Group text on iOS: native functionality and the Contaqs.app alternative (and GroupMe)

Our school mountain biking team has been doing group texting for coaches. Works well on rides — especially when coordinating riders of different skills. 

Yeah, I know the larvae do this. They use dedicated chat apps though, like WhatsApp Group Chat or Facebook Messenger or, much less often, named iMessage groups. We are old and set in our ways, so we need something that works with SMS. (Google Hangouts is said to support Group SMS, with Hangout 4.0, but I couldn’t verify this. Too complex anyway.)

The simplest approach to to send one message to a group, then dig up the thread when desired. You can even name the thread — but only if everybody is using iMessage (never happens). In practice many of us lose the thread.

There’s another approach sort of built into iOS. In OS X or iCloud you can define “Groups” of your Contacts. Bizarrely, you can see Groups using iOS Contacts.app, but you can’t edit Group membership in the standard iOS Contacts.app [1]. You can buy Contaqs.app for $2 and it will do lots of things that Contacts.app should do including editing Groups — and it works with the Contacts database. Or you can use iCloud or OS X to edit Groups and sync.

However you do it, once you define a group you can use it in iMessage as though it were someone’s name. There’s a limit of 10 SMS members however. Worse, a single person can have multiple phone numbers — and every number is used.So this looks appealing but it doesn’t actually work very well. What might work natively, at least for 10 or less SMS names, would be to create a Group composed of 1-n people each with 6-7 numbers each. Say the group is BIKE, and there are five people in it - Mike, John, Bob, Alice, Jim. Define the group BIKE, then create a contact MIkeJohnBob and a contact AliceJim with appropriate numbers. You’ll probably still hit the limit of 10 SMS numbers though.

But it’s not hopeless. It turns out Contaqs.app is pretty smart about this. When I chose my group in Contaqs.app, and select all the members (one tap) then tap SMS, it asks me to adjust the phone numbers for each recipient — and it does intelligent number selection. I was able to create a message for the BIKE group with 11 members, presumably because several used iMessage instead of plain old SMS.

i was able to create it … but not to send it. The message failed; I assume Contaqs.app can’t get around the 10 SMS limit (maybe is US specific?).

We should really use a group chat app that works on Android and iOS, like WhatsApp...

[1] A function we’ve been asking for since iOS 2. I don’t think we’ll every see it.

Update: Richard (in comments) suggested I look at GroupMe, a product launched in 2010 and acquired by Microsoft’s Skype in 2011. He says GroupMe will incorporate SMS users into a group, no app required. That wasn’t obvious from the main page, but in the About page … "Best of all, it works on nearly every phone, via push or SMS” and in support: "You don't need to have our app to use GroupMe. Add anyone from your phone book and they will immediately be able to chat with the group. You can chat with your groups directly over SMS.” SMS costs money, so I wonder if the web site has been revised to downplay the SMS integration. No business model needed since this is Microsoft.

It feels like the echo of another era, back when some phones walked on 2 legs and others slithered. You can do most things just with SMS (I have vague memories of Twitter and perhaps Facebook doing SMS things), and your correspondents don’t have to register or sign up for the app (yeah, you can spam anyone). A 2011 Business Insider article mentioned it alongside Kik; apparently GroupMe was hot once.

Every member of a GroupMe Group sees messages coming from a unique phone number. Which is a clever workaround for the limitations of SMS chat — the phone number you see is a unique identifier (key) for a combination of a Group ID and a member’s cellphone number. When you send a message to that number GroupMe confirms the sending phone (callerid) matches the database record, then GroupMe sends it out to all the other cell number that are a part of the group.

It’s clever, albeit a bit obsolete now, but it’s also quite an expensive approach. GroupMe must have ways to reclaim numbers for reuse ...

Macs and external SSD storage - thunderbolt hubs and USB 3 UASP

My 2009 iMac is finally dying. It was my second iMac and my second iLemon. My 2005 iMac had early screen discoloration, overheating, and drive failure — but it survived the capacitor failures that killed many of its generation and it was the almost last Mac designed for user servicing. My 2009 iMac had early screen discoloration, overheating, screen flickering, two drive failures (one under recall) and, now, GPU failure. It’s not user serviceable. Lemon.

