Rebates and why I won't buy from Brother

Update 1/11/06: The rebate showed up today, 12 weeks after I sent it in. So it was 50% past its deadline but it did appear. I also found the rebate company had quite a good web site (though it didn't match to my rebate, probably due to a data entry error) and very good phone service (which did locate my rebate and told me it had been mailed out). So I'm annoyed, but no longer angry.

I bought myself a Brother MFC-7820N multi-function device about 10 weeks ago. It's got some bugs, but on the whole I'm very pleased with it.

Even so, I won't buy from Brother again.

Why?

It came with a $50 rebate. I don't make buying decisions based on rebates, but this was enough money it was worth submitting. After 8 weeks I wrote the rebate site asking what had happened. No response. Now it's been 10 weeks. I don't have time to pursue this further.

I'm human though. And humans, as we know, are programmed to punish cheaters. It's a large part of what has made us a successful intensely social species. Brother cheated. Logically, since the device is worth more to me than what I paid for it, I should still recommend buying it. In this case though, I'll go with my biological imperative.

I won't buy from Brother again. Cheaters.

The absurdity of embedded CPUs - resetting an Apple power adapter

This is nuts. Power adapters allegedly have embedded CPUs and thus may need a reset?

On power adapters, PMUs and the new PowerBooks - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

... Unfortunately, a PMU reset still didn't solve my dilemma. Getting nervous, I finally decided to take advantage of Apple's insulting "90 days of complementary support" to see if they could bail me out. Fortunately, after some troubleshooting, I learned my second lesson of the day: PowerBook and iBook adapters, if left plugged into a wall for too long, might need to actually be reset. This can easily be done by unplugging both of an adapter's ends for at least 60 seconds. We didn't delve into the inner workings of these power adapters for an explanation, but I've kept one plugged into a specific outlet in my apartment for probably at least a month or two, and I guess that might be just enough to make a power adapter a little confused in the head...

Huh? I know LiOn batteries require a processor to manage, but embedded in the power adapter?! I hope this is wrong.

Non-contiguous selections in 10.4 Cocoa apps

macosxhints - Create non-contiguous selections in Cocoa apps:

Discontinuous selections were introduced in 10.4 ('Tiger'). Hold alt and drag for a 'rectangular' selection (only truly rectangular with monospace fonts); Hold command and drag for discontinious selections.

Select then command click on items in selection may also make the selection discontinuous, but the comments are confusion. Need to test it myself.

Paste with current style (Cocoa only)

I do this all the time on my XP apps, but it's an annoying trip to the menu. I didn't know of the OS X kb shortcuts. Another reason to use Cocoa apps ... (Firefox, time to go Cocoa!):

macosxhints - Automatically reformat text pasted into Cocoa apps:

... Edit menu in Tiger, the 'Paste and Match Style' option, invoked by the Command-Option-Shift-V shortcut. It does exactly what it says, and I've used it in TextEdit, iChat, and Mail.

This feature is very helpful for pasting things from websites that generally have weird formatting and colors (and require a lot of clicking to remove).

... It's not new to Tiger, though -- in Panther, it was called 'Paste With Current Style,' and accessed via the same shortcut.

Cool OSX Apps great picks: Including Google Earth for Mac

Cool OSX Apps has several great picks today, all relevant to me:

TextWranger update

TinyAlarm: handy for limiting those "quick" sessions at the screen.

GoogleEarth for Mac has been released!
Not!I misread the note. This is an unreleased copy. I wouldn't touch it. Sigh.

AppleJack has been updated (I really need this installed)

Mail.app hang when mail images from iPhoto - fixed

I have had a very annoying bug with sending images from iPhoto. If Mail.app were not running, my system would hang with a spinning beachball of death (aka SBOD, spinning pizza of death, SPOD) for at least 5 minutes. Then I would get this error message: "mail got an error: apple event timed out". If Mail.app were running, there was no problem.

