Why Facebook won't sort the News Feed by time (Most Recent) - and how to live with it

Facebook has once again taken another small step to making it more difficult to sort one’s News Feed by time (most recent). On their premier platform, Facebook.app for iOS, they’ve pushed the “Most Recent” option down into an obscure “more” setting, under “Feeds”. On the web app it’s moved to a drop down on the left side (News Feed) and always reverts to “Top Stories”.

My friends are upset. They want to see Feed items by date. Almost everyone does. So why does Facebook do this? And what can  you do about it?

Facebook does this because they feel a desperate need for growth. They’re so big they can’t grow by adding bodies, so they need to extract more money from the bodies they have. They have a few ways to do this, but they seem particularly keen on charging Page owners (Ex: Pepsi Cola, Minnesota Inline Skate Club, City of Saint Paul, Avalon Charter School [1]) for Top Page status. If you think about it, this means users cannot be encouraged to sort the Timeline by date. If we were able to sort by date, there’d be no incentive for Page owners to Pay to Play. [2]

So it doesn’t matter that most users prefer to sort by date, the Top Page sort is here to stay. We might as well get used to it.

So what can you do?

Well, you could switch to Twitter. Except Twitter’s share price is looking ugly. Their user base is flat and increasingly old. They stick ads in the stream now, and that’s only going to get worse. Then there’s Google +, but then you’d join an entity so Evil it makes Facebook seem the soul of innocence. Besides, when GooNet goes sentient you’ll be the first to be absorbed (by a few milliseconds anyway).

Or you could sign up with App.net, the elite version of Twitter. A calm culture of mutual respect, free of ads or commercial exploitation, sustained only by membership fees. That’s where I hang out. Too bad it’s now post-mortal (on life support, though we believe in resurrection).

Yeah, there’s pinterest and others like that, but they’re all going to die, be bought by Facebook, or turn into similarly evil shadows.

So you can’t leave. What can you do to make the News Feed less annoying?

First of all, unlike all the Pages that you don’t love [3]. When they’re gone the Top Stories are more likely to be ones you like, and they’ll be sorted roughly by date.

Secondly, if there are people or non-profit Pages (the non-profit bit is important) you do want to see, be sure to “Like” their stuff. That brings them up on the News Feed; you feed now behaves more like Most Recent.

I think Facebook may also use relationship information in their Top Stories algorithm (it changes!). It’s probably worth telling Facebook who you care about - their posts may (for now) show as Top Stories. If you visit someone’s FB home in the web app, you can change “friends” to “Close Friends”. If you’re a real guru you can find the special Friends List and Family List and add names there.

Ok, so far so good, but now it gets interesting. [4] In the original version of this post I didn’t distinguish between Liking non-profit and for-profit Pages. Later, when I thought about this more, I realized the most obnoxious feature of my News Feed is that it’s now infested with for-profit Pages that my Friends “Like”. (yeah, lots of Title case concepts here). It’s diabolically clever [4]; everything a Friend of mine Likes turns into a Top Rated de facto ad in my Feed disguised as a Friend item. It’s as though my Friends had been captured by evil brain-eating Fungi (I love eco-econ.)

So given this new move by our friendly Facebook Ceti eel [5] is there any hope left? Well, we do have to remember that Facebook doesn’t really want to kill us. It just wants all our money. So there are ways to manage this as well. Most importantly, we shouldn’t ever Like for-profit Page posts unless we want all our friends to see them as ads. So in addition to Unliking for-profit Pages that you personally don’t love, you need to avoid Liking the posts of the Pages you do love. [3]

Think of this as a (hah-hah) little game we play. For Profit (sponsored) Pages are … dangerous. Like these Pages carefully, Unlike often, and never Like the Posts (unless you want to be a Ceti-eel).

Additionally, for the keen gamer, there are things one can do to get rid of some of the Friend-masked ads. In Facebook web you can tap on the the inverted caret next to the “Like Page” button and hide the source as though it were an ad — because it is.

On the iOS app it takes more taps. You start with the inverted caret, the “I don’t want to see this” and navigate taps until you get the same sort of “hide all”. Fun!

Or you can keep playing the “where did they put Most Recent” today game… 

- fn -

[1] Facebook /web has a Pages Feed. You’ve probably never seen it, but that’s where you can find all the Pages updates that don’t make it into your timeline. I love my Pages — nonprofits, city government, clubs, bicycling advocacy. Great stuff.

[2] BTW, Facebook may be kicking this up a notch. My Page feed today had “Studio 110 Salon” as something I’d “Liked”. I don’t think so.

[3] This is what’s known as an unanticipated or perverse consequence. Facebook certainly doesn’t want you to Unlike Pages or stop Liking sponsored Page posts. Tough on them, but they’ll evolve an adaptation.

[4] I’ve revised this from my original post; the more I thought about this topic the more interesting it became. Facebook’s user relationship are a great example of 21st century eco-econ - an uneasy relationship that veers from mutualism to parasitism. Facebook’s diabolical machinations fascinate.

[5] Intestinal parasites have been used to treat inflammatory bowel disease.

iMessage "waiting for activation" - things you can try while mold grows on your fur

Hundreds of billions in the bank, $70 million gift for a new head of retail operations, and Apple still can’t make iMessage work. Maybe Apple needs to pay their top execs a lot less make up for their employee wage suppression cartels — because it’s clear they have a morale problem.

