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Showing posts with the label Apple

Is your Mac shutting down after it goes to sleep?

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This eluded me for some time! Usually it didn't go all the way through the shut down, as there were files that needed saving. Either way, it was a pain getting going after my Mac was asleep. This is how I solved it. Go to System Preferences... > Security & Privacy Select the padlock in the lower-left. A user name/password dialog box will open. If you don't have the correct privileges for your Mac, you may be stuck at this point. Enter your user name and password. The padlock icon will change to an open padlock; The Advanced... button will no longer be grayed out/unaccessible. (See the image below.) Select the Advanced... button. Uncheck the box proceeding "Log out after _XX_ minutes of inactivity." Select OK Close the Security & Privacy preferences dialog box. That did solve the issue for me. I've heard from others that had similar issues, and what finally solved it for them was to make sure their hard disks didn't go to s

Replaced my Macbook with a PC

For the last 4 months I've been using a Macbook at work... my first Mac since the late 90s. I did this so I could enjoy all the benefits Mac lovers rave about. Today I replaced the Macbook with a Lenovo Win7 laptop, because there were more hindrances than benefits. The funny thing, I'm not sure if it's caused by Microsoft or Apple. Here's what I'll miss about my Macbook: Slightly lighter weight Scrolling using two-fingers on the touchpad My Lenovo does that too (though not as smooth). Here's why I gave up my Macbook: Several features of Outlook unavailable Date difference in Excel No Visio or Project Some websites require IE So the Mac fanatics could say it's because Microsoft has purposefully lagged behind in Mac versions of their software. Microsoft people could claim it's too costly to develop for an additional platform when Windows runs on 80%+ of all desktops and laptops. Regardless, I have a job to do and it's much easier on Wi

iTunes was unable to load provider data from Sync Services. Reconnect or try again later.

If you're experiencing this problem, "iTunes was unable to load provider data from Sync Services. Reconnect or try again later," perhaps the fix I found will work for you too. At the time of the error, I was running iTunes 10.4.1.10 on Windows 7 Home Premium, 64bit OS. I had just starting using iTunes again to sync with my iPhone 4. It had been nearly 2 years since I had used it with an iPhone -- the original. Try these steps to correct the problem: Eject / disconnect your all iTunes devices (iPhones, iPods, etc) Close iTunes Open Task Manager and kill the Sycservices process Rename the "C:\Users\ [your user name] \AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\SyncServices" folder. DO NOT delete the folder, because if this doesn't solve it or causes other problems you can always return to this older version of the folder. Restart iTunes Re-attach your device This worked for me. Let me know how it worked for you.

iTunes 9.1 on Windows 7 (x64) fails on update

Perhaps like me, you accepted the prompt when iTunes notified you that 9.1 was available for updating on your Windows 7 (x64) computer. After the rather large download though, the installation failed. Trying again later ended with the same results. I found some reports of this occurring on 32 bit Windows 7 and on Vista. From what I could gather, it appears to occur due to a conflict with the version of Bonjour that is already installed. (Bonjour is Apple's service discovery protocol, and is used by iTunes to find shared music on your network.) I was able to successful perform a manual update. Download iTunes 9.1 for Windows (64 bit) Close iTunes Run the install When I ran the install, it reported that my version of Bonjour was newer than the version within the install package, but it didn't cause any issues. (Note, I had previously installed the Bonjour Print Utility in troubleshooting a previous problem with my wireless modem and Apple TV. That fix ended up needing a firmware

Unable to Sync iPhone and Unable to Sync Photos to iPhone

Another issue I found moving my iTunes and iPhone to a new PC, was Sync'ing was hanging, though I did have my Apps, Podcasts, and Music. Upon further investigation, I discovered that if I did not sync my photos, then it no longer got stuck. First I was thinking it was a permission issue with Windows 7 -- but I made no progress. I finally figured out how to solve the issue. Stop the sync'ing Delete the iPod Photo Cache in my photo folder(s) Resync I can only assume the iPod Photo Cache had pointers to the location of my photos on my old computer.

iTunes Clean Up

In moving my music onto a new computer, I copied my backup music folder, which contained my iTunes library definition, onto my new drive. Then when I installed iTunes, I had duplicate entries of each file, with one being a bad link (as the path was different on my new computer). With nearly 4000 files (8000 listed), I didn't want to manually go through my list and delete the Songs that were broken (Exclamation point next to the Name in iTunes.) Fortunately with some searching, I found Paul Mayne , who had a solution. Through the use of 2 Smart Play Lists and a Play List, I was able to quickly remove the dead, duplicate listings. See Paul's post for the specific details. You can may also find yourself in trouble if you let iTunes scan your backup drive and your primary drive. This would actually create duplicates, one pointing to each drive. To correct this, temporarily rename the music folder on your back drive, which will make all the listings on the backup drive to now have i

Rip / manage music on your iPod

Sometime you need to manage music on your iPod that iTunes doesn't allow. I tried iDump, and it didn't recognize my music, so I tried SharePod . While iDump has a 30 day trial before purchase, SharePod is completely free -- donations accepted. SharePod installed quicker, and was very simple to use.

