2200-1 RTP / SIP:
Account 1: 5104 / 5160
Account 2: 5108 / 5162
Account 3: 5112 / 5164

DP715 RTP / SIP:
Account 1: 5204 / 5260

The ports you choose are somewhat irrelevant, as long as you set them up for NAT and in the firewall rules.

All RTP/SIP traffic is via UDP, so when setting up NAT and the firewall rules, restrict yourself to this protocol (it makes the firewall a tad more secure and uses a tick less resources).

Since there is no real point in creating single entries for each individual port (remember that RTP may use odd-numbered ports for additional communication), I added NAT and firewall rules for port blocks in regard to the protocol and the phone.

I.e.: for GXP2200-1 I opened ports 5004-5059 for RTP and 5060-5099 for SIP.

The most important part in the config is to point the NAT entry to the right IP address; i.e. NAT for 5004-5059 needs to go to 192.168.1.30 and so on.

Once both NAT and firewall rules are set up, IP service works like a charm. I read several blogs that seemed to state that sipgate has issues with multiple IP phones behind a NAT firewall, but this simply doesn’t seem to be the case.

Since sipgate also has a proxy as part of their offering (sipgate.de), there is no need for a local proxy such as siproxd. m0n0wall doesn’t offer “plugin” installation anyway, so if a local proxy was necessary, I’d probably have to switch to pfsense.

A really good article on VoIP over m0n0wall is this one.

Bait-and-Switch in an Apple Store?

Hans D. Baumeister — 2013-10-16T12:52:13+02:00

During our visit to the US, my wife was in the market for a new iPhone 5c. Not far from where we stayed (San Jose, CA), there was an Apple Store in a mall. Off we went, since - oddly enough - that model was cheaper at Apple than at other stores that sold the device.

My wife wanted a 16GB pink model and the friendly “dude” that helped us found it to be in stock - for the expected $599. Out came the box, he scanned the barcode and said “that’ll be $756.67, please”. Seeing as sales tax in CA is 8.25%, I would have caught that after a hard night of drinking.

Not unexpected, the model they retrieved was the 32GB one. When we pointed out the error, he dove back into the storage area in the back of the store, only to come out with the info that the 16GB model seemed to be out of stock (what, Apple doesn’t keep track of its merchandise electronically?) and asked if we wanted to get the 32GB model instead.

We declined and opted for a yellow 16GB model, which was retrieved and paid for. Apparently, while searching for the yellow model, the pink one magically reappeared, as a colleague came out of the dungeon with it and our sales guy exchanged the yellow one we’d bought for the pink.

Okay, maybe they don’t have their warehouse under control, but quite honestly, it sure felt like a bait-and-switch to me...

Something to think about: Security

Hans D. Baumeister — 2013-09-17T08:03:33+02:00

What a great quote:

"Security is an illusion, the closest thing to it is backup.”
The questions is not, will someone break into my computer, the real question is: how will I recover?

I found this in the comments here.

Windows 8 - What a Disaster

Hans D. Baumeister — 2013-09-09T08:04:44+02:00

My wife bought a new laptop recently. She was a bit shocked to find that you can’t buy a laptop anymore with Windows 7 on it - they simply aren’t on offer.

So Windows 8 is what she is stuck with. I had the appealing job of getting the thing configured and up and running. If you’ve read previous blog entries, you’ll know that I’m not one of Redmond’s biggest fans (and I don’t mean the city, folks), even though I have to admit that Windows 7 was an improvement on XP (Vista, after all, isn’t an operating system. If you want to read about disease, check a medical website).

I wasn’t prepared for Windows 8, quite honestly. I’d seen it used by my contact at Microsoft when it first came out. He did, however, have a touchscreen laptop. My first impression has stuck: what a load of crap. Microsoft really outdid themselves in alienating just about every user with possible exception of those that are religiously motivated and have elevated the ex-Gates-company to demigod status.

I should be happy - after all, I own Apple stock (which certainly won’t decline due to Windows 8 being out there), but having become the designated “admin” for this abomination of a GUI, I suffer.

A few examples:

1. Feedback
Because the touchpad just of this (plastic-case) laptop just isn’t on par with my MacBook Pro one, I plugged in a USB mouse. Mind you, it wasn’t one of those “42-button-jobbers” where the wheel doesn’t just rotate but also clicks down and left and right. I would have accepted (not expected!) some difficulty in getting a driver installed. This was a €7 mouse with the most basic of functionality. What happened when I plugged the rodent in?

Nothing!

For minutes on end, nothing happened. Not a single message, status bar or other indication, that the device was even alive (the LED on the bottom was on, though, so at least it had juice). After a good two minutes, all of a sudden, the thing worked. No message telling you that whatever Windows 8 had been doing was finished and that you could use the mouse.

In fact, Windows 8 doesn’t tell you very much at all about what it is and isn’t doing. Ok, Windows has always had some issues with progress bars and the lot (remember those funny ones telling you a certain operation would take about 3 x 10E15 minutes?), but this silence is oppressive!

It starts when you boot up the computer by presenting you with a black screen for quite some time (while, I presume, the OS is starting in the background). You don’t know wether the thing has crashed, has turned itself off or what is going on until, all of a sudden, it presents a happy, colorful screen with the Seattle Space Needle (what, doesn’t Redmond have a landmark?) and some rolling hills. Now what? No idea!

Another example: after taking quite some time on figuring out how to get to the (Windows XP-looking) Control Panel, I wanted to use it to delete the users that had been added (see bottom for the reason why). You’re presented with old-style dialogs (that don’t fit with the new look and feel at all), but when you click the final “OK” to delete the user and all their files, nothing happens. The button doesn’t even react. No rotating hour glass, no status bar, nothing. Then all of a sudden, Win 8 is done and relinquishes control.

What, are you trying to cater to the I’ve-never-used-a-PC crowd here, Microsoft? Do you think they appreciate not getting any sort of feedback from actions they have taken (or possibly not taken)? Do you really think they will be going out to buy a Windows 8 device of any sort? Sorry, Microsoft, those people bought an iPad long before you came out with your unloved Surface tablet!

I very much doubt that more than 10% of regular windows users are happy or willing to switch to this disastrous GUI.

2. IMAP
The age of POP is long gone, I thing most people that know what it is would agree. With the plethora of devices that people use every day to read their mail, retrieving it from the server to a single device just isn’t sensible. IMAP has been around since 1986 and is a really stable technology. It lets you keep your emails on a server and read and delete them from multiple devices. Pretty cool, really.

Would you believe that Outlook 13 doesn’t support IMAP anymore? Aside from the preferred Exchange or Office 360 accounts, Outlook 13 (which, folks, is made for Windows 8) only supports POP for send/receive. You can add a send-only account for “accounts that can’t use POP”. I have no idea if this means IMAP, but what the heck am I going to do with a send-only email account? Sounds like the right tool for a spammer, but not for a regular user.

3. GUI
Folks, I’m open-minded - really, I am. I’ve used lots of different operating systems with different GUIs, but I’ve never come across something so inconsistent as the Windows 8 GUI. You aren’t guided as a user, you have to learn it. What good is a modern GUI if you have to read a manual to use it?

I hate to do this, because it’ll make me seem biased (again), but if you look at the iOS GUI, you’ll find that there is built-in guidance (at least for apps that follow the GUI guidelines) on how to use the interface and applications built on it. You know intuitively, how to get to the settings for a particular app and you know what to expect when you do a certain action (like tapping on a button or swiping something). Yes, there are apps out there that don’t work this way, but most of them do. I’ve seen octogenarians getting into using iOS. I don’t have to tell you what happens when you hand an iPad to a toddler - there is plenty of videos on YouTube that show you just how user-friendly iOS is.

I wonder what would happen if you handed a Surface tablet (which uses the same interface) to a child. Chances are, it would toss the thing in a corner quite quickly, highly frustrated by its illogical interface.

What really kills me about the new GUI though, is the fact that you’ve got age-old settings dialogs that pop up (after you learn for 1/2h on how to get to them from an online manual), reminiscent of Windows 2000. Probably haven’t changed since then. It’s just such a mixed bag of elements and styles that it is bound to be a failure.

4. The Church of Microsoft
“Thou shalt not downgrade if though aren’t worthy!” That’s the message, folks. If you read about this topic on blogs and in articles, you’ll find that the majority of the Windows 8 jaded have tried to get back to something halfway usable.

Apparently, MS only permits a downgrade to Windows 7 for “Windows 8 Professional” licenses. If you have a “Windows 8 Home Pro” (or whatever its called), you’re SOL. Okay - a long shot, but: I finally found a screen that would tell me, amongst other things, what Windows version was installed. Guess what I found there? “Windows 8”. Great. No shit, sherlock.

I’ve checked several articles on downgrading and all indicate unisono, that MS has done a great job of making this as hard as possible...

---

We’re now planning to either return the laptop and try to find one with Windows 7 on it or to get it downgraded. I’ll keep you posted.

Review Grandstream DP715 DECT VoIP Phone

Hans D. Baumeister — 2013-07-07T11:08:23+02:00

Because of severe functional issues with a FritzBox 7270 and connected MT-F DECT Handsets, I looked for an alternative DECT handset that I could use with our VoIP telephony account.
Besides the ominous Gigaset options, there isn't that much to choose from. After a complete disaster with a no-frills Gigaset DECT handset, I swore I would never buy Gigaset again, so the only alternative - at least at the time - seemed to be the Grandstream DP715.

The specs sound pretty okay, and we've had very good results with a Grandstream wired VoIP phone. On top of all that, the price was quite okay (I paid €60), so I purchased the phone.

All in all, though, the phone isn't really to be recommended. The display is a complete loss; it reminds me of early 90's Nokia mobile phones. Bizarre looking symbols (there is one that flashes at me constantly, and I still don't know what it means), crappy contrast. Number keys are not lit. There is no way to provision the phone with a phonebook. None. At all. What a pain in the butt, to be punching in names using that clunky "alphabet on the number buttons" method! That, too, makes me feel like I've warped back to the "good ol' days" of the GSM heyday.

The rechargeable batteries are two NiMH AAA Jobbers with 500 mAh of "life". Yikes. That is supposed to power the phone for 80h standby, according to the spec sheet. I don't buy it, and that brings me to the absolute no-go of this phone: when the battery is low, it starts beeping, perhaps once per minute. That's fine - let me know ahead of time if I'm about to drop a connection. Unfortunately, the beep is extremely loud and will knock your eardrum a couple of mm down the hole. Apparently to compensate the infinitesimal warning beep, the volume of the person talking to you is increased beyond the envelope you would ever expect the earpiece of such a phone to be able to reach. If your eardrum didn't pop from the beep, it will do so from the person now screaming into your ear.

OK, I'm exaggerating, but only a little. My eardrum didn't pop, but I ended up - after getting over the initial shock - holding the phone a ways away from my ear, which made the conversation difficult to say the least.

Grandstream does some phones really well, but this little guy is not one I would recommend to anyone!

Real Growth from the Internet?

Hans D. Baumeister — 2013-07-01T12:50:58+02:00

In an interesting article on wether the Internet has led to real growth since its inception, BloombergBusinessweek has put together a real whopper of criticism on the expectations the web has raised even in financial experts.

They write that “…the Internet has been behind a massive shift in our use of time during the past two decades, and not necessarily one that has generated a huge amount of positive feelings.”

Java issues with Surveillance Station 6 resolved

Hans D. Baumeister — 2013-06-27T12:39:44+02:00

I’ve been using several Synology DS NAS devices for a number of years quite successfully. One of the really excellent features is Surveillance Station, a software that lets you configure an IP camera and have the NAS record video from it when there is movement within the picture.

I won’t go into details on the solution (that is covered quite well on the Synology website) but rather touch on an issue that has come up with the latest update of version 6. This, as it turned out, had some really serious issues with a Java update 1.7.x from Apple, resulting in the software not being able to display recorded video on a current and updated Mac (Mountain Lion).

There is lots of chatter on this topic in various forums, including the one on the Synology site.

Finally, Synology has published a fix for the issue, which requires a bit of admin-level work in a Terminal.

In case that link should go away for some reason, here are the steps required to resolve the issue (it helped me - everything works like a charm once again):

1. On your Mac, go to Applications > Utilities and then open Terminal. Enter the following command, and press the Return or Enter key:

sudo mkdir -p /Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/disabled

2. Enter the following command, and press the Return or Enter key:

sudo mv /Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin /Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/disabled

3. Enter the following command, and press the Return or Enter key:

sudo ln -sf /System/Library/Java/Support/Deploy.bundle/Contents/Resources/JavaPlugin2_NPAPI.plugin /Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin

4. Enter the following command, and press the Return or Enter key:

sudo /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Delete :JavaWebComponentVersionMinimum" /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/XProtect.meta.plist

Please note that you’ll have to have admin priviledges or log into an admin account when sudo asks you to.

