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.

Switching from Comcast to Century Link - including how to return Xfinity equipment

Seven years ago we switched from CenturyLink to Comcast/Xfinity. At the time I thought CenturyLink was kaput. Today we switched back; I'm sharing some notes on what to expect.

We had good service from Xfinity, but over the past year we've been hitting their 1.2TB data cap. I'm sure I could call Xfinity, threaten to leave, and negotiate transition to their 'unlimited' tier and get a price reduction as well.  I could do that, but the process irritates me.

Happily Century Link has survived, we are in their fiber area, and their fiberoptic GB no-cap service is apparently about what Xfinity charges us. I say apparently because we live in the surprise-fee era. You don't know what you pay until you get the bill. [Update: Century Link quoted me $70 and I'm honestly stunned to discover that is exactly the bill.]

CenturyLink customer service seems as abysmal as ever but local reports tell me the fiber is far more reliable than their old tech.

So we switched. A few notes on the process:

1. I began by turning off Xfinity automatic bill payment. I called and confirmed we had month-to-month no-contract and that final bill would be prorated.
2. CenturyLink signup was simple but their process is weak. They insisted on contacting us by phone;  it's a miracle we were able to catch the call and respond. A snow storm delayed installation; they didn't tell us the install was canceled and they appeared the next day unannounced. I'm retired so I was able to make that work. The web site does supposedly allow formal rescheduling but overall that's a C- performance. The tech did a nice job on the install, it was a direct shot from the pole to where our Comcast modem was. Since we have an Eero network he just had to swap a cable and we were on the new service.
3. After 3 days of use I called 800-266-2278 to cancel Xfinity/Comcast. Cancelation didn't take too long, I had to say "representative" a couple of times to bypass the vmail menu. The Comcast rep sounded depressed but typed on and on trying to complete the exit process. They were unsure how to return the hardware by UPS but I found the Comcast support article (which is flawed, more below)
4. Xfinity prorates the final bill. It's not clear if they ever actually charged me for the one time we went over their 1.2TB data cap.
5. Century Link charged me on 12/27/22 though service didn't start until 1/6/2023 (December 27, 2022 - January 26, 2023). On Jan 4 there was a 0$ bill for equipment and installation. My next bill is due 2/4 so the amounts do even out. The default setup is autopay to my credit card. I'll see if that generates an extra fee.
6. It's not obvious on the web site how one sees a bill. The bill date is a hyperlink. Shockingly the bill appears to be exactly the $70 they claimed; that's what appears on my credit card. Xfinity charged me $91 so I'm unexpectedly saving money.

The Xfinity requirement return is done through xfinity.com/returns -- but the directions are buggy. The easiest option is to bring the hardware to a comcast/xfinity store but I opted to drop off at UPS. Follow the prompts to create a mailing label but be ready to conclude without, you know, the mailing label. To print the label go to customer.xfinity.com/devices/returns/status and you'll see how to print. Box up the xfinity hardware in anything, put label inside and outside box and drop off at a UPS store.

The CenturyLink model is a C4000XG; that site has an online user guide. I couldn't find a manual for it on the CenturyLink site but I did find one online. https://192.168.0.1 worked to get to the admin screen, you need the CenturyLink sticker with the Admin password. You will certainly want to change the passwords to something tappable. The device web server doesn't render properly in (old) Mojave Safari so I used Chrome.

I'll update this post if I find any other surprises in the process.

Update 2/5/2023

I dropped the xfinity router off at the UPS store with the return label and a week later I got an xfinity email saying they had the router.

After we discontinued service my Xfinity login stopped working. There was no error message, it would let me enter my password but then request my password again. I wondered how I'd pay my last bill but a paper statement came in the mail with a credit on it. We pay in advance so there's credit for the unused part of the month. It does appear they never dinged me for my data overage. The statement said that in 30 days they would send me a check for whatever is left in the account, but in fact they credited part of my last payment back to the credit card I used.

Using Apple's USB-C to T2 adapter: not for video but still good

My 2015 MacBook Air uses Thunderbolt 2; it was connected to an elgato T2 hub (reliable for over 6 years) with a few USB and Firewire 800 peripherals. That Air is in for a battery swap after which it will be primarily an Aperture machine with some portable use. At the moment I'm sharing my son's 2020 Air; there may be a Pro or M2 Air ahead.

To reduce costs and hassles I decided to try Apple's T3/USB-C to T2 adapter. It costs around $45. Everything works for now -- except my external HDMI monitor. It flickers on and off. I might play with it a bit but for now I have it connected directly to the laptop via a compact Anker USB-C hub [1]. Apple tells us that "This adapter does not support DisplayPort displays...". I wonder if the HDMI display connected to a Hub with a DisplayPort/T2 cables affected by this limitation.

Overall it's worth the money, even though I'm likely to switch everything to a USB-C or better hub eventually. The single remaining Firewire 800 device can be retired.

- fn -

[1] When I disconnect the laptop I have to pull two cables! Oldness helps with the indignity.

Impressions of the Eero 6

In retrospect my AirPort Extreme was probably flaky for a while. It's hard to diagnose router failure issues, but my son complained his iPad Zwift app was disconnecting. I was getting corrupted Synology Time Machine backups after years of good results. Then the router started to power down spontaneously. It was 6 years old and the power supply had failed.

We bought an Amazon Eero 6.

Before I talk about the various issues and surprises, let me see this is one of the more fun purchases I've made in a while. It's a huge pain to move all our various devices over to the new primary and "Guest" (where untrustworthy hardware connects) networks, but it's delightful to see 5 WiFi bars everywhere. Including the MyQ garage opener -- which is at least 50 feet from our home. (That's how we open the garage door when it's less than 15F and the external battery powered device doesn't work.) I have one device by the Comcast router, one on the middle floor towards the garage, and one basically hidden beneath the ground floor serving the basement and side patio.

Why did I buy the Eero?

1. Microsoft doesn't make a router, so the least evil tech giant was unavailable.
2. Apple doesn't make a router, so my very Evil master was unavailable.
3. That left Google, Amazon and the small ones (Linksys) who may not last very long and thus can't keep the patches coming.
4. I read that Eero does a good job of updating its devices.
5. Google is maximal Evil. I'm in the midst of a long painful divorce from Google Apps and Google Drive and I really don't want anything more from Google.
6. Amazon could get me a Eero 6 threesome within 8 hours of ordering it. It came at 6am. I felt the fangs of my Prime Parasite dig deeper into my core.

What were the surprises?

