Prediction: We won’t see a fixed MobileMe until 10.6 is out

I usually keep my editorial opinions off my tech blog, and post them in Gordon’s Notes (tech) instead. This one’s a bit of an exception.

I’ve been spinning cycles thinking about why Apple’s MobileMe and synchronization solutions are so miserable – and why they’re not improving.

Incompetence alone is not an explanation. Yes, Apple uses early adopters as beta testers, and yes, the MobileMe launch demonstrated Apple has serious internal issues, but they’ve still got good people.

Marketing is not an explanation. I can’t imagine any reason why Apple would not want MobileMe calendaring and synchronization to be a wonderful experience that would tie their desktop and phone customers ever more closely to Apple.

That leaves one explanation. Synchronization Hell.

The fundamental problem with “synchronization”* is that computers are not yet super-sentient. If a transaction hub had full knowledge of the world, and an IQ of 150, and lots of time to think things over, it could figure out how to translate an “all day event” represented as an attribute on a day to one represented as a “24 hour event” with a buggy representation of time zones and daylight savings time.

We’re not there yet.

It’s impossible, in the sense of mathematically not possible, to perfectly migrate data between systems that represent the semantics (meanings) of the data differently. Small discrepancies are amplified with each synchronization. Things get left out. Not only are the results inexplicable to users, they’re inexplicable to engineers.

In Apple’s case they’re deeply stuck. They have desktop systems running 10.4 and 10.5 that they’re trying to support, each with somewhat different models for calendar items, contacts, and tasks. (Let’s not even mention the horrors of the Mail.app vs. iCal.app task fiasco). The iPhone has yet another data model for Calendar and Contacts, not to mention Notes (but no Tasks). The iPhone has to “sync” with Outlook (when Exchange is not present) and iCal/Address Book (OS X) and MobileMe and Exchange Server.

The solution is to surrender to Microsoft and accept the Exchange Server model of the world. Yes, Microsoft’s monopoly is not dead.

So in OS X 10.6 everything adopts the Microsoft Exchange Server data and semantic model of Contacts, Tasks, Notes, Calendar events, etc. At that point MobileMe, the iPhone, and the OS X desktop will align. That’s probably good news, though users of PPC machines may be out of luck**.

“Snow Leopard” is probably coming out later this year. I don’t think MobileMe and the iPhone will give us the basic PDA functions we need until after 10.6 is widely available.

--

* In the world of HealthCare IT, where I live during daylight hours, the equivalent words are “mapping”, “messaging” and “interoperability”.

** It’s generally assumed that 10.6 will be Intel only. I would not be surprised if Apple has not yet made a final decision.

MobileMe alternatives – including for iPhone Sync (MacWorld)

Great article by “Joe Kissell ..senior editor of TidBits and author of numerous e-books about OS X” for MacWorld. He’s reviewing alternatives to MobileMe, but I particularly appreciated the iPhone sync options. He doesn’t mention using AOL IM as an alternative to the MobileMe chat directory and doesn’t mention any “Back To My Mac” alternatives to MobileMe. (I don’t think there are any.)

Some excerpts with a focus on sync, emphases mine …

Alternatives to MobileMe | Mobile Mac | Macworld

… Apple’s Address Book application can natively sync your contacts with Exchange, Yahoo, or Gmail Contacts, without requiring MobileMe. To set this up, open Address Book, choose Address Book: Preferences, and click on General. Select the Synchronize With Exchange, Synchronize With Yahoo, or Synchronize With Google option, depending on those you’d like to sync with…

Then, to sync, choose Sync Now from the Sync menu in your menu bar. (If the menu isn’t already there, open iSync in your Applications folder, choose iSync: Preferences, select Show Status in Menu Bar, and close the window.) Unfortunately, unless you also have MobileMe sync enabled (and set to occur on a schedule), Address Book doesn’t sync with these other services automatically; you must initiate each sync manually.

