Retrospect: when good software goes bad

If you've been around software long enough, you know the feeling. Good software going bad. This doesn't happen with wrenches, power saws and bicycles -- this is one way in which software has some of the properties of a living thing.

Software is complex, and it's embedded in a complex ecosystem made up of the core operating system, the antiviral and security system, and other co-resident applications -- not to mention the physical computer and peripherals. In addition it "lives" in a complex business environment with a major perverse incentive -- after initial penetration ongoing revenues requires "upgrades". Typically bug fixes aren't enough to get users to upgrade, there needs to be new features. New features mean more complexity, more bugs, declinining reliability. On the other hand, if users don't upgrade the software becomes increasingly unsuited to its 'ecosystem' -- eventually it breaks.

Even if the software survives all of the above, people move on. Expertise is lost. Business direction changes. Software dies.

The lifespan of most software is about 6-10 years. Dantz Retrospect was an excellent and popular Mac backup solution in the 1980s. It's old. It's more than decrepit.

Today I tried to make a Disaster Recovery image using Retrospect Pro 6.5 for Windows. All seemed well -- but the ISO image was 747MB. That's too large for a CD. One CD burning app claimed it was a DVD image. The documentation says it should be a CD image. The remnants of Retrospect was bought by EMC Insignia -- who removed all of the support forums, downloads, etc. There's no where to look to sort this out.

This is only the latest in a long line of issues with Retrospect. It's been in decline for years. Each update fixed some bugs and introduced others. The support forums were sour. Usenet questions fell off. The smell was bad.

What's the chance that EMC is going to sort this out? Pretty darned slim. It's time to move on, but there aren't a lot of serious backup solutions marketed to the home office. Most small businesses and homes don't do real backup.

I guess I'll just have to wait for Google to host all of my data ....

MacBook Pro: wait for rev 2

Steve Jobs was never as keen on quality and reliability as he was on vision and style. The new Intel Macs are no exception:

MacBook Pro noises, LCD, touchpad, other problems - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

I know, I should have "anticipated" "problems" with my "new" MacBook Pro. That this should be "expected" and "usual" and "jeezus man, what were you thinking?" But I want to make one thing clear: Apple cannot use "well, it's a first Rev." as an excuse for sloppy manufacturing and hiring a Quality Control team so high on hallucinogens it can't distinguish an inconsistent backlight display from a colorful dragon strumming a guitar.

I think the new Intel iMacs may be ok, they're basically a continuation of an older design. I would not buy a MacBook Pro.

What to do with an old CLIE? Children's use.

My CLIE TJ-27 bit the dust when the last of its horrid styli was lost. It still works though. What to do with it?

Give it to the kids. I'll load it up with games; since the platform is dying I should find them pretty cheaply.

One problem is what happens when you sync an OS 4.x device to the newer Palm desktop. Since I don't care about the PDA data I may try it anyway.

I'll add game sites here (more to come):

1. Abolutist: $17 each
2. Palm Store (Slim pickings)
3. Another spot

I think I have more on my old install disks from past versions of the desktop software. I'll dig through those. OS 4.x should run just about anything.

PictureSync: interesting application, odd licensing

[Update 3/12/06: Jacob responded to this post with a very thorough and considerate reply. I don't think the licensing arrangement should be a deterrent any more to registering PictureSync.]

Searching my blog, I found 3 references to PictureSync, from the 3/32/05 to this most recent one. It's an application for simultaneous uploading of images and metadata to photo services; it's been in development for a while and it's good enough to buy.

I use it with SmugMug and iPhoto; my keywords and captions get uploaded to SmugMug. It's a bit non-intuitive, and I had one mysterious failure, but I've registered it.

There is one odd thing about this product that I wish the developer, a very interesting and responsive person, would make clear in advance. When you register you don't get a registration key. Instead he sets a bit in a server somewhere that causes the app to store its registration pw in the pref file (presumably encrypted). After that you only need the server if you reinstall.

The licensing terms are quite fair, but I've told him I don't like this. If I'd known ahead of time I wouldn't have registered the produt, but after corresponding with Jacob about this I'm willing to give it a try (not asking for a refund). Be warned, however.

Jacob has grand ideas for Holocore, I hope he succeeds! I also hope he rethinks this licensing strategy, but perhaps it will become more common. I think we are going to explore different methods, old and new, for generating revenue from software. I hope we find a solution that's mutually beneficial, certainly I'd like the small companies that make my favorite software to prosper.