• Some older equipment will not connect to an Eero 6. The problem seems to be that the Eero has one SSID with two frequencies; my old AirPort had separate 2.4 and 5 GHz SSIDs. Devices that can only handle 2.4GHz may not work. We ran into two problems [see update below]:

1. SONY Playstation 4 (SONY's link no longer works of course): Go to Settings > Network > Setup Internet Connection > Use Wi-Fi > Easy. Select the SSID (wifi network name) but don't choose it! Now press the Options button on the controller. Select the 2.4GHz band. (When I tried 5GHz I got an obscure error message.)
2. Samsung television: It simply won't connect. Samsung has some tips I've not explored, I could try updating the firmware. Google found some Reddit discussions but that site crashed at the moment. (This TV is behaving a bit oddly, so there may be other issues.)

• The Eero 6 has two ethernet ports on the base unit. It's hard to tell from Eero's dreadful web site but I believe the Eero 6 Pro has ports on peripheral nodes too. I needed one for the Synology NAS and one to the Comcast modem. Given that not all devices work with the Eero it would be nice to have parts on each station -- I could then hardware devices that don't work with Eero wifi.
• The Eeros are smaller than I expected.
• The Eero app crashes every time I try to assign a device to a profile. I suspect it can't handle the ethernet address swapping of modern iPhones. It's amazing that's not fixed.
• If you want to use the parental control features on iOS devices you need to turn off the ethernet swapping. This will make it easier for vendors to track your use however.
• Amazon tries to upsell subscriptions to services including a security package. This is really annoying and it keeps doing it even after initial decline. Be careful not to accidentally subscribe to anything. You don't get filtering or website controls without the extra monthly fee, other routers provide those for free (but they usually don't work well or at all with modern connectivity).

The easiest way to swap routers is to keep the network names and passwords the same. I couldn't do that for reasons, so I get the tedium of reconnecting very old devices to WiFi.

Update 2/27/2022: Pause 5 GHz to allow older devices to connect

I read an Amazon review saying there was a way to pause 5G to allow older devices to connect! I haven't tried on the TV yet. It's an obscure feature:

Settings -> Troubleshooting -> My Device won't connect -> My device is 2.4 GHz only -> Temporarily pause 5 GHz.

There are some other features buried in troubleshooting, including Health Check.

Don't blame your hub when your USB Flash (thumb) drive disconnects from your Mac

I tried using a SanDisk USB Flash ("thumb") drive as an alternative Time Machine backup device on my daughter's 2020 Intel MacBook Air (Catalina) and my 2020 Apple Silicon MacBook Air (Big Sur). It worked when directly connected to a 2011 MacBook Air (High Sierra), but when connected to an Anker USB-C hub it kept disconnecting:

I was pretty annoyed with the Anker hub and decided to return it, but then I tried it on my 2016 MacBook Air (Mojave) with a rock solid old Elgato Thunderbolt 2 Hub. The same thing happened there!

So I can't blame the Anker hub too much. I canceled my Amazon return. The bug is probably some mixture of faults in macOS, the processor in Flash drives, and some global Hub/USB flaw. 

It would be interesting to test Apple's hub-equivalent dongle -- the USB-C Digital AV multiport adapter.

Can you do a Time Machine backup to a USB flash drive (thumb drive)?

 I'd wondered if it was possible to do a Time Machine backup to a cheap Flash Drive. My daughter is going to college and probably doesn't have a great need for backup (iCloud Document/Desktop, iCloud Photo, Google Docs, etc) but I'd still like to do something.

So I wondered about a compact Flash Drive. In the twilight of the web Google couldn't find me an answer, so I ran my own test. I used an old San Disk Ultra Fit 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive in an old USB 2 MacBook Air running High Sierra. I formatted the Flash Drive as encrypted HPFS and let Time Machine run the backup.

It took about 4-5 hours to do the initial 80GB backup but it seemed to work fine.

I doubt these Flash Drives are super reliable, but I think this is an option. I can see taking advantage of it while traveling for example. Unfortunately her 2020 Air doesn't have an open USB slot where an Ultra Fit could live, but it could be a part of her Anker 7-1 USB-C docking station. A modern San Disk Ultra Fit USB 3.1 is $33.

Digitizing home video (once again)

I have made (2000) several (2004) tries (2012) at digitizing our family video but my lost best effort only got about 10% done. I figured I’d just hire a local service and then I let it slide.

Apple’s recent codec retirement announcements prompted me to check what was available locally. I found ancient web sites that were internally inconsistent, no noise reduction prior to compression, unclear codec choices … none of it gave me much confidence. (But see [1,2])

So I’m back at it again. This time I might have an accomplice — someone who needs money and would benefit from learning the tech. So maybe we’ll make a better go of it.

The delays may have let to some data loss, but on the other hand the tech is a bit better. My first attempt would have been with a 400MHz Celeron. Yes, that’s an ‘M’. In those days hard drives were measured in tens of GBs. Now the cheapest hard drive I can buy would hold all of our video.

The tech is a bit better, but choice of codec is still an issue. In 2004 I favored H.264/AAC. I ran into an amazing number of headaches with the Apple software I was using.

For the modern era I found three good references:

• DIY VHS Preservation: Planning for Video Digitization at the American University Library
• Audio Visual Digitization Hardware and Software - Marriott Library - The University of Utah
• Building a Video Preservation Rack for In-House Digitization AV CLUB | Issue 1 | Cardinal Tales

They give me a feeling of how tricky it is to do analog video capture well. Time Base Corrector?  BNC terminations? Waveform monitors? CRT monitors?! Yikes.

I did like the sounds of the BlackMagic Intensity digitizer ($240 for T3, $200 for USB 3) used at AUL (Amazon reviews are not great however). It can save output as a lossless file. I want to capture the video as “uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2” then denoise it, then export as ProRes. Since my accomplice is a student I’ll probably buy the Pro Apps Bundle.

Ideally the process would be automated - capture uncompressed, denoise and incorporate metadata, save as ProRes.

What would I do with this material once it’s digitized? The tech isn’t here yet, but eventually I’d like to incorporate brief (silent) video fragments into my screensaver library. So between showing 10,000 images, show a 30sec of video from our family @ 1995. One day?

- fn- 

[1] From my 2000 page I see Walmart and Target were do video to DVD-R conversions for $35 a tape with YesVideo. They are still around! The price is now $26 for one 2hr tape.  

[2] Pogue years ago recommended Southtree (his screenshot of a VHS tape on a modern laptop screen is remarkable — 333x480 pixels). Their site is impressive; at the moment they’re advertising $57 for up to 3 tapes on 1 thumb drive. I contacted Southtree to ask about denoise/ProRes/etc but they kindly responded that they are consumer-only, so just mp4 compressed.

MacBook Air shutdowns - it was the battery

My 2015 Air shut down suddenly two weeks ago. The battery was at about 80%. When I got it home and plugged it in it showed classic bad SMC behavior — the power diode didn’t light. 