Will iOS 7 make Steve Jobs turn over in his Grave?

Hans D. Baumeister — 2013-06-11T07:52:22+02:00

Yikes, WWDC is upon us and, well, a few things were announced - as expected.
iOS 7 was one of them, likely to hit the download arena in Fall. And, well, I was disappointed.
A good overview - albeit full of grammatical errors (probably written late at night, after the 19th coffee, junkfood and too many drinks at a WWDC party) - is available in this Redmond Pie article.

Let me touch on some of the updates to iOS this article presented:

GUI
Wow, does this look like Android or what? Considering Apple used to be a true innovator, not only in Hardware and OS Design, but also in Ergonomics, the “breakthrough” of being able to add more apps to what are called - strangely enough - Folders, just isn’t what I was expecting! Add more apps so that you can find what you’re looking for even less? How about the ability to have iOS sort apps by usage count? That would be extremely simple to implement (just increase a counter every time an app is started or switched to) and would really make things simpler.

Let me give you an example: on my iPad, I frequently use an app by the German rail system Deutsche Bahn, to see if my local connecting train is on time. It’s a very useful app, but for whatever reason, I am unable to find it at all in any of the “folders” I’ve created to sort apps into. It’s just gone. I can only find it by searching for it. Assuming that there isn’t some programmatic glitch that has actually removed the icon from the iPad, it just goes to show how ineffective the folder-concept really is.

Let me take you back about 12 years, back to a time when the smartphone to have was a Treo 650 from Palm. They already did a good job of letting you create tabs (yes, tabs, not annoying “folders”) to sort icons into - and there were several add-on applications that made sorting icons logically even easier. I honestly feel that the methodologies used back then (we’re talking the smartphone stone age!) were a lot more ergonomically sensible that what Apple is currently presenting as the ultimate GUI.

Settings
I’ve ranted about this before - even in iOS6, getting to certain settings (like Bluetooth on/off) was a chore, making you open the Settings app and delve into the depths of layers of screens.

Android has shown the proper way to do this: just put a widget with a whole bunch of buttons to turn things on and off on one of the screens.

The fact that iOS has taken as long as version 7 to even touch on a solution to this is quite a surprise. Having to rumerate through several levels of a settings menu to do simple things like turn on or off the WIFI access point is such a pain in the rear that I would have expected a simple-access solution much, much earlier.

Review: Sony XPERIA Pro

Hans D. Baumeister — 2013-05-22T10:08:00+02:00

To get some insight on my switch from an Apple iPhone 4 to an Android phone, please have a look at this entry as well as the prelude to this review.

What convinced me to chose the XPERIA Pro over another Android smartphone with a physical keyboard is the side-slider (bigger keyboard), screen size (bigger than the Motorola Pro+) and the technical specs, including the ability to officially upgrade from Android 2.3.4 (Gingerbread) to 4.04 (Ice Cream Sandwich).

As mentioned before, I’d physically tested a Motorola Pro+ device before ordering the XPERIA Pro. While the Motorola really is quite a nice phone (and seemingly quick, despite the restricted hardware specs), but the display was just a tick too small, as was the keyboard. My thumbs just aren’t as nimble anymore.

So lets get into the pros and cons of the XPERIA. Keep in mind that this is a device released for 2011...

Device in General
I ordered the red phone (also available in charcoal and sliver), which really is “pretty”. The materials feel great, according the spec, the phone is fitted with gorillaglass for the display. The slider mechanism feels extremely solid, I’m quite sure it will work fine for a long time. The back is easily removable, yet on the device quite solidly. The SIM is easy to insert; with a little finagling, I was able to slide the Micro-SIM adapter in with proper electrical contact. Considering that this is impossible in quite a number of phones, I can live with shimmying the thing around a bit. The contact hasn’t budged since I started using the phone, so that’s ok there.

Keyboard
At first glance, the keyboard looks chincy, but when you start using it, it is absolutely fine. I can type quite quickly using both thumbs, while supporting the back of the phone with the fingers of both hands. The device does auto-capitalization - despite the checkmark being off in the settings. This still fools me once in a while, I’ll hit shift and continue typing, only noticing a bit later that I’ve been capitalizing everything. I presume this is a bug in the 4.04 release.

Display
The display is touted in the Sony marketing materials as being exceptionally good, due to the “Bravia” engine, with comparison photos of photos with and without this technology. Personally, I find the display to be quite okay, though it can’t compete with a modern iPhone 5 or Galaxy S4 display in clarity or contrast.

Speed
I didn’t bother testing the device with the preinstalled Android 2.3.4 - something I should have done to get a feel for the responsiveness in comparison to 4.04. From what I’ve read on the web, 4.04 does have issues with processing speed, and - quite honestly - this is the major issue I have with the XPERIA Pro. The device has a single-core CPU, a decision on part of Sony that is completely beyond me. Even in 2011, devices slanted for the professional market - as the XPERIA Pro supposedly is - had dual-core CPUs, often at 1.5 GHz.

That second core is badly missed on the Pro, as is more device memory (only about 380 MB remain). Even with moving apps to the SD-Card (not possible with all apps), you won’t install very many apps on the phone before you run out of memory, which makes the phone even slower.

Even with seemingly enough memory left over, the processing speed takes a massive dump - I’ve cleaned out the phone by removing apps I don’t REALLY need (but would really like to have) several times already.

Reception
One thing became very clear to me since switching from the iPhone 4 to the XPERIA Pro: the iPhone quite obviously was designed for excellent WiFi reception, at the expense of cellular reception quality. With the XPERIA, this is reversed. I have good cellular reception in locations (like my home office), where I had none whatsoever with the iPhone.

On the other hand, where I had full-power Wifi reception with the iPhone (like, in the kitchen), the XPERIA Pro is only at about 50%.

Talk quality
Boy, this really blew my mind: I’d always had issues understanding people while talking on the iPhone. With a bit of surrounding noise (i.e. train station), talk quality was so low, I generally avoided being on the phone. With the XPERIA Pro, this is completely different. Unless the person on the other line is using an iPhone (yep!), calls are very clear and seem to have a great bandwidth. HD voice seems to be implemented in some form, something that at least the iPhone 4 definitely doesn’t seem to offer.

Battery
The battery on the phone is exchangeable, which immediately prompted me to get a second one on ebay (for a laughable 7€). Unfortunately, I didn’t check ahead of time wether there is a docking station available to charge the battery out of the phone - which there is not. Oh, well, now I have two batteries…

The battery lasts - with use comparable to the iPhone - about as long: one day maximum. Wether this would have been different, had I left 2.3.6 on the device, I don’t know. Discussions on the Web seem to indicate that 4.04 is also a bit of a power hog.

Summary
If this device had a dual-core CPU and double the internal RAM, I would probably keep it for the next 10 years (okay, I’m exaggerating slightly here). To add to my wish-list, I would make it just a tick bigger (i.e. bigger display) and would love an official update to Android 4.1 or 4.2.

Would I recommend the device? If you’re looking for an Android phone with an excellent physical keyboard, I doubt you can find a better solution. Unfortunately, physical keyboards seem to have gone out of favor with the users (and the manufacturers). The selection is dwindling, with options like the BlackBerry 7.x devices going down the drain (lack of support, dusty old GUI).

You can still order the XPERIA Pro new from select sources - something you should definitely consider if you feel you can live with the caveats.

Sony Bridge for Mac

Hans D. Baumeister — 2013-05-19T09:39:34+02:00

Okay, so far I’m relatively happy with my Xperia Pro, which I will review elsewhere.
I find the Sony Bridge for Mac software, however, to be complete rubbish.

It tries to be a sync solution for photos and music, even going so far as to sync with iTunes. I haven’t tested the iTunes sync (as I don’t listen to Music on the Xperia), but the way Pictures are handled is a disgrace.

For one thing, the import - i.e. copying photos shot on the Xperia to a local directory - often brings errors with multiple files (“…couldn’t be transferred…”), apparently, because those files are damaged. As it turns out, this is complete crap; selecting the pictures individually and clicking on “Import selected” transfers them just fine.

There is no way to select individual - or all - pictures to delete them in the import photo mode, which is definitely a function that is necessary to have.

A complete joke is the file browser, which is available by clicking on the phone on the left side and selecting “Browse files on your Xperia device”. It does what it says: it lets you browse files. Delete or move files? Negative.

I’m not sure who does Xperia product management at Sony, but they certainly have not understood that this level of software quality isn’t going to retain customers.

The long road to smartphone heaven

Hans D. Baumeister — 2013-05-14T09:41:20+02:00

This is the prelude to the actual review of the Sony Xperia Pro. If you don’t want to read my gab about how I ended up with the device (in this post), then just skip to the review itself.

Several weeks ago, I took a deep plunge into very cold water (at least from my perspective at the time): I switched from an iPhone 4 to an Android device (see here).

The reasons, in short, were few:

more and more quirks, the higher the version number of iOS went
the impossibility of typing on the onscreen keyboard

Several months ago, I’d already tried a clip-on, slide-out bluetooth keyboard for the iPhone (that doubled as a case). While the keyboard was really quite good, the connection via bluetooth was a disaster. Not because the electronics in the keyboard (or the iPhone) were an issue, but because - in my opinion - bluetooth just isn’t made for that type of connection.

With a smartphone keyboard, you only use the connection for a couple of seconds (to answer an SMS) to perhaps a minute or two (to write an email). After a while, bluetooth goes to sleep, likely both in the keyboard and the smartphone, otherwise both batteries would be dry in no time. Then, when you next need to use the keyboard, it takes “forever” to wake back up and reconnect.

Why in blazes no-one has put together a slider keyboard for the iPhone that lets you slide the phone into the keyboard case and automatically connect to a real-life dock connector (via which a keyboard connection can be made) is beyond me. There just isn’t a better data connection than a cable.

So off I went into the depths of the internet to find a decent smartphone with a slider keyboard.
I’d actually taken this route before, about a year ago, when I picked up a Blackberry Bold on ebay. I used to be a big blackberry fan back in 2006 or so, when my then-employer offered it. And, to be sure, the keyboard can’t be beat for the size of the device. But folks, the user interface is so… so… well, so 2000-ish!

I had to resort to using my Palm Treo 680 some time last year when the glass on my iPhone ruptured and I’d sent it off to be repaired. Boy, considering how totally awesome the Treo used to be in its heyday, you just can’t use the OS nowadays without retching. I mean: 480x480 and 256 colors? Get real!

Perusing the various google hits on this blog entry or that product test (and about a zillion ads for each interesting link, as is the norm on google nowadays), I was peeved to find that there are no very recent keyboard-fitted smartphones out there! Okay, that changed very recently with the new Blackberry device, but this was before then.

Ebay showed a plethora of Blackberry Torches - a device I nearly ended up getting - until I started reading some of the opinions… and it just goes to show: it was high time Blackberry updated their OS! Apparently, even with OS7, the look and feel were a bit, well … see the comment on the Treo above!

I ended up getting two devices. One was a super deal on a Motorola Pro+ running Android 2.3.5 and the other was a brand new Xperia Pro in red. To be fair, I was quite surprised at the functionality and ease-of-use (no manual needed) of the older version of Android. Which, as it turns out, still powers, what, 70% of all Android phones?

Unfortunately, the Motorola really is a compromise. The screen is tiny (not good for my 45+ year old eyes) as is the keyboard. Perhaps it's an age thing; I used to be able to speed-type on these tiny candy-bar keyboards with very low error rates… no more. To be sure: the Motorola Pro+ Keyboard feels very nice and types quite well. It’s just, well, too small. I also kept hitting the function buttons on top when trying to type numerals.

So I ended up keeping the Sony Xperia Pro. Read on!

Highly explicative error messages

Hans D. Baumeister — 2013-05-14T09:22:07+02:00

I’m such a fan-boy of Microsoft products… NOT!
Okay, I think I’ve mentioned often enough that the only software that regularly has issues on my Macs is Microsoft Office 2011.

Here is just a small gripe - I really appreciate Microsoft’s highly explicative error messages… NOT.
Hey, guys in Redmond, who do you think your users are? Computer Science grads? Okay, I happen to be one, but even for me, this is completely ridiculous:

(for non-German speakers, the translation would be “the end of the file has been reached”).

This popped up when I sent an email message - mind you, not one with a file attached.

So what, exactly, am I to deduce from this juicy bit of self-explanatory detritus?

Just one more reason to looooove Office…

Security breach by WhatsApp

Hans D. Baumeister — 2013-04-22T15:42:38+02:00

Sad but true - “do no evil” just doesn’t apply to many companies out there, even those that produce apps and services that are really useful.

Take some recent reports of the widely distributed WhatsApp messenger, available on most mobile platforms:

Wired Magazin

CNET

CBC

Blog of Kim Randall (interesting summary)

Even though the CEO assured the readers of a public Blackberry forum that WhatsApp wasn’t collecting this information, that appears to have been a lie.