Yeah, I’m tired of seeing “waiting for activation” on the kids iPhones whenever we have to switch SIM cards or restore from backup. This time around it was both a 3GS running iOS 6.x and a 4S running 7.1.1.

I walked through Apple’s Troubleshooting FaceTime and iMessage activation. I love the final step: ”If you’re still unable to resolve the symptoms above after performing these troubleshooting steps, please contact Apple for assistance.” I guess they mean through the Apple Support Page or the Apple store. 

Apple’s steps didn’t work, but this time “reset network settings” worked for the 3GS device. (I’m still working on the 4s. I might just give it overnight.)

Other things you can try:

• In Settings:Phones confirm your number is listed as phone number. (It used to show up at top of Contacts, but I no longer see that on any of our phones.)
• While “waiting” send and receive iMessages to another iPhone (you typically can until activation fails, then you’re stuck) or to a Mavericks or Mountain Lion machine.
• Play around with FaceTime — iMessage and FaceTime activation seem to be linked.
• Make sure Date/Time are correct
• In Settings:Messages:Send & Receive try removing all email addresses, so it’s just phone number.
• Flip in and out of Airplane Mode
• Sign out and in of iCloud account

Note Apple says you need a SIM card and SMS services to activate iMessage. That wasn’t always true but it may be true now.

Oh, and be sure to go to Apple iPhone Feedback and tell ‘em what you think of iMessage activation.

Update: I couldn’t get the 4S working tonight, but I was swapping SIMs so I gave up. Maybe it would have worked in time. I wonder if Apple’s iMessage system depends in some way on carrier cooperation, and if the carriers aren’t always cooperative.

The Empire strikes back (again): Why we switched to AT&Ts no-contract shared data AT&T Next Plan

Between $40/year/phone H2O wireless for the kid’s hand-me-down unlocked iPhones and our fully optimized minimal voice [1] parent plan I thought we had AT&T under our thumb. True, SMS cost us 20 cents/text, but SMS was dying and we had iMessage and Google Voice. I was fine with a $10/month text bill.

But the Empire was licking its wounds; it struck back (again) with a brilliantly diabolical move. Instead of riding the dying SMS revenue stream down, AT&T shot it dead. SMS is now bundled with AT&T’s plans (even texting from US to Canada). Perhaps not coincidentally, we seem to get more text than ever. Worse, while H2O is dead cheap it has no data; the kids have been whacking us with SMS. Last month our AT&T SMS bill was $60 - more than our data plan costs.

Yeah, there were things we could do with the text message problem, like using Google Voice SMS and being careful with iMessage. I tried those — but it didn’t work. Emily didn’t share my particular obsession with fighting AT&T — the SMS workarounds were just one PITA too many.

So I admitted defeat.  We’ve switched to the current offering, which is a no-contract shared data “AT&T Next” plan. It looks like this:

Sorry for the hard to read jpeg — but it’s a rare gem taken from our local AT&T store. The online descriptions I was able to find were hard to parse and ultimately misleading; the real cost was higher than I’d estimated (and higher than it was a few months back). Notice what AT&T has done — individual plans are $25/device/month, family plans are $15/device/month, but the minimal family data is 10 GB month for $100.

Let us sit back and contemplate that for a moment. Feel the evil. Do they understand complexity fraud or what?

We went for the 2GB “single line” plan (for two lines), which means our base monthly cost is now $90 + fees [3]. This is very close to our previous base cost once one backed out the hidden subsidy [2] but we have half the data and my corporate discount is no longer applied to the hidden subsidy cost. We’ve exchanged 2GB/month of data for unlimited SMS. What a wonderful trade that is.

See what I mean? AT&T beat us like a drum.

Wait - it’s worse. Emily and I are usually under 2GB month combined, but sometimes we hit 2.2GB. AT&T will add on $15 for the 3rd GB [3], so our base costs are higher than we used to pay and we have less data (but we have &%*! SMS). Oh, and “unlimited voice” - which is worth the proverbial plugged nickel. We’ve also lost the old low cost family plan, to which we could add phones for low monthly costs and minimal data (but H2O was much cheaper).

Are there any upsides, besides the reality (must be admitted) that we expect to send AT&T less money each month even after accounting for the subsidy loss [4]? There are a few…

• We had two phones under subsidy contract. AT&T is so eager to bring people into this plan (ooooh, the evil, it burnssss) that they’re giving up on the subsidy payments we owe. We remain under contract, but the prior payment was $120 (subsidy included) and now it’s $90. So we’re ahead by about $450 if we stay with AT&T. If we leave we do need to pay off that residual subsidy.
• We’re no longer under the Family Plan trap. Once our contracts are up Emily can switch her unlocked iPhone 5 to T-Mobile LTE. This plan takes us one step further from AT&T
• Tethering (HotSpot) is included. So when traveling in the US the kids can use our data.
• When we want a new phone we can either switch to the “2 yr agreement” (if it’s available then) or use their financing plan [5] or (my preference) pay full price for an unlocked phone (and thus get full price extended warranty coverage with my AMEX card)
• There’s no longer a $36 fee tacked on each time one gets a new phone — just for “new lines”.

 On balance I suppose we’re marginally ahead, but I bet this scheme of AT&T’s takes a lot of victims.