I did an SMC reset and it worked, but a week later it did the same thing. I did an SMC reset again, but without checking if it was necessary.

It happened yet again. This time it worked fine as a soon as I plugged it in. That gave me hope that it was a battery issue, even though system info showed only 80 or so cycles. It’s an old battery.

After doing the usual 3 backups-to-current-state-prior-to-repair (one update to my Carbon Copy non-bootable clone backup, one fresh full bootable clone, and one Time Machine backup) I brought it in. It failed the diagnostic test with a big red dead battery note.

So $140 when the part comes in, which is a nice relief. If it had been the motherboard that would be $340 and I’d have a machine with a 4yo battery and a 4yo SSD. Might be better to just buy new.

The Internet Lied: Apple's 3.5 mm to lightning adapter does support audio in -- for Apple's EarPods.

I was deceived.

Prior to buying my iPhone 8 I read that Apple’s 3.5mm to lightning adapter didn’t support audio in for earphones with a microphone. Not so! It works quite well with Apple’s EarPods.

It probably doesn’t work with other earphone microphones though. Apple’s EarPods have a different arrangement for the audio-in connection from some other earphones. I looked into this years ago and it wasn’t clear to me how much of a standard there really was. I dimly recall that Apple, shockingly, was different from most.

Nursing home personal videoconferencing and iPad photo slideshow - a successful project

My 94yo father lives in a veterans long term care facility located in Ste Anne de Bellevue, a small community at the west end of the island of Montreal. It has been a good home for him despite some difficult organizational transitions. Canada’s last major war ended over 70 years ago, their veterans system is fading away.

It’s a costly 6 hour flight (fly+security+etc) to see him, so I only get out there every 3-4 months. I send a weekly email that staff print for him, and every other week I send him a PhotoCard featuring one of the kids or a family thing. Phone calls really don’t work though — he didn’t do well with them even when his cognition and hearing were better.

The facility was keen for me to try videoconferencing with him using a Skype workstation. I was a bit skeptical, but they were right. He does much better with videoconferencing than with a phone call. The audio quality is much better than a modern phone call, and it’s a lot easier for me to see how he’s doing with the conversation. I can tell, for example, that he’s enjoying just hearing me talk. He really doesn’t need, or want, to say much himself.

The Skype workstation had problems though. Most of the time scheduled calls failed. Technical and organizational issues made it too unreliable. 

I didn’t want to give up on the videoconferencing, so I researched LTE videoconferencing for a longterm care facility resident. I considered WiFi but the costs at his facility are higher than LTE and in my experience institutional WiFi is often unreliable. He was already using an LTE Rogers Wireless device to connect an old school landline phone to a cellular network [1] so I was reasonably sure the LTE solution would work from his room.

At the end of the day we deployed a new LTE iPad Air 2 in a minimally modified “CTA digital” anti-theft stand. Here are some images of the stand the Vets built for him; during this first conference he spoke with a younger brother he’d not seen in over 10 years:

 

The wall stand was build by “Jean-Paul”, a staff and facilities person at the Vets. It’s a work of art and an unexpected key to this successful deployment. He built it around the iPad locking stand and incorporated a simple turntable. My father can do the videoconferences from his wheelchair or he can view the 3,000 image family photo slideshow from his lift chair. 

Dad hasn’t tried to operate the iPad. I think he could learn some things if I were there to work with him, but he’s a passive user at this time. A private aide visits him weekly and I schedule the videoconferences with her. I initiate the call, she taps the green button to answer. We use FaceTime because it’s very reliable, has great sound and video quality, and very efficient compression. A typical 15 minute call uses about 25-40MB of data, he has no trouble staying within his monthly Rogers data cap.

I often do the calls from my iPhone and I usually incorporate some kind of walking video tour. The last tour was of a CrossFit gym I’d just finished working out at. The walking tours are very popular, he reports on them to friends and family.

When the iPad is not being used for videoconferencing it’s displaying images using Picmatic.app. I was irritated when Apple dropped its original iPad slideshow functionality, but I figured there would be many fine replacements. I was wrong. There is exactly one - Picmatic. Miraculously it’s well done. It’s also ridiculously cheap at $2. It’s configured to randomly display full screen images from an iCloud photostream; I put images on there from Aperture and my iPhone. Images display full screen with an integrated clock and cycle every 30 seconds or so. He, or an aide, taps the bottom right icon to start the show. It automatically turns off at night. I wish it were more automatic but Apple is not terribly helpful in this regard. There is only so much developers can do when using iOS.

 

I’d put some other apps up there I thought might be useful: Notes for memory aide, Mail to show old emails I’d sent him, Podcasts for entertainment, Great Courses.app to play his history audiobooks, Contacts as an address book, Facebook to see our family activity, Weather, FaceTime.app (of course), Messenger.app (for non-Apple videoconferencing) and Calendar.app. Only Picmatic.app and FaceTime are being used. As Dad’s moderate dementia progresses he is less able to follow things like an audiobook history talk. He might do better with a brief Ted Talk video.

I’ll conclude (out of time :-) with some quick notes for anyone considering a similar project:

• Theft is a problem in longterm care facilities. Lots of visitors and impossible to screen them all, not to mention residents with impaired judgment. When the staff heard he was getting an iPad they expected it to disappear. This device would not be terribly hard to steal — the cable is only attached to a wall screw and the stand could be unscrewed from the turntable. It’s been enough so far though — just awkward enough to take that it hasn’t been stolen so far. There are two keys for the cradle lock; one in a lockbox in his room, the other in the nurse manager’s desk. The iPad stays in the cradle.
• I like the cradle but with the cable lock installed it’s hard (almost impossible) to rotate orientation. It stays landscape and that works well.
• For security I set a passcode and assigned Dad and his aide’s prints to the device. If stolen it’s iPad locked so wouldn’t be useable anyway.
• My brother has power of attorney. He had to send a copy of that to Rogers so he could get added to the Rogers account. Then he could add me to the account. This was the hardest part of the project. When I arrived in Montreal I took the documents to the Rogers wireless office. They had a hard time setting things up because Roger’s standard software couldn’t handle my US address, they did it using old paper forms. Once that was done the SIM worked fine.
• I bought the device and did all the setup in the US, wasn’t time to do something like that in Canada. I tweaked setup for weeks. I should have put more things in the hidden folder. I wanted everything on one screen to minimize confusing.