With SMS and Apple Messages, WhatsApp has moved way down the list of apps I use regularly (i.e. pretty much to the bottom), after reading the reports of their data abuse, I’ve deleted the app from all my devices.

First Impressions: Android Security

Hans D. Baumeister — 2013-04-22T09:38:28+02:00

Apple prides itself for a highly scrutinous overview of all apps submitted to the Apple Appstore.
Anything that might offend or otherwise perturb is denied a listing. For several years, this has been one of my main arguments of iOS over Android, and the argument may very well still be quite true.

However, I’m quite surprised - positively - of the details listed under “Permissions” for each app in the Google Play store, with the permissions you grant each app categorized under

Network Communication
Personal Information
Storage
System Tools

I’m quite certain this is done by an automated process that checks to see which functions are called from within the API. This is information that is completely lacking in the Apple Appstore. Permissions details are also available on the Amazon Android store, by the way, but by far not in as much detail as on Google Play.

As an example, I was about to load Wunderlist onto my Xperia when I read that the app would be given full rights to read my contacts database:

“Allows the app to read data about your contacts stored on your tablet, including the frequency with which you've called, emailed, or communicated in other ways with specific individuals. This permission allows apps to save your contact data, and malicious apps may share contact data without your knowledge. Allows the app to read data about your contacts stored on your phone, including the frequency with which you've called, emailed, or communicated in other ways with specific individuals. This permission allows apps to save your contact data, and malicious apps may share contact data without your knowledge.”

Why the heck would I accept that? There is positively no reason at all for the app to go pilfering through my contacts, as there are no contacts assignable to list entries. While I like the way it is simple to set up different todo lists in Wunderlist, this has - until I get more detailed info - stopped me from installing the app.

I remind the reader about reports on the widely distributed WhatsApp, which apparently transfers all contact data from the mobile device to one of the WhatsApp servers… gee, I wonder what they do with that information…?

So the logical thing to ask is: does Wunderlist also have full access rights to my contacts on iOS? And if it does, why doesn’t Apple disclose that information proactively? Perhaps iOS apps aren’t as secure as they are always daunted?

Religious Conversion: iOS2Android

Hans D. Baumeister — 2013-03-21T17:07:40+01:00

Anyone that knows me understands, that I am deeply rooted in the Apple world.
In 2006, I’d made the final switch from Windows to Mac, due to severe issues with a then high-end Windows PC not being able to fluidly import DV content from a camcorder.

I’d actually “re-converted”, since I’d been an Apple fan ever since working as a lab-assistant in the Mac lab at college. Needless to say, I was very keen on getting an iPhone when they first came out. I finally splurged in 2009 and bought an AT&T-locked but jailbroken 3GS in Riyadh. After some ups and downs with this device, I received a used iPhone 4 from my employer to use.

When I started with the iPhone 4, iOS was still in version 4.x. Everything was groovy, I was very happy. Things really went downhill for me with the switch from 5.x to 6.x. Maybe its me, who knows, but I started having serious issues typing properly on the on-screen keyboard. Without any tactile feedback whatsoever, I kept hitting the wrong keys. Automatic word completion never worked for me, I’d always had that turned off.

Then I started having issues with the device, both from a software and hardware standpoint. When the battery died (no more than 1/2 day of regular use without recharging), I was glad to have an iPhone 4 and not a 4S, as a battery swap on a “4” is pretty straightforward and doable in 10 minutes or so.

When the phone ran awire at the CeBIT tradefair (my wife’s 3GS did the same thing, so it must be an iOS issue) by doubling keypresses and zooming the screen to roughly 110% (cutting off the outside border), I decided that my long-time relationship with the iPhone would be put to the test with an Android device. For a short time, I had considered a Blackberry 9800 series (keyboard slider), but after reading a bunch of forum entries, I decided that BBOS 7 just doesn’t cut it anymore.

I tested a Motorola Pro+ which I found on ebay a decent price (99€). The device is loaded with Android 2.3.6 which - despite the OS’ “Age” - is quite feature-packed and fluid. However, while the Keyboard is excellent, it is just too small for my clumsy fingers.

This is an age-related issue, I believe; some time ago, I had to send in the iPhone to have it repaired and switched back to my Treo 680 for the iPhone-free period. I remember, years ago, being able to type on the Treo quite quickly (and nearly error-free) - now, I have issues with that keyboard just as much as with the Pro+ keyboard. Also, due to the keyboard being below the display (instead of behind it), the display size suffers. I also had a few issues with hitting the “back” soft button instead of a top-row key.

I opted instead for a Sony-Ericsson Xperia Pro, a landscape-keyboard slider phone with a decent-sized display (a bit bigger than that of the iPhone 4), with physical “Menu, Home and Back” buttons (instead of silkscreened ones) and a very nice-to-use slide-out keyboard. Also, the phone is upgradable from the standard Android 2.3.4 to an official Sony release of 4.0.4.

I’ll detail my switchover-experiences in a separate entry, as soon as I’ve been able to gain some experience with my new phone!

New bug in iOS 6.1.2?

Hans D. Baumeister — 2013-02-28T08:55:59+01:00

After experiencing issues with iOS and MS Exchange first-hand, I was happy to update my iPhone 4 to the current 6.1.2 that is supposed to take care of these compatibility issues.

While I can’t yet comment on wether the Exchange compatibility has gotten better with the update, I did notice this today:

I’ve never seen Edge detected before without having a carrier…

Is this a new bug in the newest iOS release?

When Camera Roll isn't Camera Roll

Hans D. Baumeister — 2013-02-04T11:01:06+01:00

There is something I don’t get, maybe you can help me:

iOS 6 brought with it, amongst other things, a massive increase in “sharing” capability. Be that sending pictures via Email, iMessage or Twitter, direct Twitter integration, etc.

Okay, so do this: open the camera app and take a picture. With a tap on the tiny image bottom left (or top left in landscape mode) that represents the last, taken photo:

you can switch to the Camera Roll app to view the photo and perhaps delete it or share it. FULLSTOP. You can’t share the photo from here!

Hit the home button and go to the Camera Roll app directly, and there it is, the sharing button:

So my question goes out to Apple: why on earth is there no sharing button in the Camera Roll one can open from the camera? At what point in time, dear Apple, do you think most people want to share a photo on their smartphone? I would presume most people are like me - and want to send out the photo immediately.

Having to exit the camera and open Camera Roll separately to do this defeats the ergonomics of a “smart” phone, don’t you think?

Review: IcyBox IB-RD3262+USE2 2fach RAID

Hans D. Baumeister — 2013-01-28T15:13:33+01:00

This very attractive little box houses two SATA hard disks and provides the logic to do RAID levels 0 or 1 as well as JBOD. I picked it up via Amazon in Germany as “used but in excellent condition, in original packaging, with some scratches”.

I haven’t found the scratches yet (except on the box), it looks like someone had tested it and sent it back. Instead of 150€, I pad 85€ which suited me just fine.

I installed two WD RED 3TB drives; after several disasters with low-cost drives from Samsung, Seagate as well as WD, I decided to go with something more expensive. The RED drives are made for continuous use in a NAS, so they should be fine in my RAID box attached to my home Mac Mini.

Generally, I don’t bother installing software that is delivered with a device, as there is usually something more recent available online. Not so here. I was unable to find the RAIDMaster software that is delivered with the device online at RAIDSonic (the manufacturer), so I ended up installing the version that came on CD in the box.

Setting up the RAID-1 array was a snap and only took a minute or so. Transfer rates are - in my opinion - quite good, peaking at around 50 MB/s via Firewire 800, with 20-25 MB/s being the usual rate. I’ll add a more scientific bit of information on performance at the end.

Seeing as I was getting around 5 MB/s with the Drobo I had installed previously, this little box was going to be a good replacement.

I’ve spent the last evening / night transferring all my data from the Drobo to the IcyBox device, strangely enough I was getting read rates on the Drobo much in excess of what I’d ever gotten before. I’m not sure, but there may also have been something the matter with my Lion Server installation on the Mini, so after doing all the transfers (and putting data from the Mini onto the RAID as well), I re-installed the entire system this morning.

Before decommissioning the Drobo, I hooked it to my (newer) MacBook Pro and ran a performance check on it. More than 10 MB/s wasn’t available, and that only in peaks. Subsequently, the decision to move from the Drobo to another device was the right one!

The only thing that is a bit of a shame with the IB-RD3262 is that the cooling fan seems to run at full speed, even if the disks aren’t warm. It isn’t very loud, but still present. But perhaps this is the better way to go rather than have the fan speed up and slow down all the time, who knows.

Encrypting a complete disk under ML

Hans D. Baumeister — 2013-01-20T16:53:19+01:00

By chance I came across an article (don’t have a link anymore, sorry) that showed how to completely encrypt a disk under Mountain Lion if that disk isn’t the one that was booted from. I have a MacBook Pro with an SSD in the regular SATA mount and a 640GB hard disk mounted in place of the DVD drive (see here for the story on that).

For quite some time, I’d been using an encrypted DMG that would mount as a data drive for my more sensitive files, but that is quite a pain in the rear end. For one thing, you need to figure out how much space you need, because you have to pick a finite size for the DMG as you create it. So either it wastes (a lot of) disk space when not filled up or you end up having to create a bigger one and moving all your files from one to the other if it gets too small.

The advantages of a hard disk that is completely encrypted are obvious since Lion, which introduced FileVault for the primary disk. Getting secondary disks to be encrypted under ML is not an issue if you’re formatting them - FileVault 2 takes care of that with a click in the selection list:

I’ve done this with another drive I have and it worked like a charm. But what to do if you have a 640GB drive nearly 90% filled with stuff you don’t want to be moving someplace else so that you can re-format your drive?

Well, as it turns out, there is a way to do this from the command line using diskutil - see this article. As the article states, it really does take VERY LONG to do this on-the-fly encryption. At first, I was a bit uneasy, as nothing seemed to happen, but there is a way to check on progress and after a good 20 hours, my drive was encrypted.
You can check how things are progressing with diskutil cs list, which gives you a list of all devices, including the current disk chunk converted:

| +-> Logical Volume Family 5C25AA1F-0EBE-49A6-A644-BBDBF988E421
| ----------------------------------------------------------
| Encryption Status: Unlocked
| Encryption Type: AES-XTS
| Conversion Status: Converting
| Conversion Direction: forward
| Has Encrypted Extents: Yes
| Fully Secure: No
| Passphrase Required: Yes
| |
| +-> Logical Volume C52CBE5D-0065-467E-A180-6512A52CB46F
| ---------------------------------------------------
| Disk: disk3
| Status: Online
| Size (Total): 638939721728 B (638.9 GB)
| Size (Converted): 392502968320 B (392.5 GB)
| Revertible: Yes (unlock and decryption required)
| LV Name: Macintosh HD
| Volume Name: Macintosh HD
| Content Hint: Apple_HFS

The converted drive works like a charm, I didn’t notice any slow-down of my system afterwards.

The only caveat - at least I haven’t found a solution yet - is that if you have moved your user folder to this drive (which is the sensible thing to do if you have a small SSD that you boot from and a large HDD to keep data on), you will have to create an admin account that you can use to unlock the HDD after a reboot.

I.e.: log into the admin account, unlock the HDD (ideally saving the password in the admin’s keychain), then log out and log into your regular account.

Not a big issue, really.

iPhone 4 Battery Replacement

Hans D. Baumeister — 2013-01-20T15:30:45+01:00

The iPhone 4 I’m using is a company one that I inherited from someone that left the company about a year ago. I jokingly mention that I have one of the first iPhone 4 phones sold in Germany, and I may very well be right.

The latest issue is the battery, which lasted with normal business use no more than about half a day. Not often a problem, as I usually have a chance to top up during the day, it did put me in a situation of having to call or check emails and not able to more than once.

When I read that replacement LiPo sets, complete with tools, run no more than 10€, I opted for one, having thought about getting one of those battery cases that make your sleek iPhone look like a brick (but at least run for more than two days).

When the ordered (and paid-for) kit didn’t arrive even after being a week late, I contacted the seller, who promptly sent me a replacement - that’s what I call service, thank you alltrade-online on ebay.de!

The kit arrived a few days later and I found some time today to do the deed. Luckily, there are plenty of instructions on doing this on the web, though with the iPhone 4, replacing the battery really is a no-brainer. Had I worn my glasses (I’m far-sighted), I probably would have been done after 5 minutes - with fiddling with the screws a bit in the end, I ended up taking 10.

The phone works, the battery charged to full. The next few days will show what difference a new battery makes, I’m quite excited.

What really threw me was this: I’d put the phone in airplane mode before the “operation” (or rather, it was that way from the previous evening). I figured when you yank the battery on an iPhone, it should be better than doing a reboot, after all, the power is gone for a few minutes.