- fn - 

[1] 700 min of voice was plenty for Emily and I as was our 2GB/each data. I used Google Hangout.app (iOS) for all my business calls — far better than cellular audio and no voice minutes. In theory our bill was $15 in fees (hah!) + $85 (primary) + $35 (secondary) = $135/mo. That monthly fee included equivalent of $40 in phone subsidy, so base cost was $95/month before subsidy. (We also have a corporate discount, not shown here. In the old model corporate discount applied to the hidden subsidy, but in new model it will not!)

[2] Smartphone is the default, “basic and messaging phones” cost about the same even though they use little to no data!

[3] Could be a lot worse - they used to have huge overage fees. So the data fee is $40 for 2GB, $55 for 3GB, and $70 for 4GB. They just hide the 3.

[4] The savings is all in the SMS, remember we’re losing the hidden subsidy value. I’ll believe it when I see it. I also want to see if they apply our corporate discount.

[5] I’m very happy to report that I found the worm in AT&T Next. You know it’s somewhere in the Apple, and it’s great to know where it is. If you use AT&T’s financing to get a new carrier-locked phone you actually save a bit over the cost of a new unlocked phone, but to get a new phone you have to trade in your “old phone” (which is typically worth $200 or so).

See also

• Analyzing mobile phone plans: Our old AT&T plan vs. H2O wireless 9/2013
• Pay-as-you-go voice and SMS service for a contract-free AT&T iPhone with H2O Wireless 3/2012
• Mobile phone fraud - The accidental data charge and other scams 11/2009. Yeah, they earned our enmity.
• The Empire Strikes Back: complexity, mobile phone plans, and Apple defeated 6/2008. They’ve beaten me before.
• Information asymmetry and my Cuisinart coffee maker - Steve Jobs in Hell 4/2012
• Why quality collapsed in the bubble years: Akerlof and the last good toaster 3/2012 (information asymmetry is how AT&T wins)
• Why coupons? Price concealment information and memetic archeology in the pre-web world 5/2012 (more on econ)
• Fraud on Cyber: An annotated sample of Gordon’s Notes 8/0211 - more …

Update 7/5/14

This is working out pretty much as promised - a substantial savings with, of course, no phone subsidy. Confusingly the plan is billed at $40 a month, but then a $15 “Discount for mobile share value savings” is applied. The real cost with the hidden surcharges/fees/taxes etc is about $98 for the two of us.

Dealing with Time Zones in Aperture across multiple cameras - what I do for now

Time zones are very bad news — even if you don’t consider DST, much less states like Arizona that sometimes track California and sometimes Colorado. Now combine multiple cameras with varying approaches to time zone, then Aperture’s splitting of time adjust into Time Zone assignment set in Metadata Batch Update and Time offset configured in Adjust Date/Time, now Aperture’s assignment of time zone on import, now the computer’s time and time zone…

Right.

Here’s what I do …

When taking pictures

• Do my best to get all cameras and devices at correct time zone/time insofar as camera supports that. (Some always leave camera on UTC the adjust in Aperture as needed. I might switch to that.)
• Take pictures of my iPhone clock periodically.
• Mix in iPhone photos because those get GeoTagged and should have reference time.

In Aperture

• Tag my iPhone pictures (Aperture Label) so they’re easy to spot, they have reference time and location. I copy their metadata location and paste it into nearby non-tagged images.
• Using iPhone image time zone as reference, I select all images from a particular camera, take note of their metadata time zone, then change the time zone to match iPhone. I do this sequentially for each camera.
• I then use iPhone image reference times to select images for a camera, then offset as needed.
• Repeat for each camera

Why the low end MacBook Pro is the best family computer

First of all, the best family computer is still a Mac. ChromeBooks will be a good option when prices fall below $180 for reasonable build quality, but they’re not there yet.

So which Mac?

Until today I’d have said a Mac Mini or a 13” MacBook Air. The combination of bundled display, internal hard drive, and difficult repair rules out the iMac, and most of the MacBook Pro lineup is too expensive for a family machine.

Today though timely app.net advice [1] persuaded me that the education market legacy non-retina 13” MD101LL MacBook Pro is the right choice. It’s inexpensive by Mac standards ($1,185 and no tax via Amazon), it’s the only Mac notebook with a DVD player, and it comes with plenty of storage (500GB hard drive). Best of all, but the pathetic standards of the modern Mac, it’s relatively serviceable.

Which is why geek parents like this 2012 era MacBook. Buy it cheap and when the warranty expires a year later, put in 4GB RAM and a 500GB/1TB SSD. Now you’ve got a performance machine with a seven year lifespan. [2]

Yeah, the non-Retina MB Pro is, you know, non-Retina. But that makes it faster and the battery lasts longer. Sure it’s heavier than the new generation, but it’s a family device. You’re not globetrotting with it. And a DVD is still a handy thing to have. Best of all it’s an old design — all of the manufacturing glitches have been fixed by now.

It’s the best family computer. Too bad it’s going to disappear soon … 

- fn - 

[1] Advice sought because of a humiliating blunder that I just figured out as I was writing this post. Excuse me while I bang my head against the table.

It began when our family computer, a 2006 Core 2 Duo MacBook, stopped charging. At first the power adapter glowed green and powered the computer, but a day or so later the adapter light went out entirely. An SMC reset didn’t help. Since the power adapter was a shiny 8 month old modern L-connector Apple Store replacement I was sure the old logic board had died. Hence my app.net inquiry.

