Computers – Page 2 – DavidPierron.Com

Apple iPhone 4 IOS5 Update failing and App Ugrades failing

Wednesday October 12th, 2011 marks the release of Apple’s IOS5 for the iPhone and iPad. Searches on the web show failing upgrades and I also am experiencing this failure.

Apps: I upgraded iTunes to the latest and greatest and updated my OS X 10.6.8 with all the latest and greatest. Still, no joy. Before upgrading the iPhone’s OS I like to get all my apps up to date and have a successful Sync. Even when I try to upgrade the apps, I am stymied. I click on the Apps tab in iTunes with a 17 next to it to bring up the Apps screen. At the bottom it reports “17 Updates Available” I click on that and get to the next screen. The “Download all free updates” button is at the top and when I click on that I get a new “Terms and Conditions” that I guess is the result of the new version of iTunes. I click on the “I have read…” check box and click on the Agree button. Your request could not be completed. It says something about my clock being correct or something … and the resulting web help page refers me to Windows iTunes problems.

IOS5: So, maybe in order to upgrade these apps I need to have the new IOS5 software installed on my phone since these apps have surely been updated due to the new IOS5 release. I tried 3 times and each time I get the message that my iPhone cannot be restored at this time, there was an internal error.

Web searching, and I read others woes in the same boat as me. I’m also having intermittent iTunes password problems. I even went through the process of changing my password. Hassle.

I don’t waste any time and call AppleCare: I paid for it, I use it. After 10-15 minutes on hold, I get a guy that doesn’t handle this particular issue and he has to transfer me to the iTunes people. It’s announced that my wait time is now 5 minutes or less and after about a minute I get a guy. I explain the issues and basically I’m told that the Apple servers are overloaded and that if I wait 3 hours it should work fine. That isn’t stopping me from trying to upgrade the apps, but the IOS5 update is a long process that wants to backup the iPhone each time and that takes a long time to complete …

Here’s hoping that that’s all it is. Mass upgrading resulting in overloaded iTunes servers.

Problems Update

Regarding Verizon.Net :: A change on the PF firewall’s rule set. Forever the bridge was never in the ruleset and everything seemed to work just fine. Finally, because of the proper testing environment, found out it was my own problem all along. Added rules to address the bridge interface directly. Those rules never seemed to have been needed before … or were they?

Regarding the Wireless Router :: I gave up on it as the MBP17 acted flaky since I unplugged the hard wire … The MBP15 seemed okay with it and remained logged in to IRC room on #pf (which is where I was seeking firewall help) and I guessed at the bridge rule … It happened to work … Anyway, I plugged the cables back in and I think I’m going to try the router that I originally bought that fixed all the problems before … Last resort is to buy Apple’s wireless router.

Now digging through all old email, etc and finding email addresses that I need to send an update to … It seems I haven’t sent a newsletter since 2007 .. Hmpf! Well, no new is good news, right?

Sometimes I cause my own problems … really!

A quick update to let you know how Andy Reid and I are alike … I’ve goofed.

Number 1: I thought the Internet was slow from the new connection and called service to have it diagnosed. All the while placing the blame on them, it was I who had coded in the firewall rules the throttling for the old T1. After I changed the values to reflect the much higher speed that is now available, lo and behold it smokes now.

Number 2: While poking in the firewall I started thinking about my Verizon woes again and decided to try to tackle this once again since this problem of not being able to connect has plagued me through 3 or 4 Internet connections. For the first time I was able to connect through my connection, but not through my firewall. With my firewall “opened up” for the mail server, it still will not work over the bridge. I can telnet to hotmail perfectly fine and then in the very next command watch telnet time-out to Verizon.net. I feel that I’m closer to a solution though as I now have something to go by and it’s been my fault all along. So I should take down my “Verizon Sucks” post?