But not so! No request for a SIM PIN, it found the carrier seconds after switching from airplane mode. And, even more bizarre: all the apps that had been running before where still there in memory! Very weird.

All I can say is: if you have an iPhone 4 with an ailing battery (and there is no way it won’t be up for replacement if the phone is 2 years old or older), take the plunge if you haven’t already, and order a battery kit. If you’ve done any sort of tinkering with devices, replacing the battery should be a snap without bricking your phone.

iTunes remixed - hopefully not a trend!

Hans D. Baumeister — 2012-12-17T14:03:39+01:00

Okay, Apple comes out with a new version of iTunes and what do you do? You update your iTunes on your Mac, of course. For the past few years, iTunes has undergone a number of changes, most of them for the benefit of the user (and Apple, of course).

This latest version of iTunes - Version 11 - for the first time represented a major step back for me. Why? The changes in the UI, in the very core of how the software is used, are so massive that I can’t stop asking myself: “why change a running system, Apple?”

What’s the deal with mixing up music videos and regular MP3 or AAC songs? I was listening to some ambient music while working on a marketing piece when, all of a sudden, the music style did a 180° as Fettes Brot “Jein” started playing. What irritated me more than the sudden genre change was the movement I suddenly noticed behind the word processor window: it wasn’t just a song - it was a music video.

This is because iTunes 11 has a “Songs” … well, what do you call it? “Mode”? “Tab”? … whatever. Do we really need for iTunes to start mixing video and audio together like that? I guess if you’re looking for a Genius mix to play at a party, then it’s irrelevant wether you just listen to the music video audio or actually look at the video content.

This new (okay, folks, what is this new mode selection called? I don’t have a word for it, though Apple likely does) … “tab” … represents what irritates me most about version 11: the apparent need to make the view and selection of content “multi-dimensional”.

Personally, I don’t need it. When I want to hear ambient music, I knew how to select that in a matter of a few clicks in pre-11 iTunes; if I wanted to view a music video - ditto. Now, I can’t even get a movie, purchased via iTunes, to automatically load on my iPad without syncing it with my Mac.

What gives, Apple?
I loved Steve Jobs’ “simplicity of use” … under Tim Cook, it seems Apple is slowly but surely turning its bread-and-butter software into just another usage-disaster like Windows…

Follow-up: iPad Mini Cannibalizing iPhone

Hans D. Baumeister — 2012-12-05T09:30:03+01:00

“Seeing is believing”, or so the saying goes.

Last week, I was in Berlin, walking from the Parliamentary Society building back to my hotel. On the way was a building (no idea what - some new construction - it isn’t even in Google Maps yet) that was completely “clad” in an Apple iPad Mini Ad! I’ve never seen anything quite this extreme (and probably extreme expensive) before.

Here, too, there is an iPad Mini being held in a slender hand. It once again brought to mind my fantasies of replacing my iPhone with an iPad Mini with 3G and a simple mobile phone.

But something about the picture of the hand holding the device struck me as odd. For one thing, you can’t see all of the hand - the palm for example is mostly covered by the device. Unfortunately, I didn’t take a picture of it, but if you’re at Berlin Hauptbahnhof these days, just go out the back and look right!

The next day, I stopped by a popular electronics dealer on my way from an appointment and had the opportunity to see the thing live for the first time. And things clicked into place: I’m now entertaining the idea that the photos of the iPad Mini being held are photoshopped.

There is a break in the continuity of the bottom of the hand (ending in the pinkie) that gives the opportunity of taking two pictures of the device being held - one showing the ends of the fingers, the other part of the palm and the thumb - and splicing them together to generate the picture you’ll find on Apple’s website (and various ads, such as the building next to Berlin’s HBF).

Either that, or the person holding the device is a pianist that is used to playing Liszt, which I’ve read requires exceptionally long fingers to hit all the notes.

In either case, after seeing the iPad Mini live, I’ve come to the conclusion that the thing is just way too big to be carried around and handheld to take over the online-functions I currently do with an iPhone.

*** Update Jan 16, 2013 ***
I was in Berlin again yesterday and took a picture of the Building I described above (sorry, the quality isn’t particularly good):

LinkedIn Phishing after Security Breach

Hans D. Baumeister — 2012-11-15T09:43:32+01:00

Unbelievable: the newest phishing emails are LinkedIn-branded and convinced me to click on the link, even though I tend to be a very suspicious person in these things:

The screenshot above shows the URL that is linked to the blue text.
The URL redirects (after registering everything there is to register about your computer, surely) to Microsoft, strangely enough.

This most likely has to do with the recent security breach at LinkedIn, how else should anyone know the email address that I registered in my LinkedIn account?

http://www.rebeccafletcherdesign.com by the way seems a harmless enough URL - perhaps it was compromised as well?

iPad Mini Cannibalizing iPhone?

Hans D. Baumeister — 2012-10-30T16:57:43+01:00

Let me propose a concept that, for an Apple fan, is probably bizarre at the very least:

With the iPad mini available in a 3G/4G version, you might consider getting rid of your iPhone (or at least not buying a new one) and opting for a mobile phone with good reception…

Here’s my reasoning: the reason I don’t want to do without my iPhone is not for it’s “phone qualities” (which I think even hardcore Apple fans are likely to hum and ho about). It has to do with all the great apps one needs when on the road, from Google Maps (yep - haven’t upgraded to iOS 6 yet!), Tripadvisor, Email, Message, etc. etc.

Now, as a 40+ mid-lifer, I’m starting to have issues reading the screen (without glasses). The on-screen keyboard is a pain in the butt and the realestate of the display is just too small for a number of applications, including trying to find out where you are in a city and where you’re going.

Should my company iPhone 4 (which is likely one of the first ones to be sold in Europe) fail me, instead of getting a 4S (iPhone 5 is not an option for me), I would likely pick up an iPad Mini instead. To call people, I would use my trusty old Sony-Ericsson Z600, which syncs with the Address Book app via Bluetooth (at least it did with Lion - hopefully that is still available in Mountain Lion).

The result: a bigger screen with a lot more realestate, a device that can be slipped in a pocket and yet held with one hand, with full integration into the Apple iCloud services, with data available anywhere there is reception, using the SIM card I currently use with a MiFi device (with a lot more volume available per month than my iPhone) and a small phone with excellent reception.

Your thoughts?

Zeitumstellungsprobleme mit FritzBox

Hans D. Baumeister — 2012-10-28T12:58:05+01:00

Im März gab es schon Probleme mit der Zeitumstellung auf der FritzBox 7270, siehe z.B. hier. Damals wurde das mit einer neuen Firmware einige Wochen nach der Umstellung behoben. Ich verstehe zwar nicht, was diese “spezielle Konstellation” so speziell macht - schließlich gibt es alle 4 Jahre ein Schaltjahr, aber gut.

Heute wurde auf die normale MEZ umgestellt. Meine zwei FritzFon DECT Geräte zeigten aber noch Sommerzeit an. Also schaltete ich eines der Geräte aus und wieder ein - es hätte ja sein können, dass ein Neustart dann die richtige Zeit aus der FritzBox laden würde… Fehlanzeige.

Jetzt wird die Uhrzeit gar nicht mehr angezeigt!

Da es in den Systemeinstellungen der FritzBox keine Möglichkeit gibt, irgend etwas an der Uhrzeit zu ändern (um sie z.B. manuell einzustellen), werde ich wohl wieder einige Wochen warten müssen, damit AVM ein Update zur Verfügung stellt.

Ich frage mich nur: testet denn niemand bei AVM so etwas im Voraus???

So viel zum Thema “Software Made in Germany”.

-----------------

Ergänzung am 6.11.12:

Gestern suchte ich einmal wieder auf der AVM Website, ob es wohl eine Lösung für das Problem gäbe - leider ohne Erfolg. Einmal wieder suchte ich über die Telefone und auch die FritzBox, ob neue Firmware verfügbar sei - auch ohne Ergebnis.

Letztendlich habe ich die Telefone neu gestartet - ohne Resultat. Aber dann startete ich die FritzBox neu und siehe da: plötzlich war die Uhrzeit wieder verfügbar! Da frage ich mich doch: was, bitte, hat sich geändert? Telefoniert die FritzBox womöglich “nach Hause” und zieht sich Daten von AVM? Der Neustart am 1.11. hatte ja keine Lösung gebracht…

Auf meine Email an den Support bei AVM habe ich bis heute keine Antwort erhalten!

Fritz DECT Problem gelöst?

Hans D. Baumeister — 2012-09-26T12:59:36+02:00

Nach unserem Umzug war ziemlich bald klar: einen Telekom-Anschluss mit ISDN wollen wir nicht mehr. VoIP muss her, also haben wir uns bei sipgate registriert und eine FritzBox 7270 mitsamt zwei MT-F DECT Geräten von AVM in Betrieb genommen.

Eine Zeitlang ging das auch gut, dann fingen plötzlich erhebliche Probleme an:

1) bei gut 20% der ausgehenden Anrufe sofort nach drücken der grünen Taste ein “Extremrauschen” - man hatte das Gefühl, das Mobilteil schreit einen auf seiner digitalen Art und Weise an

2) Enorme Verbindungsprobleme während dem Gespräch, meistens konnte der Angerufene nichts mehr verstehen, z.T. sind die Gespräche einfach abgebrochen.

Also habe ich versucht, durch Einrichten einer dedizierten Pipe für Upstream sowie Downstream (immerhin 160kBit) in der M0n0wall, das Problem in den Griff zu bekommen. Da die Problemfälle extrem schwierig zu quantifizieren sind, war der Effekt nur scheinbar positiv.

Faktisch sind wir dann für Geschäftsgespräche auf ein Grandstream VoIP Telefon umgestiegen, das auch super funktioniert. Alles deutete auf die FritzBox als Problemquelle.

Bzgl. dem 1. Problem hatte ich mich schon vor Monaten bei AVM gemeldet - ich hätte das Mobilteil einschicken sollen, das war mir aber zu viel Aufwand.

Das Problem hat mich ziemlich gewurmt, also habe ich, nach mehreren problematischen Telefonaten, noch einmal recherchiert. AVM hat das eine Problem, nämlich dass der Angerufene plötzlich nichts mehr hört, inzwischen zugegeben und deutet auf ein kurzfristig verfügbares Update der FritzBox hin.

Das Extremrauschen bei einigen Telefonaten (Ausgehend) ist wohl auch bekannt (gut, dass ich das MT-F nicht eingeschickt hatte) und hängt damit zusammen, dass ein weiteres DECT Mobilteil ohne HD-Fähigkeit im Funknetz hängt.

Ich habe jetzt das dritte DECT Gerät, ein älteres Gigaset, rausgenommen und nur noch die zwei MT-F Geräte "drin" - bislang hatte ich weder Gesprächsabbrüche noch Extremrauschen. Voila, evtl. Problem gelöst?

Fazit: trotz GAP und anderen DECT Standards scheint es auch in der AVM-Welt keine Kompabilität zu geben, die gemischten Betrieb möglich macht. Auch ein Weg, den eigenen Umsatz zu steigern.

Nicht nur Maps in iOS 6 hat Probleme

Hans D. Baumeister — 2012-09-24T13:00:14+02:00

Derzeit wird viel Stunk wegen einigen Problemen mit Apple’s Maps App für iOS 6 gemacht (siehe auch meinen Kommentar). Aber im Google Maps Lager ist nicht alles grün, so z.B. diese Bezeichnung für den Frankfurter Flughafen:

Das kam von Google Maps auf meinem iPad, als ich herausfinden wollte, wie lange ich vom Frankfurter Flughafen nach hause fahren würde.

Einiges an Recherche brachte die Sprache ans Tageslicht: es scheint Tschechisch zu sein. Siehe auch hier.

Warum nun eine Tschechische Bezeichnung auf einem iPad (dessen UI auf Englisch eingestellt ist) in Deutschland kommt, ist mir ziemlich unerklärlich...

SF to Sausalito - only by Boat

Hans D. Baumeister — 2012-09-23T07:43:08+02:00

Apple has taken quite a bit of rap for their map quality in iOS6, the internet is full of complaints.

This one is pretty funny - it details a route from San Francisco to Sausalito (the two happen to be connected by the Golden Gate bridge).

According to Apple, the only connection is by Ferry boat (leaving from Pier 41). Makes me wonder if the map material used in iOS6 is from pre-Golden-Gate times? Or perhaps the route type chosen was “most scenic”?

Who knows, all I know is, I’m waiting for iOS 6.1 before I update my iPhone!

The screenshot isn’t mine by the way. I’d credit it, but unfortunately, I don’t recall from which of the 10+ blog entries on the topic I “borrowed” it from. Sorry, dude (or dudess).

