SteveX Compiled

Here's a little tip if you use the Mac Mail application to read your Gmail.

You can hook Mail up to Gmail through IMAP, using these instructions.

But once you've done that, you should make sure you're using these recommended client settings, because the default is that mail that you delete through IMAP gets moved into Gmail's Trash, and Gmail empties the trash every 30 days.

From Google's recommendation page:

Do NOT save deleted messages on the server. Messages that are deleted from an IMAP folder (except for those in [Gmail]/Spam or [Gmail]/Trash) only have that label removed and still exist in All Mail. Hence, your client doesn't need to store an extra copy of a deleted message.

The key is these settings:

Trash:
Move deleted messages to the Trash mailbox > do NOT check
Store deleted messages on the server > do NOT check

Google has announced the Chrome OS.

There's been speculation for years about Google introducing an OS, but somehow the actual announcement seems anti-climatic. Maybe it's because of the existing prevalence of Netbooks running Linux. It makes me wonder what Google stands to gain by doing this.

This is a scenario that Microsoft has been working hard to prevent, and has apparently failed at. A laptop that runs Chrome (and has the Flash player) is all most people need in a computer. Flash covers the games and rich multimedia, Chrome with JavaScript and HTML5 cover the applications, and what else is there? For most users, that's it.

Google's timing on this is bizarre. Second half of 2010? What's the point of pre-announcing something that's over a year away? This is also somewhat out of character for Google, who, like Apple, traditionally don't announce things until they're ready to use. They're doing the same thing with Google Wave, and it's strange there too.

Another interesting aspect is that this isn't based on Android. Logically, I think it should be. Is there something about Android that makes it unsuitable for a desktop OS? They're both based on Linux, and I don't see why they can't both be distributions of the same core. Two teams that are doing basically the same thing in parallel isn't a good way to run a business, especially a big one like an OS business.

This is a good move for the industry even if I don't think it's a great move for Google. The resurgence of the Mac platform (including the iPhone), and Netbooks, have given the computing world a future that doesn't depend on Windows. Over 10% of traffic on the web is now not Windows based - still a small number, but a growing one. Windows 7 is a great OS, but now it has to compete on its merits, and not on the inability for its users to choose an alternative.

I spent the last few days trying to migrate from the Unibody MacBook Pro that I originally ordered to the refurb 2.4 that I have now. The Unibody was a MacBookPro 5,3 and the 2.4 refurb is a MacBookPro 4,1, in the parlance that the Mac uses in the boot screen you don't normally see.

Yeah, that boot screen you don't normally see? I've been seeing it a lot. Often it looks like this:

The little text you can't read says "Unable to find driver for this platform: \"ACPI\".

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I'd "moved in" to the 2.66 when I got it, and it had a 500gb drive. One of my main reasons for wanting to upgrade was to keep all my music on my laptop, so I was going to need to get a 500gb drive into the new machine. After reading some reviews I picked up the Western Digital Scorpio Blue drive. It's 500gb, and only 5400rpm, but it benchmarks very well compared to the 7200rpm Seagate Momentus 7200.4 (not as good in every test but better in some and overall good enough) and being 5400rpm, is quieter and uses less power. I put this drive into a Acomdata Tango FireWire enclosure, and then used SuperDuper to clone the internal drive 2.66 onto this new drive. I then plugged the drive into the 2.4, held down Option at boot and picked this drive to boot off. That's when I first saw this screen.

I assumed this problem was because I was cloning a hard drive that had an OS installed for a newer hardware build, and maybe the OS didn't have drivers for the older hardware. Seemed like a reasonable theory (although it may be wrong), so I switched my strategy to cloning the 200gb drive in the 2.4 and then migrating the user accounts and apps from the 2.66. Tried this, and no luck: Same error at bootup.

I've been through a lot of troubleshooting and didn't take notes so my memory is a bit fuzzy on exactly what the resolution to this problem was, but believe the problem here was I hadn't installed any software updates on the 2.4 after receiving it, and there was a firmware update that fixed this.

The next problem I ran into was that after cloning the OS onto the drive, it would seem to boot part way but then hang. If you hold down Cmd-V when a Mac is booting, you'll see a console with messages scrolling by. The message that looked like it was trouble was "MacBookPro4,1: stalling for module". It wasn't the last message, but it seemed like the last substantial one and the boot hung shortly after.

At this point I was thinking there was some sort of hardware trouble. Some googling showed that some FireWire enclosures had troubles where others did not (based on the chipset) and I couldn't find anyone saying the Tango enclosure worked, so I picked up a different enclosure, the MacAlly PHR-S250CC. With a company name like MacAlly I figured it had to work.

