How to maybe stop Sierra from preferentially auto-connecting to XFINITY WiFi.

My Mac insists on connecting to my neighbors Comcast/XFINITY WiFi rather than my home wifi. The usual recommendations didn’t work. (Note, if you don’t run as admin, and want to play with WiFi settings, you need to first click the unlock icon on the Network Preference Pane before you click “Advanced”. Bad UI.)

Despite deleting XFINITY from preferred networks I could still immediately join my neighbors network. Sierra didn’t seem to honor the order of WiFi networks I’d set. I searched Keychain but couldn’t find Comcast or XFINITY left anywhere.

The new trick to look to see if you have a Profiles PreferencePane. There, if you’re like me, you’ll find a “User Profile” called XFINITY WiFi. (I dimly recall installing per XFINITY directions, but now they advise us to use an app — I think the app may allow one to prioritize a local WiFi).

My XFINITY WiFi Profile description said “Automatically connect to XFINITY WiFi hotspots”. It had an Enterprise Profile ID and I suspect MacOS is prioritizing it. So I deleted it.

And … I still connect to the XFINITY WiFI without specifying a password. It appears to need no credentials (or the Profile is still lurking around). When I toggle WiFi on/off I don’t auto-connect to XFINITY though, so maybe removing the cert deprioritized it.

I think this is more a MacOS bug that a Comcast bug.

Can't remove last "App" from the App Bar in iOS 11.2.1 iMessage.app? Turn screen to landscape mode.

On my iPhone 8 with iOS 11.2.1 I was unable to toggle off the last App (YouTube by alpha sort) in my plug-in list (what I mean). I turned phone to landscape mode and my touch was recognized. It’s not a screen touch bug because after doing this I could turn back to portrait mode and toggle it on/off at will. I suspect an array count or layout bug.

My Instagram account was hacked -- the follow-up is interesting

I signed up for Instagram before Facebook bought them. Back then it was a curiosity of low value and I used my throwaway password. That’s the password I’ve used for over 20 years for things I don’t care about, usually things that don’t even make it into my 1,867 item password database (ok, so only 488 are likely useful).  It’s an 8 character alphanumeric — not bad by the standards of 1997 but obviously insecure now. It’s also certainly been added to many dictionaries as various services have been hacked.

After Facebook acquired instagram I think I authenticated through my Facebook account. I forgot about the old password.

Today when I launched Instagram.app I was notified of a login from Rio de Janeiro. When I answered that was not me I was sent to a password change screen. Evidently, like Google, Facebook/Instagram considers a valid password only a modest marker of identity (it might help that I never use the Instagram password and, in particular, I never login with the email address associated with that account, only with a username).

So no harm there — but it means someone is testing the throwaway password together with my gmail address against a range of accounts. I checked my database and there may be a few low value accounts I should clean up. Very few though …

Overcast.app: the upload feature in premium is not very useful

I like to listen to medical and historical podcasts on my commutes. I have years of material in iTunes and limited listening time, I don’t need new subscriptions. I just need to queue up selected podcasts on my device. I prefer not to waste cellular data and I’m not interested in listening from newer to older (in fact many medical podcasts need to be sequenced the other way).

iOS Podcasts.app worked for this, back when I could choose a Playlist in iTunes and sync it. Today’s iOS 11 Podcasts.app is pretty much worthless.

So today I tried Overcast. I can select the podcasts I wanted in iTunes and drag them to the desktop. I subscribed to Overcast.app premium so I could upload them for download into Overcast (no iTunes support).

That’s when I found uploads are one … at … a …. time. Not to mention slow, but really I could live with slow. Overcast.app is even less useful than Podcasts.app

I wasted $10. I’ve canceled subscription renewal.

Simplenote for Mac search has been fixed

Two years after Simplenote.app for Mac was released with broken search it is now fixed in version 1.2. A product I rely on is not only alive, it’s even improved.

This was a significant rewrite and there is still lots of basic work to do. Tags don’t autocomplete (I think they used to in the prior release and they do on iOS). You still can’t apply tag changes to a group of notes. There’s no export of notes as text files from App. There’s no markdown support (not a priority for me but iOS version has it) and of course no support for images. 

I haven’t used it long enough to spot any sync errors — recent versions of Simplenote were very reliable.

I hope this is a sign that Simplenote has a future. Now if they would only figure out a way for me to pay for it…

Sending multiple Contacts to an iOS user from iCloud Contacts

Found this works

• Select multiple in iCloud
• Click gear bottom left to export VCF
• Email VCF to iOS device
• Click on attachment - get option to Add all members

I’m sure there are other means. Note this does seem to require a computer. I imagine works same from Mail.macos.

iTunes cannot sync voice memos ...

“iTunes cannot sync voice memos … because the Voce Memos app is not installed … You must download the Voice Memos app …”

Got this error message in iTunes today. I haven’t used voice memos.app in a long time (I use iTalk.app) and didn’t notice Voice Memos.app was no longer on my iPhone.

So why am I only getting this now … and why did a search on this phrase only find some phishing/spam page? Why does searching on Voice Memo Apple find only a bunch of third party apps? Why isn’t Voice Memos.app on my iPhone?

1. I don’t know why only now … maybe an iTunes update?
2. I don’t know why Voice Memos.app didn’t get installed when I updated to iOS 11 — might be a bug there.
3. It is on the app store, but Apple’s app search/discovery is an unholy mess. You have to search for “Voice Memos” exactly. Shame we can’t search iOS App Store from the #$#@% Mac any more

One good thing — I ran across Apple’s Music Memos.app — which I’d missed. It does sound useful.