News: Apple puts Diskette Drive in MacBook

Hans D. Baumeister — 2012-09-20T13:10:21+02:00

This is the ultimate joke on Microsoft. Check out this error message I received from Word for Mac (current version, mind you). Is this a joke some programmer put in, or are they serious about this?

For those of you unable to read German, it basically says:

Irreparable diskette error in file …”A problem has occurred on your diskette. Try the following: * try to format a different diskette* save the document

Great going, Microsoft!

Tipp: Auto Paragraphs in Word for Mac

Hans D. Baumeister — 2012-09-06T18:02:36+02:00

Ever since using Microsoft Word for Windows, it seems the default setting for paragraphs in the Standard format was to have no space whatsoever between two paragraphs. As I prefer to have a 6 point space between paragraphs, I would set up a “Paragraph” format and save it in my normal.dot file.

Since using Word on the Mac, I found an interesting function that is not really intuitive: an automatic spacing function for paragraphs! The two screen snaps are in German, but don’t let that irritate you. The default setting for spacing before or after a paragraph is zero:

You can put in any number you wish (within reasonable limits), but certainly not a negative one. Subsequently, you wouldn’t normally think to click on the down arrow here, but if you do - lo and behold - you get something interesting:

the setting goes from a digit (followed by “pt” for “point”) to “Auto”. This works for “After paragraph” as well. The results are - so far - exactly in line with my preference. Normally, there should be a checkbox “Auto” here, graying out the digit entry field, which would make the ergonomics simpler, but such is life.

I tested Word for Windows as well, and guess what: it works there too!

Contacts Bugs in Mountain Lion

Hans D. Baumeister — 2012-09-05T09:15:39+02:00

This issue is reproducable and obviously related to what I described in this post:
Dragging a picture, for example off a LinkedIn profile, into Contacts makes the cursor change to a green + when hovering over the picture drop zone, but letting go makes the picture “fall back” to whence it came from.

If I save it to disk (dragging it to a folder works fine) and then drag it from there to the contact I want it displayed in, the framing dialog comes up. In one instance, hitting “Done” didn’t do a thing. I had to switch back to Safari and then drag the picture to Contacts again to make it work.

The second bug comes after syncing the changes to iCloud: while the algorithm that pics out the face works well as usual in automatically cropping even large pictures, the picture contents “snap back” to the original, full-size picture contents once the contact is synced.

I’m very much looking forward to the next Mountain Lion Update (with hopes of having things fixed in there).

Privacy concerns with Firefox 14!

Hans D. Baumeister — 2012-09-04T09:44:57+02:00

This really irritated me: I had Firefox open on my Mac and typed in a web URL (www.softpro.de). Perhaps the system was a bit slow, for whatever reason, Firefox left a “translation” of this URL in the URL entry field that was pretty shocking:

http://www.google.de/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCgQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.softpro.de%2F&ei=w7FEUM2VIIbFtAbFmYGYBA&usg=AFQjCNE0-3ECEco1haEYb8rL7xPVA3-DCw

I didn’t write the original URL in the search field, so the shocking truth seems to be: this “translation” can only come from Firefox. The “translation” changed back to my originally entered URL within about a second, so capturing the “translation” was tricky - it also shows that it was repeatable and not a strange “freak” action.

The question is: why?

My guess is, Mozilla is getting funded by Google and is sending references and metadata to Google in return. I have no idea what is encoded in the two data strings “&ved”, “&ei” or “&usg” is beyond me, but thats a lot of data encoded in them.

Quite honestly, I’m not a fan of Safari’s stability, but this is completely ridiculous. Mozilla, you get an “F” from me, so much for an independent Internet based on Opensource software!

If I’ve missed something here and there is a simple explanation, please let me know in the comments section.

Mountain Lion: Image Drag-and-Drop broken?

Hans D. Baumeister — 2012-08-27T08:50:42+02:00

Something new, I would call it a bug.

One of the really cool things about Mac OS has always been the ability to drag an image from the web browser, say of a person from LinkedIn, to another app, say the image well for that person’s contact.

A hugely time-saving thing to be able to do. Doesn’t work anymore.
I didn’t have this problem in Lion (or previous versions of the OS), ever.

In Mountain Lion, it seems to crop up more often than not. The image is legit - I can still drag it right out of the LinkedIn web page and drop it in a directory open in the Finder. Then, I can drag it from there to the contact card in Contacts. But not directly.

Yes, I’ve updated to 10.8.1 and no, this didn’t fix the issue.

Unresponsive Home button on iPhone 4

Hans D. Baumeister — 2012-08-26T21:05:20+02:00

This is bizarre.

I had to have the display on my iPhone 4 replaced a couple of weeks ago, because the darned thing slipped out of my hand and landed - like the proverbial toast with marmalade - directly on the display (on a stone floor, mind you), causing it to crack.

The last few weeks, my home button started acting up - sometimes it would take multiple clicks to get it to respond right. This got worse over the last 10 days or so, causing it to not work at all anymore for minutes on end (and then working just fine for several minutes after that).

After doing a complete restore of the phone and that not helping the last bit, I ended up doing some searching and found two interesting items.

For one thing, there is a function called “assistive touch”, which you can turn on under General -> Accessibility -> Physical & Motor. It leaves a slowly fading, round button at the bottom right of the screen that , if tapped, gives accss to a plethora of functions, amongst these a home button function. If your home button ever completely strikes out, this would be a decent replacement in leu of getting your iPhone repaired.

What actually at first seemed to have fixed things was the instructions in this article. Unfortunately, only for a short spell. Now, the button is once again acting up. My thoughts are along the lines of dirt or dust getting in when the screen was changed out. Now its to see if Gravis will want to charge for having that checked out…

I guess I’ll work with assistive touch until I get the issue worked out one way or another.

How small the web really is...

Hans D. Baumeister — 2012-08-21T09:46:18+02:00

For some years now, I’ve been an avid listener of a CBC podcast called Spark, hosted by Nora Young.
I recommended the podcast in 2009, and can still recommend it highly to anyone interested in the effect the use of technology has on our lives.

One of my hobbies has to do with social network analysis (SNA), which came from work I did for a previous employer on the topic of KYC (Know Your Customer) analysis. In one of the classic texts on the topic (Linked, by Albert-Lazlo Barabazi), it was mentioned that anyone in the US is connected to anyone else within a maximum of 9 “hops”, which I found hard to believe (but exciting nonetheless).

Out of a whim, I decided to search out Nora Young on LinkedIn, and lo and behold - we are connected with a short 3 “hops” - and that across the Atlantic (she lives in Toronto, Canada)!

All goes to show: it’s a “small web” indeed.
(and yes, this is the Nora Young that hosts Spark)

bit.ly hoax by Twitter App?

Hans D. Baumeister — 2012-08-09T09:56:56+02:00

When I read interesting tweets on my iPad, I’ll send them to myself by email so that I can follow-up on the link at a later date.

I came across an article I wanted to comment (see here) and sent the tweet, as usual, by email. It came out okay, I clicked on the link in the email to open the URL (shortened on bit.ly) and: This is weird.

What opened was a t.co-shortened URL that led to an emtpy site (not, as you would expect, to a 404 error). Oddly enough, the tweet went to the right site (via the bit.ly URL) when I opened it up on my iPad!

Here is a region snap of my email message with the underlying URL, that is actually executed when clicking on the link, exposed:

What generated this fake URL? It could only have been the Twitter App on my iPad… but why?
t.co is Twitter’s own URL shortner.

Veeeery mysterious!

Mountain Lion Update 3

Hans D. Baumeister — 2012-08-08T18:02:59+02:00

The update from Lion to Mountain Lion turned out to be a bit more stable - at least on my MacBook - than the update from Snow Leopard to Lion (which was a complete disaster), but my opinion about upgrades from one cat to the next has firmed up: one seems well advised to do a clean install of such an update!

In addition to the already mentioned issues with the Ubiquity daemon, a few other things have cropped up. Also, a look at the current entries for Mountain Lion at support.apple.com show that there are massive issues - and quite abnormal ones - with this upgrade.

An example - at least on my MacBook - is the odd misshaping of the DropBox app. While files put into dropbox folders were still synchronized, the DropBox icon as well as the rightclick-menu entry for it disappeared.

This was relatively simple to fix - I just re-installed the current version of DropBox on top of the old app (apparently, with no ill effects), but it was a nuisance nontheless.

goo.gl App Recommendation: ShortGoo

Hans D. Baumeister — 2012-08-08T12:29:57+02:00

Looking for a simple way to get URLs shortened via goo.gl URL?

I can recommend the software “ShortGoo” by Matt Shepard (see http://www.mattshepherd.us/apps/), which you can get via the App Store.

The software has a very simple and likable interface, will generate goo.gl URLs very quickly (given an internet connection) and even give you a listing of your recent URLs with, and this is great: click-counts!

For the price, the app is an unbeatable value if you need to frequently generate goo.gl URLs.

Caveat: it won’t do the other shorteners, such as bit.ly or t.co.

MacOS Mountain Lion Upgrade - Ubiquity

Hans D. Baumeister — 2012-08-07T14:21:51+02:00

While Mountain Lion certainly seems more stable than the upgrade to Lion, I came across something nasty today.

While trying to get Pages to start so that I might do some work on the train, I noticed that Pages would load the inspector but nothing else and then lock up. I also noticed that a process “ubd” (which is the Ubiquity Daemon) was repeatedly restarting and using huge amounts of CPU resources. This was evident in the console log for Ubiquity, it kept coming back with an error:

[ERROR] 109710548aa [12/08/07 14:16:11.418] 768.main get_uuid_and_open_iidb:920 failed to mkdir "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users/Nick/Library/Application Support/Ubiquity/peer-A457E30B-FECA-D32F-0E18-059C1F0917D3-v23" (Permission denied)
[ERROR] 1097682a992 [12/08/07 14:16:11.510] 770.main ubd_main:2604 personid: 104544000
[warn] 1097b9d1c5a [12/08/07 14:16:11.595] 770.main find_existing_identity_unsafe:1104 Can't find identity. (error -25300 from SecItemCopyMatching)

There is a lot of content on this on support.apple.com (see this article).

As it happens, neither Numbers nor Keynote was coming up either. I tried deleting all the iWork com.apple.iwork.PLIST files in /library/preferences, but that didn’t help. Then - since ubd is related to iCloud, I opened the system preferences for users and - lo and behold - my Apple ID had been removed from my user account! Why? Nobody knows - perhaps this is “standard issue” for an OS upgrade, I don’t know.

In any case, as soon as I re-entered my Apple ID, ubd calmed down and iWork was startable again…

As with many of the issues reported in the article mentioned above, ubd had filled my Keychain with massive amounts of entries called com.apple.ubiquity.peer-uuid.n, where n is one of thousands of UIDs. Apparently, it was trying to generate self-signed root certificates for the missing one, but unable to do so due to the missing entry of my Apple ID.

In any case, Apple seems to really have made a complicated blunder here - there are, apparently, so many dependencies with the Apple ID and iCloud, that if something goes wrong, it tears down a large chunk of a previously running system.

MacOS Mountain Lion Upgrade - First Impression

Hans D. Baumeister — 2012-08-02T12:15:52+02:00

Today, I upgraded my Lion Notebook to Mountain Lion.

The only apparent problem was with Mail - likely due to an issue with a plugin, it would freeze after about 20% of upgrading the mail database.

Some research gave the correct answer by a user called registerednderd on discussions.apple.com:

The Library folder has been hidden, starting in Lion. To access it, in finder, go to Go > Go to folder, and type "~/Library"

1. Force Quit Mail
2. Open Finder
3. Go > Go to Folder
4. Type in "~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData" (no quotes)
5. There are three files that start with "Envelopes," delete them
6. Re-open Mail
The upgrade should now proceed normally.

Thanks, registerednderd!

So far, Mountain Lion seems stable enough, time will tell.

Passwords - a modern Tragedy

Hans D. Baumeister — 2012-06-13T09:58:13+02:00

Since 1985, I’d been using a very simple, one-word password that I’d learned from a fellow student at RIT. I protected everything (and I mean everything!) digital with this password. To this day, it hasn’t been compromised.

After, amongst others, the password-debacle at LinkedIn, mixed with a growing number of services requiring high-complexitiy passwords, I’ve modified this original password with capital letters, symbols and digits. I can still remember it quite easily, but doing a split-second password entry on a keyboard has become a fond memory.

With shift keys to press and digits to hit properly, entering this new password has become quite a chore, especially on my iPhone with its dinky, made-for-babies on-screen keyboard. Why is it, by the way, that Apple hasn’t implemented a landscape-orientation keyboard for this?

In any case, with the number of electronic services that one uses on the increase, so is the number of separate entities requiring some form of secure identification. If the password doesn’t need changing regularly, then - with “remember me on this computer” features - this isn’t such an issue. Often, though, it is just plain annoying.