I ran to the U of MN Apple store to get a new machine, but, of course, I brought my adapter along to check it worked. And there they told me that it was a 45W adapter! Wow, amazing it worked at all! How could that Apple Genius have given me the wrong adapter! What an idiot! (wait for it)

So I gave ‘em my 45W adapter to throw out and went home. Later, when writing this blog, I confirmed the MacBook needs a 60W adapter, whereas my MacBook Air uses a 45W adapter (wait for it) which … come to think of it … looks a lot … like the one … I just bought …

Yeah. Somehow we’d switched adapters. The 60W is fine for the Air (though unnecessarily bulky) 

Although you should always use the proper wattage adapter for your Apple notebook, you can use an adapter of a higher wattage without issue.

But the 45W failed the MacBook. I’m surprised it worked at all. The whole mess was a series an Einstellung effect cognitive blunders. I assumed I had the right adapter, I assumed it had to be the logic board …

Sigh. Now I have to take my new 60W adapter back to the Apple Store and exchange it for a new 45W adapter …

- fn -

[1] Scotch tape over chipping top case plastic, congenitally crummy hinges but with one huge, killer feature — it’s serviceable. Anyone can easily upgrade RAM or replace the hard drive. And so it delivered great value. Apple has forgotten what made it loved…

[2] Extra credit feature: The University of Minnesota Apple Store will add memory at time of purchase (non-soldered!). They’ll even do the SSD update. Now that our beloved First Tech is gone, I’ll be relying on them more …

See also

• iPhoto bug: black or all white photos when editing on MacBook Duo 2012. Weird bug with old integrated Intel CPU
• My MagSafe adapter light goes out periodically 2011.
• MacBook: won’t startup unless plugged in 2007 (a year after I bought MacBook battery died prematurely)
• A dead MacBook Air power adapter is magically restored. SMC problem? 2011. But then it died again. It was replaced under warranty.

Google is closing little used Google Apps accounts

For a few years Google offered a free version of Google Apps, and even after that was discontinued you could get a free Apps service with a new Dreamhost domain (I think that’s been discontinued). It was a great deal; I ended up with a dozen or so. One of them has provided all of our family email and calendars since 2007; even after Google ended the new signups they let freeloaders like us hang around.

Recently though I’ve received notices from Google warning that they will close unused Google Apps accounts. So if you have some Google Apps you’d like to keep, be sure they are setup with a valid forwarding address [1] and periodically log in and send an email.

In one case I did authenticate, but I still received a second notice of pending termination. I hope that’s just a glitch.

[1] In some cases an Apps account is also associated with a companion Domain, so if the Apps account is lost the domain control may be lost too. Check.

iOS 7.1 movies (video) sync from iCloud but not iTunes - a bug and a fix

The afternoon that we were leaving for holiday I discovered that I couldn’t use iTunes to sync a movie (or a video Podcast) to my daughter’s iPhone 4S. [1] Sync was normal for all other devices but on her iPhone we got stuck at the agonizing “Waiting for changes to be applied” prompt [3]. If I waited 15 minutes or so the sync “completed” without an error message, but no movies were transferred. When I inspected the iPhone contents from iTunes I saw ghostly outlines of the movies I was trying to transfer.

I could download our movies from iCloud directly to the phone, but that’s fairly slow. iTunes sync is faster. Our flight was delayed long enough for me to try many  things including

• sync of non-DRMd home video (didn’t work)
• turn off all sync for movies then sync then remove media then try one movie
• Parental Controls toggle including age range check
• restarts of iOS and OS X
• PhoneView inspection of the file system (iOS CloudAssets directory was empty post iOS 7.1 fix for the Other Data cache bug.)
• Sign out and sign in to App Store from iOS and OS X iTunes.
• Looked for anything in Console.app related to iTunes (nothing)
• Backing up, wiping (“restore” to default) iPhone, then restoring it 

I gave up and made do with iCloud download, but @gaelicwizard suggested …

Could try initiating a sync with a different computer and letting it overwrite the link with this one. Then, back again. That would clear any caches...

That worked. The key here is that when you sync an iOS device to a different iTunes instance you lose all of your media, but you don’t lose anything else. You don’t lose Apps or App data or iCloud data, etc [2]. If you’re old enough to remember the iPod you can see that when the iTunes is treating the iPhone as though it were an iPod. I did this:

1. Backup iPhone on Primary iTunes. (iTunesP)
2. Switched to the admin account on my Mac and launched iTunes there (iTunesA). 
3. Selected a single short movie to sync (and nothing else). iTunes warned me all media (but only media) would be wiped from my iPhone. (Note difference from the usual “restore” and “restore from backup” behavior.)
4. The movie synched normally.
5. Switched back to iTunesP. Did same thing, again iTunes warned me all media would be removed. The moved synched normally.
6. Turned on sync for Music, TV, Photo, etc. iTunes remembered all of the prior settings so this went quickly.

I suspect this is a new 7.1 bug possibly related to the fix for the Other Data cache bug. Apple clearly wants to end media synchronization from the desktop, so we can expect more bugs like this in the future. 

 

Three thoughts on items that might be related to this bug…

• We downloaded the (great) movie Frozen from iCloud to our Apple TV very early in its release cycle. There was odd behavior when I later downloaded a copy to iTunes; the new download had a slightly different file size and iTunes seemed to think they were different movies. I can’t remember how I fixed that … (probably deleted and redownloaded)
• Since wiping the phone and restoring from backup didn’t fix the problem, it’s likely related to something that’s backed up.
• Even after I synchronized the iPhone with my admin account iTunes instance, I still saw the ghostly outlines of the movies I’d been unable to sync previously. 

