End of software support for the Fujitsu (Ricoh, PFU) ix500 document scanner

Many years ago I bought a (then) Fujitsu ScanSnap ix500 document scanner. The hardware has been superb but the MacOS desktop software was always ugly and awkward. Infamously there's no API for a third party to use and no standards support. The current version of the desktop software allows only one active WiFi desktop client to protect revenue on their business line.

In contrast to the desktop app the simple iOS app, ScanSnap.app [ScanSnap Connect Application], worked well for me. It was even multi-user -- anyone could scan from their iPhone.

As of 7/2024 the ix500 still works with a single macOS device by cable or WiFi using the current desktop app. The iOS app is end of life however. A year ago it dropped Google Drive support. A few days ago OneDrive auto-upload started to crash the app following upload (it freezes, needs force quit, the document is lost).

The replacement for [ScanSnap Connect Application] is ScanSnap Home. That app does not support the ix500; it will not connect via WiFi. There is also an end-of-life ScanSnap Cloud app that uses PFU's crazy (failed?) cloud document routing service. I did not test that app.

For now we will probably switch our ix500 to a wired machine connection; I have a de facto home server that will work for that.

I'm playing around with iOS ScanSnap.app to see what still works after disabling OneDrive Auto Upload:

1. If you preview a PDF doc it can be sent to OneDrive from preview without a crash.
2. If you tap on the ellipsis next to a File you can AirDrop or otherwise move it about in iOS Files. 
3. If you use the ScanSnap Edit function, select documents, then choose "Save to the Files app" the documents in <On My iPhone / ScanSnap / ScanSnap / .Files> [1] are copied to <On My iPhone / ScanSnap / ScanSnap> and from there can be manipulated using Files.

I'll update if a learn more. ScanSnap Connect Application was last updated 2m ago but I'm pretty sure it worked until 2w ago. I'm guessing something changed in OneDrive recently. Perhaps it will start working again someday -- like Apple Aperture's peculiar and transient Ventura M1 resurrection.

PS. I have never had Apple's scripting/automation software be useful for anything I really needed it for. It would be nice if there was a way to use it to move things from .Files to somewhere useful but I'd be shocked if that were possible.

Sharing an iPad with "Family Sharing" and a unique "Family" Apple ID.

Nobody expects Apple to bring Apple ID switching to iPadOS -- even though there's a version of it for managed devices. Technical and revenue issues aside, there are likely DRM contractual limitations.

So no Apple ID switches for the iPad. But there's a relatively easy way to implement a shared iPad for up to 5 people where Family Sharing can be used:

1. Give the iPad it's own unique Apple ID
2. Make the iPad Apple ID a family member. (See also: migrating from legacy shared iTunes Apple ID to family sharing.)

The five person "limit" is because Apple DRM / FairPlay is limited to at most 6 Apple IDs in a family group. Five for each family member, one for the family.

Caveat: Family Sharing for adults means every family member's purchases go first to the Apple Cash balance purchaser's account, next to the Organizer's payment method. Sooner or later I suspect Apple will need to fix this but it's been a problem for years. Without family sharing the shared iPad isn't useful for sharing Apple's media content.

No message sound for one iMessage correspondent? User message thread can be both silenced and not silenced.

I thought I'd fixed Emily's messages not generating a tone or haptic notification as per my 4/29/2024 post below. Then the bug recurred. It's fixed again, for now. I had to delete her iMessages - four times. To delete them I first unpinned her then swiped to delete all her messages [1]. Her entry vanished -- only to return a few seconds later. I repeated this 4 times; sometimes the messages showed her profile image and sometimes they didn't. ONE of the four times the message UI showed a mute/silence icon (speaker with a line through it). I un-silenced that one then again deleted all the messages.

Finally there were no messages left for her. When she messaged me it created a new message thread and notifications worked.

I did other things of course. I can't disentangle them all. I removed her Contact Card's iCloud.com email but left her me.com email (clue!). I quit and resumed iMessages (Messages.app) and Contacts. I set her Contact back to the default message tone.

But I think the important fix was removing ALL of her messages.

Here's my guess as to what's going on -- and why this bug will affect very few people.

1. It's possible for a Correspondent's message thread to be in a state of being silenced and not being silenced such that the silenced icon will not appear but the correspondent is silenced.
2. It may be that this bug ONLY impacts people who have both me.com and iCloud.com emails associated with a single AppleID (old time legacy users).
3. This bug is activated, I'm guessing, when a correspondent (Contact) is a participant in a group Chat that has been silenced and then un-silenced. (Because it showed up around the time I did that.)
4. Although we (usually) see only one message thread per correctly configured Contact, in reality it appears there are several identities merged to look like a single user. I had long suspected this, but seeing how deleting thousands of messages sent over a decade seemed to expose identities with different attributes strengthened my suspicion.

I'll update this post if I learn more or if the bug recurs.

- fn -

[1] I really didn't need any of that data.

---

Initial version of this post from April 29, 2024

I got a message tone for every sender -- except Emily. Who is my most important correspondent.

So I went debugging. I asked Perplexity for fixes and got a good set of responses -- except for the non-existent DND setting (click for full res):

I tried all but reset Notifications since I have a vague memory of annoying side-effects from that. I also checked "hide alerts" (which is probably where the DND thing comes from -- that was an old term) on her Contact and that was off (not enabled). I toggled it for good measure.