With different password complexity requirements, one password - even it if is complex enough to be very secure - won’t suffice for every service.

Why is it that we have highly integrated technologies like an iPhone, but no halfway simple mechanism to automate personal identification? The user-facing camera on my iPhone should, for example, suffice in resolution and quality for a biometric check of the face (okay, I admit it: I haven’t a clue as to how this is done, but my imagination tells me it should be doable).

Why hasn’t someone implemented a bluetooth device that I can carry and link to my laptop, smartphone, desktop to identify me securely, perhaps via a smartcard and 5-digit PIN?

Huawei E585 MiFi Appliance

Hans D. Baumeister — 2012-06-01T09:59:10+02:00

As I’ve been using the E585 for nearly a year, I believe it is time to give a quick summary of my experiences with the device.

There is no doubt in my mind, that a small, portable device that provides 3G to WiFi routing - ideally for multiple clients - is the best solution for people frequently on the road. Some of the advantages:

1. connect multliple WiFi clients simultaneously in a local WiFi network with internet access (up to 5 on the E585)
2. no driver issues with USB 3G sticks, especially on Apple computers
3. connect devices (for example iPod Touch) that don’t offer any other connectivity, even on the road

Subsequently, I would buy a MiFi again, should the E585 quit working.

Would it be the E585 or a similar Huawei product? Not so sure about that.

For one thing, the E585 initially delivered incredible performance from the rechargable battery. The first time I used it was on a train trip from Berlin to Karlsruhe (more than 5 hours) without any need to connect it to the USB port to recharge. Unfortunately, the battery quickly lost its capacity, so that it currently won’t run for longer than half an hour without connection to power.

For another thing, the device occasionally has a “network hiccup” in that it will show good reception but not route any data. This only happens sporadically, but it sure is annoying, as it doesn’t indicate any sort of error. A reset (either by power cycling or by calling a reset from the config web page) will fix this, but read the next issue.

Lastly, the time required for the device to begin routing from power up is, in my opinion, much too long. I haven’t measured it, but it feels like about 3 minutes. If all you’re trying to do is quickly get some emails out, this is annoying. It certainly seems like most of that time, the device is booting up, quite possibly due to an extremely slow CPU.

One more point, although I wouldn’t dock “stars” from a product rating for this: I would have wished for the device to have a “USB data mode”, where the WiFI actually turns off and data is delivered via USB. Yes, this once again requires drivers to be installed (or already available), but seeing as there are quite a few standard products that provide USB to Ethernet bridging, this mode of operation should be less troublesome than finding working drivers (and software) for a USB 3G stick.

I haven’t tried any other MiFi products, but there are some things that could - probably quite easily - be solved with hardware / firmware upgrades.

Speaking of upgrades, I have not been able to find a way to upgrade the E585 firmware. The Huawei website doesn’t offer a simple firmware update download - unfortunately.

Would I recommend the unit to others? Potentially yes, but I would certainly recommend a bit more research into alternatives.

Mac Mini Mediacenter - End of an Era

Hans D. Baumeister — 2012-02-13T09:04:33+01:00

What started out with the goal of attaining the ultimate home media solution is fizzling out as I write this: Using a Mac Mini, combined with an Elgato HybridTV USB device, to concentrate all media activity.

What sounds like the ideal solution (and I still believe it could be that) has turned out to be something that just isn’t usable by normal people.

One problem may have been the upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion on the Mac Mini. With all the issues I’ve had on my MacBook and iMac with this upgrade (see previous posts), I can’t imagine Lion is not responsible for at least some of the issues we’ve encountered. Also, there are infrequent issues between EyeTV and iTunes, usually with iTunes ending up blocking the sound so that TV sound would only be back on if iTunes was quit.

However, it is my considered opinion that the major problems are sourced from the Elgato EyeTV software and the HybridTV USB stick.

From EyeTV (frequently) freezing up to programmed recordings not working to actual issues wither with the driver for the hardware or with the hardware itself, the setup has been riddled with issues that especially my wife has had to suffer under. To be fair, she isn’t a Mac fan and she’s never really taken the time to learn the inside track on the MacMini setup. On the other hand, setting up such an expensive device should really make any inside knowledge unnecessary.

Very recently, we’ve had the issue of not getting a signal when switching channels (“This station is currently not available”) - unplugging the Elgato hardware and immediately plugging back in fixes this - perhaps, however, this is the reason that some programmed recordings don’t record.

A couple of months ago, we’d already attempted to replace the Mac Mini with a Panasonic digital HD cable receiver with built-in hard drive. Judging by the HD size (160GB), the model was a bit older, but we’d had a Panasonic analog cable receiver before getting the Mac MIni and were relatively happy with the user interface (take the “G” out of GUI for this one!).

As it turned out, however, the total ease of use of the Mac with the EyeTV software really spoiled us, so that even my wife - who was very keen on getting something that would work when I was on the road - agreed that this device was NOT IT. Praise Amazon for an unproblematic return: bye-bye Panasonic.

Last week, I found that our cable carrier offered a digital HD receiver with 320GB hard drive and a smart card for HD reception of most programs for €6 per month - and I bought.

The interface here - quite obviously - does not live up to the Mac either, but it is really quite feasible and simple to use. The search capabilities for programs in the downloaded TVTV database is workable, if not ideal.

Subsequently, the Mac Mini will be phased over gradually into a life of “service” - Lion Server is already installed.

Crashed Public Phone

Hans D. Baumeister — 2012-02-10T09:54:55+01:00

This is a fascinating one, seen at Frankfurt Airport: a public phone stuck on the BIOS boot screen:

I never would have imagined that such a device would contain a regular PC, but there you are, here turned for your viewing pleasure:

Not that a Celeron with 400MHz is anything to run Windows 7 on…

The question really is: what on earth did the device fill the “primary hard disk” with? Maybe MP3 recordings of conversations placed on it?

The hard disk encoded in the Primary Master ID is a Hitachi Endurastar with 20 GB and an ATA-100 interface, by the way.

Added SSD, Reinstalled Lion...

Hans D. Baumeister — 2011-11-21T10:02:50+01:00

Some recent issues with my Lion-based MacBook Pro built up a strong desire to re-install the entire OS. Since reports from colleagues with SSDs in their Macs were so positive, this was going to be my way to go: put an SSD in place of my regular hard drive and install the latter in a special mounting kit that replaces the DVD drive (see my separate entry about that).

The results:
1) Boot-up time greatly sped-up - incredible
2) most of the issues I’ve had with Lion are gone
3) most important: the wakeup-delay (see previous posts) was gone

Subsequently, this is a step I can greatly recommend. I’m not sure if some of the issues I had with Lion were due to upgrading from Snow Leopard (instead of doing a clean install) or some other problem, but one mystery was solved in the process: the cause of the wakeup-delay.

Because the installed SSD is - in comparison to the 640GB HD - somewhat restricted (96 GB), I wanted to move my user folder to the hard drive (see separate post). In doing so, the notorious wake-up delay came back! I ended up moving the user folder back to the SSD and *presto*, the problem was gone again.

Some more research shows that there are documented issues with the hard disk I use (a Samsung HM641JI), as well as with other models, in the update of the MacBook Pro EFI 1.6 to 1.7, causing some folks to actually do an EFI downgrade (pretty risky business). With the issue popping up with the user folder moved to the HD and disappearing when it was moved back, the evidence strongly supports an issue with the Mac and the Samsung HD. I’m assuming my HD is okay (perhaps wrongly so); unfortunately, I’m unable to find a Firmware update for the drive on the Samsung support site (in fact, I’m unable to find the drive!!! thanks, Samsung!). Seeing as my EFI version is 2.0, I would have thought Apple would fix things by now…

MacOS Lion Caveats - 4. Look and Feel / Ergonomics

Hans D. Baumeister — 2011-08-03T17:06:01+02:00

4.1 - OS in General

I'm not sure what the reason for changing things in the MacOS GUI was - quite possibly, because there might be an impending feeling - had things _not_ changed - that the OS hadn't been changed. However, I really like the use of color to differentiate items and, this should be mentioned, it was Apple who first introduced the concept to a GUI... are we now going Bauhaus or minimalist or what is the reason to take away all color in the tool bar?

4.2 - Mail

Mail is one of the apps that - in my opinion - has suffered the most from the GUI revamp as well as having some issues implanted that make working with the app more of a chore than it should be.

Take, for example, us road warriors that often have flakey internet connections: if I'm syncing my IMAP accounts while in a train and the connection goes bad, Mail consistently asks me to re-enter the password for the account - as if losing an IP connection actually caused Keychain to drop it into /dev/null! How annoying!

As for the GUI issues, I repeatedly find myself doing a mouse hover over the buttons to make sure I'm hitting the same one. @Apple: the buttons were fine - why did you have to change them?

What also irks me is: Apple has applied the idiotic day naming, found (and hated) in Outlook, to Mail: instead of just writing date and time in the mailbox list, it now uses "Today", "Yesterday" etc. Looking for a particular mail at a particular time? Nope. Time isn't displayed anymore, just the date or "Today... Yesterday... ".

Actually, what is even more freaky: I have set my OS to prefer English language UI content to German, which is in second place (as I work in Germany). Mail has everything of the GUI in English, which the exception of the mail date naming... "Today" becomes "Heute", "Yesterday ... Gestern" and, since there is a specific word in German for the day before yesterday ("Vorgestern"), it uses that too!

Also, things have changed with the way that attachments are displayed. I'm not much of an Outlook fan, but I've always liked the separate "box" within the mail message window for attachments. This way, you see immediately what / if something is attached and you're able to drag-and-drop it to whereever you'd like to have it.

It wasn't implemented that well in Mail under SL, but at least you would see the attachments as separate "file entries" below the header information. Apparently, this is no more (at least I haven't found a way to change it): now, there is only a button for saving attachments, or you can go and scroll to the bottom of the message where, if you're lucky, the attachments are displayed as icons. Mail tends to display single-page PDFs inline, which makes it a pain to extract via drag-n-drop.

MacOS Lion Caveats - 3. Freezing Computer

Hans D. Baumeister — 2011-08-03T17:04:55+02:00

My MacBook Pro freezes once in a while. Everything. For about 30 seconds or so. Then it just continues working, as if nothing happened. It doesn't seem to be related to a particular application or situation. Never had that with SL and it only happens on the Laptop (luckily). No idea why…

This happens every once in a while, not with any particular application „on top”.

***
Update August 11:
I’ve upgraded my RAM to 8GB, mainly because I realized that both VMWare and Aperture claim incredible amounts of RAM (why does a VM that has 1GB associated with it take 2.4GB real RAM???).
Also, I’ve seen the Kernel process consume up a one GB for whatever reason (this never happened with SnowLeopard!).

So far, the 8GB really helps to speed things up and prevent the system from swapping like crazy. Lets hope the freezing doesn’t pop up anymore with this much RAM...!

MacOS Lion Caveats - 2. Crashing Apps

Hans D. Baumeister — 2011-08-03T17:03:53+02:00

Okay, I would presume that Lion poses some hurdles for apps certified to run under Snow Leopard. Strangely enough, apps that I would have expected to break, like the printing software for my Brother label printer works without a hitch, while Pages - an Apple product (!) - does the dying swan once in a while (it never did under SL).

One set of applications is behaving just like I expected: with major issues. Microsoft Office 2011. With the quality of this software on the level that it is even after several updates, my expectations weren't very high - but even this level wasn't met.

I won't go into the details here, I can just state that Microsoft is keeping up its bad reputation with me by promising to bring a Lion-ready update for the software MONTHS AFTER LION's RELEASE! This puts the final whop of whipped cream on my theory that Microsoft's only reason for making Office available for the Mac is to take the excellent experience one has with the computer down to par with a Windows machine.

MacOS Lion Caveats - 1. Me.com Issues

Hans D. Baumeister — 2011-08-03T16:55:24+02:00

I use me.com mainly for keeping several calendars and my contacts in sync over three Macs, an iPad and my iPhone. This worked mostly like a charm - until Lion came along. For whatever reason, me.com syncing is completely broken on my iMac.

I haven't had the time to investigate yet, but it is completely nixed. All my contacts are gone from this device (luckily only from the iMac) and calendars are not being updated.

*** Update Aug. 11, 2011

After much research and almost no results (am I really the only user of Lion with this issue???), I set up a new user and connected it to me.com to sync. Lo and behold, everything works fine, so quite obviously, the Lion upgrade screwed something up with my user account. I may have to switch to a new user and re-do all my settings just to fix this...

Apple, please, send us 10.7.1!