So I’m not a fan of Apple’s iMac lineup; I don’t want to buy another one. The Mac Mini is interesting, but the SSD pricing is irritating. The obscure but still sold non-retina 2012 MacBook Pro is an attractive iMac alternative when paired with an external monitor — and I actually prefer two 21" displays to a single 27” display. A refurb costs $829 and it’s easy to add memory to the 8GB max. It even has a Firewire 800 port. Still … 2012. That’s pretty old tech. I could buy another 13” Air ...

Or, I realized, I could not buy a Mac. I could save money and, more importantly, reduce my maintenance hassles. When my Time Capsule died young I bought a Synology NAS [1], I can use that as a file server for the family files. My Aperture photo Library is too large for my MacBook Air SSD, but I can pull my 1TB Samsung EVO SSD from the dying iMac and put it in an (very) inexpensive UASP+ external SSD enclosure (or this one) [5]. Based on past experience Aperture ran pretty well even over Firewire 800 and an external SSD. Emily has her 11” Air, I have my 13” Air, #3 uses her school iPad, and #2 only uses a computer for his school work. He can use one of the Airs — or maybe I’ll buy a disposable $150 Chromebook. [2]

Ahhh. One less computer to update, debug, drag to the Apple store, configure … I feel the warm breeze of a southern sea … [2].

My Air has two USB 3 ports and one Thunderbolt 2, currently occupied by a mini-display port. If it’s replacing my iMac it needs to work with 1-2 external displays, the iMac’s 1TB SSD in a USB 3 enclosure, several USB devices (scanner, DVD), an ethernet cable connection to the NAS and, ideally, my old Firewire 800 external 4TB drive, backup drive cradle, and flatbed scanner. Apple’s $1000 answer is the aging USB-free Apple Thunderbolt display.

Disregarding the obsolete Apple solution, I could go with a USB 3 hub or a Thunderbolt hub. With either one I’d like UASP Support [3]. The Vantek UGT-AH700U3-2C USB 3 hub is said to support UASP on a Mac; Wirecutter’s favored Anker hub didn’t in 2013 (though it might with newer chipset, wire cutter missed this important criteria in their review).

Really, even though the USB 3 hubs are ultra-cheap, I’d prefer something that would give me a single plug. Which means Thunderbolt-2 docking stations. I reviewed the options...

• The original Caldigit ThunderboltStation claimed UASP support but the new one doesn’t mention UASP — and it has a limited number of ports.
• Elgato thunderbolt 2 dock is sold by Apple Store [4], it has Thunderbolt_2 (2), USB 3 UASP compliant (3), HDMI, GB ethernet (no firewire, but Apple sells a firewire/thunderbolt adapter for $30)
• Belkin thunderbold 2 express HD is also sold by Apple, but there’s no mention of UASP and it has only two USB connectors.
• The OWC Thunderbolt 2 dock has the best connector options: Firewire 800 (!), 5 USB 3, Ultra-HD HDMI, Gb ethernet — BUT there’s no mention of UASP support anywhere. You have to buy a thunderbolt cable.
• The Akitio has only two USB 3 ports, but they do support UASP [5] - but no ethernet ports.

Overall I like the OWC Thunderbolt 2 ($228 + $30 thunderbolt cable), but it’s missing the UASP support (but [5]). Otherwise the Elgato ($208, need to buy $30 Firewire/Thunderbolt adapter) would be my choice.

I’ve got a response from OWC pending on UASP support, but I’m also wondering if it makes a real world difference. Update pending.

- fn -

[1] Apple quality? Only by comparison to the alternatives, and perhaps not even then.

[2] Apple, you really shouldn’t be making non-purchase so appealing. Maybe invest more in software quality and hardware reliability and value and less in marketing gimmicks?

[3] USB Attached SCSI. Really?!  I still have nightmares from my SCSI days, termination voodoo. Yeah, not the same thing, but tell that to the dreams. From the wikipedia article: "Apple added native support for UAS to OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion; drives using UAS show up as using IOUSBAttachedSCSI instead of the older IOUSBMassStorageClass kext”. I wonder how much USB Attached SCSI/UASP resembles Firewire protocols; I couldn’t find any Google references. This is the kind of thing BYTE magazine used to do so well...

[4] Navigating the online Apple store really can’t get any more painful… can it?

[5] It sounds like, practically speaking, the best one ever does is about 370MB/sec whether by USB, thunderbolt or eSATA. Makes me wonder whether UASP support actually makes a real difference in today’s products.