See also: 

• Bandwidth use over 5 min video call: FaceTime << Facebook Messenger < Skype
• Father longterm care iPad videoconferencing project: Securing the iPad

- fn - 

[1] I wrote about that project in Wanted - a way to make an old style landline work over a cellular connection. Service was a bit flaky at first, but quality improved substantially and it’s fine now. It turned out to be quite economical to pay for a family member’s iPhone on Rogers then add the “wireless home phone” for $10/month and subsequently add the LTE iPad for $10/month, all sharing data. With this device he can change rooms without a service disruption, and his entire monthly service bill is less than the institutional landline charge.

Brother HL6180DW laser printer: manufacturing defect in foam roller in @ 2003 printers?

This post is based on my two star Amazon review of our 3yo paper-jamming Brother HL6180DW:

We've had this printer for 3 years.

Early on this printer had sleep/wake issues with our Mac. Sometime in the first year or so of use software updates fixed those.

After almost 3 years of regular home printing use it began jamming. The Drum was also due to be replaced. We replaced both the drum and the toner cartridge, but the jamming worsened until it became unusable.

Since this happened I’ve been in contact with Brother support. They requested photos of a key foam roller and they wanted the printer serial number. Even though the printer is 3 years out of warranty they said they'd mail me a refurb. Problem is -- they don't have any refurb devices, they've all been shipped out.

I think my year of this product had a manufacturing problem with a foam roller. It's visible when you open the rear port and flip out a plastic guide. It should be crinkled at the margins and smooth in the center. Ours has linear striations. There are blog posts about this problem. I think Brother offered the out-of-warranty refurb because they know printers in my model year are failing. They're unwilling to announce this however. This probably also explains the lack of refurb machines.

I'm actually ordering a new one. If they send me a refurb in the next 30 days I'll return it (so Brother will have another refurb to distribute!). If they send me a refurb 4 months from now I guess I'll have two. I'm ordering a new one because I have toner and drum components already.

If you have an older HL6180DW do these things before you order a new Drum for an old printer.

1. Check the foam roller and make sure it looks like it should (When you get a new one, photograph the roller.)
2. Check the Fuser lifespan remaining. After 3y we had 71% left. (it's in the manual).

I’ll add photos of the current foam roller condition and the new one once it arrives.

The last really good printer I owned was an Apple LaserWriter Select 360. Printers have not really improved since the early 90s, scanners stopped improving around 2000, dSLRs stopped around 2014, smartphones around 2016.

Update 5/6/2016: Very much to my surprise Brother phoned to say they were unlikely to get any more 6180DW, but they’d overnight ship me a HLL6200DW along with a toner cartridge. That’s the 6180 replacement.

Update 5/10/2016: I received my replacement HL-L6200DW. I can’t tell if it’s new or a refurb. The test print is vastly better than my aged 6180DW, there was more wrong than the paper jams. Installation was straightforward, save that one Mac gave me an annoying “unable to communicate with the printer art this time” over the WiFi interface. I reset the OS X print system then restarted the Mac and the printer and it worked.

I didn’t bother with the directions, I used the USB cable and OS X printer page to get  it on the WiFi network.

Some of the things I’ve learned:

1. Think very carefully about replacing the Drum Unit on a 3yo printer. The Drum Unit was half the price of a new (toner-free) printer. If I hadn’t bought the Drum Unit I wouldn’t have bothered contacting Brother on an out-of-warranty device, I’d have just bought a new printer. Faster and less trouble.
2. Brother is pretty serious about service. It took a few days of back and forth tech questions, but their responses were never unreasonable. Probably best to say you use paper they recommend when asked (in fact I did, but only by chance).
3. I was a bit annoyed when Brother said to wait for a refurb — I pointed out I’d have to buy a printer while I waited. So that wasn’t stellar, but they then phoned and said they would send a newer model. So there’s that.
4. It’s really dumb to think that a Drum Unit will help with paper jams if the paper isn’t jamming in the Drum Unit. Duh. I wasn’t thinking very clearly there. In my defense the Drum Unit was end-of-life, so I figured it was problem. It wasn’t.

Mac thunderbolt 2 drive dropping -- remember ScanSnap AOUMonitor and don't touch Amazon Cloud Drive.

After months of reliable use my Elgato Thunderbolt 2 hub is dropping my USB3 external SSD; just like the OWC T2 hub did in my initial testing.

We know Yosemite (and El Capitan) have issues with Thunderbolt hubs; there’s something frail in Apple’s infrastructure [1]. But it had been working… So after power cycling everything [3] it’s time to look for things that have changed recently.

The first place to look is my Login items. I find something called “Mountain”. It’s missing though. Weird. Part of something I’d tried then removed. Deleted that.

I also find AOUMonitor. That would be related to my recent ScanSnap update. Sounds familiar, so I use my Google Custom Search for everything I’ve published. I find Managing unwanted Mac startup apps: ScanSnap’s AOUMonitor and Citrix Receiver. Bang. AOUMonitor is a known bad actor. Delete it.

Next is Google Drive. It’s known to cause problems, but I’m still hooked on it and it’s an old-timer. Despite Google’s decreasing interest in iOS and OS X [2] I have to leave it.

But where’s Amazon Cloud Drive? It’s a newbie that’s also launching automatically. The fact that it’s absent from Login Items tells me it’s poorly written. Over to LaunchDaemons.

System Library\LaunchDaemons looks all Apple — as it should be.

Users\Library\LaunchDaemons has CCC (ok), Office (licensing and update, ugh), Skype (huh? - deleted!), Google keystone (old, part of their update infrastructure I think), TripMode (? delete for now), Barebones (trustworthy).

Users\me\Library is a bit odd.  Instead of LaunchDaemons we have LaunchAgents (really Apple?) [4] and no Startup Items. In LaunchAgents I find simple plists for Synology CloudStation (yeah, I’m suspicious of that one, but need it for now), 1Password (need it), Safari (ok I guess) and com.imobiesilentcleanserver.plist. The last was probably left over from testing imobie’s iOS cache cleaner (didn’t work), so I deleted it.

Alas, I still can’t figure out how Amazon Cloud Drive is starting up. Now I really want to kill it. Google is no help (which is another bad sign). Looking at Log files it looks like ACD is using some .NET infrastructure and it’s generated about 15 Console crash logs. 

Amazon Cloud Drive is a bugger to purge. EasyFind finds a folder in .local/share — yeah, a hidden directory. There’s app.com.amazon.clouddrive.mac.installer.playlist in friggin’ /private/var/db/BootCaches/2B1FD298-BBE8-4207-B1B0-ED420A2DAD74. There’s crap in Application Scripts, Application Support, and too many to mention. Try searching on “Amazon Cloud Drive”, “amazon.clouddrive” and so on. Take your time. 

Really, don’t touch Amazon Cloud Drive. Now I’m getting DOS TSR flashbacks in addition to my SCSI flashbacks.

