Tag Archives: Apple Inc.

Installing a HP LaserJet 1505 printer on Apple OSX Mountain Lion

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What a problem this was! We had a user with a MacBook Pro that had a new copy of Macintosh OSX Mountain Lion 10.8.2 running on it. Plugged in a rinky-dink HP LaserJet 1505 and nothing. Even though there was the exact same printer installed before, from the user’s home, the system refused to reuse the connection for the printer at work. Obviously that has to be because the system notices it’s a different device and refuses to play along, which I find stupid.

Plug in the printer, try to add it, and the Add Printer function goes out to Apple Software Update to look for the driver and then comes back and tells us that nothing is available. Then commence zombie debugging via muzzle flare, wandering around in the dark trying to fix what shouldn’t be happening but apparently is beyond all logic and reason.

So how you do diagnose a Mac? Here’s a handy-dandy guide which anyone can use to fix their Macs. I seriously doubt any issues ever survive this particular procedure:

  1. Clear PRAM – Turn off computer, turn on computer while holding down  Command-Option-P-R. The computer will restart and you’ll hear the startup chime twice. Let go of the keys. ~ For this, just do it. It doesn’t matter if you don’t think doing this will fix your problem, it will. Just shut your pie hole and do this. If you don’t do it, I don’t want to hear about your problems. It’s magical. I don’t care if Apple says it won’t do anything. This thing DOES EVERYTHING IN CREATION – apparently. That and it cannot hurt. Lots of fluids and plenty of bed-rest. 
  2. Repair Disk Permissions – Start Disk Utility, find your “Macintosh HD” and click “Repair Disk Permissions” and wait. Do this. Often. Regularly. Lots. Weekly. Now.
  3. Download Onyx. Pick which version of OSX you are using, download it, install it and use it. I recommend skipping everything it wants to do and going right for the Automation button. Uncheck “Repair Permissions” and “Display of folders content” and check the rest. Click Execute and wait. When the system asks for a reboot. Reboot. Everyone should do this weekly. Think of it like vitamins for your Mac. Plus, it can’t hurt.

At this point your system should be all spic and span and whatever niggling bit was bothering you should be dealt with. Of course, for the problem I had to deal with at work, there is one little thing extra, one thing more. Open Finder, click Go on the Menubar, then Go to Folder… and type in /Library/Printers and click Ok. You’ll see a list of folders. In this list find the folder named “hp” and KILL IT WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE. Y’arr! This !@#$ folder is at the very center of my hatred for all that is Hewlett-Packard. I’ve started to unceremoniously refer to them as Fudge Packard. Bastards. Anyways, killing the folder does the trick, it clears everything up and Mountain Lion can download software from Apple again for the HP Drivers – blah blah blah. I’d rather just get a sledgehammer and pound the HP LaserJet 1505 into foil, but hey, you have to cope or have some sort of attack. I regret buying HP. I regret the LaserJet 1505. What a piece of crap. Steaming.

Cloze

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Discovered a neat new site and I sent invites out to everyone who I thought initially might find it useful. The site is called Cloze and it combines email and social networking in one view. There are free apps for iPhone and iPad as well. So if you got some email from me and you weren’t expecting it, now you know who it was from. I had to use my work email because many of the addressees on the mail were work contacts and they wouldn’t know who I am if I used my gmail account.

Waiting is the hardest part

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Waiting for Verizon. It’s the hardest part of my February so far. For those who have been keeping track, the IRS came and tried to strangle our wireless infrastructure to death, but apparently failed. I’ve been on-again-off-again with Verizon but now we’re firmly on-again. I’ve sent neatly wrapped missives to management but have yet to hear any response.

All of this would be maddening if Verizon was ready. Thankfully it isn’t maddening because Verizon isn’t ready. In fact, from what I’ve seen from my local Verizon sales rep, they don’t even have a vocabulary yet, let alone any plans or packages for sale. So while I struggle with this nominal Blackberry, I watch the time tick away waiting for Verizon to get off their duff and give us details on plans. Then I can take that information to management and maybe goose them into action.