Update [5]: The Amazon listing for the Intateck is a bit mind boggling. This screenshot shows the multiple options shown for a single listing:

Depending on where the mouse lands you can get a model FE2003, FE2002, or FE2001 with varying case designs, some plastic, some aluminum, some with side vents, some not. I chose Aluminum, Optimized For SSD] Inateck 2.5 Inch USB 3.0 Hard Drive Disk HDD Aluminum External Enclosure Case with usb 3.0 Cable for 9.5mm 7mm 2.5" SATA HDD and SSD, Support UASP - the FE2003 version. The reviews for these different units are all merged. I suspect both Inteck and Amazon are guilty here.

Update: I ordered both the Elgata AND the OWC Thunderbolt docks from Amazon. I’ll run my own tests on both of them against the Inateck F2003 containing my 1TB Samsung and I’ll return the loser. If the OWC is good enough I’ll keep that one.

Update 12/12/2015: Results of my testing.

Replacing a Time Capsule with a Synology NAS - Time Machine for multiple machines

When my first Time Capsule died young I grumbled and bought another. When the second Time Capsule died even younger I decided to try a Synology NAS. If nothing else, maybe restores would, maybe, actually work.

Yes, Apple’s Time Capsule sucks. So does Apple to be honest. But you go to war with the army you have ...

Synology has a technical article on configuring Time Machine, but it assumes you have only one Mac.That’s dumb. If I had only one Mac I’d use an external drive cradle.

Two web sites were particularly helpful

• osx - Creating multiple Time Machine volumes for a couple users on Synology NAS - Super User
• Setting up Time Machine Support on Synology | macsynology

To begin with I purchased a consumer grade Synology DS215j for $200 . This device is widely used and has a good reputation, but I suspect it’s due for replacement soon. I like using old stable stuff so this was fine with me. I bought it through Amazon where it was clear most users buy a pair of WD Red 4TB NAS drive to go with it. Installation was simple — but I still got confused! Synology provides two sets of screws, one for the drive mount and the other for case closure. They also provide extra screws for each! So, of course, I ended up thinking the packet of 10 screws was 8 mounts and 2 case. Except they don’t fit the case… Ok. Look for the other wee packet.

 

So far my Synology setup seems fairly quiet. If you hear a loud fan noise you probably got a bum unit (OTOH I expect the fan will get loud in a year or two.)

 

The initial setup defaults to Synology’s version of RAID 1 Synology Hybrid Raid (SHR). Use the Storage Manager tool to run a SMART Quick Test or a full Extended Test. The Health Info will show SMART status and useful disk information including Temperature (90F on mine). I configured Notifications to send me a monthly report; I didn’t want to give it access to my primary Google account so I used a non-critical secondary account for email services.

 

Synology tells me I have 3.6TB of storage to play with. That’s enough for my backups, but it doesn’t leave much for other uses. I considered using a Disk Group to create a 7.2 TB “drive” and divide that into two volumes, but then I did the arithmetic on failure assuming a 1/10 chance of drive death in the first year of use (which, for me, would be typical):

• Use one drive for backup without drive group: 1/10 chance of data loss.
• SHR data loss probability: 1/100 (both drives must fail, really it’s much less than that because they have to both fail before I can replace one)
• Single Drive Group data loss probability: 1/5 (1 - 0.9*0.9) — Assuming data is striped so that if either drive dies the entire data group is lost.

I decided I like having a much more reliable backup — at least for now. I don’t like the risks of creating a Single Drive Group, but I could see one day using one drive for backup and another for other work.

First in Control Panel:File Services enable AFP service. Even in 2020 I have not enabled SMB service. (At least through High Sierra Time Machine needs AFP and that works for Mojave too.) In the Advanced tab I enabled Bonjour and SSDP.

Within the Control Panel:Shared Folder you create one Time Machine folder on the Synology NAS that will hold one or more Time Machine disk images (one disk image per Time Machine). I named mine Time_Machine_FLNAS (no spaces).

In Control Panel:User create one user for each Mac so each machine can have its own quota and the logs are machine specific. I created one user per machine named after each Mac’s network name (they all share the same password). Each of these users has its own disk quota. I gave each user “Network Backup Destination (later rsync)” and “File Station” application permissions, I’m not sure both are needed.

Synology supports AES encryption of the backup disk, but a 2012 article claims a major performance impact. Time Machine also supports encrypted backups (new since 2012) but for initial setup I’ve left that off. Since my primary server is also unencrypted this isn’t worse than my current practice. I use encrypted images for sensitive data and we do encrypt our laptops and our rotating offsite server backups. The primary risk of an unencrypted onsite drive is, of course, theft.