 - fn - 

[1] This was a week ago, and I can’t recall if TV shows were behaving normally. I think they were, which is extra weird so maybe I’m remembering incorrectly.

[2] Pre-iCloud days I used to sync Calendar/Contacts for my wife on one iTunes account, and media on a different iTunes account.  In the iPod era Apple was worried about using iPods to share media between iTunes instances — something that seems quaint now. Today’s DRM infrastructure is much more robust.

[3] A common indicator of a sync problem. It’s so annoying that error details don’t appear in Console logs.

Mavericks iBooks Apple ID and Sync issues - one possible fix

iBooks for Mac 1.0 has not been well received; Apple Discussions include a good range of rants and removal hacks. (You can, and should, register your feedback here. Tom Cook’s Apple seems to pay attention to those submissions.)

I’ll join the chorus. My initial experience on a Mac that migrated from Mountain Lion to Mavericks did not go well — possibly because my Mavericks account iCloud services use a different Apple ID than my iTunes/Apple Store/App Store purchases.

In particular when I did my usual wired sync with iTunes I received this unfortunate error message:

It’s an unfortunate error message because;

1. There’s nothing to tell me what “A_Decade_of_Reversal” is (book? app? podcast?).
2. The item (a PDF) was actually on the iPhone, the problem is it wouldn’t sync to my Mac. (Precisely the opposite of the error message.)

Once I figured out what this item was (I searched Google on “A Decade of Reversal” and found the medical journal article I’d saved to iOS iBooks.app from Safari.app for iOS) I tried starting up iBooks and was asked to provide my Apple ID for iBooks store purchases…

Except the Apple ID I use for all my purchases is not the old me.com/icloud.com address shown above, nor is it two of my other 3 (known) Apple IDs, it’s my jfaughnan@mac.com Apple ID [1]. I tried entering that one and iBooks refused it.

I was stuck.

This is what seemed to work:

1. Got iBooks to sign me out of the me.com address. I did this by messing with Store and auto-download setting in Preferences, but I think one could just go to the Store menu and sign out. Then sign in again with the correct Apple ID for purchases. This triggered a message telling me I would have access only to books for the new Apple ID, but interestingly very little content seemed to change.
2. From within iBooks choose “Move Books from iTunes”. I thought this already happened, but it seemed to happen “again”.

After that I could sync, and after my first sync the PDF “A Decade of Reversal” nicely synchronized disappeared. Oh, nicely played Apple.

 

So I downloaded it to my phone again (view PDF, choose open in iBooks) and tried another sync. This time it showed up in iBooks for OS X. I’m hopeful sync will work from now on.

 

BTW, if you do provide feedback, don’t forget we need to be able to edit basic metadata again (lost Mavericks) - Category, author, title, etc. 

[1] Which, but the way, I thought didn’t have an associated iCloud account. Wrong; I just checked and it does. Everything except email, probably because the jfaughnan@mac.com email address was orphaned when I failed to renew my .Mac online service some time in the early 00s.

Low cost net entry for Canadians: The Virgin Mobile experience

For my US kids I wanted low cost voice/text services and no data. With H2O Wireless we pay $40/year per kid. Yeah, 40 bucks. The buys never use their text/voice quota, my daughter sometimes runs a bit more. They mostly use WiFi.

For my Canadian sister I needed a different solution. She has no net connection, no computer, and no wifi. She's off the net and her budget is limited. For her I wanted enough data to do basic email, iMessage, and non-video Facebook and emergency voice services. I had an unlocked refurbished AT&T iPhone 4, and I had some experience with Virgin Mobile Canada prepaid data - I decided to try that combination aiming for a cost of about $200 a year (not including the phone).

So far it's working, but Virgin Mobile is no Ting, it's not even AT&T. Be warned; I'm not at all sure this is a good solution.

I followed the general procedure I documented a year ago for my own personal use (if you're in Canada you can order SIMs for 0$ from Virgin, I paid $10 at Future Shop). Once again Virgin's web site didn't recognize the AT&T iPhone's IMEI. The web experience was painful -- I was almost done when I timed out and had to restart (moving more quickly). This time around I paid more attention to how much spam Virgin generates -- their contract authorizes an appalling amount of spam (email, sms) and telemarketing/robocalls to any email or phone number you give Virgin. Follow the link to track all the places you have to go AFTER you sign up. See also turning off Virgin's text spam and email spam. To turn off the robocalls you need to call from the mobile phone at 40cents/min; when I did that I found the number was already DNC but I extended protection for 5 years.

Just like last time it took about 30 minutes to activate my sister's account on the web site. Until the account was active entering the number created a password prompt, only after activation did I get a PIN prompt; with prepay you don't get an honest password and username, just a phone number and PIN. It took another 30 minutes to activate the phone.

Then I ran into a bug I'm still sorting out. When I tried to use my balance to purchase the monthly data add-on I got "...Contact our Customer Care at 1 888 999 2321 so we can help." I was able to use Chat to complete an initial purchase and make a change to to the recurring purchase, but when I asked why I couldn't do it online I was told there was a "web site problem". I later found that this is what the call center operators are told to say.