Lastly, a safe boot to clear caches and then a restart. Now we’ll see what happens. I never did find what was launching Amazon Cloud Drive, but my Console isn’t showing any “Amazon” messages.

- fn -

[1] I’m getting PTSD flashbacks to MacOS Classic and SCSI chains.
[2] Apple is not doing well. 
[3] I’m going to start routinely power cycling my peripherals — they can go weeks without cycling whereas my Air gets cycled every week or two. 
[4] Update: jws explained -  "The difference between an agent and a daemon is that an agent can display GUI if it wants to, while a daemon can't. The difference between an agent and a regular application is that an agent typically displays no GUI (or a very limited GUI)… Agents run in a user context; daemons are userless and purely background, without any access to a window server or other user state. That’s why the daemon vs agent distinction in the Library folder names…

My 2014 AirPort Extreme just died.

I liked the ME918LL/A AirPort Extreme for 17 months. It covered most of our house with a single device and it was pretty reliable. Around 17 months it started to spontaneously power down. I suspect an issue with the power supply, Apple has a long history of wonky power supply problems.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's eventually a recall program. I purchased it with an AMEX card, so I’ll now see how good their extended warranty program is. (It used to be quite good, but AMEX has outsourced the program. If it fails me on this one I’ll deprecate my AMEX card.)

In the meanwhile, sadly, I’ve ordered another Airport Extreme. (Sigh.) I really couldn’t find a better option — Eero is quite expensive, unproven, and it comes from a startup that’s got a 20% chance of surviving. Google's hardware is outsourced and of unproven quality.

Apple’s Airport Express has a great reputation of reliability. If you can make do with the Express I’d recommend it over the Extreme. If you live in a country that mandates 2 year warranties then the Extreme is a good buy. If you live in the US either use an extended warranty credit cards or pay extra for Apple Care. Once you add the Apple Care costs the Extreme is more expensive than Google’s router.

Yes, WiFi services suck. They really shouldn’t. I need an electrical engineer to explain to me why so many of my WiFi solutions last 1-2 years. (I have a 6+ yo Airport Express still running …)

PS. Interesting that Amazon no longer sells the Airport Extreme or the Express. I had to buy direct from Apple.

Thunderbolt 2 Dock Smackdown: OWC vs Elgato. Also cheap UASP SSD enclosures.

This posts could go on for hours, but I’m racing a 20 minute timer [2]. I think it’s still worth sharing.

Until this year I used an ugly corporate Dell with a $35 dock. It could run 2 external displays and multiple USB-2 devices (now USB-3 I’m sure). I love my best-computer-ever 2015 MacBook Air, but I do miss that dock.

Ok, on to the Apple precious metal equivalent. When my 27” 2009 iMac GPU expired I executed a surprisingly painful migration to a relatively modern family platform consisting of two MacBooks, a Synology NAS for Time Capsule backups, and Synology “Cloud Station” LAN file sync. The latter replaced a traditional file server or the newly dying world of Cloud file sync. I could write a long post about why that migration was so hard but life is short.

As a part of the migration I stripped a 1TB Samsung SSD from the iMac. It needed a home, so after some research I bought a very (very) cheap Inatek SSD enclosure that claimed to support UASP [1]. UASP is one acronym for a somewhat neglected SCSI-like data interface that runs over USB 3.

The other part of the migration was a thunderbolt dock. I could have made do with a USB 3 enclosure but I wanted Firewire 800 support and a single cable for display and peripherals. I couldn’t find a trustworthy source so after some research I bought both an OWC Thunderbolt 2 dock (recent Wirecutter favorite, no UASP support, not sold in Apple Store, no cable in box, Firewire 800, lovely USB 3 port number) and an Elgato T2 dock (UASP support claimed, sold in Apple store, T2 cable, no Firewire, not enough USB 3 ports) from Amazon. I expected to return the Elgato.

I then did XBENCH performance scores. Despite lack of UASP support the OWC was roughly as fast as the Elgato. All the speeds are in MB/sec and, yes, they are all far less than the theoretical T2 speeds or even USB 3 speeds.

• Internal 2015 MacBook Air SSD: 900
• USB 3 direct cable connection: 600
• OWC dock: 320
• Elgato dock: 300 - 368 (varied with different tests, don’t ask me why)
• External Flash drive (USB 2 flash): 24 (just for comparison :-)

What stands out for me here is how much faster the direct USB 3 cable connection to the cheap Innatek enclosure was than either of the T2 connected drives. All testing was done with the Elgato cable. Nice cable, but too short. So it wasn’t worth much to me.

The lack of UASP support on the OWC didn’t make any difference in my crude testing. I suspect the T2 dock data processing is the bottleneck. The docks are so slow UASP support is wasted.

The OWC seemed fine so I prepared to return the Elgato. Then it dropped my drive connection overnight. So I returned the OWC and kept the Elgato.

The Elgato comes with a utility that is supposed to boost USB 3 port power output and provide the undock shortcut OS X doesn’t have (My Dell had it — but it tended to die when used). It’s a kernel extension. I mean, really, do I look suicidal? Clark Goble taught me how to use the far better AppleScript undock.app. I charge devices on dedicated 5 port chargers. In any case, the Elgato doesn’t have enough ports to spare.

I’ve been using the Elgato for 5 weeks. I bought an Apple 3 foot T2 cable and an Apple Thunderbolt-Firewire adapter (so both thunderbolt connections are in use). My 1TB SSD is on one USB 3 port, my 3TB drive is still Firewire 800. It all works, no dropped drives. I returned the OWC as defective (because, dammit, it is defective — and based on my research it’s a common defect) so Amazon paid return shipment.

Even though my external SSD is 50% slower on the T2 dock than with a direct USB 3 connection it’s still fine for working with a large Aperture photo library. I love SSD.

[1] They have many SKUs for a similar device and I suspect they change daily. On Amazon they all share one product rating. I got the one that’s aluminum, black, and seemed to have better heat dissipation.

[2] I lost. Took almost 30 minutes!

Update 2/27/2016:

The Elgato drops connection to the external USB3 drive when all USB ports are in use, even though only two of the ports require power. Looks like a genuine defect.

iPhone 6 screen pop problem

A day ago, as I slid my finger along the right side of my 9 month old iPhone 6 screen, I heard and felt a sharp pop.

It is the sort of thing Emily would ignore, but of course it bugs me. The screen worked properly, but every time I passed over the SIM card area I felt a little, distracting, pop.

I’m not the only one. As of Nov 28, 2015 Apple Support Communities has a mega-thread on the problem that started in Sept 2014.

