Blogger in Draft: New toolbar, AJAX saving, and other fixes for the post editorI think the bug also showed if you switched post editors from Safari to Firefox, so we'll see if it's really fixed.
...Line breaking is no longer lost when editing a post in the old editor that was first written in the new editor...
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Safe to try Blogger in Draft again?
Blogger may have fixed a nasty bug:
MobileMe: Perspective of a crusty Palm veteran
I'll update this post as I explore the quirks of MobileMe. As I'd promised, I signed up:
I did opt for the free trial; Apple converts me to a paid account unless I cancel. I had a typo in my original user name so I had to cancel once -- I think Apple would be wise to provide a username review before they complete the signup! My account starts one month after the Free Trial signup, so it does look like this gives me an extra month.
My first question is whether I could get the username that was associated with a former .Mac account. I was able to do that. I checked the old address before and after signing up -- the old email bounces.
Interestingly my Apple Store account, through which I make Apple purchases, is bound to my old .Mac email address. Currently that email address cannot be changed without discarding my Apple account and its associated purchase data -- so Apple doesn't have a current email address for me! I think they've missed something here. I wonder if they'll figure out the problem or if I'll have to discard that account.
Notes follow. In general the PIM/PDA services in MobileMe are a close match to OS X Address book and iCal.
Gordon's Tech:I didn't take advantage of the Amazon option, I decided to get the process out of the way. Since it's possible to upgrade from an individual to a family account, I decided to only buy what I need for the moment. When I do that update I'll document how the pricing works.
... The 5 member MobileMe family pack is $130 on Amazon - a $20 savings. As usual, best to order via Macintouch.com to give them a bit of a boost...
I did opt for the free trial; Apple converts me to a paid account unless I cancel. I had a typo in my original user name so I had to cancel once -- I think Apple would be wise to provide a username review before they complete the signup! My account starts one month after the Free Trial signup, so it does look like this gives me an extra month.
My first question is whether I could get the username that was associated with a former .Mac account. I was able to do that. I checked the old address before and after signing up -- the old email bounces.
Interestingly my Apple Store account, through which I make Apple purchases, is bound to my old .Mac email address. Currently that email address cannot be changed without discarding my Apple account and its associated purchase data -- so Apple doesn't have a current email address for me! I think they've missed something here. I wonder if they'll figure out the problem or if I'll have to discard that account.
Notes follow. In general the PIM/PDA services in MobileMe are a close match to OS X Address book and iCal.
- There's an order of declining support as follows:
OS X 10.5 > OS X 10.4.11/Intel > Vista > XP > OS X 10.4.11/PPC.
Yes, the absolute rock bottom support is Tiger, not XP. As of today only the iDisk works on 10.4.11/PPC Tiger (reports of Tiger success are Intel only). - Calendars can be organized into Calendar Groups, Groups allow toggling of all members. Calendars may be more robust than the weak Palm model, and may even have advantages over Outlook 2003 calendars.
- I uninstalled the problematic Google calendar Sync before testing Outlook Calendar sync. There's no control of calendar synchronization direction, it's all or nothing. On initial sync when data exists the app does allow additional details.
- Tasks are very weak. Tasks have a minuscule note field, plain text only (no RTF), capacity > 500 characters. They have a description, completion status, due date (no start date), calendar association and, oddly enough, a URL. Task filtering, sorting and organizing is significantly inferior to the earliest US Robotics PalmPilot. Tasks must be associated with a single calendar; checking or unchecking display of a calendar controls display of calendar-associated tasks
- OS X iCal users have task synchronization, but Outlook users do not. Tasks in MobileMe (and iCal) are so weak it's hard to imagine being able to synchronize them with Outlook. Perhaps that has something to do with why there are still no iPhone tasks -- Apple's OS X Task management is so feeble compared to Outlook that Apple may be hoping the majority of users won't notice their absence! (They may be right.)
- There are no Note equivalents.
- Contacts are reasonably robust. Simpler than the baroque Outlook contacts, more complete that the simple Palm contact, exact match to the OS X address book.
- Account options allow one to cancel an account, set time zone, change alternate email address, and allocate storage (I minimized email storage).
- You can transfer a personal domain to MobileMe management and get iWeb '08 integration. It will be interesting to see what else they add to this.
- There's no equivalent to the old .Mac web page services. Unless they add something else it's iWeb only, which means XP users will be shortchaged. (I even recall when .Mac had some blogging tool -- Apple used to add and remove services fairly frequently when I was a member.)