Thanks to Google Calendar’s support for the widely used CalDAV standard, iCal can connect directly with a Google-hosted calendar and sync all events automatically… you can’t simply sync an existing iCal calendar with Google Calendar…

… Another service, currently in beta testing, is Soocial. Its OS X software will sync your Address Book with a Web-based contact manager as well as (optionally) Gmail Contacts and several other services.

..Plaxo is a social networking Web site that, among many other features, offers a Web-based contact manager and calendar; they can be synched with Address Book and iCal using the company’s free Plaxo for Mac software (available only to members). Plaxo has another handy trick up its sleeve, too: it can update your Address Book automatically when contacts who are also Plaxo members change their contact details…

.. [File sync ] Evenflow’s DropBox (2GB free; 50GB for $99 per year or $10 per month); SpiderOak (2GB free; $10 per month for 100 GB; $10 per month each additional 100GB); and Sharpcast’s SugarSync (prices range from $2.49 per month for 10GB to $25 per month for 250GB).

All three services include software that you can install on your Mac or on a Windows PC (SpiderOak and DropBox also offer Linux versions, while SugarSync is also available for the iPhone and iPod touch). With this software installed, you can easily sync files between your computers and an online storage area.

DropBox sets up a single folder (the eponymous DropBox) whose contents are automatically mirrored between your Mac and the DropBox servers. SpiderOak and SugarSync let you designate one or more existing folders to behave in the same way. In all three cases, new or modified files are uploaded automatically as soon as a change is detected in the folder(s). All three services offer file sharing and synching; SugarSync and DropBox also let you upload or delete files from a Web browser.

Sync iPhone to Mac

… The iPhone fully supports Exchange accounts, which provide push e-mail, contact, and calendar updates. .. you can sign up for an individual account with several providers, including 4iPhone, interWays, mail2web, or SherWeb.

Note that you don’t need to use actual Exchange servers; third-party servers that use Microsoft’s ActiveSync technology—such Kerio MailServer, Zimbra Collaboration Suite, and Communigate Pro—also offer push synchronization of e-mail, contacts, and calendars with your iPhone…

Use NuevaSync NuevaSync is a free online service that offers over-the-air push syncing of contacts and calendars between your iPhone or iPod touch and Google (Gmail Contacts and Google Calendar), Plaxo (for contacts only), or both….

…. Athough NuevaSync can give you over-the-air push synchronization of contacts and calendars, it doesn’t sync directly with iCal or Address Book. To fill in that part of the puzzle, use BusySync, Spanning Sync, or Plaxo to sync data from your online account to your Mac…

Of course all sync services are for use “strictly at your own risk” – my experience is that all are risky and if you combine more than one sync solution you are doomed. Also the iPhone can only sync with a single Exchange server, so if your employer allows Exchange sync then you can’t use it to sync your personal data (the unreleased Palm Pre is more versatile).

I’ll be visiting some of those Exchange/ActiveSync options. I’ve been holding off on NuevaSync until they get out of beta and start to charge money.

Update: I visited some of the Exchange services. I wasn't impressed. I'll wait for NeuvaSync to get out of beta and take a look at what they're going to charge.

GoogleUpdate.exe - broken on our corporate network

This is an odd one. I don't have the answer, so any hints would be much appreciated.

In our corporate environment when we try to install any Google Products we now get what I'm guessing is the GoogleUpdate.exe XML manifest instead. It starts like this (example, Chrome, emphases mine):

... <asmv1:assembly xsi:schemaLocation="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1 assembly.adaptive.xsd" manifestVersion="1.0">
<assemblyIdentity name="Google Installer.app" version="1.2.133.37" publicKeyToken="9a8dfcd080ccb114" language="neutral" processorArchitecture="x86"/>
<description asmv2:publisher="Google, Inc." asmv2:product="Google Installer"/>
<deployment trustURLParameters="true" install="false"/>
−
<dependency>
−
<dependentAssembly dependencyType="install" codebase="clickonce_bootstrap.exe.manifest" size="13531">
<assemblyIdentity name="clickonce_bootstrap.exe" version="1.2.133.37" publicKeyToken="9a8dfcd080ccb114" language="neutral" processorArchitecture="x86" type="win32"/> ...

