Apple's iPhone parental controls are completely broken

I've ranted about how crappy OS X Parental Controls are, but I thought iOS did better.

Not.

My son specializes in hacking iOS. It's not hard. Even #@$@ PublicRadio.app has an $@$# embedded webkit browser function. Disabling Safari doesn't disable embedded WebKit access, and it's evidently extremely easy to incorporate WebKit into an app. So app developers do it -- because they can.

What the heck is wrong with Cupertino and parental controls? Is it the (bottled) water?

Update 10/2/2010: Martin in comments suggested a brilliant idea Apple could implement now. They could say that any app with unrestricted embedded webkit access gets an NC17+ rating. I'm sure PublicRadio and WolframAlpha would close their backdoors immediately.

Of course there are lots of things Apple could do in software, but that would take at least 6-12 months to do if it's not already done. I like Martin's suggestion.

Where OS X Chess Engine comes from ...

In case you ever wondered what powered OS X Chess ...

Sjeng - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 

An earlier open source version of Sjeng has been the engine of the standard Mac OS X Chess application since Mac OS X v10.4

There are far more powerful modern versions, but the price is right for the open source version.

Installing from an ISO file for OS X VM hosted XP - use Disk Mounter

This is fun, but geeky.

I run XP in a Fusion 3.1 VM so I can use PowerPoint 2007 (PPT 2008 for Mac is a disaster,my dept requires PPT)  and a few other ancient Windows apps (Quicken, Access) with no Mac equivalents.

Recently I had to install from an ISO file. There are lots of ISO mounting solutions for Windows (not needed for Vista/7?), but I didn't need to bother. OS X Disk Utility (Mounter) will mount an .ISO file, just double click on the file.

I mounted the ISO file in OS X 10.6, then in Fusion I shared it into the Fusion environment.

Sweet.

[1]  OS X .DMG files are a form of .ISO file, and the simplest form of .DMG will mount with a Windows ISO mounter if the extension is changed.

Update: Andrew W, clearly in a party pooping mood, points out that if I'd looked in VMWare under "CD" I'd have seen it will mount an ISO image itself.

Google, please fire the team that's working on Blogger's rich text editor

I've finally cracked. I hate Blogger's broken rich text editor. It's time ... Please fire the team that's working on the Blogger rich text editor - Blogger Help.

GV Mobile is back - wait for the reviews

GV Mobile has returned to the App Store, presumably due to FTC pressure on Apple. Is the Battle of Google Voice entering a new phase?

It's now GV Mobile +. I bought it, but you shouldn't until you read some reviews. There are already troublesome signs

• Sean didn't manage to update his web site prior to launch.
• It's not an update to GV Mobile, so you pay again. I'm actually fine with that, but it does mean GV Mobile customers should wait for reviews.
• It wasn't tested on the iPad.
• It apparently doesn't run on 3.1 -- and there's no mention of that in the iTunes description! (Bad form.)
• It's not compatible with Google's "Multiple sign-in" feature.

Basically the developer got caught out, GV Mobile + was not ready for launch. Give it time, read the reviews, and one demerit to Mr Kovacs.

Update 9/25/10: Working fine in light use. Probably coincidence, but the voice connections using this methods have been better quality than what I was getting dialing direct. It's faster and more reliable than setting up a long dialing sequence with pauses. I use it 3-4 times a week to call Canada.

Reeder vs Byline: Battle of the iPhone Google Reader clients

I've used the Google Reader client Byline. app on my iPhone for over a year. The latest version is the best to date, but it's still has synchronization problems. It continues to show me articles I've read.

Reader itself has problems of this sort, but Byline is significantly worse. So lately I've been trying Reeder. I wrote this quick review for the app store ...

Bad news first. It crashes more than it should, but not more than Byline. Secondly it needs a manual, and it desperately needs a "reset" button to wipe its local store and force a reload from Google Reader. Thirdly it get its sync state confused, but no more than Byline. Lastly it doesn't precache the source pages, so Byline has a big edge there. There's no support for creating a Google Reader "Note" status update (Byline doesn't either).

Now the good news. The under-documented UI is elegant -- once you figure it out. (Programmers raised on games think life is a role playing adventure.) Readability is excellent. There's an option to open source pages in Instapaper Mobilizer - a vast improvement over Google Mobilizer. Services and configurability is excellent. Performance is great, so stability is now a bigger issue. It shows Following (Byline doesn't) - but here it gets counts wrong.

Bottom line - definitely worth the money, currently the best of breed, room for stability and synchronization improvements and, for the love of Binary, please add a reset option.

I think Reeder is a better app than Byline -- for the moment. It's not perfect though. If the developer doesn't fix a few bugs soon I'll take a look at Mobile RSS next.

See also (reviews found by search on [Reeder Byline "Mobile RSS"]:

• Reeder vs. Byline – An Instapaper Addicted Mobile RSS App Review: He loves what I miss -- the caching of full pages in Byline. In the end, he's torn.
• Reeder 2.0: Finally, An Awesome iPhone Feed Reader Arrives
• iPhone’s Missing Feed Reader – Shawn Blanc: Likes Reeder, but wants more

Update 9/30/10: No contest. Reeder is much better. There are bugs (Followed count), and crashes, and I miss the original page pre-caching -- but it's still the clear winner.

The Cisco WebEx ARF Player for OS X - convert to MP4

Welcome to the world's only documentation on the Cisco WebEx ARF Player for OS X.

You have come here because you downloaded a WebEx ARF file. These are used by some training companies. You brought it home, and you want to put it on your Mac so you can convert the ARF to .MP4 and transfer it to your iPhone. Perhaps you know that the ARF Player for Windows will export to Flash, WMV and (takes @ 1 hour) to MP4.

You have downloaded the OS X version and completed the installation. Now you're ready to begin.

Except ... where's the application?

Sigh. I might as well tell you directly. The OS X version of the ARF Player has no conversion options. All it does is play the ARF file. The executables are installed in your User Library:

/Users/(user name)/Library/Application Support/WebEx Folder

There's no Application UI, but if you double click on an ARF file it will play. There's also a shortcut on your desktop

I suppose we should be grateful that they used an OS X installer with a log. I think the uninstall is deleting the Library Folder.

If you want to convert to .MP4 on a Mac, you'll need to run a VM.

Yes, Cisco does suck.

You can, however, play back the ARF file and use Audio Hijack to grab the audio as it plays and save it as an AAC or MP3 file.