Friday, December 25, 2009

Skype - video conferencing

I'm still looking for a reasonably reliable video conferencing solution that my mother can use.

It has to run on OS X, the UI should work well for a low vision user, and it must "auto-answer" when I call.

I've tried iChat. Enough said. Apple would make me happy if they pulled iChat from the OS and sold it separately. Maybe they'd be motivated to make it work, and they'd encourage competition.

I really like the quality of Google Video Chat when it works. Alas, it fails far too often, the interface is a case study in UI sadism and the plugin didn't work on my 10.6 64 bit machine.

That leaves Skype, with video auto-answer. The quality isn't as good as GV, and it does crash, but I think it's more reliable than GV. More importantly, auto-answer is build it. The install was very easy.

I'll report more as I get additional experience.

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LogMeIn OS X - 32 bit only

For several weeks I was frustrated that LogMeIn didn't work on my iMac i5 running 10.6.2. I couldn't find any explanation. I made do with the almost inert Java applet or used my MacBook (10.5) to maintain my mother's Mini.


It did work for me in 32 bit mode, but it was flaky. I switched to Firefox which is still 32 bit (the 64 bit version is in beta I think). It worked there.

Obviously LogMeIn.com isn't exactly dying to please OS X customers. This should have shown up in blazing red letters for every OS X user who logs in to the service. Practically speaking, LogMeIn is not compatible with any of Apple's newer machines.

I don't mind them not having a fix, I do mind the time I wasted trying to make their product work.

Anyone know a better (please, no VNC) remote control solution? I don't mind paying! (Yes, I know about Apple's remote control solution. It's almost as crummy as iChat.)
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OS X Mail.app supports multiple sending aliases

If you want to use aliases when you send an email ...
Mail’s Email Aliases, and Complexity Hidden - Release Candidate One
... all my outgoing email appeared to come from the One True Email Address ... I looked around Mail’s account preferences for a hint as to where outgoing email aliases could be set up. Nowhere, it seemed. Could they have left that feature out? Do they want strict one-to-one mappings between incoming and outgoing addresses, and didn’t account for aliases? Surely not.
A Google search later, it turns out you can list multiple addresses separated by commas, and later those addresses will appear on a menu in the New Message window. Your selection will determine from whence that message appears to be delivered, and everybody’s happy.
This is a typical Apple move. Provide the functionality, but make it invisible and documentation free. No promises.
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Retrospect 8 - no user guide?

I have two backup systems at the moment: Time Capsule/Time Machine and Retrospect Professional (Windows). Neither is fabulous, but there aren't a lot of good choices. Somewhat to my surprise EMC fixed quite a few Retrospect Pro bugs; it's extremely complex to configure but my version works.

Problem is, I want to sunset my XP box. So I need an OS X only solution. Fortunately EMC has invested in creating a new version of the original Retrospect product. It now runs on 10.6 Intel.

I downloaded a trial version and, as a veteran user, I was able to get a hard drive backup going in minutes. Configuring the clients is a bit trickier than it used to be, but that should only take a few minutes with the User Guide ...

User Guide?


Yes, the documentation for a SOHO backup system has been missing since March 2009 because EMC won't pay for a tech writer.

Who the #$!#$#! is going to use a backup system when the vendor won't even invest in a manual? (*cough* Time Machine *cough).

What kind of company would bring a product like this to market, then be unable to pay a tech writer to put a manual together - back in the peak of the great recession when contract writers were begging for work?

What a waste.

Update 1/2/10: Joe Kissell wrote a cautious review of Retrospect 8 in Sept 2009. He didn't mention the missing manual.

Update 3/13/2010: Still no user guide. The EMC forum responses from product support are very sad.
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When Google Voice goes bad - report here

Google Voice (VOIP with local switched connections) saves me about $1,000 a year in mobile long distance charges, so I'm a grateful fan.

The quality used to be pretty iffy, but these days it's good to Canada -- except when it's awful. Two weeks ago an echo problem forced me to revert to the higher quality but costly AT&T alternative.