And, well, it does. Mostly. Not every boot succeeds but some do, and once the system is up, it seems just fine. I don't understand that. Maybe the FireWire drivers that are in the BIOS are flakier than the ones that the system uses later into the boot? I don't know.

Once the system was up with the 500gb drive with the clone of the 200gb drive, I connected the 2.66 in Target Disk Mode via FireWire 800 and let the Migration Assistant do its thing. Migration Assistant is magic, bringing over not only the user account but all the installed applications as well. Imagine trying that on a Windows box.

Here's a picture of the 2.66 on the left in Target Disk Mode, and the 2.4 on the right booted off the external drive and migrating data over this double-firewire path.

That's the Tango enclosure in the background (and my iPhone in the foreground).

The next step is getting the 500gb drive into the 2.4. I had the broken 2.4 that I could experiement with, so I tried opening it up and getting the old 120gb drive from it to see how hard it would be, and I got suck trying to get the keyboard off where the DVD drive was. It just wouldn't come out, possibly because the case was already a bit bent there, but I ended up bending it just a little bit more, to the point where when I got the machine all back together, the lid closing mechanism was a bit out of alignment and didn't latch properly. Rather than risking this with the new laptop, I have an appointment at a local dealer on Monday to get the drive installed.

Once that's done I should be back in business.

Did you know CompuServe was still around?

Did you even know what CompuServe was?

If not, read this. The gist of it is it's a place that a lot of today's 40+ techies spent a lot of time.

When I read the article, the number 72627,1325 jumped to mind. I couldn't believe I'd still recall my CompuServe ID after all these years, but a Google search proves it. That was me.

It's kind of sad to see these old online services closing down. Some day, Ultima Online will go away. And EverQuest. And World of Warcraft. Each of them taking a set of memories with them.

They say you can never go back home, because it won't be what you remembered. But in the case of virtual worlds, you can't go back home because someone turned it off.

I gave up my on 2.66ghz 15.4" Summer 2009 MacBook Pro, and am sending it back for a refund.

How I'm getting a refund is a little strange. My Mac is a custom built item, because I opted for a 500gb hard drive. Normally you can't return a custom built-to-order product for a refund, but apparently you can if you have a service case open.

Apple has great support. One aspect of their great support is that you can visit their website and basically start a service call before calling them, by entering your Apple ID and some basic information about the problem. What do you get when you do this? A Case ID. What do you need to return a custom order for a refund? A Case ID. Seems like a bit of a loophole, but that's how I'm getting a refund.

I'd be getting a refund anyway, because on top of all the other problems I have with this Mac, it's developed a hardware failure. Twice in the week I've had it, it's developed some sort of problem that's caused the screen to go crazy and the laptop to lock up. Both times I've had to do a hard shutdown (by holding down the power button) and then when trying to turn it back on, it would give me one long beep and refuse to boot. One long beep apparently indicates no ram installed. It's a RAM problem, or a system board problem. Either way, it's going for a ride in a brown truck.

I've opted for a refurbished MacBook Pro 2.4ghz replacement. The refurb is significantly discounted, comes with a regular warranty and is eligible for AppleCare. Overall I think I'll be happier with it than with this one, and it's cheap enough that I can buy the bigger hard drive and still have quite a bit left over.

I will miss the better keyboard and longer battery life of the newer model.

John Nack blogged about Adobe's summer shutdown, and I just wanted to chime in and say I agree with him 100%. The idea of a week where everyone is of is much preferable to random weeks off. It would be bad if someone have a specific reason they wanted to take some other summer week off (like a trip booked way in advance or an event they wanted to attend), but given the amount of notice we had, I don't actually know anyone who was in that situation.

John mentioned teams incorporating the shutdown into their scheduling. Isn't that a radical idea?

My wife's MacBook Pro broke and was facing a $1700 repair out of warranty. Fortunately my Visa features extended warranty protection which extended the warranty by a year, and gave me the opportunity to replace it with a newer model. My wife volunteered (okay not exactly willingly but in the end it was her choice and did I mention that I love her?) to let me have the new system and she'd take my laptop.

In the end, I'm not sure that was such a good deal for me.

I ordered a MacBook Pro 2.66ghz 15" system with the GeForce 9600M GT video option and a 500gb 7200RPM hard drive.

The big drive is great - I love having a drive big enough to keep all my photos and music nearby.

But in most other ways, the "features" of this new laptop are working against me, not for me.