I didn't want to remove and restore her contact as I thought that might mess up Photos.app naming. So I tried removing her phone numbers. Without any numbers in her contact iMessages did generate a tone -- but the default tone, not the custom tone. Still, it was something!

When I added in Emily's cellphone number that caused the custom tone I'd set to become active. (I also added back another number with no effect.)

So the bug is gone for now. I'm guessing it's something deep in the bowels of Apple's SMS/iMessage integration with AT&T (our carrier). The variable tone with and without the phone number is a clue.

The modest changes that would make macOS Photos.app a good app

I've submitted all of these as feature requests to Apple. If you like them please submit too, because we got nothing else.

1. For any photo show list of albums that hold it. The UI for Contact/Folder relationships would do.
2. Include Folder name matches in search results.
3. Port Photos.iOS feature that shows geo view of images for an album to Photos.mac
4. Provide a list view of images with metadata
5. When exporting images also export metadata (ideally in image header, otherwise XMP sidecar

There's a few more I need to add but I'll remember them as I work/curse Photos.app.

Not a modest change but great benefits for customers - extend PhotoKit so third parties can fill gaps better.

Visual Studio Code Jupyter Python Extension line wrap in output cell - how to set notebook.output.wordWrap

My Visual Studio Code (Mac) Jupyter extension (plug-in) output was not line wrapped. It was a single unreadable output string. I had to either copy and paste into a markdown cell (where VSC line wrap config is followed) or I had to come up with Python output formatting solutions.

Then I saw a video in which the developer's cell block output was wrapping. So I went looking again. This turned out to be a lot harder than it was, say, 10 years ago. I spent at least 40 minutes, and probably more, digging through obscure corners of the internet

At last I got a hint. There is something called "notebook.output.wordWrap" that defaults to false but can be set true. If you can figure out how to set it.

I couldn't figure out how to set this value for the Jupyter Notebook extension on my Mac however. I got some hints from Microsoft's documentation on editing settings.json even though it's not correct about how to navigate to preferences. I used the ⌘, shortcut. From there I searched for "wordwrap"

You can see the result below. I needed to set Notebook > Output > Word Wrap to true. The copied JSON version of this is "notebook.output.wordWrap": true. You can see the setting in the screen shot below (click for full size).

I set this value for User and Workspace both, I assume Workspace wins but I don't know. Now my output wraps so I can read it.

There's also supposed be a metadata tag that causes a Jupyter notebook cell to scroll output but I couldn't get I too work and it felt too obscure to rely on.

Aperture will launch on an M2 Air running Ventura 13.6.3 and will browse an existing Aperture Library.

This was a bit of a shock. Aperture won't run on Intel Monterey without an OS hack (Retroactive). I was cleaning up an M1 Air that had a copy of Aperture on it and on a whim I clicked it. Aperture was there via Migration Assistant. No Retroactive needed.

Aperture launched. No complaints. I could browse my old 600GB Library.

So I copied just the app from my Application folder to an external drive and then launched it on a different M2 Air. Same. Just launched. I could browse and search. Much faster than on my old Air running Mojave.

I have not tried doing anything with it other than search and browse. I'm basically stunned and I figure it could mess up my old Library.

I'm still healing from my years long slog to migrate the Library to Photos.app/iCloud. Being able to browse the old Library is very helpful for understanding what migrated and what didn't. (Yes, Photos.app is mostly a huge regression.)

See also: I shared this on Apple Discussions. I'm curious if Apple will remove the post; they are pretty aggressive about removing posts these days.

Update 3/28/2024: I recently got an older M1 which I updated to Sonoma. Aperture launches and quits on this machine. So now I need to test on an M2 running Sonoma.

Update 3/30/2024: And ... it crashes on an M2 running Sonoma. So this is only a weird curiosity and not very useful.

Extracting core concepts with ChatGPT 4 from OCR of scanned sample examination PDF - Feb 2024

I think this is an interesting example of what works and doesn't work on the personal AI front in early 2024.

My son was given a printed practice exam in microeconomics. I wanted ChatGPT 4 to extract and summarize the core concepts. This turned out to require two steps, one of which only worked with Google.

Step One: OCR and download text file

I scanned the document in ScanSnap and produced a scan PDF. I tried getting ChatGPT to do the OCR but it abandoned that task. I then tried Gemini and it told me it didn't do OCR. Next I tried Microsoft Lens, but it seemed to only do OCR from a local image, I couldn't see how to use it with a OneDrive PDF. ChatGPT claimed that I could open a OneDrive PDF in Office 365 Word but that did not work with the web version (perhaps it works with full Word?). ChatGPT did not know of a way to do PDF OCR on Sonoma.

The only thing that worked was Google Drive. It allowed me to open the PDF in Google Docs and then export a .txt version.

Step Two: ChatGPT 4 analysis

I asked ChatGPT 4 to extract the key concepts from the .txt file. It provided a plausible set and then proceeded to answer some of the exam questions. Concepts captured were:

... equilibrium price, consumer's surplus, producer's surplus, total surplus, efficient output levels, negative externalities, deadweight loss (DWL), price ceilings, and the impact of taxes on market outcomes ...

I don't think it added much to the textbook chapter topic loss but it did provide a plausible set of topics to emphasize in my son's studying. I was primarily interested in the workflow today. It will be interesting to look back on this in a year and see what's different.