Number 3: The post that’s gotten the most comments here was about the Mac and the Self Assigned IP. While not everyone has used my solution, they’re thanking me for the posting of someone else’s solution. That’s fine. Since my solution was a Belkin router, when I started to move things over to the new location I bought the very same router. Shortly into my Internet usage, the wireless signal would be lost after a certain amount of time. Not the IP problem, just connectivity. Weird. I made sure that the configurations were the same with original router and this new one. They were. I couldn’t figure it out, so I hard-wired and it’s been that way ever since. For some reason I went in the router recently and noticed the Firmware Update. It was two releases behind. I upgraded the firmware, popped out the network cables and have been wireless ever since. Did the newer router come purchased with an older firmware? I won’t know until I check the old router, but if I were a betting man …

You learn something new everyday. I’m not entirely opposed to admitting when I’ve done something wrong, but I sure thought in the first two cases that I was right. The last here is an honest mistake I think … What say you?

Rails is off track without Ruby …

So I’ve been doing my thing. Trying to get the gist of it all and get things in place, working, etc … and then they start with this Rails 3.0 stuff that it doesn’t seem I can run …

What I mean is, developers seemed to have moved on to Rails 3 but I don’t understand how. I decided, okay, it’s an RC (Release Candidate) so I’ll take the plunge and install it on a public server and start developing. Welp, Rails 3 requires ruby 1.9.2 far as I know and I can’t get that installed successfully in a FreeBSD environment when the latest ruby is 1.8.7 (2009-12-24 patchlevel 248) (which currently has a UTF-7 encoding XSS vulnerability in WEBrick.) … sure 1.9.2 will install, but it doesn’t install a “ruby” binary, it’s called ruby19 and you have to symlink or copy it to “ruby” … Why?

Can you run rvm on a production server? Would you? Why?

In Rails defense, their website isn’t advocating a new release nor to install it, yet touts how many people are running it in production already … Bah! Cutting edge.

In other words, I think there’s just still too much stuff up in the air to actually try to massage Rails 3 into place before the rest of the world is ready for it. I mean, Rails isn’t the only thing in my servers that use ruby …

… A couple hours later UPDATE: Ruby 1.9.2 Released

If you’re a Mac, you’re a PC …

A PC is defined literally as a Personal Computer. If you’re using a Mac, you’re using a personal computer. The Mac vs. PC commercials are obviously Microsoft vs. Apple commercials, and they’re spot on when put in that context. But why confuse everyone thinking that “PC” is a bad thing? Or “PC” is the derogatory term that has opposite connotations than “Mac” … I mean, don’t get me wrong, as a computer professional since the mid eighties, I have found my place in the Mac world. I find myself utterly and completely more productive and enjoying my environment and experience 100 times more. I was in misery at the hands of Microsoft products.

Probably many people don’t know that before Microsoft, it was an IBM world and the PC had become known as an “IBM Compatible.” At that time we also had the Commodore, Apple ][ and Franklin. Franklin was an Apple ][ clone and were sued by Apple. Result being, you don’t see any Franklins around, do you?

People also probably don’t know that the CPUs in the first IBM computers were AMDs. Seems that AMD came late to the game to most people, but my IBM XT had a 4.77Mhz AMD chip installed in it, and I used the “Tiny Turbo” to up that baby to a whopping 8Mhz. I imagine Intel struck a deal early on with IBM and that’s how they cornered the CPU market as well as Microsoft pushing IBM’s PC-DOS out of existence with MS-DOS.

But, is it just me? Someone like me that knows all the history of the little boxes and where they all came from and how they started? (Of course I skipped over the earlier Apples and Tandy’s attempt at PC greatness, the 5.25 floppies and 3.5s that don’t exist anymore, etc). Is it just a simple fact that “PC” now means IBM Compatible running Microsoft Windows and “Mac” means awesome computer that puts PCs (in this context) to shame?

I write this post on my 800MHz PowerPC G4 iMac with 768MB SDRAM that I bought used off of eBay and received January 14th, 2004. It’s running 10.4.11 Tiger Mac OS X … It shipped with Jaguar (10.2) but the previous owner gave me Panther (10.3) which I had also purchased separately.

I now run 2 MacBook Pros, a 17 and a 15 both with Snow Leopard (10.6) and a Dell Mini running Leopard (10.5). I bought 10.5 for the Dell (Family version) and tried to install it on the G4 PPC and that was a no go for processors under 866MHz and Snow is Intel only. It took the Intel version of the Mac (and OSX) before I was able to lose Microsoft completely. Whatever the mixture of technologies came together, that’s the case for me. The iMac didn’t get me there in 2004, it took the MacBook Pro in 2008, 4 and a half years later.