Here’s my contribution:

I've scanned this thread. My impression is that there's more than one theme in the thread. Some people have a relatively simple defect -- a screen that's clearly loose. That may be related to dropping the phone or "bad luck" and it sounds straightforward. In some cases there may be loose screws at the base of the phone (these are very tiny screws, few people have the right tools to tighten them -- I'd let the Apple store do it).

More people, especially more recently, have a distinct "pop" sound with light pressure over a part of the display. It can be any part of the display. This sounds like either a design or manufacturing flaw or both. We'd need an expert in iPhone assembly to contribute. I can imagine a small structural deformity related to dropping the phone or imperceptible "pocket-bend" or a problem with screen glue chemistry.

If you squeeze firmly (but not TOO hard) over the pop area the problem will often clear for a few days to a week (which sounds like a bonding issue). I suspect Apple techs are "fixing" some phones this way.

When an iPhone is replaced under warranty Apple typically distributes a refurbished phone, and it sounds like they often have the same issue. It may be that Apple still doesn't understand the problem and that they haven't tested refurbs for the defect. As of Nov 2015 I don't think Apple has distributed a fix to service centers.

The fix may be expensive. It may require replacement of the screen/touch sensor, or frame replacement or even both. From my experience with similar defects on iMacs once Apple understands the problem they will fix it under warranty but if the repair is costly they may or may not do a post-warranty repair program. (Long discussion threads seem to help, contrary to what's often said here I think Apple does monitor long threads).

I'm going to take my phone to a local Apple store for review. If they don't know the cause (or are not authorized to discuss it) I'll hold onto my phone -- but I'll keep a record of the visit so I have proof the problem occurred under warranty.

Squeezing the pop area “fixed” it for me, but I expect the problem to return. I have almost 3 months of 1 year warranty coverage left, so I have time to wait and see if a fix emerges. (If the pop doesn’t return before my Genius appointment I’ll reschedule.)

Sledging the drives

Obsolete and dead hard drives have been piling up for 7 years in a wardrobe I want to empty. Here they are ready for execution; one had to be dug out of a Time Capsule:

The ones that I know held sensitive data (unencrypted backups mostly) I wiped via cradle mount.

Then it was sledgehammer time. The lawn was a bad idea — even by my neglectful standards it made a mess.

The best results came from angling drives on concrete, and using short strikes to fold the drive:

A one pass wipe and a sledgehammer might not stop the NSA, but it should suffice for Best Buy recycling.

Macs and external SSD storage - thunderbolt hubs and USB 3 UASP

My 2009 iMac is finally dying. It was my second iMac and my second iLemon. My 2005 iMac had early screen discoloration, overheating, and drive failure — but it survived the capacitor failures that killed many of its generation and it was the almost last Mac designed for user servicing. My 2009 iMac had early screen discoloration, overheating, screen flickering, two drive failures (one under recall) and, now, GPU failure. It’s not user serviceable. Lemon.

So I’m not a fan of Apple’s iMac lineup; I don’t want to buy another one. The Mac Mini is interesting, but the SSD pricing is irritating. The obscure but still sold non-retina 2012 MacBook Pro is an attractive iMac alternative when paired with an external monitor — and I actually prefer two 21" displays to a single 27” display. A refurb costs $829 and it’s easy to add memory to the 8GB max. It even has a Firewire 800 port. Still … 2012. That’s pretty old tech. I could buy another 13” Air ...

Or, I realized, I could not buy a Mac. I could save money and, more importantly, reduce my maintenance hassles. When my Time Capsule died young I bought a Synology NAS [1], I can use that as a file server for the family files. My Aperture photo Library is too large for my MacBook Air SSD, but I can pull my 1TB Samsung EVO SSD from the dying iMac and put it in an (very) inexpensive UASP+ external SSD enclosure (or this one) [5]. Based on past experience Aperture ran pretty well even over Firewire 800 and an external SSD. Emily has her 11” Air, I have my 13” Air, #3 uses her school iPad, and #2 only uses a computer for his school work. He can use one of the Airs — or maybe I’ll buy a disposable $150 Chromebook. [2]

Ahhh. One less computer to update, debug, drag to the Apple store, configure … I feel the warm breeze of a southern sea … [2].

My Air has two USB 3 ports and one Thunderbolt 2, currently occupied by a mini-display port. If it’s replacing my iMac it needs to work with 1-2 external displays, the iMac’s 1TB SSD in a USB 3 enclosure, several USB devices (scanner, DVD), an ethernet cable connection to the NAS and, ideally, my old Firewire 800 external 4TB drive, backup drive cradle, and flatbed scanner. Apple’s $1000 answer is the aging USB-free Apple Thunderbolt display.

Disregarding the obsolete Apple solution, I could go with a USB 3 hub or a Thunderbolt hub. With either one I’d like UASP Support [3]. The Vantek UGT-AH700U3-2C USB 3 hub is said to support UASP on a Mac; Wirecutter’s favored Anker hub didn’t in 2013 (though it might with newer chipset, wire cutter missed this important criteria in their review).

Really, even though the USB 3 hubs are ultra-cheap, I’d prefer something that would give me a single plug. Which means Thunderbolt-2 docking stations. I reviewed the options...

• The original Caldigit ThunderboltStation claimed UASP support but the new one doesn’t mention UASP — and it has a limited number of ports.
• Elgato thunderbolt 2 dock is sold by Apple Store [4], it has Thunderbolt_2 (2), USB 3 UASP compliant (3), HDMI, GB ethernet (no firewire, but Apple sells a firewire/thunderbolt adapter for $30)
• Belkin thunderbold 2 express HD is also sold by Apple, but there’s no mention of UASP and it has only two USB connectors.
• The OWC Thunderbolt 2 dock has the best connector options: Firewire 800 (!), 5 USB 3, Ultra-HD HDMI, Gb ethernet — BUT there’s no mention of UASP support anywhere. You have to buy a thunderbolt cable.
• The Akitio has only two USB 3 ports, but they do support UASP [5] - but no ethernet ports.

Overall I like the OWC Thunderbolt 2 ($228 + $30 thunderbolt cable), but it’s missing the UASP support (but [5]). Otherwise the Elgato ($208, need to buy $30 Firewire/Thunderbolt adapter) would be my choice.

I’ve got a response from OWC pending on UASP support, but I’m also wondering if it makes a real world difference. Update pending.

- fn -

[1] Apple quality? Only by comparison to the alternatives, and perhaps not even then.

[2] Apple, you really shouldn’t be making non-purchase so appealing. Maybe invest more in software quality and hardware reliability and value and less in marketing gimmicks?