MacOS Lion - Part 2 - Weird wake-up delays with my MacBook Pro

Hans D. Baumeister — 2011-08-03T16:54:13+02:00

At some point in time about 6 months ago, a weird phenomenon started happening on my MacBook Pro: it had issues waking up from sleep. This comes up in three variants:
a) I have a mouse cursor I can move, but nothing else happens for about 30-60 seconds, then I get a password prompt
b) I get the "spinning disk of death" for about the same time, then the login prompt
c) I get the login prompt immediately, but my password entry doesn't appear until 30-60 seconds after the fact

once in a very great while, I will have "normal" operation: i.e. the login prompt comes up immediately, my password is accepted immediately and the environment appears immediately (as things should be). But this is exceedingly rare.

And yes, I have tried turning off the password protection after wakeup - with the exception of a missing password prompt, nothing is different. And yes, I have tried resetting the NRI. Folks, believe me, I've likely read most of the entries of other people experiencing this effect - apparently, I'm not alone out there. I can tell you, however, that Apple isn't reading these entries, or they would do something about this issue.

I went as far as transplanting my hard drive to another MacBook Pro to see if it was a hardware issue. This is where it gets creepy: for the first hour or two, the problem was gone. "Hey", I thought, "great: get the notebook fixed and everything will be ok!". Nope. This problem is like a virus: after a while, the other MacBook Pro started reacting in exactly the same manner! Weird, huh?

To make this short: I had high hopes that whatever process was broken on my machine, it would be fixed with Lion. You guessed it all along, of course: it didn't.

MacOS Lion - Part 1 - Support of Canon Multifunction

Hans D. Baumeister — 2011-08-03T16:51:48+02:00

I wasn't going to do it, but in the end, I succumbed to my "greed for progress": I downloaded and installed Lion on the day Apple made it available. I’d like to share my experiences (quite a few of them negative) with Lion with you.

I had high hopes for the new OS. After all, the feature list was well-sold by its Maker. Also, there were a few issues I had with Snow Leopard that I had hoped to have fixed with this release, for example the support of the Canon iSensys MF8350CD Multifunction Printer / Scanner / Fax.

The integration of our MF8350CD multifunction device was abominal in Snow Leopard. Luckily (or unluckily?), I'm not alone here - the amount of frustration that Mac users have typed into blogs, newsgroups and other online sites about these devices is huge. No drivers built into MacOS at all; the device didn't even function using standard drivers (which, according to some blogs, helped some people). The driver supplied by Canon would bomb every 5th print-attempt or so, and running "Repair Disk Permissions" would break it to the point of having to be re-installed. Because I tend to do a preventative RDP relatively frequently, I decided to put the driver disk image on my desktop to help me locate it quickly…

Needless to say, Lion didn't help - quite the contrary. The old (2.02) driver now didn't work at all any more, and the device still wasn't part of the OS printer library. Very recently, Canon released the 2.03 driver, which works, well, sometimes. I would say, 1/3 of the print attempts actually end in a piece of paper coming out of the printer. 1/3 of the time, some daemon that is part of the Canon CUPS environment dies and - apparently - gets restarted, and 1/3 of the time the application issuing the print command goes up in a puff of smoke. Being an experienced user (say "frustrated"), I know that it is IMPERATIVE to save any changes in a Pages document _before_ printing…

I can tell you: I will NEVER buy another Canon printer or scanner ever again (I do love my IOS D350). Canon used to be the absolute market leader in high-performance color printing from the Mac; now, even HP does better - sad but true.

First Impressions: Vikuiti Screen Filter

Hans D. Baumeister — 2011-05-20T15:50:01+02:00

I travel a lot, mostly by train. While the German ICE trains have a nice, open-air design (for example: a largish gap between seats), I frequently catch my seat neighbor’s eyes flicking to my screen.
Okay, chances are it is envy (I use a Mac and can work productively) or mere interest in MacOS that makes most folks break established social rules, but you never know - every once an a while, I’m sure I have had a competitor or even a customer sitting next to me without knowing it.

To be brief: for a few weeks, I’ve been thinking about getting one of those screen filters that greatly reduce the field of view to the left and to the right. Patent holder seems to be 3M, as I’ve only seen this type of filter from them, so I picked up a Vikuiti filter made to fit the 13.3 inch diagonal screen of my MacBook Pro.

The distributor in Germany provided a very easy to use online shop and the product arrived two days later by parcel service.

The filter itself is two-sided, meaning that one side has a glossy finish and one has a matte finish. While I love the screen of the MacBook Pro, the glossiness can be an issue when working out side or in a train next to the window, so I chose the matte side forward.

The screen comes with a mounting kit for notebooks as well as desktop monitors. While the latter merely consists of double-sided tape (get serious, guys), the laptop version is in the form of clear plastic strips, which are sticky down half of their length. Two long strips are intended to go on the left and right sides of the screen, while several short ones go on the bottom and, optionally on the top sides and top.

Mounting looked easy enough, however there is something that wasn’t clear from the (non-verbal) instructions: you need to leave some space between the edge of the filter and the beginning of the sticky part of the strip, perhaps 2mm. If you stick it too tightly to the edge of the filter, getting the filter in is impossible. So - off they went, to be re-stuck a little further out. While the strips made nearly clear contact with the glass screen of the MacBook before, they now have a bunch of gunk under the sticky part. They still hold, but don’t look as nice anymore.

One thing I find irritating is that these strips stick out into the actual screen by a little bit - depending on how you place them, up to about 4mm. While they are clear and subsequently see-through, they still represent a bit of an irritation - I hope I get used to them. And, of course, the clear lines of the glossy MacBook display are completely destroyed, but such is life. I would have preferred a filter as large as the entire black part of the display, with clear dual-sided sticky dots to put the filter over the screen. Either with velcro to remove it or permanently.

The effect, of course, is immediately clear:

no chance for anyone sitting next to me of seeing anything - the display look completely black.
someone looking over your shoulder can still see your screen - the reduction in luminance is minimal in angles from top to bottom
the picture is clearly darker than without the filter, and seems slightly, well, out of focus. I guess the reduction in edge contrast makes it look that way.
if you get too close to the screen, you’ll have a serious issue reading anything that isn’t smack in the center, as the blocking effect of the filter also works in that direction (obviously) - you’ll have to maintain at least 50cm distance to the screen to avoid this effect, something that may be difficult on an economy airplane seat.

Summary: it works as advertised, though you have to live with some drawbacks. I’m certainly glad the filter is removable in situations where I work alone.

*** Second impression: June 20, 2011 ***

After using the filter for a month now, I can reflect in more detail on the system.
The solution for holding the filter to the screen is absolute crap. The plastic strips gather dust and grit and look like some grotesque outgrowth on the stylistically quite beautiful MacBook Pro screen.

The filter is impossible to insert with one hand, even with two it is difficult to get it to slide in properly. Making the filter the identical size of the actual display is not only unattractive but requires - as already detailed - for the holding tabs to overlap into the display, making it nearly unreadable at these points.

To summarize: the filter works as advertised. It even reduces reflections on the mirror-like glass screen of the MacBook Pro, which - especially in a window seat on a train - is a plus. The reduction in light transmission is acceptable and was expected.

The system used to hold the filter to the screen is absolutely unacceptable. The manufacturer really needs to think up something different, either a filter that is as large as the display plus border, possibly with velcro attachments or at least a little bit larger so that modified holding tabs can be moved onto the (non-display) border. The holding tabs need to be modified in such that there is a raised edge where the filter is to be inserted, so that it can be slid in without problems.

To Err is Mac... Freezing Issues out of Sleepmode

Hans D. Baumeister — 2011-05-17T20:28:00+02:00

Describes issues with freezing of my MacBook Pro when coming out of sleep mode, and what I did against it.

Worst iPhone App ever?

Hans D. Baumeister — 2011-03-03T16:14:52+01:00

The CeBIT trade fair seems to be shrinking every year, but it is still a moloch when it comes to trying to find your way around. Like the year before, an official iPhone App („CeBIT2Go”) for the 2011 CeBIT trade fair was released; the description seemed to promise to make a visit to the fair as easy as shopping at Amazon.

What would I expect from such an app? Well, I would certainly like to see a search by exhibitor, as well as a search by the topic I’m trying to find exhibitors for. All that is in there, and more, but that is where the good news stops.

The app gave me the impression of a group of overzealous designers (of the function follows form lobby) and a computer science student just out of college having teamed up a week before the start of the fair.

Search by portions of an exhibitor name? Nope!
Search just by a buzzword for a particular topic? Never!
Quick response of the app? Not here!

In fact, the app takes forever to initialize (okay, I use a 3GS and not an iPhone 4, but the speed difference isn’t that dramatic). It crashed twice on me, out of the blue. The relatively neat feature of being able to track the shuttle busses on the fairgrounds (to see if one is near you) comes up with „position server unavailable” relatively frequently.

To summarize: a trade fair that focusses on high-tech and software should rather NOT release an app than something of such low quality.

The ultimate solution to multiple iTunes libraries?

Hans D. Baumeister — 2010-10-22T00:29:32+02:00

I just found a fascinating solution to the problem of having multiple iTunes libraries on multiple Macs (or PC’s for that matter): A service / software called MediaRover.

This solution consists of a software package for Windows or Mac OS (free) that you install, as well as a service account that lets you control up to 8 (eight!) of these so-called „Rovers” to sync to a central server, such as a NAS box.

You get to set up the sync options (including the choice of wether you want songs deleted or not) for each „Rover” (Mac or PC with iTunes on it) individually.

The software then syncs all music to a central server directory to each Rover. The caveat: you need to have such a central repository, which can be either a „real” server or a NAS box acting as one. I set up a new share on my NAS, installed the software on my Mac Mini Media Center and off it went - copying all music and playlists to that share.

Next comes the same install on my MacBook, and hopefully it will then have an exact replica of the Mac Mini. Last but not least, my iMac.

It sounds like a dream come true and - at least for now - the service is free of charge.

Solved the overscan problem on the Mac Mini Media Center

Hans D. Baumeister — 2010-07-09T22:04:23+02:00

After Googling the topic a bit more and reading about other people’s experiences with using a Mac Mini as a Media Center with, especially, Plasma TVs with 1024x768 resolution, I figured out the solution to the problem: Overscan on the Mac OFF and Overscan on the Plasma ON. Pretty simple, really. Now the Picture uses the entire screen perfectly while watching a video, with just a little being shaved off the edges of the MacOS GUI.

Still no solution for 720p vs. 768 pixels...

Hans D. Baumeister — 2010-06-16T21:54:57+02:00

Unfortunately, I still don’t have a fix for getting a 1024x768 resolution working on the Plasma.

I’ve noticed today, while doing a reboot after updating to 10.6.4 - when the screen is mostly white with an Apple logo in the center - that I’m getting a certain degree of burn-in on the screen!
Or rather, since the outer border always stays black now, it isn’t being “used” so much.

Not a good thing. Hopefully, I can figure out a way to get a proper 1024x768 image going.

What’s the best way to work with the MMM?

Hans D. Baumeister — 2010-04-19T21:53:55+02:00

I did some experimenting of what the best way to use it might be - by that I mean actually working with the unit. I did get the keyboard as a wireless model, which isn’t that easy to find if you’re looking for a model with touchpad. I picked up the ___ (tbfl) which had some decent reviews online and offers a small form factor with good reach and a pretty decent touchpad. In parallel to the touchpad, I’ve added my old LogiTech trackball right underneath the plasma.

The trackball - if you like that sort of thing (I do) - is the better mouse mover, hands down. I have to admit that I thought I was going to use the MMM to surf the web from the couch, which isn’t something I’ve done yet. I have looked up a couple of things about drivers or instructions, of course, but that was while standing in front of the plasma.

Chances are, I’ll never use it to browse the web - I can just grab my MacBook for that - and I can tell you the screen quality difference is really worth the couple of seconds you need to retrieve the notebook.

That is one of the issues I still have, by the way: while the Panasonic was recognized as the monitor, it is just a “Panasonic” monitor, not a specific model. The display settings offer a whole bunch of different resolutions, some of which are pretty ridiculous. Four of them have a little TV icon next to the resolution indicator, so I’m assuming that these are the preferred resolutions to use for the Plasma.

Two of them are 1080 (i and p), both of which produce a horrible picture. That’s to be expected, however, as the specs of the Plasma indicate that it does 720p maximum, everything else is upscaled. The first one is 480p, which is unusable.
Setting the display to 720p gives good results, though I would have expected text (i.e. black on white background) to be crisper - after all, a Plasma has discrete 3-color pixels and should be able to give a relatively good picture.

One thing I haven’t figured out - if it is possible at all - is how to increase the font size in Mac OS. Windows offers this option (even though it usually doesn’t work well in most applications), and I would have though this to be part of the “Universal Access” control - but it isn’t.
For example, the various views in EyeTV could use a much bigger font and still fit on the screen, at least horizontally. It would make things much easier to use, even from the couch. Working with EyeTV (or any other software with lots of text) from anywhere but right up front just doesn’t work well. I’ll have to research that a bit more.