2009 Tech Predictions Review

I made 3 rather tame (or lame) tech predictions for 2009 -- none with any real relevance. Here's a recap of how I did. Apple will become less popular. Miss. Though a very subjective opinion, here's what happened. Throughout much of 2009 there was a lot of buzz about an Apple Tablet that never materialized, but it kept Apple in the news. Early in the year there was also a lot of buzz about Steve Jobs' health and further whether he would return to Apple or not. Upon his return, as announced, the buzz has died down. Finally, Apple received some spill over from the new Verizon ads that really trashed the AT&T 3G network. To counter some of the Apple buzz, we started seeing several Android phones (finally) ship late in the year. Overall, I don't think the buzz, and therefore popularity, died down as much as expected. On the other hand, clearly Apple was no where near as popular as they had been the two prior years with the iPhone. TWiT will lose its spot as the top te

Browser Wars III - Revenge of the ...?

Since Microsoft killed off Netscape (Browser Wars, the original), most users were not aware of any alternatives until Firefox (FF) came on the scene ( Mozilla vs. Godzilla - Browser Wars II). Actually, there was a 3rd browser that was and is quite good, Opera . More recently, Google announce their own web browser, Chrome , while Mozilla had released Firefox 3 (now FF 3.5 is available) and Apple released Safari 4. Since Microsoft released Internet Explorer 5 (IE5), I've been quite unhappy with the browser. It has suffered from security holes (predominately due to ActiveX), proprietary solutions (ActiveX again raises its ugly head), and slowness. I've also come to really like Firefox due to its extensibility with Add-ons. With the popularity of Firefox and now the additions of Chrome and Safari, you could say that Netscape is finally getting their revenge, sort of. Since Firefox came out of the aftermath of Nestcape and the additional fire power of Google and Apple, Microso

Listen to iPhone videos while using other iPhone functions

The iPhone's iPod player works great with audio. Start your favorite song or podcast, and while it plays, you can use other functions on the phone. This is one of the few background processes that works with the iPhone. If you try the same thing with a video, perhaps all you really care about is the audio portion, you're out of luck. As soon as you navigate away from the video player screen, the video stops playing. I have found a work-around, so you can listen to the video while you use other iPhone functions. Here are the steps: Find and start the video Navigate away from the video player by pressing the Home button Put the iPhone to sleep (press the top sleep/wake button) Wake the iPhone (press the top sleep/wake button, again) Double-click the Home button This will bring up the video, with the phone locked Press the play button Slide the slider to unlock the iPhone Now you will be able to listen to the video while you use other features of the iPhone. Have fun!

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak dances with the stars

Steve Wozniak takes one for the (geek) team as he puts himself out there to be ridiculed by the judges for his lack of rhythm. It's this type of attitude that led Steve to innovate -- take risks, even though you might fail.

It's coming, the Apple Wheel

Apple announces a revolutionary product, the keyboard-less laptop.

iTunes / iPhone buggy

The iPhone is the phone that everyone wants to love. Unfortunately, Apple makes that difficult at times. The 2.2 upgrade was the first error free upgrade I've had. But now I ran into another problem. I had added a new, 2nd drive to my PC as my media was consuming so much space. With that, I moved my photos and videos to the new drive. With photos, it was easy to point iTunes to the new location, but unfortunately for the videos it wasn't. iTunes uses a custom database (itl file) to store its media index and creates an xml file for a backup. If the itl file should become corrupt, it will rebuild with the xml file. If the itl file is non-existant, it will start over. Based on some various guides I found online, I used search and replace and updated the location for all the videos, and then I caused the itl file to be corrupt. iTunes read my updated xml file and rebuild the itl database file and I seemed to be back in business. Ahh, not so fast. Apparently iTunes does not back up

Apple TV (ATV) remote not working

Recently my Apple TV remote quit working. When I pressed the buttons, the light on the Apple TV lit, but nothing happened. I've since learned, similar to "pairing" your wireless key for your car, the Apple TV remote needs to be "paired" with your Apple TV. It's an easy process: Hold the Menu and Previous buttons for 6 seconds. You should see a new graphic appear, a remote and a broken chain. Then, Hold the Menu and Next buttons for 6 seconds. The graphic will go away, as you have just "paired" your remote with your Apple TV.