[3] USB Attached SCSI. Really?!  I still have nightmares from my SCSI days, termination voodoo. Yeah, not the same thing, but tell that to the dreams. From the wikipedia article: "Apple added native support for UAS to OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion; drives using UAS show up as using IOUSBAttachedSCSI instead of the older IOUSBMassStorageClass kext”. I wonder how much USB Attached SCSI/UASP resembles Firewire protocols; I couldn’t find any Google references. This is the kind of thing BYTE magazine used to do so well...

[4] Navigating the online Apple store really can’t get any more painful… can it?

[5] It sounds like, practically speaking, the best one ever does is about 370MB/sec whether by USB, thunderbolt or eSATA. Makes me wonder whether UASP support actually makes a real difference in today’s products.

Update [5]: The Amazon listing for the Intateck is a bit mind boggling. This screenshot shows the multiple options shown for a single listing:

Depending on where the mouse lands you can get a model FE2003, FE2002, or FE2001 with varying case designs, some plastic, some aluminum, some with side vents, some not. I chose Aluminum, Optimized For SSD] Inateck 2.5 Inch USB 3.0 Hard Drive Disk HDD Aluminum External Enclosure Case with usb 3.0 Cable for 9.5mm 7mm 2.5" SATA HDD and SSD, Support UASP - the FE2003 version. The reviews for these different units are all merged. I suspect both Inteck and Amazon are guilty here.

Update: I ordered both the Elgata AND the OWC Thunderbolt docks from Amazon. I’ll run my own tests on both of them against the Inateck F2003 containing my 1TB Samsung and I’ll return the loser. If the OWC is good enough I’ll keep that one.

Update 12/12/2015: Results of my testing.

Apple Time Capsule - dead at 2 years 4 months, resurrected as a pure NAS solution

My Apple Time Capsule is dead. It started taking a very long time to join my wireless network, so I did a ’restore default settings’. The restore seemed to work, but it couldn’t join the network; on restart it’s settings were scrambled. So I tried again, and it stopped paying attention altogether.

This TC lasted 2 years and 4 months. Even when it worked restores were agonizingly, impossibly, slow; the Time Capsule is a grossly underpowered NAS. I was disappointed in my previous time capsule, but at least it limped along for almost 4 years.

I have a reasonably modern Airport Express that can take over print server duties for now, but I do need something to run Time Machine backups on. I’ll have to think this over a bit…

Update 10/6/2015: Using broken TC as a wired peripheral

It looks like something is rotten on the network/wireless side of the Time Capsule. I gave it some debug time and some factory resets, but I didn’t invest a lot of time. For one thing I realized there’s only 25GB left on the 2TB internal drive — it really is too small to backup our home network. I’ve ordered a Synology DS215j [1] and two WD Red 4TB NAS drives to be our Time Machine and file server. Over time I may be able to use this to replace an external drive attached to our home server. Shawn Blanc’s 2014 review of the DS213j is a helpful guide.

In the meantime I’m short on backup for our home network. My primary server runs a highly carbon copy clone with offsite backup, and I can run carbon copy manually to a network share from my personal workstation, but that leaves two other machines. I also like having two very different backup modalities for my primary machines. I found I could still use the Time Capsule through its wired ethernet connection.

Our home network is all WiFi now that the Time Capsule (switch, NAS, etc) is dead, so I used network preferences/location to make wifi the primary network option on all devices. Then, using Airport Utility, I browbeat the half-dead TC until WiFi was off and network services were in bridge mode, but file share with local file password was on. Then I found I could connect from each machine by direct ethernet to the TC and run Time Machine manually. I’ll do that until I get the Synology integrated.

Hmm. I wonder what happens if I connect the Time Capsule to a network port on my Airport Extreme...

Update 10/6/2015b: Using broken TC as a pure NAS hanging off my newish Airport Extreme

It took me too long to figure this one out. I blame that partly on Apple’s now opaque Airport configuration tool (designed to try to hide complexity of WiFi, fails at that).

Our newish AirPort Extreme (column thingie with fancy antennae), which plugs into our Comcast “modem”, is powerful enough to cover our whole house — and it has 3 ethernet connectors. So after I disabled WiFi and put the broken TC into bridge mode, I connected its ethernet uplink to an ethernet jack on the Extreme. Voila — it’s lights are happy green and Time Machine works with no configuration changes. Even the photo slideshow on the TC USB mounted thumb drive share works. This will hold us until the Synology arrives (0 drive configuration is out of stock).

The only trick is convincing the TC to accept bridge/no wifi:

After doing a hardware refresh AirPort Utility (ethernet connection to Mac) insisted I first configure it as standalone network service. That left it blinking yellow, but I could then get to the “advance” interface that let me make it into a pure NAS solution.

[1] What are the odds its firmware comes with Chinese gov hacks pre-installed?

Switching from CenturyLink to Comcast: last rats off the sinking ship

I was on hold with CenturyLink's “retention” service. That’s where support sends customers who request escape. The first 8 minutes of hold sounded like this ...

MMMMMMMMMMMMM (music) MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM (music) RMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM…. (silence) … (music) MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

I heard it on my iPhone because our CenturyLink landline is dead. Again. It’s been dead for about 5 of the past 10 days, despite a technician visit.

After 8 minutes of hum-buzz the line switched to classical music and, at 17 minutes, a woman answered. I told her I was calling to turn off my internet service. She said she couldn’t hear me, and a few seconds later she hung up.

I'm filling out the MN State Attorney General Consumer Complaint form and I’ll see if switching our landline number to a burner phone forces a service kill [1]. Not coincidentally, here’s the past year of CenturyLink share prices compared to S&P and Comcast.

Yeah, they’re dying.

Happily I switched to Comcast for Internet services today. Yes, Satan, but a Satan harried by millions of angry customers. So we have allies. On the other hand, we may be among CenturyLink’s last 10 customers. Not much help there.

