REDELIJKHEID
A while back, I wrote a couple of blog posts about the FileVault quirks in OSX. The problems seemed to be gone with the upgrade to Snow Leopard, but this week I ran into a (new??) 'feature'?
When I remove a directory on a (SMB) file-share it removes the files and directory (or so it seems). But after a couple of seconds the (empty) directory re-appears.
A page on the website of KPN (the biggest Dutch telecom provider, and former employer) suggests this.
At the moment, the iPhone is exclusively sold by T-Mobile, but for as long as the iPhone has been in the Netherlands, there have been rumors about other carriers.
A prank, a mistake, or somebodies wettest dream? I have no idea. All I know that the page is there (today), and that I saved it to make sure it stays 'there'.
A mirror of the 'analogue' pages can be found here.
My dad switched to an iMac a couple of weeks ago. He came from a Windows environment with lots of periferals (RF Mouse, Bluetooth dongle, HP flatbed Scanner, Espon printer, Nikon CoolScan V, HP PDA, etc.). So the challenge was to migrate as many periferals as possible.
Thankfully, most of them worked. Even the old Nikon CoolScan V film scanner worked with the supplied Nikon Scan 4 software, until last Sunday. For some reason the application crashes with a message that the preferences file can't be read (Is another instance of Nikon Scan 4 running??).
It seemed that the Nikon app wasn't shut down properly on one occasion and a lock file was left in the preferences. Removing the lock file solved the issue.
The lock file is located at the following location:
~/Library/Preferences/Nikon/Nikon Scan 4 Prefs.lock
Sidenote: Weird that relatively old propriatary software like the Nikon Scan 4 software works fine, but that more recent (Nikon) software needs special updates to keep working under Snow Leopard. Was Nikon Scan 4 written by people who understand what they were doing (OS sub-version independent)? Or is this just luck?
Normally, I wouldn't write about every app I try (or buy) in the iPhone App Store, but sometimes there's a good reason. In this case two;
GeoDefense Swarm is a highly addictive Desktop Tower Defense game. Very good gameplay, great graphics, and addictive as hell. I heard about this game om MacBreak Weekly, and I curse them every time I start the game (for getting me to buy it and getting addicted).
Appie is a Netherlands-only app. It's an application for Albert Heijn (Supermarkt in the Netherlands). It shows what articles are on sale, what you bought in the last three months (based on your Bonuscard number). It also holds recipes, and a lot more. A definite must-have for everyone who owns an iPhone (or iPod Touch), and who shops @ Albert Heijn.
During the migration of the data on my dad's (*cough*) Windows computer to his new iMac, we ran into lot's of locked files. Usually you get the information on a specific file (⌘ + i) and deselect the 'Locked' option in the 'General' part. It's basically impossible to remove all the locks by hand, so I needed a quicker way to remove these locks.
It seems that there's a command available in Terminal to do this. The following command removed the Locks from all the files in the current directory AND all the sub-directories.
chflags -R nouchg *
More info on the chflags command can be found in the Terminal by typing man chflags, or by visiting this page.
The cause of the locked files in my case was that we copied the data from a read-only network share (to prevent that information might get lost in copy/move actions during the migration). Reading from read-only media results in locked files (or so it seems).
Before I go into the imperfections of the iPhone, I must mention that the iPhone is one of the best (smart)phones I've had so far.....My (smartphone) references are the Nokia Communicator, Nokia E61i, Nokia N95. While the PDA experience comes from Psion (to bad that they are gone), and a boatload of crappy/unstable Windows CE/Mobile platforms over the last 10 years.
Every device had its limitations, but the iPhone clearly has the upperhand (at the moment). But there's always room for improvement :-)
The next morning; The initial rush of a new iPhone is gone (not that much though). So it's time to look at the thing with a more open mind. After my earlier post I had some time to think about the features I stumbled upon. Especially the tethering and syncing problems I ran into.
At first the tethering; no idea why Apple stripped that one from the 3.1.2 update (when you're not having the correct carrier). Most countries allow (by law) the users to remove the SIMLOCK from the iPhone. This opens the iPhone for other carriers. But it seems that when you switch carriers you end up with a 'crippled' phone, since the tethering gets 'disabled'. Not having the visual voicemail with other carriers is only a nice-to-have gone away. But tethering is something more basic. Something you (I) cannot live without.
Every other phone I've owned in the last 5 years was able to 'tether' through either an USB cable or through Bluetooth. It's like stepping back in time with the iPhone.
As of today, I'm the (proud) owner of an iPhone 3Gs 32GB (Black). Ever since the release a couple of years ago I really wanted an iPhone. The problem is that we can only get an iPhone in combination with a T-Mobile plan here in Holland, and alternatives to the T-Mobile plan are relatively expensive;
Either way, an iPhone cost around 800 euros, whether you pay it at once or spread the costs over two years. Since I didn't like to finance T-Mobile for a plan, since I already got a pretty good deal, I went out and bought an iPhone.
At least with a 99.9% certainty.
It seemed that the memory upgrade I bought when I bought the MacBook is having trouble. Weird, because under Leopard it worked just fine. Snow Leopard crashes (system freeze), and sometimes even with weird flashing lines on the screen.
I guess that Snow Leopard is a bit more sensitive about the memory that's installed.
Ordered a set of Kingston KTA-MB1066K2/4G @ Informatique. Let's see if that's more stable.
The old RAM I had was OCZ So-Dimm DDR3 PC3-8500, 1066MHz (P/N: OCZ3M10664GK). Let's see if I can put it in another laptop. A less picky one.
Ran into one of the most annoying bugs in OSX evah.... The earlier versions of OSX had a problem with Filevault and remembering certain default application preferences. This issue is resolved in Snow Leopard, but I ran into another (new) feature.
Whenever I put my MacBook to sleep it closes all running programs and documents (without any save option), and logs me off....
Waking the MacBook back up leaves me with the default log in screen. After the log in, it's like I rebooted the machine...
Need to remember to save before putting it to sleep, or to wander of for a couple of minutes.......
UPDATE: I fixed it. Yesterday I saw a flash of the error reporting tool of OSX while I opened the lid of my MacBook, and before it logged me out on the fly. This meant that there might be some info in the console application.
It turned out there were two applications generating lots of errors. Namely PGP and EyeConnect (some part of EyeTV). Somehow both had come over with the data migration.
After uninstalling PGP manually (because the regular interface didn't work any more) and removing all references to the EyeConnect application everything worked as it should (so far).
UPDATE 2: Never mind the previous cheerful update. LoginWindow keeps crashing. I even reinstalled the compleet OS on a seperate disk and with virtual no apps installed it keeps crashing. So the sleep mode is essentially unusable. I've been thinking of removing the Snow from the Leopard....