From the client Macs Time Machine should show the Drive name you created on Synology. Choose that and wait. As of 8/2020 I alternate TM backup for one of my machines between my Synology TM and a tiny local USB drive. I've been using the same Synology box and drive for five years.

PS If you have to delete a large sparseimage then do it from the Synology NAS using File Station (NOT from MacOS!). It takes about an hour to delete a multi-TB sparseimage.

AT&T iPhone 6s with iOS 9.0.2 problem: no WiFi-Calling, Call Forwarding or Call waiting. Fixed by new SIM card and repeat activation.

I described this problem in a series of Apple Discussion posts, but I’ll summarize here. I think it’s the related to the problem that’s described in a Verge article from 10/9 (despite Apple marketing in the 6s is not actually GSM carrier neutral). I also bought an unlocked iPhone from Apple.

Shortly before a trip (as usual!) I found I couldn’t do Call Forwarding (Settings:Phones) on my relatively new iPhone 6. Instead of getting a number I could edit, I saw the display “loading…”. If I deleted the text I could enter a number, but it didn’t really work. If I played around a bit I could generate an Oops! error message. Around the same time I discovered WiFi calling wasn’t working despite new AT&T support; initially it seemed to be available but I got yet another “Oops!”: “We can’t turn on Wi-Fi calling for your account. Think this message is a mistake ..” Call Waiting wasn’t working either.

I don’t know if the call forwarding was a new problem, I don’t use it very much. I found that other phones on our family account could forward. I called AT&T and the rep hadn’t heard of the problem, but based on a tip from Apple Discussions I asked for a new SIM card. Turns out they can send these by mail.

That fixed everything. I suspect the SIM activation process updated my AT&T config data correctly. I’m not sure how I activated my iPhone 6 — I might have put my 5s SIM in it. That’s probably not the write way to do things.

You need to setup your phone as if it were a new device, per the “Let’s Get Started” directions and the att.com/Activations site. When I started the process AT&T showed me my iPhone 6 IMEI number and the SIM/ICCID number for the new SIM card. I turned off my iPhone, did the Activation on the web site, inserted the new SIM card, and turned on the phone. Everything worked — even iMessage (to be safe consider logging out of iMessage with the old SIM then activating again with new SIM — but I didn’t run into problems).

Comcast (xfinitiy) Arris modem link light blinks orange (yellow?) rather than green - check your ethernet cable.

[jump to the update on this one, it’s not what I thought it was…]

When I switched from CenturyLink to Comcast two months ago my “boost” speeds were 50 up and 10 down on a rented Arris modem. The modem lights were green and i thought the link light was blinking green.

Recently comcast claimed to have doubled my internet speed. It did go up briefly to 100+ mbps, but now it’s back down again. Around the same time I noticed my modem link light started blinking yellow/orange.

It sounds like this may be associated with a > 100 mbps connection, but I suspect it also happens when there’s something amiss with Comcast’s network. Based on what I read and a call to Comcast there’s nothing to do about it as long as you’re getting the speed you paid for (which may not be the speed comcast promised, but there you go.) The comcast rep did say my area was suffering from network issues.

Update: A better thread on Amazon (!) says: "The light is orange when connected to a 100 Mbit device, and blue when connected to a 1 Gbit device”. My modem is connected to a GB device though (Airport Extreme), and the link light should be for upstream connection, not downstream. I may try a different ethernet cable...

Update b: I’m surprised, it’s not at all what I thought. The link light isn’t for upstream connections, it indicates downstream (internal) connection mode — 10/100 is yellow/amber/orange, 1000 (gb) is green. I’d forgotten that, in the midst of resolving an issue with a dying time capsule, I swapped out the ethernet cable connecting my Comcast modem to my Airport extreme. The new cable was a better length, and I thought it was excellent quality. Turns out it wasn’t so excellent! I swapped my original cable back in and the light immediately went green.

I then repeated the Comcast speed test, this time with my Macbook Air within a few feet of my router. For convenience I tried with 5GHz Wifi, not wired gb ethernet. Comcast more than passed the speed test — delivering 125 mbps over wifi. I don’t know if my modem reports a faster internal speed to Comcast and if that impacts provisioning. I’m used to berating my ISP, but Comcast did very well on this one. With 100+mbps (much less gbps) broadband internal networks matter.