Last night was a problem because I couldn’t make an outbound call with my minimally acceptable Sprint service on my Blackberry. I had to turn off Automatic Roaming, go up to the upper level of my house where I could get the weakest of signals and make a call to order pizza for dinner. Sprint’s network is wretchedly bad, and it almost never was the case before.

I haven’t the heart to call Sprint and tell them what I’m planning. So far all they know is that the IRS is likely going to be the reason why we close our contract. It’s a total straw-man, and as far as today, a rather nifty fabrication. The last time I told them I was contemplating leaving Sprint for Verizon they sent my sales rep, a VP of sales, and a third fellow who had the word “synergy” in his title, or something to that effect. Truth to be told, I don’t have a problem with my Sprint sales rep, or the VP of sales that came to visit, but that third guy was aggressive, abrasive, and thoroughly an unpleasant human being. If Sprint ever gets around to thinking about why they lost my business they can look no further than this third-man they brought with them. Leaving him in his cubicle may be the best move for their future business, if they have any after Verizon poaches every single one of their customers.

I couldn’t properly express to Sprint exactly why the iPhone on Verizon was so compelling. They kept on pushing Android on their network — Are you serious? Verizon is a double-dunk. The device has pretty much already sold me. The Verizon network is the other half of the power-shot and the fact that Verizon is willing to drop the pretense and become a commodity wireless service vendor means the biggest fear I had about the iPhone on Verizon went up in smoke. They aren’t going to nail it down, cover it with obnoxious Verizon “VZ” bullshit, they are going to simply put the device on their network and let the chips fall where they may.

This is like a hat-trick from heaven. Sprint pre-occupied with an IRS straw-man, iPhone on Verizon, and Verizon keeping their ugly branding out of the pot. Bam Bam BAM! If anyone wants to know why, that’s why. A hat-trick.

Now if only Verizon would get back to me… tick tock tick tock gentlemen!

iPad Apps Series

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Over the next few blog posts I will be listing about ten iOS Apps that I find worthy to be on my iPad. I’ve written about my iPad before, how the device has changed my life and it appears from what I can see in the incoming Google Searches that hit this blog, that people might find some of these interesting. One short note to add however, I will not be including the apps that come with iOS 4.2.1 by default, since we all have those and can appreciate them. Since iBooks is pushed when you first touch the App store, that too will be left off the list, as everyone should already have looked into it to see if it fits their needs.

So, without further ado, here’s the first ten:

  1. Evernote – The app has a crashing problem and a display glitch. That being said, having your Evernote library handy even off-network is worth it’s weight in gold.
  2. Wx – Excellent short-and-sweet weather app. NWS is changing some key XML files which might break the app, but maybe the author will cope in time.
  3. Flipboard – The ultimate browser for Facebook, Twitter, and Google Reader. It received a huge shot of adrenaline in the arm recently, but the biggest feature, multiple accounts for everything, is very much overdue.
  4. WordPress – The WordPress App. It’s an okay way to blog and it works natively with the WordPress interface. I’m never quite sure whether my blog posts get in properly or not and I’m always wary that the entire app could crash at any moment. It hasn’t done so yet, but I definitely get the sense that failure is just over the next river bend.
  5. Reeder – My Go-To App for browsing Google Reader RSS feeds. It is very clean and very slick, with shortcuts for Instapaper and Twitter/Facebook. The only thing I would like to see with this app is a “Clip to Evernote” feature. Perhaps it’s coming.
  6. Instapaper – Buy this app, enjoy the service. Nothing brings on the Instapaper love more than sitting at work at 5pm, knowing you have to go, seeing a flurry of unread tabs in Safari and with a few clicks, saving each page to Instapaper, saving it for later… very useful indeed.
  7. Wikipanion+ – Great app to query Wikipedia and keep page details offline when you can’t reach the network. Some people get bent out of shape when they discover that the information in Wikipedia isn’t curated by some scholar. I think they are spending too much time with very nit-picky academics. Sometimes Wikipedia is “Good Enough”
  8. Twitter – The home Twitter client is probably the best of all the Twitter apps out there. I can’t quite make up my mind between Twitteriffic or Twitter. Currently Twitter is on the home screen and Twitteriffic is stuck in a folder.
  9. Friendly – I bought this Facebook app when it was paid and I’ve found it steadily getting better with time. It might as well just be picked up by Facebook as their official iPad app. I don’t think that will happen until Facebook realizes that the iPad is just as useful as a computer or an iPhone to access its services.
  10. GetGlue – At first I thought this app was going to be another lame Foursquare ripoff, but the ability to check in to shows, movies, wine, or a host of other topics really works surprisingly well. The first thing I noticed about GetGlue was that it socialized popular media. You could see who watches Primeval for example and develop new social contacts based on that kind of lead-in.