Chrome itself can still install Google Apps, but nothing else can.

We assume "Google Installer.app" is broken for us. This does not appear to be a common problem, though it's now universal in one company.

It's hard to get information on "Google Installer.app". I presume it's related to "GoogleUpdate.exe", but there are currently no pages that mention both (except this one). This is the best page I've found on GoogleUpdate.exe:

GoogleUpdate.exe - Google Chrome Help

GoogleUpdate.exe is a software component that acts as a meta-installer and auto-updater in many downloadable Google applications, including Google Chrome. It keeps your programs updated with the latest features. More importantly, GoogleUpdate allows your Google applications to be rapidly updated if security flaws are discovered...

I don't think this problem is a result of our corporate "webwasher" filters, because I think we can install will work when we connect to other networks.

Any ideas? (I tried Google's Help Groups, but they're continuing their record of being 100% useless for me.)

Update: From the Google Pack site we can install Chrome and GoogleUpdater.exe (also Earth, Picasa, etc). Chrome doesn't do one click installs of Google's products, so if you use Chrome to install a browser plug-in like Google Video Chat Google provides an executable (such as GoogleVoiceAndVideoSetup.exe) that's stored in the Downloads folder. This can then be run.

Dreamhost - registrar and hosting - still like 'em

Last August, after years of moderate dissatisfaction with my domain registration and site hosting arrangements, I signed up with Dreamhost.

I've been quite satisfied with them as a hosting service and even happier with their registrar services; you can see this from posts over the past six months. I was disappointed with their weak implementation of webdav services, but that's been a minor problem. Of course you need some geek genes to work with them, but less so than most alternatives.

If you want to keep things simple, DreamHost is a better Google Apps partner than Google -- especially now that Google is trying to hide the free stuff.

Dreamhost offers members kickbacks to facilitate recruitment. So you need to take my recommendation with more saline than usual, but if you independently decide to sign up you can use my promo code of KATEVA (our dog) and get $50 off your 1st year fee (and I get a kickback if you pay up). Be sure to check out other promo code deals however, the one on their home page looks remarkably good.

Dreamhost now offers "unlimited bandwidth" and "disk space" to new customers with the caveat that you can't be running a site designed to suck bandwidth. Existing customers can also upgade, It turns out I was somehow using more storage than I thought and was paying some modest overage fee, so I just did the free upgrade to "unlimited".

Lastly, unrelated to hosting, Dreamhost is offering an "apps" service (install Wordpress, etc) that's supposed to be free "forever" to beta testers (more invitation codes).

How to use Firefox with Sharepoint - avoiding the credential problem

I found this one via a work colleague.

Firefox works pretty well with Sharepoint, but you need to enter your domain credentials every time you authenticate. It turns out there's a way get FF to store the credentials and enter them automatically.

I haven't tested this since I use IE 7 with SP, but I wonder if a similar approach would work with a standalone windows feed reader that would be more capable that the one built into IE 7; the key is "NTLM authentication support". (The Outlook 2007 and FF feed readers are miserable, IE 7 is decent by comparison).

Configure NTLM for Firefox, Using Firefox for Sharepoint Sites « My Home Automation project

...  Firefox does have NTLM just that you need to configure it ... NTLM stands for NT LAN Manager ... Microsoft’s authentication protocol...

... launch Firefox and enter in the URL field - about:config

From there it will provide a long list of settings, on the ’search’ bar type NTLM, you will see 3 entries ... Double click on network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris

From there you will enter the DNS name of your Server...

If you use multiple SP servers, you can separate the name by commas. "DNS name" is just the familiar name, like "server_name.megacorp.com".