It's not clear what the problem is. As I noted above, Virgin didn't recognize the the AT&T iPhone4's IMEI; maybe the website can't tell if I should see the BlackBerry or Smartphone options. Or maybe there's some weird rule here I don't understand yet. I'm slowly working this with tech support

Between Chat Support and the web site I've put together some notes on how Virgin does prepaid plans and prepaid data as of March 2014: [1]

• $15 Top Ups expire in 30 days, $25 and $50 Top Ups expire in 60 days and $100 Top Ups have an expiration period of 365 days. (A Top Up is simply a credit one buys from Future Shop and other retailers.)
• Unused funds expire at the end of the Active Period unless you Top Up within 7 calendar days of their expiry. If you Top Up before hitting zero the new Active Period will apply to the combined amount of prepaid funds.
• Expiration is based on the expiration date of the latest Top Up. So if your credit expires in 60 days, and you buy a $100 Top Up, expiration is 365 days, not 425. Other prepaid vendors are much better; the expiration date is sum of original remaining plus new. (If expiration is 365 days and you but a $10 Top Up what happens then? Nothing good I fear.)
• If you run through your Data Plan, Virgin charges per MB overage fees until your prepaid balance is exhausted. (If you optionally associated a credit card with the prepaid plan I suspect the credit card is charged until your bank account is exhausted. I don't know if this applies to INTERAC purchases.)
• If your prepaid funds expire and you do not top up for 3 months your account will completely disconnect. (It may be possible to 'reactivate', but I don't know how that works or for how long.)

I'm very reluctant to give Virgin a credit card number - I don't trust them in the least. I think the best option is going to be their pre-authorized monthly bank debit plan -- $20/month one day before plan expires:

• 10$: 100MB
• 7$: 500 text
• 3$: minimal voice

Aperture and/or iPhoto had a nasty habit of emptying Facebook photo albums @2011 or so

For some time I've noticed some of the older Facebook albums I'd created from either iPhoto or Aperture showed with generic icons when displayed in Aperture's Facebook view. After a recent Aperture update to 3.51 I decided to investigate; I right clicked on the icons and navigated to the albums in Facebook.

Which had no images in them. It sounds like this bug, documented back in 2010 (as I write this I think Discussions has gone offline):

Xeep 11/6/2010

... I was pleased that the Aperture 3.1 update fixed a lot of bugs related to Facebook, however it seems to have introduced a new bug. When I started Aperture after the update, it brought in all my Facebook albums (about 10 of them), however one of the albums was empty. I went on Facebook to see that this album still existed but was also empty. It seems that Aperture deleted the contents since there were obviously pictures in it before the update. I created a new album in Aperture and uploaded it successfully to Facebook. The photos stayed intact until the next time I opened Aperture after which it deleted all the photos again. I repeated this 5 times before giving up. It only affected the one previous album (seemingly random) and any new albums I try to create. I've since disconnected Aperture from Facebook and only upload through Safari. Anyone seen something similar?...

I saw some similar comments in Apple Discussions, but not much elsewhere. Looking back at my albums the most last empty album was some time in summer 2011. So perhaps the bug, which might have belonged to Apple or Facebook or both, was fixed after that.

The photos are still in Aperture -- though I had a stomach ache moment when I thought they weren't. So this appears to be a synchronization bug, of the sort that have plagued me for years decades. Synchronization is tough, and Apple has failed at it more than once.

I could recreate the albums by exporting images from Aperture and uploading via Safari, but for now I'll leave them be.

If you used Aperture or iPhoto @2010-2011 with Facebook you should take a look at your albums.

Lion: prompted for lpadmin group when printer pauses (and Apple's permissions mess)

I didn't have a problem with Snow Leopard and my prior printer, but our elder MacBook (plastic, dual USB, no ML support) running Lion is having repeated problems with our Brother HL-6180DW. The printer keeps going into a paused state (sleep / wake bug?), and users are prompted to "Type the name and password of a user in the lpadmin group to allow...". Of course the kids don't know what to type -- and this is a very awkward prompt in any case. Something is broken.

Of course a lot of things are broken with OS X and printing - even in Mavericks. So this isn't a great surprise. It is annoying though.

There are lots of online tips on this mostly focusing on terminal commands for adding users to lpadmin manually or disabling printer queue password requirements. Sometimes they seem to work, sometimes not. [1]. 

The only Apple doc on this covers 10.5 (Leopard) to 10.6 (Snow Leopard). It's weirdly written, and suggests some intersection with parental controls  "Limit printer administration" (which makes sense). Then it talks about toggling admin privileges for the admin user, even though one assumes that only non-admin users would see the prompt.

FWIW even after I created a new admin account on the Lion machine OS X 10.7 wouldn't let me toggle admin status for my primary admin account. It merely said it couldn't. Seems there was something odd about that admin account. So I deleted it (my admin accounts are all disposable, I only use them for admin tasks). I'll see if fixing that makes any difference. If not I'll play around with toggling parental controls and exploring Workgroup Manager and those terminal commands.

- fn -

[1] If you don't like Terminal Commands took a look at Workgroup Manager. Lion’s Server Admin Tools includes Workgroup Manager, I used Workgroup Manager downloads to get the Mountain Lion version (see also). You need to select “Show System Records” to see the “system” users and groups (thank you Google).

In Mountain Lion the lpadmin group is _lpadmin and the Name is Print Administrators. All Administrators were members of lpadmin, and so was ONE of the FIVE non-admin accounts on that machine. Interestingly the ONLY non-admin member of lpadmin on my ML box has parental controls enabled. By Darwin, Apple made such a mess of permissions in OS X.