Verizon iPhone 4

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Everyone is weighing in on a device that hasn’t been released yet, and everyone already has formed opinions based on rumors and suppositions. Since this is the way it is going, I’ll just toss my unrequested three-cents in with the rest of the noise and babble.

Key Differences between AT&T and Verizon on the iPhone 4:

  1. No 4G Service – Who cares to have broadband speeds in your pocket? Eventually there is a good-enough-speed that people reach, with 3G and WiFi pretty much available everywhere this claim is only going to make the really geeky miffed. If you need such speeds in your pocket, what exactly are you doing IN YOUR POCKET? At some point extra speed only benefits BitTorrent users. The only exception to this is media streaming, but frankly my dear, if you are sitting back and enjoying a movie, chances are you are doing so in the comfort of some place that has WiFi. Just like FaceTime Chat…
  2. iPhone 4 Antennagate – CDMA doesn’t have the same antenna as a GSM phone has, so physical attenuation isn’t a problem. The Verizon phone won’t have the grip-of-death, while the AT&T phone will.
  3. CDMA-GSM Simultaneous Data and Voice – I have to admit to living without this as such a thing is by the design of CDMA very unlikely if not impossible to bring off. I’ve never needed both data and voice services at the same time. My logic is that people smush the phone against their face to talk, they aren’t going to smush-tap-tap-smush-tap. The fact that AT&T can do this is pretty much a cute empty little extra. People who have been using CDMA won’t notice at all.
  4. Network Size – AT&T has done NOTHING to address signal quality in key markets that I find important. Really it comes down to Kalamazoo. AT&T bought out Centennial, along with all their 3G towers in the area. The fact that AT&T hasn’t enabled those towers speaks volumes to me. They don’t care. They claim that their network reaches 97% of Americans, and it does, some are graced with 3G service like the people in Grand Rapids or Chicago, while the rest of us have to contend with their EDGE network. So, what about Verizon? They’ve got a giant network and they have 3G in Kalamazoo. I live in Kalamazoo, it is an important market. I would argue that Kalamazoo is more important than Grand Rapids. So, when it comes to 3G network traffic, who wins? Verizon.
  5. Finally, It’s AT&T PEOPLE! – AT&T, which lets face it is just a shelled out mask that Cingular wears to ritzy dinner parties (yes, it wears another’s tanned hide) is still CINGULAR. Just because it’s wearing AT&T’s dead face and animating it doesn’t mean that it’s somehow got a new soul. Both Cingular and AT&T were as I regard them, abhorrent companies. Cingular for their lameness before trapping and gutting AT&T, and AT&T for being inherently EVIL. Many people don’t recall, and it’s understandable, that AT&T used to be Ma Bell. The giant monster company that abused it’s customers, ran a monopoly, and retarded real technological innovation for decades! This is less of an argument based in reality as it is a name-game since Verizon also was a shard of Ma Bell’s evil empire. It’s not that somehow Verizon is good, of course they aren’t, they are just as evil as AT&T is, but AT&T is stupid and evil. Verizon is clever and evil. It’s a very fine difference.
  6. Waiting around for iPhone 5 – Great, so Verizon is going to get iPhone 4, but Consumer Reports goes on at length about how they are going to wait until iPhone 5 before they’ll look at it again. What exactly are people waiting for? Isn’t the iPhone 4 “Good Enough”? What can Apple do to make the iPhone 5 compelling enough for everyone to suddenly acquire buyers remorse regarding the iPhone 4? They could make the device thinner, perhaps make it transparent, change the shape perhaps but in every other instance the iPhone 4 can be field-upgraded to whatever iOS revision is coming down the pike unless Apple is serious about enabling things like BitTorrent on the iPhone. For this class of device, how much can change? Is it enough to continue to suffer with AT&T? In my case, is it enough to continue to suffer with Sprint? My answer is no. I don’t care what is or is not coming out in June or July. I’ve been waiting for the iPhone 4, without the grip-of-death, on a competent 3G network FOR A VERY LONG TIME. Who cares if you are locked into an iPhone4 for two years? It’s not like an immense base of other iPhone 4’s out there are suddenly going to just vanish. Just because there is something new doesn’t mean it’s needful. Sometimes what you need is right in your hand all along, or in this case, in the traveling roadshow that is Verizon.