Restarting a remote machine: XP and Windows 2003

How do you restart a remote machine, like an XP controlled by remote desktop or a Windows 2003 server running terminal services? At least with Windows 2003 server you see a grayed out button when you try to shutdown or restart from a remote desktop session.

In Windows NT and 2000 you could install the “remote shutdown tool” on your remote machine but Microsoft pulled it, perhaps because they had a rather serious security problem related to remote shutdown in XP SP1.

I couldn’t find much Microsoft documentation on how this works for XP, but it’s still supported. Just fire up the command line and type “shutdown –i”. In theory you need admin privileges on the remote machine for this to work (the SP1 bug allowed non-admin users to do remote restarts with another tool).

I can confirm this works on Windows 2003 server, though there is a known bug that can affect some machines.

Restart or shut down remotely and document the reason explains how to do it. You have to know the machine name of the remote machine and you have to have admin privileges on the remote machine associated with your network name. Oddly enough the documentation there uses / for an option delimiter, but if you type “shutdown” the directions use hyphens.

From a command prompt “shutdown –i” gives you a handy GUI (you can tediously browse the network for the machine), or just type this command line (where N4591Fred is not my real machine name) …

shutdown -r -m \\N4591Fred –t 0 -c "bug fixes"

The command line example above will shutdown with no warning, but it still takes a few minutes to shutdown, restart, etc.

Update: I’ve been told that if you’re connected to a remote server you can run the “shutdown.exe” command from the remote machine command line. I haven’t tried that yet.

Legal BitTorrent sites. Who knew?

Sarcasm aside, it's useful to know that bitTorrent sites exist that are limited to legal content ...

Top Sites That Every BitTorrent User Should Know About | MakeUseOf.com

... If you want to stay out of trouble check out Legit Torrents and Legal Torrents which only list legal torrents. ...Public Domain Torrents - Lists torrents for downloading classic long forgotten movies in the Public Domain...

If you'd like to play with BitTorrent without impairing your ability to serve in the Obama administration, those links could be a worthwhile start.

Google Video Chat – at last, news from Google

We’ve been making extensive use of GVC for corporate collaboration.

It’s damned impressive, but there’s NO information from Google’s official channels on what’s going on with it.

There is, however, an authoritative source.

One of the lead developers has a personal blog …

juberjabber: Gmail voice and video v1.0.5

… Today we released the 1.0.5 update for the Gmail voice and video chat software. All current installations will begin an automatic update within the next 24 hours. If you do not want to wait, you can visit http://mail.google.com/videochat and re-run the installer…

They’ve done a lot of work on the Mac version. It was grossly unstable a month ago, but I’m going to be retesting.

Wanted a fix for iTunes Podcast 2 week shutoff

This is my biggest problem with iTunes: “iTunes has stopped updating this podcast because you haven’t listened to any episodes for two weeks”.

If I'm not extremely careful it can lead to my missing episodes of In Our Time!

I've been looking for a hack that would force iTunes to wait at least 8 weeks. This Apple discussion thread points to a blog post discussing a Doug's AppleScript that forces a regular bulk update.

Be nice if Apple fixed this, but meanwhile OS X iTunes users have a crude workaround ...

Time Capsule reviewed

Not only the best Time Capsule review I've seen, it might be the ONLY decent one written: Time Capsule brings high class, high function to Wi-Fi access points |Enterprise Mac | Tom Yager | InfoWorld

How many browsers really work with Google? Fewer than you might think.

How many web browsers are fully supported clients with Google's web applications?

Fewer than most people imagine.

Consider this acid test suite of Google web applications that I routinely use:

1. Gmail with Google Video Chat
2. Google Apps: Documents, Spreadsheet
3. Blogger and BlotThis!
4. Google Sites
5. Google Calendar
   
6. Google Page Creator*

Now consider this set of browsers I run against those apps** and the OSs I use with them:

1. Firefox (XP and OS X)
2. Safari (OS X)
3. Camino (OS X)
4. Chrome (XP)

Which browser(s) really work with all of Google Apps 1-5, or even 1-4?

