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Posts Tagged apple
Happy Pi Day!
Mar 14
I’ve already forgotten this tidbit once. So now I am making this note both to myself, and to maybe help someone on the entirewebs.
If your iPhone refuses to sync or backup through iTunes, it is likely due to one of two causes:
- The iPhone itself is actually having a problem. (I have not encountered this, personally.)
- There is something screwed up with the USB port you have it plugged into.
This can be a temporary software issue (as can happen when you unplug a device without officially removing it in Windows). But can also be an actual problem with the physical USB port. I have had both happen.
At first, after researching this problem with the knowledge floating around the web, I thought it was a problem with one of the applications, or of too many applications, etc. While it is true that removing all your applications may make this problem go away, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the applications that had the problem, but that there was more data being transmitted through the USB port that was wonky, and therefore the issue had more chances to rear it’s ugly head.
My solution to you, is to first try to relocate the iPhone USB cable to a new USB port, and then try again. But most importantly, because it is usually my problem, and I always forget:
Use a USB port that is directly attached to your motherboard.
It seems the iTunes helper dlls or whatever, that regulate communication between your Apple wonder and your system, are prone to stutter at most any wonkiness. Sometimes, if there is the smallest of hangups in your USB hub, it will simply kill the entire transaction and spit out error messages that make it sound to you as if your iPhone is kaput. Thank you, Apple, for learning such descriptive error messages from Windows 3.1.
fin.
Well, the wife and I got iPhone 3G’s today. But they really should be called iPhone 2.5G’s.
After Wired’s article about the survey they did of 3G users in various locales across North America, I was ready to discount the iPhone 3G’s troubles with the 3G network as mainly due to faulty local networks.
Then again, something didn’t sit right in that conclusion. It all became crystal clear as the young, stoked Apple attendant was ringing up the phones. We talked a bit about the Wired article, and I told him I was confident about the iPhone being ok here in Austin, because of the article and my current phone. I have had a Samsung Sync SGH-A707 for almost 2 years now, and the one problem I have never had with it is bad reception. I have 5 to 7 bars (which is max on the phone) on 3G almost the entire time I am in town.
Then he said, “look at it now”. I did and it showed 5 bars of 3G on the Samsung. It never wavered while my wife was getting her iPhone setup. Then as my iPhone was setup, I saw that it has only one bar of 3G for a brief moment and then switches to 3 to 5 bars of Edge. That was enough test for me. The Apple store employee says they never get 3G at that store or around it on the iPhones.
I sit here now, in South Austin (the store was in North Austin) with the new iPhone showing 5 bars of Edge, reading this rebuttal to a rebuttal of the Wired article… essentially saying it is ‘mostly’ still the network.
It’s not the network.
I remember that the Samsung Sync is known for its exceptionally high radio strength. But Wired’s survey chart certainly shows Austin as solid green for network stability/strength. And yet the phones we just purchased have a very hard time connecting anywhere in town with more than a couple bars, and drop to Edge a majority of the time. It was a good theory, and I appreciate the survey, but unfortunately it isn’t backed up in reality.
Mac hacked in two minutes
Mar 28
Apple fanatics have one less tic mark to their list of all that is good.
Linux fanbois can continue their chest pumping, however.
Apple users tend to be a fanatical lot, often expressing their choice in pre-fabricated computing platforms as if it were a religious experience. There is no sense running down comparisons or arguing any points, it’d be just like arguing religion or politics. This is really odd considering it is just an electronic device. Even if it comes in a pure white candy shell.
One of the common things to hear supporting the halo around Apple is that “Macs don’t have viruses”. Apple even proclaims it in one of their Mac vs. PC ads, and on their website. Of course, this is false, but don’t try explaining that. They also state that because they use a Unix base for Mac OS X, that there are little to no vulnerabilities.
But Thursday, in an international security conference called CanSecWest in Canada, there was a little hacking competition waged. The “PWN 2 OWN” competition featured a $10000 grand prize to hack into a laptop and steal a file. First one wins. Charlie Miller did it in 2 minutes.
The machine was running the latest Mac OS X version with all security patches. Due to agreements at the conference, the way he hacked it will not be revealed until after Apple has been fully notified of the breach. But the contest had stipulations that the contestant could only use software pre-installed on the system. So, the likely vulnerability was Apple’s Safari web browser.
The thing is, he could have gone after any OS, as the three laptops offered for exploiting were one each of the Mac OS X, Windows Vista, and Ubuntu Linux varieties. Why did Miller choose to target the Mac? Because it was the easiest.
This video is of a 7 year old back in 1982 talking about programming on some local access show. He demonstrates coding BASIC on an Apple ][.
This strikes a chord with me, because around the exact same time, at around the same age, I went to a summer camp for budding computer nerds in the deserts of southern California. It was the same scenario too, we were kids learning BASIC on Apple ][. Our imaginations were fueled by shows like Whiz Kids and movies like WarGames. Not to mention the explosion of science fiction novels at the time. I still have the binder I used to map out my programs and keep printouts of them some 25 years ago.
I’ve never shaken that love of computers and programming, and I’m glad I got to grow up with it. Now that computers are ubiquitous, “hackers” aren’t such special snowflakes, but I still feel the nostalgia of when it was a budding science and I was still a bud myself.
Man, this website really is turning into a blog. So be it.
New Video Ipod
Oct 20
Well, the new Video Ipod has piqued my interest. Soooo, another free site with good vibes has gone up.