I reported my problem and a few days later it resolved. Coincidence? Probably. All the same, be sure to report if you run into GV quality issues.
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Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Notes from the new world of video cable confusion and iMac target display mode

Once upon a time I had to know about hercules graphics cards and RGB cards and about half a dozen forgotten video standards from the dawn of the PC.

Mercifully we've more or less sorted out screen resolutions (albeit without our long promised resolution independence). Video cables though, not so much. DRM, mega-screens, and licensing struggles have blown through a half-dozen cable standards. Here's what I deal with in my own home with our new flickering 27" i5 iMac.
MacBook: Apple Mini DVI. I have adapters to VGA and DVI.
iBook: mini-VGA port, I have a mini-VGA to VGA adapter.
Dell 2007WFP (1680x1050) display: DVI and VGA
Ancient XP box: VGA
iMac G5: mini-VGA (amazingly, same as iBook)
iMac i5 27" as computer: mini-DisplayPort
iMac i5 27" as display (1560x1440): mini-DisplayPort
Dell Laptop (corporate): standard VGA and (full size) DisplayPort
Prior to the i5 I had the following adapter cables
  • mini-VGA to VGA
  • mini-VGA to DVI
  • mini-DVI to DVI
  • mini-DVI to VGA
Recently I've added these cables/adapters
They were both relatively inexpensive, even with shipping (which was reasonably priced in both cases). So far both of them work. I was surprised how useful using the i5 as an external display is.

Using the mini-DisplayPort to DVI (from eForcity via Amazon, $7) adapter I can connect the i5 to the lower-pixel density Dell 2007WFP. I use the Dell for easy-on-the-eyes reading and the i5 for photo, video and as a work space. It's not a bad combination.

Using the mini-DisplayPort to (male) DisplayPort 3 foot cable I can connect my Dell laptop and use the iMac as an external display (Target display mode). This is a wee bit tricky. When I first tried it my Dell blue screened, but after rebooting it was ok. This didn't surprise me, it's always been fragile about external displays. When it worked it drove the i5 at full resolution, which impressed me. The i5 went into target display mode when I plugged in the DisplayPort cable -- but it didn't return to normal mode when I pulled it. The almost-undocumented secret is to use Command+F2 to toggle display modes.

Some other tips about using the iMac as a really big monitor (from Apple, except mine didn't leave target mode when I pulled the cable ...) ...
  • Applications running on the 27-inch iMac computer remain open and running while it is in Target Display mode.
  • Use the keyboard of the 27-inch iMac to adjust display brightness and sound volume and to control media playback of applications running on the 27-inch iMac in Target Display mode. Other keyboard and mouse input is disabled on the 27-inch iMac while it is in Target Display mode.
  • The 27-inch iMac works like any other external display while it is in Target Display mode, except that you cannot access its built-in iSight or USB and FireWire ports. To change display settings, open System Preferences on the external source computer and choose Display from the View menu.
  • Mac OS X on the 27-inch iMac ignores some sleep requests while it is in Target Display mode, but forced sleep, restart, and shutdown commands will still work. If the external source goes into idle display sleep, the 27-inch iMac in Target Display mode will go dark until activity resumes on the external source.
  • If you shut down, sleep, or detach the external source while In Target Display mode, the 27-inch iMac will leave Target Display mode.
  • The Mini DisplayPort in the 27-inch iMac can receive only DisplayPort compliant video and audio signals. Converters not made by Apple may provide options to convert other electrical, video, and audio protocols to Mini DisplayPort compliant signals.
Incidentally, I can't use the MacBook to drive the i5 display, but I can use it with the smaller Dell display.

Phew. I hope things settle down to using mini-DisplayPort and/or DisplayPort for a while.
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Monday, December 21, 2009

Freeing up Time Capsule space – and documentation for Time Machine and Time Capsule

[See Update for the bottom line -- my original impressions were a bit off]

I bought my 500 GB Time Capsule a few weeks before Apple upgraded performance and doubled drive capacity (they probably fixed the original’s flaky power supply too).