For the sake of those still stuck in the DSL era, here’s are the things I didn’t know about switching to Comcast:

• You have to browse Comcast’s site carefully to find the listing of all internet-only services available in your area. We’re in the backwoods of St Paul, our faster sister city of Minneapolis pays about 20% less for faster services. Here we have two choices, and one of them is dying. Comcast ain’t exactly sweating.
• There’s no contract.
• I wanted good upload speeds, so I went for the St Paul 50/10 “boost" option. I was never able to find the upload speed on Comcast’s site, but that’s where it helps to have a geeky customer base. Google found the numbers for me. My speed test is indeed showing 50+ Mbps and 10+ Mbps. It’s listed as $45/m for 12 months plus $5 in taxes/fees, then jumps to $76/month + more tax/fees (unless competition shows up here, which is damned unlikely). Installation is $50 for the minimal install, $40 for a “wall drop”. We went for a very simple closet jack.
• Modem rental is $10/month. I needed the initial setup to work so I went with the rental for now. In 4-6 weeks I’ll order something like the ARRIS SURFboard and bring the rental unit to our local Xfinity store. Be interesting to see if/when the rental fee stops. My DSL modem was a router with NAT services, but the rental unit is a bridge. My AirPort Extreme now has a pingable net facing IP address. Feels a bit naked. 
• I have no access to the rental modem — it’s a black box. I assume Comcast can configure it.
• Don’t try to get any Comcast rep on the phone. It might not be as bad as calling CenturyLink, but it’s still very bad. Chat is likewise awful — they are forced to divert to a sales script and slow to answer real questions.
• The Comcast web site is an antique. It works better on Chrome than Safari, I suspect it’s made for IE 7. Contrary to a misdirecting prompt the 1990s email client does support forwarding. It also supports RSS feeds, which would be a great trivia question answer.
• The process of scheduling an installation is pretty good including multiple reminders. No problem there. The post-install phone satisfaction survey is too long — don’t even start it.
• There were several things that didn’t work on the Comcast registration site. SMS authentication didn’t get through to Google Voice (spam block?) and I couldn’t add a Yahoo address as secondary email. 
• The xfinity Connect app for iOS is probably worthwhile, I didn’t let it access contacts.
• There are WiFi hotspots for Comcast customers but they aren’t very interesting.
• Password (in)security involves 3 painful SecretToYouButNotToHackers questions that can’t be avoided.
• Comcast is supposed to be able to test a modem post install for signal strength. In Saint Paul this can take an hour to work, our installer called after he left to say the signal strength was too high (we have no splitters, new cable, etc) and the modem would disconnect. So he returned and added a filter. I tried Comcast’s SpeedExperience modem test tool but it couldn’t retrieve any modem data. 

That’s it. For today, I’m happy in Satan’s kingdom.

[1] We’d wanted to keep the wired landline because we’re on a cheap home security plan. I think that’s not an option any more...

Update 8/7/2015

• As of August 2015 this is the direct number to change service or close an CenturyLink account: 800-244-1111. My spouse, E, has magical powers honed through years of working with health insurers and schools. She called that number and had us on CenturyLink’s $20/month minimal landline service in under 20 minutes. Pure magic.
• CenturyLink has a customer relations page to use when "you are not satisfied with the resolution of your issue after contacting one of our Customer Service Centers or one of our Customer Experience Centers”.  That page has a link to an "email form”. The link no longer works, instead you go the page for revising feature sets. Shocking :-).

Update 4/12/2016

• Comcast has worked quite well for us. I’m watching for the expiration of our 1 year pricing and anticipating the negotiation to follow. Amazon is now reselling Comcast services — it provides clear price information for 1 year contracts vs. no contracts. We expect to switch between Comcast and CenturyLink every year or so — while I campaign for Google Fiber every chance I get.

dd, the Mac OS X (Unix) native solution to hard drive testing, cloning, drive recovery ...

App.net’s gaelicwizard posted this approach to hard drive testing back in Oct 2013. I’d lost it for a while but just found it again today:

$ dd if=/dev/disk1s2 of=/dev/null If it hangs indefinitely, replace the hard drive. If it I/O Error’s, replace the the hard drive. If it completes without problem, the hard drive has no bad blocks.

I’ve not seen this mentioned anywhere else recently, but I found a related MacOS X Hint from 2005 that explains what dd is, and how it can be used for drive recovery and as an alternative to “Norton Ghost”:

The Unix program dd is a disk copying util that you can use at the command line in order to make a disk image. It makes a bit-by-bit copy of the drive it's copying, caring nothing about filesystem type, files, or anything else. It's a great way to workaround the need for Norton Ghost.

Normally, in order to make a disk image, the disk you're copying from has to be able to spin up and talk -- in other words, it's OK to make a copy if the disk is healthy. But what happens when your disk is becoming a doorstop? As long as it continues to spin, even with physical damage on the drive, dd and Mac OS X will get you out of the fire.

We had a situation recently where a friend sent a disk to us that had hard physical errors on it. It would boot in Windows, but then it would hit one of these scratch marks and just die. We fired up dd, and it started OK, but stopped at the same physical error location -- complaining about a Hard Error.

So the workaround was to designate the dd mode as noerror -- which just slides over the hard stops, and to add the mode sync, which fills the image with nulls at that point. We did it on BSD Unix, but as long as you can get the hard drive attached to your Mac, the command is the same:

dd bs=512 if=/dev/rXX# of=/some_dir/foo.dmg conv=noerror,sync

… Once you’ve established the disk image (in this example, foo.dmg), you're almost home. Here's where your Mac OS X box is far and away the best thing to have. In this example, the dd output file is foo.dmg. You have to realize that this is an exact copy of a busted drive, but the "holes" are filled with nulls. As long as the damage isn’t to the boot sector, though, when you double-click on it, Mac OS X mounts it without breathing hard … who cares if it's FAT32, NTFS, whatever...

On a Mac or Unix machine “man dd” will provide the explanations of the parameters in @gaelicwizard’s example:

• if=file Read input from file instead of the standard input.
• of=file  Write output to file instead of the standard output. 

So the command reads every byte of disk1s2 and writes it to “null” (Nowhere). Why disk1s2? It’s a common boot drive. You can use “diskutil list” to find out the name of attached drives. On my machine the result looks like:

/dev/disk0
 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
 0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk0
 1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
 2: Apple_HFS Stanford 999.3 GB disk0s2
 3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3
/dev/disk1
 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
 0: GUID_partition_scheme *2.0 TB disk1
 1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1
 2: Apple_HFS Media 2.0 TB disk1s2
/dev/disk2
 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
 0: GUID_partition_scheme *3.0 TB disk2
 1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk2s1
 2: Apple_CoreStorage 3.0 TB disk2s2
 3: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 134.2 MB disk2s3
/dev/disk3
 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
 0: confidential *102.4 MB disk3
/dev/disk4
 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
 0: Apple_HFS BACKUP_B *3.0 TB disk4

I tested dd on disk4 (my backup disk). I found I had to run from my admin account, I needed to use sudo, and I had to unmount the drive first (or I got “resource busy” error message):

Admin$ sudo dd if=/dev/disk4 of=/dev/null

Please be careful what you type — especially for the of parameter. One little typo and you could be writing data anywhere.

It runs silently, you can stop with a Ctrl-C. It then reported:

1451352+0 records in

1451352+0 records out

743092224 bytes transferred in 48.218709 secs (15410869 bytes/sec)

I’ll let this run overnight on one of my backup drives some time, but it looks like an inexpensive way to test a hard drive. I’m surprised it’s not described more frequently. gaelicwizard knows the dark arts.