Of course if Jacob's company, Holocore, goes bankrupt it would not be surprising if the creditors misused their ownership of the licensing.

TextPlus for Palm: Replacement for WordComplete

I have long liked WordComplete (Word Complete) from CIC, but CIC is long gone and the app is not really compatible with the Tungsten E2 OS and wretched nonvolatile RAM.

Today I found there is a potential replacement: TextPlus by SmartCell Technology. I'll give it a try. $20 to register, 30 day trial. That's fair.

Update 3/13/06: Wow, that was a quick trial. Here are the uninstall directions. TextPlus is complex, big, and utterly incompatible with TealMaster, TealScript, & TealLaunch. Those apps are far more important to me than TextPlus. I'll switch back to the old incompatible WordComplete. It is only slightly crashy.

How to erase data from your cell phone

Wireless Recycling tells you how to purge a phone of its data. Ref by Pogue's blog.

The Tungsten E2: Brain transplant report

[Updates are at the end of the post. After 3 months the digitizer is dying.]

My mind was ailing. Specifically, the SONY CLIE TJ-27 was on death's door.

When the last of its styli was lost, then it would go to the junk drawer. I was ready for the end. I cursed each moment with its hell-spawned stylus - a demented offspring of a toothpick and needle. The earth itself had rebelled against that satanic tool -- there were no replacements anywhere. If I did not already despise SONY for their spyware scam, I would loathe them for that stylus.

And yet, I did not entirely welcome the end. I knew that the noble lineage of the US Robotics Pilot was fallow. True, the CLIE was a twisted shadow of its grandfather -- the Vx, and its great-grandfather -- the III, but what better options were there? The much disliked Tungsten E2? (Let us not speak of the father -- the ill-fated Tungsten E -- nor of the bastard IIIxe.)

Two days ago the last CLIE "stylus" was lost. Yesterday my Tungsten E2 arrived. I've been fighting with it since. It's no trivial thing to transplant a fundamental component of a distributed geek consciousness. I had to rip out the tendrils of the CLIE, flog recalcitrant software, hack through crashes and bugs and learn the eccentricities of the latest degnerate product of Palm's incompetence. (I hope the intern who came up with the "Favorites" application learned something valuable during their ill-fated tenure.)

It seems to be working now. This is what I've found:

• It should have at least 128MB of working memory. Instead it has something like 28MB or so. This alone earns the E2 a place in hell.
• It's slow. I stare at the screen, waiting for it to refresh. It's slower in its routine operations than the Palm III was.
• The idiotic Favorites application hijacks the home button. Now instead of cycling through application categories, tapping the silkscreen icon launches the Favorites. Stupid intern.
• Palm used 3MB of precious static storage for the 'Media' application?
• The "expansion memory card" is so badly integrated into the OS that it makes DOS expanded and extended memory look brilliant. Words fail me. How could so much money and so many resources, have yielded so little progress? I hope they at least had some really good parties.
• Some TealLaunch things don't work. Mostly it works. I need it since the power switch is said to be as flaky as that of the Palm V, the Palm Vx, the m500 and a few other Palm devices. It's a signature feature of that demented vendor that they can't buy a reliable on/off switch.
• TealScript works fine. Merciful heaven, I can can continue to avoid "Graffiti Two" (aka Jot).
• It comes with exactly one stylus, but it is a beauty. (I have nine styli on order.)
• The screen protector material they provide is a pain to write on. I'm going to cut off the input portion and go back to my old Scotch satin tape cover.
• The connector is fiendishly evil. Completely proprietary and completely stupid. It looks ugly, it looks cheap, and each time I remove the cable I hold my breath. The Tungsten E used a USB mini-B connector that worked brilliantly. The engineer who specified the Tungsten E connector was used as a human sacrifice in Palm's dark satanic rituals of inspiration. The engineers of the T|E2 learned their lesson.
• If you use Bluetooth and write to the memory card the giant battery drains fairly quickly.
• The device does trickle charge through the USB connector, but it's incredibly slow. USB provides 100 mAmp, the charger provides 500. It's a 1000 mAh+ battery, so trickle charging takes a very long time.
• The Bluetooth did work with my OS X machine, I could sync AvantGo via Bluetooth and I could transfer a JPG to the PDA. I suspect Bluetooth sync would work well (avoid that sync cable!!). See: Send files between a Palm T3 and a Mac via Bluetooth
• I had a lot of crashes during my installs and setups. I think the Teal Software apps I rely on may have trouble with the T|E2 and its weird persistent memory. (So what was wrong with a tiny little capacitor?)
• When I installed BeyondContacts I got the error message: "Unexpected error occurred - $80004005". The support site didn't have anything on that error message. I reinstalled, this time skipping the sync step and letting the install complete. It worked then.