- MobileMe email provides disposable aliases. This is a great feature. If you ever donate money to a political party, use a disposable alias. Parties are exempt from anti-spam laws.
- MobileMe email supports forwarding. I am forwarding to Gmail for now.
- Junk mail filtering is not enabled by default (weird). Junk mail filtering has complicated implications for Mac OX Mail.app.
- The iDisk contains remnants of .Mac, including a "Groups" folder. Groups are not a part of MobileMe.
- The iDisk also has an installer for the old OS X .Mac backup program.
- The iDisk Public Folder access can be password controlled. There is only one public password -- you can't assign folder-level access. There's some confusion in the documentation about the public URL and webdav connections. There's no web UI for access control, you use the MobileMe Control Panel installed with iTunes/XP, the MobileMe Preference panel in 10.5, or the obsolete .Mac preference in Tiger (10.4).
- iDisk supports Vista and OS X direct (webdav) access. XP direct webdav access is not officially supported. Some docs make mention of a MobileMe client, I don't know if the old XP iDisk client still works. I entered the string "http://idisk.me.com/[myusername]" into the XP "Add Network Place" dialog, and after a few false starts (user error?) my username and pw were accepted. Performance is slow, but it works.
- When I tried synchronizing from my 10.5 machine after all updates, I got this calendar error message "MobileMe Calendar could not start because it was unable to load any calendars from the server. Try reloading Calendar. If this problem persists, contact MobileMe Support." After a restart I was able to load.
- Safari/Window can't load my MobileMe calendar. It hangs -- probably too many events. Firefox 3.01/XP is able to load it. Safari OS X and Firefox 3.01/OS X can also load the calendar.
- I miss Microsoft. Hell frozen.
- When synchronizing multiple items (bookmarks, calendar, etc) with MobileMe a sync warning appears when any one of the items being synchronized is undergoing its first sync. MobileMe requests a user decision for the sync. Problem is, the UI does not allow the decision to be applied to a single item type, it applies to all item types.
- The XP MobileMe Settings application is installed with iTunes 7.7 and cannot be separately uninstalled. If you decide, like me, to give it a rest, you can't uninstall. Instead, you sign out.
- The MobileMe calendar doesn't support subscribing to ICS feeds, and it doesn't support publishing ICS feeds. At the moment this disturbs me more than many other failings of MobileMe.
Pogue on MobileMe - best review so far
Pogue has the best MobileMe review to date: State of the Art - In Sync to Pierce the Cloud - NYTimes.com.
Since MobileMe does tasks, I wonder if can work with my tasks through the iPhone browser -- at least for now.
Well, I guess I'm signing up for MobileMe. Resistance appears futile.
It will give me something to do while I wait for the iPhone to resupply. As of yesterday there are zero iPhones in Minnesota. If we don't see phones by next week people are going to start muttering about the Wii supply story.
Update: The 5 member MobileMe family pack is $130 on Amazon - a $20 savings. As usual, best to order via Macintouch.com to give them a bit of a boost. By happy coincidence we are a family of five humans -- these days most family offers max out at four. Kateva will have to do without.
Since MobileMe does tasks, I wonder if can work with my tasks through the iPhone browser -- at least for now.
Well, I guess I'm signing up for MobileMe. Resistance appears futile.
It will give me something to do while I wait for the iPhone to resupply. As of yesterday there are zero iPhones in Minnesota. If we don't see phones by next week people are going to start muttering about the Wii supply story.
Update: The 5 member MobileMe family pack is $130 on Amazon - a $20 savings. As usual, best to order via Macintouch.com to give them a bit of a boost. By happy coincidence we are a family of five humans -- these days most family offers max out at four. Kateva will have to do without.
How to uninstall an OS X preference pane - as an admin user
Dang. I've always removed Preference Panes by hunting them down in the file system.
Turns out there's an official way (with one catch) that works in 10.4 and 10.5:
So this is not well implemented in 10.4. It should be a menu item for non-admin users, and ask for a un/pw when it's selected. I wonder if Apple fixed that in 10.5?
Turns out there's an official way (with one catch) that works in 10.4 and 10.5:
Mac 101: Remove unwanted System Preference panes - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) To uninstall System Preference panes, just right-click (or control click if you have a one button mouse) on the preference pane icon and select 'remove x preference pane.'The catch is, you need to be logged in as an administrative user! If you're a non-admin user you don't see anything; there's not even a "gray menu" (tested in 10.4). That's why I never noticed it -- I don't run as an admin user. I'm used to OS X asking for a privilege escalation for admin tasks.