See also:

• 10.5: Disable printer queue password requirements - Mac OS X Hints: first seen in 10.5, Leopard.
• Mac OS X - Print Job “On Hold (Authentication required)” - Authentication problem with print servers, suggests I might try changing his password.
• osx - How to Resume a Paused Network Printer with non-Admin credentials?: “_lpoperator should suffice, talks about adding Staff to _lpoperator

Update 4/5/2014

Most of the problems were with one user’s account. With Workgroup Manager I found he was NOT a member of Staff, but all other Lion user accounts were. He was a member of a Group that had the same name as his User Name, probably due to the horrid User/Group/Staff mess of 10.3 to 10.7. I deleted that Group and assigned him to Staff. I’ll see if that works.

There’s also a recent Brother printer driver update to try, and a firmware update. The latter requires Java, which is essentially obsolete on the Mac. I was able to perform the update using an old Lion machine. Shame on Brother for not supporting firmware updates via the web app. (They used to.)

Is my Apple refurb GSM iPhone really factory unlocked and ready for Virgin Mobile Canada?

Last year I discovered that Virgin Mobile Canada's [1] prepaid service worked quite well with an AT&T (GSM) post-contract unlocked iPhone 4S. It looked like for about $15-$20/month I could buy enough data to support email, iMessage and Facebook (with video autoplay disabled) [2].

That made me think about a battered AT&T iPhone 4 unlocked refurb phone with an old battery and balky Home button [4] we've been using as a backup. My Canadian sister has no computer or net access -- maybe I could set her up on Virgin with the iPhone 4. 

A bit of research [2] suggests that the American GSM iPhone 4 should work on Virgin's network -- though at a slower rate than the 4S. (Virgin's SIM card FAQ IMEI lookup didn't recognize my IMEI, but I think I ran into that with the 4s too.) So the plan looked doable, but I wanted to give her a phone that would last -- and I didn't want to try my own repairs [5].

There are two options for refreshing an old iPhone 4 with a known defect (I don't know of any equivalent service for Android). You can pay about $170 for an Express Replacement or you can see what the local Apple store will do. If you do the Express Replacement or a typical Apple store refresh you'll probably get an AT&T locked iPhone back, and have to beg AT&T for help.

This time I tried my local Apple store -- and got a top notch "Genius". She decided to give me a refurb for $155, so I saved on the ERS fee. Even better, she said, I'd be getting an Apple unlocked refurb [6]. The entire process took about 15 minutes. Nice deal - looks good as new, fresh battery, home button should work for a while.

Except ... how could I tell it was really unlocked? I tried the erase/restore procedure for AT&T unlocks, but iTunes didn't show me the nice "Congratulations, your iPhone has been unlocked" message. I tried IMEI.info (surrendering more personal data), but it didn't recognize the IMEI. I think Factory Unlocks are different.

In the end I found two techniques. One is to inspect the Settings screens, there I found a "Carrier" menu I'm not used to seeing. It showed up with an old (inactive) AT&T SIM card inserted.

The Carrier menu let me select two carriers (after I turned off 3G data [7], I think T-Mobile only does EDGE data for the 4/4s though maybe a carrier settings update would help):

 

I had an old (inactive) T-Mobile SIM in my desk, so I tried that and got some more menus of interest:

and with the old T-Mobile SIM my carrier changed (though I still had no service)

So Apple delivered as promised. I think the Carrier options by themselves are a pretty good indicator of an Apple factory unlocked GSM phone.

- footnotes -

[1] A Bell Wireless Affiliate, 

[2] Voice is 40 cents/min, so strictly for emergency. This strategy is a pure data play.

[3] Radios:

Bell Affiliates like Virgin use 850 and 1900MHz GSM frequencies (and some CDMA). 

iPhone 4s

• GSM 850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz
• HSDPA 14.4 Mbit/s, HSUPA 5.76 Mbit/s, UMTS, EDGE, EV-DO Rev.A

iPhone 4

• GSM 850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz
• HSDPA 7.2 Mbit/s, HSUPA 5.76 Mbit/s, UMTS, EDGE

[4] Achilles heel of the iPhone 4. They all fail.

 

[5] I've done that -- it's a mug's game. It's difficult to find genuine parts, and it takes most of us a few phones to get good at these repairs.

[6] Maybe improved policies since Nov 2013?

 

[7] At some point in my experiments I got a No Service - Restricted Network message. Turning off 3G and cellular data let me connect to T-Mobile.

GrandView Outliner and Information Manager: Scanned manual from 1990 - and a DOS Emulator

Before the Omni Group created OmniOutliner, there was Symantec MORE 3.1 (Mac) and GrandView 2.0 (DOS) [1]. I was a heavy user of MORE, but I also owned GrandView. Like OmniOutliner, GrandView combined features of a traditional outliner with a spreadsheet (columnar metadata).

Recently Jim W and Daniel G scanned the GrandView Reference Manual. It's a bit of history, both of an innovative software app and of a time when floppy disks shipped with lovingly prepared paper manuals. Grab it while it's hot!

(I'll eventually move the files to my personal site and fix up the above link, but it should work for the moment.)

[1] OmniOutliner 3 imported MORE 3.1 outlines. I don't know if that's true of version 4, I haven't upgraded. I wouldn't blame them for dropping that feature!