The real problem with the 720p mode, however, is that it produces a picture that is approximately 40” across (on a 42” display) - which is pretty annoying - after all, a 40” TV is considerably cheaper than a 42”. I wasn’t able to find a monitor profile on the Panasonic website, so I’ll have to research that some as well.

First Update: Mac Mini Media Center

Hans D. Baumeister — 2010-04-03T21:44:39+02:00

Wow, honestly, I didn’t think I’d enjoy this device as much as I do.
It is - at least for me - a real upgrade in both quality and versatility to what we had before.

First off, let me mention one of the more important aspects: the quality difference even between watching digital cable on a cable receiver connected by SCART (analog signal) to the MMM connected by HDMI is like taking pickle slices off your eyes. It is truly astounding. I tried switching back just to see the difference (the Elgato tuner does both digital + analog) and I felt nauseous viewing the analog signal.

Cable tuners with HDMI and hard disk are only now appearing on the market, but I’m very glad I chose to go with the MMM, since the price difference is marginal!

Unbelievable Experiences with Entourage 2008

Hans D. Baumeister — 2010-03-10T20:24:50+01:00

Folks, I’m not a big fan of Windows, that’s why I use a Mac. I don’t make a big secret of that.

Unfortunately, a large part of the IT world is still blinded by the dark side; subsequently, my employer makes software to run on MS Windows, not on Linux or Apple. Which also means that we use Microsoft Office internally, including that wanton beast, Exchange Server.

Mind you, I much prefer Exchange / Outlook to what I used at my previous engagement, which was Lotus Notes. You think you have it bad because you have to use Outlook? Think again!

Microsoft has offered “Office for Mac” for a number of years now; an ex colleague was extremely happy with it, even proffed that it was better than the comparable Office for Windows. You might think “okay, that isn’t very difficult to achive” - and I would agree.

Unfortunately, to keep with the standard file types my colleagues generate, I’m using Office for Mac 2008. Let me tell you: it is the worst piece of software on my machine. Sometimes I think Microsoft put in all those bugs and rediculous “ergonomics” to create some sort of disappointment with that non-dark-side operating system this software runs on.

Besides some serious stability issues with the rest of the applications, as well as lacking VisualBasic or even Macro support in Word and Excel, MS also provides an Outlook “replacement” for Exchange, called Entourage.

I doubt that I have ever used a piece of software more bug-ridden than this sad piece of work. Besides the fact that it regularly spits out bizarre error messages with error numbers you will find NOWHERE on the internet (certainly not on Microsoft’s extremely sparse support site for the Office 2008 suite), I have the strangest problems with it.

I’ll give you an example that is currently plaguing me: I write emails in German and English, and sometimes I need to include words in Turkish when I communicate with our Turkish reseller. I’ve already turned off the spellchecker, yet Entourage insists on changing words I enter in Turkish to some bizarre German “equivalent”. I can’t get it to stop. It won’t even let me change the words back - if I do that in the About field and then go back to my text, for example, BANG it changes it back.

Microsoft is bringing out Office 2010 for Mac sometime this year - and let me tell you, I certainly hope the “real” Outlook that is supposed to ship with that package is any better than this crap!

Upgrading the Harddisk of my 2007 20” iMac

Hans D. Baumeister — 2010-02-26T21:37:40+01:00

The original harddisk of my iMac purchased in April 2007 had 250GB, which - of course - filled up mighty quickly. I added an external dual drive box and set these two Terabyte drives up as RAID-1. I synchronise this regularly with a NAS box, also with RAID-1 setup, so the RAID-1 on the iMac is really somewhat overkill. The issue with it is: to save power, I have the drives spin down after some time (Apple doesn’t permit specifying a time), but they spin back up for seemingly unrelated tasks (that don’t require the RAID-1 data).

This is pretty annoying, as you constantly sit around, waiting for the drives to spin back up to do even simple things. So I decided to pimp the iMac with a new hard drive.
I did some research on upgrading, and was happy to find out that my device belonged to those that are still relatively simple to upgrade. The current generation of iMacs is - apparently - a real nightmare.

I used the excellent photo set found at this URL. These instructions are, for the most part, perfect and really well executed; however, my machine looked differently inside, even though it was only built a couple of months later. Also I have a couple of tips and tricks that may help you in successfully upgrading your iMac.

Mac Mini Media Center - Still in Beta

Hans D. Baumeister — 2010-02-16T21:43:21+01:00

Okay, I splurged. I ordered a Mac Mini with 2.26 GHz CPU and a 160GB Hard Disk from Amazon - it was a bit cheaper there than from the Apple store. I also ordered a 500GB 2.5” hard disk, an EyeTV Hybrid and a Mac-compatible wireless keyboard.

The idea was to replace a Panasonic harddisk-recorder and a cable receiver, both of which do not offer HDMI connectivity, and add lots of functionality (useful or not).

The connection to our Panasonic 42” Plasma is via the standard DVI adapter that came in the packaging and a DVI to HDMI cable from ebay (for less than 9€, including shipping!).

The first thing I did was buy a replacement hard disk, as the 160GB that came with the unit would hold the operating system and about 12 movie-length recordings -- not what I had in mind. I followed a couple of the really excellent instructions on the Web for replacing the hard disk in the iMac, which is a bit of an iffy situation from a warranty standpoint. While lots of people argue that if the HD in the unit wasn’t to be replaced by the owner, Apple would have had to mark the case with “no user servicable parts inside.”

To be honest, though, even if that is the legal situation - I guarantee Apple will make a stink about it should I ever have to send the unit in within the 24 month warranty period. After doing the “operation”, I have to admit - I would, too, if I were Apple. The replacement really isn’t for someone with even a touch of fear of what is required... there are a couple of screws that are tough to (re-) position. What really cost me time was re-attaching the Wifi (or was it Bluetooth?) antenna connector to the mainboard - what a job for very small hands! It is difficult, because while you can position the connector relatively well using an angled tweezers (luckily, I have one), that tool doesn’t give you enough pressure to make it click in place.

In any case, the iMac now has a 500GB HD built in, which was really a good decision.

Installing the OS and the EyeTV software for the receiver is - as usual - a snap. I also put Skype on it (incredible: my age-old Logitech Notebook Pro USB Webcam runs without a driver!) as well as iTunes, of course. I’ve also moved my iTunes library from my iMac in the basement office to the MMM.

Sonnet Carapace MacBook Keyboard Cover

Hans D. Baumeister — 2009-11-09T20:10:53+01:00

While a keyboard cover for a laptop that is used extensively on the road, including tight airplane seats and seat neighbors with red wine glasses and a case of the jitters, this particular one isn’t what it is cracked up to be.

The advertising indicates that the silicon cover basically welts itself onto the keys, leaving no change in the touchtype-feeling as with the uncovered keyboard.

Both indications are not true. For one thing, a MacBook keyboard covered with the Carapace looks like a disease befell it. I received multiple enqueries about what had happened to my keyboard, with guesses of “vaseline”, “heat” or other, even less desirable possibilities being the standard. The cover never “loses” the air pocket between the silicon and the keycap, no matter what you do (okay, I didn’t try a rolling pin).

Secondly, the keyboard with the cover applied, feels strange. It smells odd. Your fingers smell odd after working for a while (much like those popular kids toys made of silicon that have flashing lights inside). Also, it definitely slows down your typing speed, if you touchtype.

Lastly, and this proved to be the reason I decided to ditch the cover after only four weeks of use: it started sticking to the display, so that it would half pull off when opening the laptop. This, of course, would ruin the effects of any air removal scheme that had been applied beforehand.

If you work with the Mac in an area where fluids or dust are likely to cover it, then this keyboard cover will certainly seal off the keyboard quite well, though I don’t know how you’re going to prevent liquids or dust from entering various other openings.

After taking it off the keyboard, by the way, I had a residual oily feel on the keycaps for quite a while afterwards.

Experiences with OpenOffice 3 (Mac)

Hans D. Baumeister — 2009-06-05T20:05:04+02:00

I'd like to quickly pass on some of the experiences I've made using OpenOffice 3.01 on the Mac. Having used an iMac for over two years, I kept up-to-date on NeoOffice, loading updates as they came along. While not entirely happy with the way the GUI is structured on NeoOffice - it goes its own way in choice of icons and menu structure, it was quite ok from a technical standpoint in having to work with Microsoft Office (.doc) files, at least those produced by Office 2003.

I had chosen to use NeoOffice over OpenOffice 2.0 because, quite frankly, OO 2.0 was a fiasco in usability and stability - I dumped it just days after installation. Then came OO 3.0, and with it a very likable interface feeling (if you're used to MS Office 2003). When I got my MacBook two weeks ago, I decided to install OO 3.0 on it rather than NeoOffice.

Unfortunately, I have to admit that I am disappointed. I can accept that the import of MS Office 2007 files (i.e. .docx) doesn't work properly. I'm sure MS works very hard in making the format difficult to work with when using software that is not from MS. However, not only are there serious issues in using Office 2003 files, such as included images disappearing, bullets changing from a round (yep: "bullet") graphic to - of all things - a directors clapboard (where the hell did that come from?), fonts changing even though equivalents are available (i.e. Arial to Helvetica). But actually working with even native files is - at times - quite frustrating.

For example, I had cut-pasted a text fragment from Firefox into a document. The font changed in size and color, even from what the browser displayed - quite outlandishly, really. No problem, I thought. In MS Office, you select the malignant text and do a single click on the format selection (i.e. "Standard") to change it back to how this format is defined. In OO? Nothing happens. I opened the formats dialog box and started wildly selecting different formats, from Headings to Footer. Nothing. Only when I selected Format-->Standard format (Cmd-M) did the text change. What a pain.

OO, like MS Office, has automatic capitalization, for example at the beginning of a sentence (in case you forget to hit Shift). I'm not a fan of this option, but I hadn't bothered to turn it off. I was generating the contents of a table, and every time I hit tab to get to a new column (not yet in table format), OO would capitalize the first word typed. I suppose you could argue for hours wether this is right or not. In MS Office, this isn't an issue. You hit Control-Z and Word undoes the automatic capitalization. Somewhat annoying, because you have to remember to hit Control-Z before typing the next word, but one gets used to it. In OO? Not so. Hitting Cmd-Z does undo the capitalization but then OO puts the cursor at the beginning of the word! Who the hell came up with that stupid idea?

Another thing I've come across is that OO doesn't render the text - especially in tables - correctly when scrolling up or down a page. I.e. you're scrolling down, looking for a passage of text and a table comes up from below. Quite frequently, the contents of that table will be incompletely rendered or distorted. Very strange, I've never seen this with any other app on the Mac, so I'm presuming its an OO problem and not a Cocoa problem.

All in all, I will likely load up NeoOffice on my MacBook at my next connection to broadband. While I still prefer the UI of OO to NeoOffice, these issues indicate to me that OO 3.0 isn't really ready for the mainstream yet. Maybe I'll wait for 3.1 or 3.2 before trying again.

Blackberry 8800 User Comments

Hans D. Baumeister — 2007-11-30T10:02:24+01:00

Okay, I used to be completely against the concept of "Blackberry". Why? Because I didn't want to be available all the time. Not on the toilet, not at the movies, not at dinner. And not at a couple of other activities.

Also, I was (and still am) a loyal follower of the Palm operating system, culminating in a Treo 650 Smartphone. Nothing better out there.

The caveat: at work, we use Lotus Notes. Syncing a Palm device to Lotus Notes is something you shouldn't look forward to. Lost contacts, changed or lost to-dos. Recurring calendar entries that multiplied over several days (now when WAS cousin Armin's birthday? The 28th? 29th? 30th?).

I resisted (successfully) switching to a Blackberry device on the basis that the Treo had a Keyboard while the (then available) BB did not. I installed a version of the Blackberry service for Treo to try to at least get my emails live when I wanted them. That was a fiasco to the power of five! I won't go into the details, but if you're considering trying that software, don't!

To make a long story short: my resistance finally caved in about 6 months ago. I was up for a new mobile device and had seen the 8800 being used by a colleague in the UK. Pretty slick.

After using it for half a year, I can only say - I'm glad I switched! Not because the Treo is no good - its a great little phone with a super efficient and stable operating system. But because I finally get proper syncs between my handheld device and my Notes account. Everything, all the time. Live. What more do you want?

And, to be fair, the voice quality on the 8800 _is_ better than on the Treo. So is the speakerphone. Much better. So is reception. Built-in GPS? WOW!
I can deal with not having a built-in camera, especially because the one built into the Treo was a joke (640x480 just doesn't cut it if you want to document a trip to Rome).

And to be honest, my fear of the "ever available worker" weren't really that realistic. The thing has a function to turn off the radio - obviously, since you wouldn't be able to fly with the device if it didn't.

And: I still have final control over the urge to look or not look at new messages.
At least so far.