In the dining room, a floor below and about 20’ feet away, the same speedtest over 5GHz wifi gave me about 73 mbps (my 11” Air might have been a wee bit faster than my 13” Air). Quite an impressive reduction.

Apple Time Capsule - dead at 2 years 4 months, resurrected as a pure NAS solution

My Apple Time Capsule is dead. It started taking a very long time to join my wireless network, so I did a ’restore default settings’. The restore seemed to work, but it couldn’t join the network; on restart it’s settings were scrambled. So I tried again, and it stopped paying attention altogether.

This TC lasted 2 years and 4 months. Even when it worked restores were agonizingly, impossibly, slow; the Time Capsule is a grossly underpowered NAS. I was disappointed in my previous time capsule, but at least it limped along for almost 4 years.

I have a reasonably modern Airport Express that can take over print server duties for now, but I do need something to run Time Machine backups on. I’ll have to think this over a bit…

Update 10/6/2015: Using broken TC as a wired peripheral

It looks like something is rotten on the network/wireless side of the Time Capsule. I gave it some debug time and some factory resets, but I didn’t invest a lot of time. For one thing I realized there’s only 25GB left on the 2TB internal drive — it really is too small to backup our home network. I’ve ordered a Synology DS215j [1] and two WD Red 4TB NAS drives to be our Time Machine and file server. Over time I may be able to use this to replace an external drive attached to our home server. Shawn Blanc’s 2014 review of the DS213j is a helpful guide.

In the meantime I’m short on backup for our home network. My primary server runs a highly carbon copy clone with offsite backup, and I can run carbon copy manually to a network share from my personal workstation, but that leaves two other machines. I also like having two very different backup modalities for my primary machines. I found I could still use the Time Capsule through its wired ethernet connection.

Our home network is all WiFi now that the Time Capsule (switch, NAS, etc) is dead, so I used network preferences/location to make wifi the primary network option on all devices. Then, using Airport Utility, I browbeat the half-dead TC until WiFi was off and network services were in bridge mode, but file share with local file password was on. Then I found I could connect from each machine by direct ethernet to the TC and run Time Machine manually. I’ll do that until I get the Synology integrated.

Hmm. I wonder what happens if I connect the Time Capsule to a network port on my Airport Extreme...

Update 10/6/2015b: Using broken TC as a pure NAS hanging off my newish Airport Extreme

It took me too long to figure this one out. I blame that partly on Apple’s now opaque Airport configuration tool (designed to try to hide complexity of WiFi, fails at that).

Our newish AirPort Extreme (column thingie with fancy antennae), which plugs into our Comcast “modem”, is powerful enough to cover our whole house — and it has 3 ethernet connectors. So after I disabled WiFi and put the broken TC into bridge mode, I connected its ethernet uplink to an ethernet jack on the Extreme. Voila — it’s lights are happy green and Time Machine works with no configuration changes. Even the photo slideshow on the TC USB mounted thumb drive share works. This will hold us until the Synology arrives (0 drive configuration is out of stock).

The only trick is convincing the TC to accept bridge/no wifi:

After doing a hardware refresh AirPort Utility (ethernet connection to Mac) insisted I first configure it as standalone network service. That left it blinking yellow, but I could then get to the “advance” interface that let me make it into a pure NAS solution.

[1] What are the odds its firmware comes with Chinese gov hacks pre-installed?

Search is broken on Simplenote.app for OS X

The developer working on Simplenote.app for OS X took an unfortunate shortcut when coding search. That’s kind of a problem, because search is what Simplenote is about.

It’s easy to see the problem.

In Simplenote 1.1 for OS X a note that has three words in it:

blue green yellow

search on blue and you’ll find the note. Search on blue green and you’ll find it. But search on [blue yellow] and you won’t.

That’s because the developer implemented a very simple string match search (sometimes this is called phrase search, but that’s a bit grandiose). Whatever string you enter in search has to directly match a string in the note.

Now repeat the same experiment with the Web version or Simplenote.app for iOS You’ll find that [blue yellow] works, as does [blu yell]. The developers who implemented search on iOS and the  web used what I call ‘word-starts-with-search’; it means a separate index is created containing all the lexical tokens and the input tokens are boolean matched against the index tokens (see also).

I’m quite surprised the OS X app passed Automatic acceptance testing — search is feature #1 for this app and it’s very broken in the OS X version.