Update 4/21/2014: I’ve yet to update my old web page, and I’ve more files from Jim and Daniel to post, but life is hectic. In the meantime I’ll share here a note from Gregory J on running GV in a DOS emulator on Win64:

Just wanted to follow up with you to let you know that I found a pretty easy way to run Grandview inside 64-bit Windows 8.1. I downloaded the "DOSBox-0.74" DOS Emulator Program and install it (the 32-bit works fine under my 64-bit Win8)

http://www.dosbox.com/information.php?page=0

Next, I put my Grandview Program Files and Data Files into a subdirectory c:\GV

I navigated to C:\Program Files (x86)\DOSBox-0.74 and I Run "DOSBox.exe"
At the Z prompt type MOUNT C C:\GV
then c:\
then GV.EXE

At this point I'm able to run Grandview perfectly. More importantly I'm able to EXPORT my Outline contents into an ASCII File (a/k/a a Text File) into the c:\GV subdirectory. Then I'm able to cut N' Paste text in this text file to use elsewhere inside of Windows 8. My goal is to find OLD data I have stuck inside Grandview and get it copied so I can use that Data in new programs under Win8.

BTW, Pressing alt-enter will switch to Full Screen (making GV highly usable) and inside GV pressing Ctrl-2 will expand everything in the outline to make for a GREAT text file export.

The DOSBox Tutorial is at http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Basic_Setup_and_Installation_of_DosBox

Managing unwanted Mac startup apps: ScanSnap's AOUMonitor and Citrix Receiver

I replaced my despised ScanSnap S1300 with (sigh) another Fujitsu - the ScanSnap ix500. So far I like the ix500 almost as much as I disliked its predecessor. I bought it as a document scanner, but I'm using it to process several thousand prints currently stuck in a bin. The image quality is nowhere near as good as my Epson V700 [1], but it's a lot better than nothing. [2]

The next day though, my 2009 iMac (Mountain Lion)'s mouse pointer was frozen after screensaver clearance. The machine didn't respond to keyboard either; I hard to power cycle. This happened a few more times, though sometimes the keyboard worked.  I found if I unplugged the peripherals, including my Mini DisplayPort external monitor, I could get things working.

In my recent experience this kind of problem is most often hardware related -- perhaps a problem with my USB bus (7-8 devices on one old hub!) or Firewire bus. I do look for software issues though, and I realized I had two new apps running in my Menu Bar. One was called AOUMonitor and the other was Citrix Receiver.

Yikes! It's true that modern Mac issues are more often hardware than software, but those are two bad actors. AOUMonitor is Fujitsu's "ScanSnap Online Update" -- and Fujitsu is known for buggy Mac software. I only run ScanSnap Manager when I need it. Citrix is even worse -- my wife has to use it but it shouldn't be running in my account.

I needed both of them out.

AOUMonitor was easy. From my Admin account I found ScanSnap Online Update Settings.app and turned off auto-update. then I went to the Admin startup items and disabled AOUMonitor. I saw that ScanSnap Manager was also running for all users on startup, so I deleted that as well. I'll run it when I need it.

I figure AOUMonitor crept in when I uninstalled my old ScanSnap software and installed the new stuff, then updated it. I can't explain how Citrix Receiver showed up; until now I'd only seen it in my wife's account. Maybe some auto-update? Maybe I just never noticed it before. Disturbing!

Of course Citrix Receiver is an evil hack, so you don't find it Apple's User Startup Items list. I followed MacWorld's Take control of startup and login items (See also: Troubleshooting Startup and Login Items) and found several Citrix items in ~\Library\Library\LaunchAgents. I moved them to Emily's personal Library\LaunchAgents folder so they'd only run in her account.

Now we'll see if my mouse problems improve. Next thing is reducing the stress on the USB hub - and changing my screensaver away from Aperture slideshows.

- fn -

[1] Scanner tech isn't changing much -- just faster. So good photo scanners last a long time, but of course prints are going away -- so the useful lifetime of photo scanners is limited.

[2] Not the point of this post, but I just dump 30 or so photos in the feeder and scan to iPhoto at 300 dpi, color, minimal compression.  The ix500 does a batch in about 15 seconds. Then I flip over to Aperture and organize 'em. The photos go into appropriate "Events" after I fix version names and set an approximate date, but I also create albums that match the photos to a code number (S1 ... Sn) on the photo envelopes. Then when I'm done it's easy to find prints or negatives that I want to scan property. I didn't return to high quality cameras until I went digital, so for most of these prints the quick scan is good enough.

Mass archiving of thousands of Gmail messages - working around Gmail's new bugs

A family member had accumulated over 6000 messages in her Gmail inbox. No problem thought I, I'd just use the old "Select All" trick and be done with it.

Not so fast. Turns out this is broken in Gmail 1/2014. Actually, it's worse than it was in Nov 2013, I added an additional correction to the Stack Exchange thread [1]. 

Google now returns only 45 messages at a time, regardless of search critera. This worked:

1. Turn off special boxes, turn off conversation mode
2. Do search: before:2014/1/1
3. Use Select All box
4. NOW, only now, I see "Select all messages that match this search". Still see only 25 results. Click archive button. See "Loading...."

The Google still needs us, but increasingly it despises the humans it once serves. We know how this ends.

Seriously [2], The Google isn't into its old web apps any more. It is an AI/robotics company now, leaving the limitations of a merely digital existence behind.

- fn -

[1] In Jan 2014 only personal blogs, Stack Exchange, and Apple Discussions are healthy information sources.

[2] Ok, I was serious on the first one too. It's not personal, it's just corporate evolution in action.