I tried various fixes such as cleaning caches, testing with different iPhoto libraries, etc. I began to feel the problem was in Mail.app. Stupidly, however, I forgot the standard fix for OS/X problems -- delete the preferences (.plist) file. I did ask on Apple's discussion forum, and I received a helpful response from Robert K:

Apple - Support - Discussions - iPhoto and Mail.app hand on email images ...

> I was having the same problem. Others have advised
> to delete the following file: com.apple.iphoto.plist
> in /users/library/preferences/. This had no effect
> on the freeze. I then deleted com.apple.mail.plist.
> This cured my problem. I did have to set up my mail
> accounts again in mail, but no more freezes when
> sharing a photo from IPhoto and Mail.

Your advice fixed the problem. There were some interesting twists.

I was pretty sure the problem was in Mail.app, not iPhoto, since switching iPhoto libraries had no effect. First I opened com.apple.mail.plist in a plist editor and saved it externally. I figured that would fix any true corruption. Interestingly when copied this file to the Prefs folder and tested I only got the beachball for about 1-2 minutes, then the images appeared. HOWEVER, I then remembered I'd recently set my CPU to higher performance. I suspect there's some odd race condition here and what happened was the race condition resolved before the AppleEvent messages timed out.

Then I deleted my mail prefs file and restored the settings. On testing if Mail.app was running the image appeared instantaneously, if it was not running I got a beachball for five seconds.

So evidently there's some prefs value in com.apple.mail.plist that causes this problem. I have my old prefs file if Apple should want a copy!

So the problem is gone for now, until I do something in Mail.app to alter the preferencess in such a way that the problem recurs. I wonder if it's somehow related to having once had a .Mac account then having discontinued it.

Update 1/9/06:

I may have identified the cause of this bug. We know that deleting com.apple.mail.plist fixes it. But why? What was "wrong" with the original.

I think the trick is to delete the default .mac account for both sending and receiving. When you do that, and try mailing an image, you'll get the beachball and the appleevent error.

I have to guess for some reason Mail.app is trying to do something with the .Mac account, and when it's missing it hangs.

It doesn't matter whether the .Mac account is active or not, it simply has to exist.

Hamachi - free secure VPN for Windows

Gibson podcast about Hamachi, a "free" personal Win32/Linux VPN solution, in December:

This week Leo and I discuss and describe the brand new, ready to emerge from a its long development beta phase, ultra-secure, lightweight, high-performance, highly-polished, multi-platform, peer-to-peer and FREE! personal virtual private networking system known as "Hamachi". After two solid weeks of testing and intense dialog with Hamachi's lead developer and designer, I have fully vetted the system's security architecture and have it running on many of my systems. While I am travelling to Toronto this week, Hamachi is keeping my roaming laptop securely and directly connected to all of my machines back home. Don't miss this one!

I went to the web site, from which I could figure out approximately nothing. In particular, I can't see how they plan to make money. Gibson says a Mac version is coming:

Steve: It's www.hamachi.cc. Alex is up in Vancouver, and so he's got a .cc on the end of his URL. You'll go to his site, download his client, currently for Windows or Macintosh - I'm sorry, Windows or Linux, and then Mac is coming soon. Installing couldn't be any easier. You simply run the setup, you go through a little wizard-based install to basically, you know, tell it where you want to load it on your hard drive. It sees that it's being installed in a system that it hasn't installed before. There's a negotiation with the server where it assigns it a unique IP. Your client produces its own asymmetric key pair, which it then uses to perform strong authentication. You do that on a couple other systems. Now, one trick is, he is assigning IPs sequentially. When I installed it on my second machine, for example, one of mine was 5.11.66.114. That was the first one I installed. What's very cool is I can tell you the IP. It doesn't matter. You can't get to 5.

I still haven't quite figured it out. If they produce a Mac client I'll give it a try.

Update: The key to figuring this out is to click on the screenshots and read them. I think I get it. I am also now inclined to believe a Mac client may appear. This is very interesting.