I don’t run any emulation software to run MS-Windows virtually, and I don’t utilize BootCamp. There is absolutely nothing Microsoft on my Macs at all. It’s wonderful. The 15″ came with Microsoft Office and I figured I would check it out. When I loaded Word, it said it wanted to update and I said sure. The words “Running Microsoft Update” came up on my screen and I freaked, I blew away the HD and installed my purchased Leopard from DVD. I wanted no remnant of a Microsoft product on my Mac.

So! Once you go Mac, you never go back. I think this is the case for anyone that seriously uses a computer for computing and not just web browsing and email. What do you think?

Snow Leopard Black Screen Fixed?

I ordered Snow Leopard from Amazon.Com and waited patiently for it to arrive. I read up on some sites about things to watch for when I upgraded, etc., but nothing can prepare you for when you actually go and do it.

I opted to run Carbon Copy Cloner as suggested by one site found by Google to make a complete backup of the hard drive inside my MacBook Pro 17. I tested by booting from the USB hard drive (hold down ALT at power up) to make sure I could “go back” if I had to by reversing the Carbon Copy Cloner step.

All of the FUD on the Internet was crap. Everything just worked. Until …

I had been working on my MacBook Pro 15 and the Snow Leopard blanked out (as my MBP17 normally does after about 20-30 minutes). Working on another MacBook Pro is a suggested method for passing the time. Yes, I suggest you have more than one Mac (if you’re cool enough). As I do sometimes, I swipe my finger across the trackpad to bring back whatever is on the screen. When I did this, the keyboard illuminated, but nothing shown on the screens (I have a 24″ external). The screen was black! I thought maybe the brightness went out of range and pressed the “f2″ key to bring it up. I see the dialog for the brightness level, but there’s nothing on the screen. I see the backlight getting brighter, but the screen is black … nothing there. I try the volume and that shows on the 24” (which is set as the main display). I Google on the MBP15 and find that people close their cover and open to a working Mac. After I wake from sleep, moving the mouse I see it as the spinning beach ball that it is. I hold down the power button to power off the Mac, there is no other choice.

Turn the MacBook Pro 17 on again and I have a working Snow Leopard. All the things that “they” said didn’t work work for me. I installed the 10.6.1 update and iTunes 9. So everything is up to date. It happens again, same symptoms. Black screens, can see volume and brightness dialogs when keys are hit, no mouse until after I sleep and wake to spinning beach ball mouse with black screens.

Google searching brings up black screen during the install, and some similar to my problem, but not all the same. Some blame just on the install blanking and they can see images on their screen with no backlight. I guess they’re fine after they upgrade cause I see no follow ups. I see more and more people blaming things having to do with the video or their video card. Some it’s playing games and some it’s running VLC … So I decided, mine “hangs” when the computer screen sleeps (that’s SCREEN, my MacBook Pro never sleeps), so I think *screen saver!*

While the computer is running, I click on the Apple, go to System Preferences… into Desktop & Screen Saver. Immediately, spinning beach ball. Aha! I can Force Quit System Preferences until I can get in there and click on the first screen saver I can click on to change it. What was selected when it hung was a directory “Screen Savers” … I don’t know where it came from – only thing I can think of was a shareware copy of that Aqua Marine fish tank-like screen saver that I never ended up buying. I’ve been using Flurry forever (and that was my first thought when I thought it might be OpenGL or something, which never worked on my KDE installs on cheap PC hardware) and thought that might have been hanging the computer’s video card or something.

So far so good, I will update if the longer the screen sleep gives different results. Here’s hoping this helped someone.

October Macworld Mac Virus FUD

As part of the package of the purchase of my new Mac, I was offered a subscription to Macworld. I agreed to the subscription and then offered to extend it at a very low price, so I did …

Each month I browse through the issue quickly. Sometimes I find things that help me with my daily Mac computing or software that I may have otherwise not been aware existed. There is also iPhone stuff periodically and reviews of peripheral hardware.

