Dialing in to a home LAN

MacInTouch Home Page

It was unclear to us in Apple's various online descriptions, but the modem version of the AirPort Extreme Base Station [$241 at Amazon] not only supports dialing out to an Internet provider, it also supports dialing in to your own network.
The feature is configured via the AirPort Admin Utility: in the Show All Settings>Network panel is a checkbox for Enable PPP Dial-in, along with a Configure dialog for entering a single username and password, plus time-out parameters.

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Wild, I never noticed this.

OS X: fixing a remote services failure by deleting keychain items

iPhoto 4

Re: Unable to Order Prints
John Roche

I wrote previously about not being able to order prints or books with iPhoto 4. It was driving me crazy and I may have figured out the problem. It appears to be a keychain related issue. Look for a file in your keychain called "net services for apple.com" mine had a corrupted password of jumbled characters. I just deleted the file (not the whole key chain!) and like magic I was now able to connect to the ordering page with iPhoto.

This worked for ordering prints, but when I tried to do a book it hung after assembling as before. Again, it appears to be a key chain issue. The newly generated file 'Net Services' for apple.com has a jumbled password. This time I did NOT delete it but simply change the password to my correct password and all was well.

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I think there's a keychain utility that handles this somewhere ...

macosxhints - Review iPhoto books prior to final order

macosxhints - Review iPhoto books prior to final order

I recently ordered two of Apple's photo albums using iPhoto. One of the books went through without a hitch, but with one of the books there were problems with the text and Apple canceled the order. I came to find out that even though I used the guidelines to line up the text, there is a bug in program. It seems some of the text become truncated and was cut out and would not have been published had Apple continued with the order.

However, there is a way to check that the text is lined up correctly before the order is sent to Apple. Proceed normally and assemble the book and just before ordering go to Finder. Select 'Go' from the Finder menu, then 'Go To Finder' and enter '/tmp' in the dialog box. In the resulting window, an iPhoto folder will appear, within that folder is the PDF of the book you just compiled. Open this file and you will be looking at what Apple is sent to print your book. From there, review the book for cut text, missing images, and look at the crop lines to view what will be cropped.

iPhoto4 Update: Although this hint works with iPhoto4, the location of the file has changed. While it's still in the /tmp folder, it's now more deeply buried. If you're the normal first admin user of the machine, you'll find it in /tmp -> 501 -> TemporaryItems -> iPhoto; if you're not the first user, then '501' will be replaced by another number, but the rest of the path will be the same.

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iPhoto boundary bug: There is not enough disk space ...

iPhoto bug: There is not enough disk space to complete that operation.

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iphoto 4 has many, many bugs. One of the odder sets of bugs appear to relate to math overflow bugs (divide-by-zero type) which manifest as either absurd image sizes or boundary errors. These bugs often manifest with a single cryptic error message:

"There is not enough disk space to complete that operation"

Sometimes this bug appears because iPhoto has internally calculated an absurdly large image size. The image size in the file system is normal, but iPhoto displays the overflow state for a LARGE_UNSIGNED_DECIMAL: 175921860444.

The best workaround for this bug is to crop the image, then revert to original. iPhoto moves the image to the "original" folder, then moves it back to the standard folder, and thus recalculates sizes. (An AppleScript to detect these images and do this across a library would be handy.)

A related bug occurs at the 4GB free on drive boundary. (It may occur at other drive sizes too). The workaround is to duplicate some data so the free space on the drive is LESS than the boundary condition. Here's how I demonstrated that.

When I first experienced the bug I had about 4.3 GB free and I was unable to export 870MB of images. I restarted my iBook, which had the side effect of freeing up 1GB of space (caches?). So I went fom 4GB free to 5GB.

I was then able to export the images.

I then had about 4.26 GB available. I then got the error message when attempting to export the same image set, but was able to export a smaller subset. I continued on the same vein, reexporting the subsets again and again, getting the error message and then exporting a smaller set. Finally I got to the point that a single image export triggered the error message.

At that point, I had EXACTLY 4GB free on my drive. I then DUPLICATED a folder of images, so I had 3.89 GB available.

I was then able to export again.

So the workaround for this bug is to duplicate a large folder and cross the remaining size boundary, then recommence the export.

If Microsoft released a product like iPhoto 4 they'd be pilloried. I use (with deep regret) many, many Microsoft products under Windows XP, and I've never experienced anything as buggy as iPhoto 4. The only comparison I can make is to some versions of Quicken.

I think we've been too forgiving of Apple. I realize they don't have the money to do internal QA. They can, however, adopt the open source approach to public betas. They can charge for the release version.

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john faughnan
jfaughnan@spamcop.net
www.faughnan.com/iphoto

BetterHTMLExport Update

BetterHTMLExport

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From Macintouch: BetterHTMLExport 2.0.11 is an iPhoto plug-in that provides increased control over Export to Web Page. The new version adds a command-line tool, localizes exported dates based on system preferences, makes the EXIF original date and digitized date available to templates, and more. BetterHTMLExport is $20 for Mac OS X and iPhoto 2 and 4.

RAM Tests for Macintosh

MacInTouch Home Page: "With the recent spate of reported memory problems, how about reminding folks about the two great tools: (#1) 'memtester-2.93.1, and (#2) DCTest.
Memtest (as MacInTouch reported) is a port of the Memtest86 utility from the PC world (yes, Mac folks aren't the only one who can be tripped up by bad RAM -- intermittent or otherwise). Memtest of course checks most of your memory, but it also gives your CPU and registers a good workout along the way.
I did a Google search and found the latest info on memtest for the Mac at [Frisky's Home Page]. Even if you are not having problems, you should run memtest periodically ... and probably over a weekend. Be sure to read the 'READMEFIRST' doc.
The second utility, DCTest by Tim Seufert, does about the same thing as memtest, only for your disk and I/O subsystem. I found a place to download DCTest here (toward the bottom of the page): [Bad RAM]
Likewise, running DCTest over a weekend every once in a while is a Very Good Idea.
As to the '2GB limit' reported for Photoshop (and other apps), it seems this is due to OS X's loading shared libraries at just below the 2GB threshold. I believe this blocks malloc from 'seeing' RAM above 2GB, when the app first attempts to allocate RAM.
If anyone has better information on this '2GB limit' problem .. Please, please (including a date for a possible fix), please post it ! "

Apple iBook Logic Board Repair Extension Program - FAQ

Apple - Support - iBook - Logic Board Repair Extension Program - FAQ

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A 3 year extension to the warrantee. The failures arise from two distinct apple manufacturing defects involving cable routing and case design.