For me, this entire release of a CDMA iPhone is mana from heaven. I’m willing to give up data+voice simultaneously for fewer dropped calls (in AT&T’s case) and way fewer impossible-to-make calls (in Sprint’s case). My professional recommendation is that the Verizon iPhone 4 is exactly what people need and they should pounce on it immediately. If you are beyond your ETF-barrier on your contract with AT&T or Sprint, you owe it to yourself to leave them behind and hop on. Even if a few months down the line iPhone 5 comes out, it’s not going to be revolutionary, it’ll be evolutionary. The same way the iPad 2 is not going to make me love my iPad 1 any less. A device is still a device and if it works well, isn’t that enough?

Kicking The Can

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Sprint is utterly adorable. So far there have been two notable problems we’ve had, the first was trying to get a new line established for a new staff member in the office. They gave us a number with the exchange 363, which fails local dialing because the other POTS companies don’t understand that 363 is in the 269 area code. Sprint’s solution wasn’t “We’ll fix it” but “You should call the other POTS companies and request it be fixed.” Oh, really now? The second problem we had been crappy service in Kalamazoo Township. Instead of owning the problem, they simply just gave me the 1-800 number to essentially DIY. If I had 3 lines and ran a dumpy mom-n-pop shop out of Climax Michigan I’d be fine with it, but I’ve got damn near 25 lines and I spend two grand a month – I would appreciate some TLC god damn it. So here is an email I wrote to Sprint…

Thanks for the information.

This is the second time that Sprint has kicked the can as it were, the first time was Sprint’s determination that their customers were the proper party to resolve local carrier exchange switching errors and now with poor signal quality, as well. On some level I could be upset that Sprint has refused to take ownership of problems related to their network and problems brought to them by their customers but I am really not that invested in haranguing either of you about this. The first time is a mistake, the second time is by design. I have made a personal resolution to reduce the amount of stress and trim my rage for my own personal health and wellbeing. We are learning quickly that Sprint isn’t really invested in the whole ‘taking ownership of problems’ practice and because of these failures we are awaiting the announcement of an Apple iPhone 4-CDMA class device to be brought to Verizon and when that device is announced and manufactured I am going to recommend that we take our business to Verizon.  I don’t expect any better customer support from Verizon, but at least I won’t be filled with fantasies of skeet-shooting my mobile device any longer and feeling little blossoms of cluster headaches whenever I reset my device and get mocked by “SprintSpeed”.

As for the twin problems, the first one being the 363 local exchange switching error, we’ve avoided that by swapping numbers with a line number we already had possession of in the 599 exchange, solving that problem by sheer abandonment. As for the second problem, conditions may have improved for my user who was having problems, and if they come up again I will not bother either of you but take the issue to BWTS directly.