Just Firefox. Even today's Chrome has obvious bugs, such as omitting the final character from a link created against an existing text string.

I assume IE 7 works pretty well too, but I can't speak to that. I'm surprised Chrome still doesn't work as well as FF against Google's own properties.

It's still incredibly hard to deliver full function "web 2.0" apps against more than one browser.

* On death row and supposedly due for replacement by Google Sites, but that seems to be on hold.
** I use IE 7 regularly against Sharepoint at work, but nowhere else

Tasks and calendar items - what I'd like

I really do spend too much time thinking about tasks, calendars, projects and the like. It recently occurred to me that I would like to see support for something that's a hybrid between a task and an appointment.

You could think of it as a task that has a date, time and span. Or you could think of it as an appointment that shows up on a task list and has a priority/urgency attribute.

The idea is that I'd schedule it as an appointment and it would show up in my task list. If I deleted the appointment I'd have the option of deleting the task, or just editing the task. If I deleted the task then I'd delete the appointment. Completing the task would leave the appointment untouched.

If I see anything like that I'll attach a note here.

Google Video Chat – suddenly unstable

Ahh, the perils of life on the cutting edge. I gave Google Video Chat a grade of B- a week or so ago, but now it’s as unstable on XP as it’s always been on OS X. Sessions dropping at 10-20 minutes, problems starting up, etc.

I am very fond of my Logitech Vision Pro webcam though. It’s marketed for OS X, but it’s the best thing going on XP. There are no thrice-damned drivers to load, so it’s easier on the CPU and I don’t have to live with the horrible quality of modern device drivers (which are routinely outsourced to the lowest bidder).

Nothing to do to wait for a fix from Google. There are SO many things that can go wrong with these solutions …

Corporate iPhone: WLAN connection and Outlook web

The iPhone is a lousy business phone. Of course the BlackBerry ain’t so great either – the key difference is that the BB usually comes with a pass to the corporate exchange server. That’s a big deal though.

On the other hand, I’ve made some progress.

Briefly:

1. The iPhone’s support for WPA Enterprise let me connect quickly to our corporate LAN. It was a lot easier than connecting my XP laptop, but I’m not sure I have all privileges the laptop has – even though I’m authenticating the same way.
2. With the iPhone I can use the web interface to Exchange server. It’s hardlyl mobile friendly, but it runs on Safari/iPhone.

Connecting directly to Exchange server is another matter.

Even if it were officially supported, an Exchange connection would wipe my personal iPhone calendaring and contact information. The only way I know of to have both corporate and personal data on an iPhone is to sync corporate data with Exchange and Personal data with MobileMe. The latter, of course, is remarkably inadequate.

For now the Exchange connection isn’t available, but if it were it would be exquisitely painful to give up the power of Google Calendar in favor of MobileMe Calendar. I really do need a miraculous improvement in MobileMe …

iTunes iPhone Applications menu grayed out?

One of our iPhones had a grayed out iTunes Applications menu.

It would update existing apps during a sync when something else was going to the phone (like music or videos), but if no other sync was occurring apps wouldn't update.

I couldn't tweak any of the settings that limit which apps went to that iPhone.

Our other iPhone was fine.

The answer was here: Apple - Support - Discussions - "Sync Applications" grayed out in iTunes ...

I'd enabled 'Restrictions' on this particular phone, which is now used as an iTouch. I was trying to keep the kids out of trouble. I bet I'd restricted application installation.

Removing restrictions fixed the problem.

This may not be so much a bug as a usability problem. I think iTunes should display a message in addition to graying out the Applications tab.

Update 5/16/09: This really is a usability issue. It happened again, and it puzzled me again. OK, so it's a dementia issue too. Fortunately I have my external memory to search (my blogs).

Update 8/3/09: I just installed iPhone 3.01 and noticed the Disable Restrictions menu has an "installing apps" control. I think that's new in 3.0, maybe even new in 3.01. Glad to see this problem taken care of!