So this is not well implemented in 10.4. It should be a menu item for non-admin users, and ask for a un/pw when it's selected. I wonder if Apple fixed that in 10.5?
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Physics hurts: the iPhone battery life and how to work around it
Physics is a pain sometimes. Jobs told us 3G was going to suck way more power than EDGE, but some were skeptical (I recall I was inclined to believe him).
We know the iPhone will function on EDGE networks if 3G is not available, I wonder if Apple and AT&T will provide an option to use EDGE when power is at a premium. (See comments -- in fact this is available now. So why do only my readers know to mention this?)
Meanwhile, a solid Tidbits review recommends the APC UPB10 Mobile Power Pack USB Battery Extender. These are $63 on Amazon; however there are newish airline regulations about carrying external LiOn batteries. The terminals must be covered and it has to go through security in a bin.
These regs are enough of a pain to make the $10 APC external USB AA battery charger very appealing; I would want to test in a store that it really charged an iPhone however.
At work it's easy to charge a phone from a USB source, on the road it's easy to carry a USB car charger. One does have to learn to treat a power supply the way long distance cyclists treat a shower -- get it while you can.
Update: disabling push email helps too, Ars has a in-depth review of accessory battery packs.
Update 7/23/08: More tips, including holding down home key to shut off background tasks.
AppleInsider | Apple's iPhone 3G battery good for about 3.5 hours of browsingI've found that the battery life on my low end 3G Nokia phone is similarly quite poor, even though that phone has no data services at all. 3G is bad on batteries even when the traffic is voice only; of course 802.11 is far worse.
...While Anandtech's chart shows the Apple handset to last about 30 minutes more than Samsung's 3G Blackjack, the unsettling comparison exists between the iPhone 3G running on AT&T's 3G network and the original iPhone running on AT&T's EDGE network. In the site's tests, the original iPhone lasted 2 hours and 26 minutes longer while browsing over EDGE than the new iPhone did browsing over 3G...
We know the iPhone will function on EDGE networks if 3G is not available, I wonder if Apple and AT&T will provide an option to use EDGE when power is at a premium. (See comments -- in fact this is available now. So why do only my readers know to mention this?)
Meanwhile, a solid Tidbits review recommends the APC UPB10 Mobile Power Pack USB Battery Extender. These are $63 on Amazon; however there are newish airline regulations about carrying external LiOn batteries. The terminals must be covered and it has to go through security in a bin.
These regs are enough of a pain to make the $10 APC external USB AA battery charger very appealing; I would want to test in a store that it really charged an iPhone however.
At work it's easy to charge a phone from a USB source, on the road it's easy to carry a USB car charger. One does have to learn to treat a power supply the way long distance cyclists treat a shower -- get it while you can.
Update: disabling push email helps too, Ars has a in-depth review of accessory battery packs.
Update 7/23/08: More tips, including holding down home key to shut off background tasks.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
How to wrap earbuds so they don't tangle
Life Hacks explains how to keep headphone wires from getting tangled (2/2006)
The attached image is missing, but the technique is simple. I just tried it and I like the results. The comments reference various organizing techniques for larger cables and ropes.
iPhone 2.0 development: it must have been a death march
iPhone 1.0 development must have been insane, but I'm guessing iPhone 2.0 development was a classic death march.
We can gather that from the things that were left out:
It must have been really, really, ugly in Cupertino over the past few months.
I'm definitely feeling sympathy for the iPhone development team. They must be toast. It's going to take more than a few months to get things patched up. Corporate customers are going to want to hold off on significant deployments until next year.
Update: More death march evidence
We can gather that from the things that were left out:
- cut, copy, paste: Apple has now admitted they wanted to put this in, so the omission must have been a desperate decision
- tasks: If they couldn't add tasks, then they were beyond cutting features and deep into slashing organs (emphasis mine):
Entirely Random Notes On iPhone 2.0 - Inside iPhone BlogSearch only looks at contact names.
... There appear to be crashing bugs with both many third party applications themselves, as well as the OS itself. Prior to updating to 2.0, I can't recall the last time my iPhone reset. I've seen it a half dozen times already so far, however.
Searching in Contacts is nice. However, I find I still generally just scroll for the contact, and the search doesn't look inside each contact, just at the name...
It must have been really, really, ugly in Cupertino over the past few months.
I'm definitely feeling sympathy for the iPhone development team. They must be toast. It's going to take more than a few months to get things patched up. Corporate customers are going to want to hold off on significant deployments until next year.
Update: More death march evidence
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