The Mac vs. PC controversy exists. No matter what. There’s the John Hodgman & Justin Long commercials and Microsoft’s commercials saving money buying a PC stuff. I’ve gone through the Linux vs. Microsoft stuff too, just so happens I choose FreeBSD (why I like the Mac so much). There should be a distinction that we’re talking about a PC running MS-Windows. A PC running FreeBSD is solid as a rock.

BUT! Macworld … keep it real … There’s no reason to start spreading FUD about the Mac and viruses. In two articles (in an issue that targets saving money utilizing your Mac as well as after the purchase of your Mac), Jason Snell and Dan Frakes mention the expense of viruses and it’s simply not true. It’s not an added expense to the PC, nor the Mac.

I’ve been computing since 1984, and I’ve never spent money on virus software. The BBS I started in 1990 used McAffe’s virus protection, and it was always free to use and download for BBS Sysops, and I think it was free to end users as well (I may still have an old copy on an old machine and I can look that up). Anyway, through the early years running PC-DOS and MS-DOS, I simply didn’t run stuff I didn’t know where it came from, and there was always some form of a free piece of Virus Software, now being called Anti-Virus software.

Regardless, I just wanted to post this since it’s simply not true, there is no expense in the Anti-Virus market (or just about any other) if you take the time and know where to look. These softwares offer free daily updates to virus signatures as well, so no subscription to pay for. They’re normally much more up to date than any of the pay subscriptions as well.

FREE MS-Windows Anti-Virus Software called AVG.

FREE Mac (and all others) Anti-Virus software called ClamAV.

It’s already a fact that any PC sucks if it has some version of MS-Windows on it, you don’t have to make stuff up.

Going Mac, one person at a time …

So my brother Tom calls me one night frustrated as heck because he can’t make a copy of a DVD. A simple thing, pop a DVD into the computer and click “Copy”. It’s of his performance at a show, and he wants to make copies for himself and the rest of the members of the band. He’s been trying Windows machines and utilizing Nero. I think he had purchased a copy of Nero, but it wasn’t cooperating. He then tried using a trial version from their web site that would be fully functional, just slow (write @ 1X or something). It may be that he purchased Nero, and that was on his old PC which was in storage and he thought he might go get that to get the job done. Regardless, no matter how far he got, the copy was not happening.

I told him to stop over, and I would make the copy no problem. I have a Macbook Pro and a Windows PC where I was, so no matter what, we’d make a copy. I ended up using a trial version of Toast I got with Cubase 5. But even so, I would have tried the FREE Mac software Burn if Toast hadn’t stepped up. It was a click, “Copy” and it asked how many copies you wanted.

While we waited for the process to complete, Tom reiterated his DVD copying experience and frustrations. He was to the point where he was going to go out and buy a new computer to make this work! He thought maybe his PC was too old for such a task as copying a DVD. I said, “If you’re going to buy a new computer, you should buy a Mac.” I think that was Monday, August 17th. I saw Tom a week later, Monday, August 24th and he told me he bought an iMac. He was going back to the store to have a one on one session with someone who knows Logic. I told him Cubase 5 or Digital Performer 6 were good choices as well … and you can always play with GarageBand.

I hardly ever touch a Microsoft Windows machine anymore unless I have to. All my servers are FreeBSD and the Mac software (OS X) is FreeBSD based. The interface is so much more intuitive and I venture to say “cleaner” … It’s much more of a pleasure to develop web sites and programs on and mix music as well … Come on Windows people, once you go Mac, you never go back! Or so they say … but who are “they” actually? Probably a bunch of satisfied Mac users! =)

Two out of Three ain’t bad; 10.5.7 Mac OS X Update Failed

Out of the MBP17, MBP15 and the Dell Mini 9, the MBP15 wins with no issue, but I’ll tell you about the others.

By the way, if you didn’t know, “MBP” is short for MacBook Pro. I have the silvers w/matte displays. Bring back the matte and firewire Apple! =)

Let’s start off with a complaint, cause that’s what I do. I use MenuMeters for the Mac. I was made aware of its existence by it being on one of the OSX386 Project distributions. Anyway, because I’m running it, I see activity on my Mac that others are oblivious to … I like to know why something is taking so long, or if there might be a problem. So the complaint is, it takes me a while to figure out that the Mac is downloading updates. 10.5.7 was a kinda big one, and when the Mac is downloading that long and I didn’t initiate it, I’d kinda like to know about it. I think Apple should notify you it’s doing so, that’s all.