Attempting to stuff all my data into the paltry limits of the T|E2 taught me a few things about Palm's memory card infrastructure:

• ePocrates Sx/Dx can be moved to card but NOT Rx
• I could move this data: jfile databases, splashphoto images, media files, AvantGo data (AGConnect on the Palm has the magic setting), Documents to Go files.
• I couldn't move most applications. AvantGo seemed to move ok, but failed when I did a sync. The only thing that worked was a completely self-contained solitaire game. The expansion card is really for data, not apps. As far as I know it's not backed up either!
• Expansion Card Locations for Palm OS Applications eBook provides some useful hints.

Did Palm's product managers get anything right in the past ten years?

• The security and encryption settings are pretty decent. Looks like they borrowed from TealLock.
• The tasks views are marginally better.
• They finally include an alarm clock (World clock).
• The outlook sync that was so messed up in the early versions of the Tungsten E seems to work.
• It will beam a contact to an older Palm device. I don't think the T|E could do that at first.

That's it for now. My new cognitive module has been implanted and I'm coming to terms with its limitations. I have a bad feeling, however, that I'll be doing this again in six months.

Update 3/10/06 and 3/15/06

• IR sync works, thought interestingly IR support was disabled in my Dell laptop at the BIOS level. It is extremely slow. Suitable for emergencies only.
  
• The device is crashy, but no lost data yet. I am using hacks to get around the problems with the unreliable power switch and Graffiti Two.
• I bought two Zip-Linq P33 chare-n-sync retractable cables. They have an extra connector that fits the power input and causes the PDA to display its 'charging' icon when trickle charging. I don't think it charges any faster than the standard cable however.
  
• The battery drains quickly when doing IR sync.
• HotSync Manager won't auto-launch and it vanishes on me. That's new on this machine. Bad sign.
• This new device ships with an amazing bug that was patched three months ago. If one enables 'intrusion detection' the device will, sooner or later, lock the user completely out of it. Wow. That's one patch that can't be delayed.
• It sure is slow.

Update 3/10/06b:

I'm starting to bond with the Tungsten E2. I can tell because it's already causing me pain. Since the HotSync Manager wasn't stable, I downloaded 4.14E from the Palm site. Allegedly this was the same as the 4.14 I installed. I then tried reinstalling, and the adventure began ... [Note: I used to keep my data files in a special location to help w/ backup, Palm Desktop supports this as an option.]

1. Installer completely removed existing application.
2. Installer copied over my data profile and then proceded to tell me it was going to apply it to a new device. (In other words, the installer assumes that the first sync after any installation is with a new device!!)
3. Installer moved a number of applications to a special folder of 'incompatible apps'. In fact all but one of them is very new, is marketed for the latest OS, and, as near as I can tell, does work. (One of them, Word Complete, is indeed risky. Alas, I can't live without it and, like so many Palm apps, it's zombie software.)

At this point I smiled gently. This was all so nostalgic, so Palm like. I quit the sync but didn't reboot my machine. (I should have, even though the installer didn't make me.) I then moved everything out of the new folder that had been created in the Palm application directory and copied in the good data from my last sync. I then resumed ...

1. The installation had broken BeyondContacts -- same error as above. I reinstalled BeyondContacts. No joy. I restarted and tried again. That worked.
2. The Palm HotSync Manager is now starting automatically and not vanishing after use.
3. The rest of my sync worked out fine.
   

Update 3/15/06

1. It's producing a high pitched noise - from the display. Suggests a short lifespan!
2. Sync is bad again. I remember this from the Tungsten/E. It is throwing all kinds of sync errors. PocketMirror did NOT do this. I may download PocketMirror and try that. I hate Palm.

Update 6/22/06: At age 3 months the portion of the screen covered by the 'details' button is no longer responding reliably to screen taps. In other words, the digitizer is dying. Within a month it won't be worth much. It' out of the 90 day warranty, but still covered by my AMEX extended warranty.