Thanks

So all we have to do now is wait. Wait for Verizon and Apple to ink those contracts, make sure Qualcomm has enough Viagra to go the distance, and hope that Foxconn doesn’t endure anymore “It’s Raining Men (and Women)” 🙂

Sprint Bork

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Today has been quite an annoying exploration in the vagaries of 20th Century POTS bullshit. My assistant has been on the phone for the better portion of the day with various Sprint representatives trying to get our latest Blackberry device for our new VP to work properly. The phone came with the exchange 363, which when you dial it using any regular phone line ends up in a doo-dee-tiii (computer gobbledygook sounds). Sprint claimed they couldn’t do anything about the problem, so Andy had them switch the number to a brand new one, another 363 number, and the same problem. In the end we switched an old number onto the VP’s device using the 599 exchange, oh would you look at that, damn thing works! Really what it comes down to is that we don’t want to have to dial 269-363-yadayadayada, we want to dial 363-yadayadayada. It’s not that complicated of a thing to figure out now! Of course Sprint’s response was “contact the other POTS companies and complain to them!” Really Sprint? How about YOU DO IT YOU LAZY BASTARDS! Yeah, one little teeny tinny voice is going to command Qwest or SBC Ameritech or Verizon or … to hut right to it and correct a local-exchange switching error. While we’re at it, Sprint, I’ll be sure to refine our ability to FART RAINBOWS!

So what did we learn from this interaction with Sprint? That they’d much rather ignore a POTS problem and let their customers agonize over it rather than take the !@#$ high-road and own the problem and FIX IT THEMSELVES. I suppose I do make a little tactical error here, in that Sprint apparently no longer considers itself a POTS company, no-no-no! It’s a Telecommunications Experience Synergizer. Or something.

To the rumors and all the hints and allegations that Verizon will have an iPhone in January, we say “Oh God YES!” It’s things like this that add ammunition to my professional recommendation that Sprint be fled-from as soon as possible.

Shuffle thy mortal coil

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Everything is done, for the Apple Digital Lifestyle project for our soon-to-retire management person. Getting to this point was a challenge only in terms of getting the data off of the old computer. The old machine was a Dell Dimension desktop loaded with Windows XP. I got the machine running and everything was fine, as far as Windows XP can be fine and I inserted my Knoppix DVD into the disk drive and rebooted. Then began the hurdles, the system was configured to boot first to the HD, not to the DVD, so I changed that and rebooted, the disk wouldn’t read and the system booted to the HD anyways, up comes Windows XP. Turns out, this computer is so old that it doesn’t have DVD, just a plain CD-ROM drive that I errantly mistook for a DVD drive. So I swapped out the Knoppix DVD and traded it for a Knoppix CD, rebooted and finally was up and running in Knoppix. I mounted the volume where the user files lived and used the tar utility to copy them over the network to my iMac on my desk. Once that was done I switched Knoppix out for DBAN, a popular hard drive erasing utility and booted into that, set it to chew away using DoD short wipe and proceeded to unpack the tar file I had copied over. I had unpacked the users data, trimmed out the meaningless Windows junk and ended up with about 800MB of user data in the end, mostly music and pictures and a few documents peppered in. I made a new ‘tar’ file and then copied that over to the new iMac using my handy-dandy USB file transmission cable. I had utterly blanked on the fact that both my iMac and the new iMac had fancy FireWire 800 capability, and only now that I reflect upon it do I feel rather silly in forgetting FireWire.

Once the data was over, I moved all the documents where they needed to be and then I thought about how I would manage the music and pictures. First was the pictures, I opened iPhoto ’09 (which came with the iMac!) and clicked on File, Import, pointed it to the directory that held the mishmash of user data and in about 45 seconds (I couldn’t help but time it) all the user pictures were now in iPhoto. I did the same thing with iTunes for the music and that took a whole 30 seconds. I then threw all the rescued remains in the trash (because they were now in iPhoto and iTunes) and then rescued bookmarks, that took a whole 10 seconds and into Safari it went. Cleaned everything up, installed the ‘Free’ HP All-in-one, and that took 2 minutes to unpack and 30 seconds to set up, I had a test print a minute later. Packed it all up, walked it to the manager’s office and he’s all set to enjoy.