Pictured is the 3 About This Mac windows after I was all done. They all made it without any serious perspiration. I started on the MBP17. After the update, the 17″ screen remained gray. It did automatically boot twice, but after the second boot went nowhere. I waited an ample amount of time while I saw nothing happening. You know, I’m used to having to wait when I don’t have my meters. So then I started Googling on the Mini 9 while it downloaded its update. After reading a bunch of the obvious posts from people that shouldn’t be allowed access to computers, I decided to unplug everything from the MBP17. External screen, external hard drives, external keyboard and mouse. Lo and behold, MBP17 solved, and the screen hopped right over when I plugged the 24″ back in.

I let the Mini 9 run its own update and it did a fine job, although on the final boot, the graphics were horrible. The screen could not be seen at all. So, I fired up the MBP15 so it could download its update and I could Google what was up with the Mini 9. I was expecting something might have happened to it since I read what the update did and there was something in there for video. I just figured I would boot via CD and reinstall the kext files, etc, but I skipped Google entirely and went straight to the MyDellMini.Com Forums … There was a forum about the 10.5.7 update and apparently it’s been out for a while. I just got it this morning, weird … One thing in the forum was the noticing that although we were all there discussing something that shouldn’t work anyway, regular Mac users all over the place were having 10.5.7 update problems … same as I described above with the MBP17. There’s articles from Macworld and Computerworld out there about using the Mac as a firewire device, etc. Work arounds for the update problems. Anyway, I digress.

Fix for Mini 9 was what I expected and even easier than I had thought it would be … I went to the trouble of hooking up the external CD/DVD drive, etc, but all I needed to do was start in Safe Mode and rerun the Dell EFI proggy … I got the latest (1.2a5 I think), popped it on a USB stick and shoved it into the Mini 9. Let Finder unzip it, ran the program and off to the races. Mini 9 is fine, and that rhymes three times. Whoops! Four.

Leaving the MBP15 for last, it gave no problems what-so-ever … Nothing external about it, and nothing weird going on with it …

From what I heard (read) while surfing around, this is the last release before Snow Leopard. How anyone would know that, I don’t have a clue.

So there you have it, Meatloaf would be proud. “Baby we can talk all night, but that ain’t gettin’ us nowhere.” (or maybe Utopia would be proud, the band on Bat Out of Hell, Todd Rundgren, Kasim Sulton, Roger Powell, Wee Willie Wilcox). I always say Bat Out of Hell is Utopia with Meatloaf fronting. Good luck on your own 10.5.7 update!

Dell Mini 9 and Mac OS X

If it weren’t for the fact that I’m using a Dell Mini 9 running Mac OS X 10.5.6 to post this entry, I guess I could be skeptical of the claims that a little tiny thing like this would be able to run Mac OS X like my MacbookPros. Well let me tell you, it’s pretty dern neat!

Using a formula easily found on the MyDellMini forums, it’s true. You can run the Mac OS X you purchased on the Dell Mini 9 and everything appears to work. Some things I haven’t tried yet, but those things I would probably never use. Only snag I ran into installing was my external DVD drive didn’t work with the install DVD. I bought an LG specifically for this purpose, but a borrowed Sony got it done.

I can’t say that this would be a replacement for a Macbook, but for someone like me who likes to have his OS X not very far away, so far it’s amazing! Only things I wonder about is space on the SSD and I have a 32G installed. I’ve already installed Xcode and my Rails development environment. The SSD shows as being 28.38 GB in size and has 19.46 GB available. I wish they would standardize the size of storage devices. You know, the 1000 vs. 1024 thing. Bah!

So having 20GB to play around with I think is fine. Again, I think this is more for the away from home convenience rather than a power house of storage. I mean, at least I can develop in cramped spaces and I don’t have to worry about fitting a 15 or 17″ MBP anywhere. This little guy rocks.

I’ll update in the future after having more experience with it. But so far, can’t beat this thing with a stick! Mobile Mac OS X for less than $500.