Remove the DRM from iTune purchased music

Most of us who have purchased iTunes music know that we can remove the DRM from the M4P audio files by burning the music onto a CD. But if you have a large collection, this can be very time consuming -- though having your music backed up to CD isn't a bad idea. For those of you who do not relish the idea of bacing up each every track, there might be a solution available for you. This first program, MagicISO , will convert up to 3 minutes per song for 14 days without purchasing -- I tried a song under 3 minutes and it seemed to work fine. You can buy it for $30 or get it free when you buy a 3rd party item or service through their site. For example, you can get the 2009 Entertainment Book for $25. Your second option is NoteBurner -- a $35 software that will allow you to burn to a virtual CD, and then back to MP3s. This batch converter works with iTunes, Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, Winamp, and SonicStage. Another option is TuneBite . TuneBite appears to play and capture, getti

Real iPhone speed, not the commercial speed

As published on the Silicon Alley Insider , here's a video that compares the real speed of an iPhone against the speed you see in the iPhone commercials. In looking at the ad, Apple has clearly cut out much of the connection and load times. Now let's examine the reality of cell phone network speeds. As reported by tests done by Computer World , AT&T's network averaged download speeds of 755Kbit/sec. and average upload speeds of 484Kbit/sec. Computer World also included a 3 second network connection time. With this information, let's calculate the load time for an average 50kb page. Convert our download rate to Kb: 755/8 (8 bits in a byte) = 94.4 Kb/sec Download page time: 50 / 94.4 = 0.53 seconds Total time: connection time of 3 sec + download time of 0.53 seconds = 3.53 sec For us to really get the performance we have come to expect from our computers, it appears the issue right now is the connection times. We can grow our page sizes 6x (and many have) before the

Microsoft Ad Campaign, Phase 2 is much different than Gates/Seinfeld

It's hard to figure whether the Gates/Seinfeld ads ran their course as expected or were they cut short because thy missed the mark expected. Regardless, Microsoft has releases some new, more relevant ads that displays all types of people and their roles as PC users. I'm a PC: Pride I'm a PC: Not Alone I'm a PC: Stereotype The New York Time released an analysis of the Microsoft strategy to combat the Apple TV spots, and they point out that Microsoft isn't the first company to try and take some very bad press and turn it around in their favor. “This is just the beginning, the first phase of the campaign,” said Mich Mathews, senior vice president for marketing at Microsoft. “We’re on a journey to reposition the PC.” Looks as if we may have many more entertaining commercial spots ahead of us.

Follow-up odds and ends: Google, Comcast and Microsoft

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Well it has been a week since Google released Chrome, a week since I've tracked my Internet bandwidth usage, and 5 days since Microsoft released its ads to compete against Apple. Let's take a look and see how each are doing. =============== I wrote a little about Google's surprise announcement of their new browser Chrome last week, highlighting some of its features. One feature that intrigued me was the ability to "tear-off" a tab and turn a browser window into a pseudo application on your desktop. I did just that with my email and RSS reader -- I replaced Thunderbird with a direct window into my Gmail account and replaced the RSS reader with Google's RSS reader. I had looked and tried many RSS readers before settling on Thunderbird, but found that over the last six months that I've used it less and less. I like the Google Reader interface much better than Thunderbird and others and Chrome has made it just a little easier to access it. In addition, in th

Fix crashing iPhone Apps

I discovered an easy fix to crashing iPhone Apps... turn Airplane Mode on and off or shut your iPhone off and on. By doing this, your iPhone re-establishes itself with the cell phone network. This reminds me of troubles I used to have with my old Sprint phone -- the longer I had it on, the more likely I would have problems with dropped calls. According to Sprint at the time, the cell phone needs to periodically re-establish itself with the cell database. This seems to have worked for me with the iPhone, as my crashes were always occurring when the iPhone was interacting over the network, such as trying to establish my location. Note that I have a first generation iPhone on firware 2.0.1. Let me know if this works for you or not.

Unable to call out on the iPhone

Update, 10:22 am PST: I am now able to make calls, receive email, and use the network. Update, 10:05 am PST : AT&T customer service confirmed that there is a major outage in Oregon and Washington and they are sending a technician out to fix it. They have no ETA on when it will be back up. This affects only the 2G network -- 3G is up and working. Update, 9:50 am PST : Still no change. No incoming or outgoing calls, nor access to any network functions. It's 9:00 am PST, just south of Portland, OR, and I am unable to dial out or receive calls on my first generation (firmware 2.0.1) iPhone. I confirmed the same experience with 3 of my co-workers. Data services are also down. I'll be looking for that credit on my next bill from AT&T.