For example, the new trackpad. This is a big deal on this system - a much larger trackpad whose entire surface works as a button. You can click anywhere on the trackpad except near the very top, because the whole thing is hinged from the top. In other words, you can use what used to be the button area as trackpad surface in addition to being a button.

The problem here is that the separation of button and trackpad was apparently something my fingers depended on. I find that quite often my middle finger is moving the mouse and my index finger is clicking, but the two fingers are close enough together that the trackpad registers it as a mouse move before it sees the click, and I end up clicking somewhere below and to the left of where I meant to. This happens *all the time*. I'm trying to train myself to click with my thumb, which helps, but we'll see how this goes. I didn't feel like there was anything wrong with the old trackpad, so this is an upgrade that I could have done without.

Another upgrade I could have done without is the new screen. While the new glossy screen does make photos look much better than the matte screen on my old MBP, and some colours are much richer, I find that text has become just ever so slightly blurry or fuzzy. It's not much, and again maybe something I'll get used to, but right now, every time I open up and start using the new system the lower quality text strikes me. I have my old MatteBook Pro next to the new one and the difference is minor, but noticeable.

The glossy screen sucks. At work, where I frequently use this system, the overhead fluorescent lights make parts of the screen very difficult to see. I find myself adjusting my position or the screen position as I read through a screenful of text, or moving the window containing the text around the screen to somewhere where the glare isn't so bad. This is a silly way to have to use a computer. I'm going to look into a matte overlay and see if that helps - I expect it will, but it's a $35 expense I shouldn't have to make.

There's another $50 I shouldn't have to spend, on the DisplayPort adapter I need to buy. Nobody has DisplayPort compatible hardware, and the system doesn't come with an adapter. That's just an annoying $50 Apple tax.

The closing mechanism is different than the old MBP. The old system had a button you have to press to unlatch the screen before you could open it, and this one uses magnets to hold the lid closed. This means it takes a bit of force to get the lid to move, which can be awkward when you don't have the laptop sitting on a desk. I'll get used to it, but I don't see it as an improvement.

Also, the screen hinge is much looser than previous laptops. You ever hand an open laptop to someone? Picking this one up and moving it by the corner (which we probably shouldn't do but I've seen lots of people do it) seems risky because the screen is so loose that it can flip closed or (more troubling) all the way open as you move it, which has got to be bad for the hinge. (Apparently I'm not the only one who has a problem with this)

Ah well, I'm sure in a few weeks I'll forget about most of this. But so far my experience with this "upgrade" hasn't been very good. The keyboard is an improvement, photos look better, I like having an SD slot and the bigger HD, but that's about it for positive aspects of the new model in my experience. I'd actually consider returning it and opting for a refurbished older model but because I went for the 500gb HD it's a custom build-to-order purchase and Apple's return policy doesn't allow me the option of returning it.

The Mac version of The Sims 3 is built using Transgaming's Cider portability technology.

How can I tell?

The game runs great, but it's funny seeing this much "Windows" under the hood.

I have had tethering working with the iPhone betas (I'm in the developer program), but now that I have the GM version of the OS installed, I don't have the option to tether. It just doesn't show up.

My theory on what's happened is that the iPhone betas didn't use the carrier settings file (which identifies your carrier to the phone - things like the carrier name to put at the top of the phone or the default choices for the Stocks app) but now that it's started using it, my old carrier settings don't have the setting to allow tethering.

If you go into Settings / General / Network and don't see the Tethering option, check Settings / About and look at the "Carrier" line. Mine says "Rogers 4.0", and a friend's phone, which does have tethering workin, says "Rogers 4.1".

For some reason, iTunes isn't noticing that my carrier settings are out of date. It may be as simple as acquiring an updated carrier settings file, and I'm trying to locate one - I'll update this post with the results.

Update: So you need two things. The updated carrier settings, which I've attached rogers_caipcc (Download and then rename to "Rogers_ca.ipcc"), and you need to set iTunes to allow you to use them. There's information on how to do that here.

it's odd to be posting a pleasant surprise concerning Rogers and the iPhone but here it is: Rogers was one of the carriers listed as supporting iPhone tethering with iPhone OS 3.0. Makes me glad I held onto my 6gb $30 "limited time" data plan.

Rogers even has text on their website that explicitly allows tethering:

Tethering is the use of your phone as a wireless modem to connect to the Internet from your computer. For a limited time, if you subscribe to a data option which includes at least 1GB of data transmission between June 8, 2009 and December 31, 2009, you may use tethering as part of the volume of data included in your option at no additional charge. Tethering cannot be used with data options of less than 1GB.

Now the question is when will Rogers send out a carrier profile that allows the phone to enable the tethering option.