Sniff.

In any case adding a new iMac means the TC is blinking amber – it’s short of space. I could replace the 500 with a 1.5 or 2.0 TB Western Digital Green Power drive but the upgrade looks like a pain and it would void my original warrantee (which I might need thanks to that flaky power supply).

In reality 500GB is enough for what I truly need to backup – at this time*. I just need to free up space by excluding the System and Application folders from backup. (You can’t specify which folders to include, only which to exclude.)

This being the modern era it’s quite a chore to find Apple documentation on the Time Capsule (Google is less help than one would expect). Here’s the current list I have:

Specific references on removing backups and freeing up TC storage:

  • Erase and reformat an Apple Time Capsule- Dave Taylor: Use AirPort Time Capsule UI to reformat the drive. It works, but see Update for a 10.5 bug that might impact restarting your backups. It means all backups need to be redone, see update for removing just one machine backup.
  • Removing backups from Apple’s Time Machine: This is more intriguing than I first thought, but it's somewhat different from what I've read elsewhere. Proceed with caution: I'd try other methods first. Note that TM doesn't always free up space immediately - the sparse bundle doesn't auto-compact. This article and others suggest use the "hdiutil compact" command to force sparse bundle compression.
  • Removing backups by deleting the sparse image bunde: Joe Kissell, author of the superb Take Control of Mac OS X Backups wrote to me about this (see Update). I purchased the eBook and he responded very quickly to this specific question.

Some additional non-Apple references …

Among other tidbits it’s useful to know that …

  • When using Time Machine, the little “gear” icon in the Finder view is not what you think it is. It’s a control element for the Time Capsule interface. Nobody has ever figured this out on their own. (See the FAQ for how to restore this if you don’t see it. World’s most inane UI decision.
  • If you control-click the Time Machine Dock icon (better make sure you add one to your dock!) you can “browser other backups”.
  • For ease of cleaning out Time Machine backups, it’s best to use an external drive that you can reformat. If you want an external drive to do more that TM, you should partition it.
  • If you back up more than one machine to a TM drive (which is what Time Capsule does) you should ideally have a separate partition for each machine. Otherwise the backup pruning algorithms have suboptimal behavior (this is what I’m seeing with my Time Capsule). The user-compiled FA
  • There’s a free dashboard app that shows Time Machine messages.
  • If you want to use the TC as a file share, one good approach is to create a disk image on the TC that will handle your file share files - keeps them separate from the backup sparse bundle images.

The best reference is the user-compiled FAQ.

* I have a completely separate redundant Retrospect Professional backup system with larger capacity. Yes, I have two automated backup systems, one of which has offsite rotation. Yes, I’m berserk on backups. Incidentally, the more I study this, the more I think it will make more sense to add an external 2TB drive to my primary iMac and network server than to revise my Time Capsule.

Update 1/1/2010: I find a bug in TM that caused a restore to fail. There's a workaround.

Update 1/22/2010: I finally did the clean-up and restore, and discovered a 10.5 bug that hits when you erase a Time Capsule.

Update 1/25/2010: Next time I'll remove just the problematic sparse image per the advice of Joe Kissell, author of an eBook I bought: Take Control of Mac OS X Backups

First, in the Time Machine preference pane for the Mac in question, click Select Disk and then click Stop Backing Up.

Next, if you back up to a Time Capsule or other network drive (as I'm guessing you do), you must mount that volume in the Finder. For example, select your Time Capsule in the Finder sidebar, and if its volume doesn't appear automatically in a few seconds, click Connect As and enter your credentials. On that volume you'll see a disk image for each computer you back up. Drag the one in question to the Trash and click Delete.

Or, if you back up to a locally connected drive, instead of disk images at the top level of the drive, you'll see a top-level folder called Backups.backupdb, and inside that should be a folder for each Mac. Drag the appropriate Mac's folder to the Trash and empty the Trash. Note that emptying the Trash could take a *very* long time!

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