What will he enjoy? His big thing is email and using iChat Video Chat. That’s the biggest selling point I think for this entire adventure. He can see his daughter and her budding family, full audio/video Mac goodness for as long as he likes to do so. I suggested that he could even set up a link in the morning and have a virtual “magic mirror” run all day long so they could spend time close to their loved ones without the expense or trouble of traveling.

After this entire adventure it struck me that I effectively ran an entire micro-sized Apple Store from inside my head. I had a Genius Bar (my office), I was the Genius (don’t have a fancy apple shirt, tho) and I got the user interested, sold, migrated, and trained – just like in an Apple Store. If Apple ever were to establish a store in Kalamazoo I would definitely moonlight there, without a doubt. The last time I did enter an Apple Store was with my Father in Syracuse a few months ago, the salespeople approached and I was busy pointing out a 21″ iMac to my Dad and as the sales guy approached he heard me actually running through his script. He chuckled and smiled and stood behind me. That’s why Apple succeeds, because they impress people like me and we become evangelists. Walking around, free Apple advertising and when someone comes up and asks, we show them all the wonderful fun they could have and then they go and buy into the dream as well, the cycle continues.

Comic Con Day 3 – iPad is Disabled

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Just exited the Family Guy panel on Day 3 of San Diego Comic Con and after it was done I opened up my Apple iPad and to my chagrin it said “This iPad is Disabled, please try again in 4 minutes” and my Bluetooth was active. I immediately thought that someone was being hacky and clever with my open Bluetooth stack being a security risk. I left Ballroom 20 with concern that somehow my iPad had been broken into and was now for some reason vulnerable. As I walked along, trying to reset the iPad and turn it on and off to no effect I waited and eventually the device was unlocked. I opened up Google on my POS Blackberry and looked up the phrase, “iPad is Disabled”.

This is where my chagrin was firmly planted. I also brought with me my Apple Wireless Keyboard today, and didn’t think anything about it. While I’m traveling I have my iPad in secure mode with a passcode. Apparently somehow my Apple Wireless Keyboard turned on (probably a nudge) and then it started to feed my iPad guesses to the unlock code. With enough wrong guesses the iPad started to limit access. I’m thankful that I caught it when I did, after 10 wrong guesses my iPad deletes all the content within it.

Apparently my handy Apple Wireless Keyboard has a very touchy power button so now when I travel I’m just going to pull it’s batteries out. A part of me wishes it wasn’t that hard to screw everything up, and another part of me is embarrassed that I even let it happen.

If you are traveling with an iPad and an Apple Wireless Keyboard, check your batteries!

Apple iPad App Review – Page 1 Line 5

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The final line on the first page, quite a few applications have shuffled about, and the remaining reviews will be a straight shot through the rest of the pages. Here’s the last line on my iPad:

  • Pandora – Quite possibly the greatest background filler to a game of Scrabble that I could imagine. Plugged in (preserving batteries) you can set it to create whatever atmosphere you wish for whatever may be going on. Mozart or Mahler for Scrabble, great choice. The App itself is great, as all apps are that work the way you imagine they should.
  • Wikipanion – This app gives you a custom interface to Wikipedia. It’s truthiness aside, I find Wikipedia ‘good enough’ for basic information and I absolutely love the ability to save Wikipedia articles for later viewing.
  • StreamToMe – Best $2.99 I’ve spent in the App Store for my iPad. This application and it’s free server software for my Mac gives me the ability to stream video and music content from my Mac Mini connected to a data pig. Instead of having to store all the media on my iPad, I can stream it over my wifi network at home, works like a charm.
  • Settings – The go to place for pretty much all system level adjustments, from Wallpapers to accessing VPN services. On the front page so I don’t have to go a-hunting for it elsewhere. Both my iPod Touch and my iPad have the Settings icon on the first page. Couldn’t imagine it anywhere else.