Call the Listener Hotline 951-281-6332
Tonight’s show is brought to you by:
This show is a member of Friends In Tech
Tonight co-host is Katie from The MacCorePodcast. Katie and I discuss what we need to do to buy a new Mac.
Show Notes
One of my listeners Reinaldo, also know as EagerDragon over at the AppleInsider Forums, wrote to me and posted a comment on this web-site stating that nowhere on Apples web-site do they proclaim to provide official support for using an AirPort Extreme with an external drive as a way to do backups with TimeMachine. I tended to disagree with Reinaldo, and asked him to post his comments, as differing opinions are always encouraged here.
Today he updated me with a link to a post over at AppleInsider Forums where he makes the same statements, shortly followed by another post by “Taylorman” who claims that he spent three hours talking to Apple Support about this issue and was told over and over that. . .
“while some rumor sites claim that Apple supports this functionality, and that some people seem to be able to accomplish it- Apple in no way supports or claims to provide wireless backup functionality through Time Machine through anything other than TimeCapsule.”
Again, to see the full comments go here (their comments are comments 16 and 18).
What is Apples position on this. Well, Apple hasn’t called and I can’t find any reference to it on the net, however over at the AirPort Extreme Apple web-site they say the following . . .
” The AirPort Extreme lets you turn your external USB hard drive into a drive you can share with all the users on your network. It’s called AirPort Disk, and it’s a simple and convenient way to share files among everyone in your family, office, or class.”
I have searched the Apple web-site to see if there is any evidence of Apple supporting the use of the AirPort Extreme along with an attached drive as a TimeMachine (like the TimeCapsule does). I have found no such evidence.
The question then becomes does Apple support TM writing to sparse bundles on a NAS? We know that you can indeed use the AirPort Extreme for this purpose. Associate Editor George Starcher from this blog has done it successfully (both on a wired and wireless network).
The fact that Apple does not want to spend time, support hours, money, and effort to “officially” provide phone or other support for the AirPort Extreme does not surprise however. With so many different brands of hard-drives, routers etc; why would they want to provide this support?
To me that does not mean the AirPort Extreme can’t do it, or that people should not do it (at their own risk).
I think that it is our responsibility to report what functionality we find in devices like this that does work.
I want to thank Reinaldo for his interest in the subject and for providing a differing opinion on this subject. The fact remains that there is no official documentation that I have seen that supports that Apple does or does not provide support for this function.
When I saw in my RSS reader that Adobe was offering an on-line photo editor called Photoshop Express I had to try it out.
Photoshop Express is a new online photo service that makes it easy to upload, share and edit digital photos on-line The service is free, currently includes 2 GB of online storage, and is a public beta.
I had ten minutes at lunch to look at this service and upload exactly one photo.
Well from what I can see this is no a full blown Photoshop, or even Elements, nor should it be. It is clearly based on Photoshop and has much of the look and feel of it’s big brother. Making adjustments to my one photo was easy. I as able to adjust exposure easily and the program gives you a strip of thumbnails with various degrees of the settings applied; You just click on the one that looks best to you. One nice feature is that the edits were non-destructive, so if I did mess up I could revert. I’m sure I will talk more about this service on the show, but first impressions are lasting, and Adobe’s Photoshop Express made a good one.
Today I received a review unit of the OWC Mercury On-The-Go FireWire 800/400 + USB 2.0 2.5″ Portable SATA hard drive. My love for hard drives of all kinds is no secret to all of you. However this is the first time I’ve owned an FW800 drive. Below are some un-boxing pictures for you to enjoy. I will partition this baby and try it out for several weeks. I’ll then provide a full review on the podcast sometime in April.
by: George Starcher, Associate Editor
I have been reading up on the IT project disaster that is the 2010 paperless Census. You can read some details over on the Computer World article. Engadget also had a short writeup. In a nutshell a complete miscommunication by the Census Bureau and the contracting firm, Harris Corp. Ever changing technical requirements seem to be the most cited issue. Add to it how the pda Harris is using is so complex it confuses the heck out of the census workers. No kidding. Check out the photo of this monster below.
May I say one thing to the government and to Harris? iPhone SDK! Come on. How on earth can anyone be expected to use that ugly thing? Imagine walking door to door all day long. Trying to find your way around with that little screen, your hands sweating and getting dirt in all those keys. Imagine now a nice simple iPhone app or even iPod touch. A clear icon for Man, Woman, girl, boy. Touch and slide your finger to input a count. Sure the data collected may be more complicated but I bet a clever developer can fix that up real quick. Side to side swiping perhaps? Tie in google maps… Well you get the idea. And I bet being a census worker is both taxing and low paying. So load on some music for them as they go door to door and they might actually be motivated in addition to NOT confused on how to enter the census data. And no stylus to lose either.
Heck I go to the Big Nerd Ranch ObjectiveC/Cocoa bootcamp in October. Maybe I will make my learning project doing up a census program. If I even get a fraction of the money we wasted on this fiasco I could retire.
CORRECTION: During the show and the review of the OtterBox product I made a mistake. The case I actually got was the OtterBox for iPod video not the classic case. My error was that I said it was the classic case. I am using this case with an iPod Video, but other than that my statements were correct.
Therefore if you are thinking about getting this case make sure you get the right one. By the way the classic Armor™ series can be submerged in water, but only if it has the classic iPod is in it. In fact, all Armor™ Series cases are waterproof. Thanks to Kristin from OtteBox for helping me clarify this.
Call the Listener Hotline 951-281-6332
Tonight’s show is brought to you by:
This show is a member of Friends In Tech
Enter the Monthly Ambrosia Software Giveaway
Just send me an email at typicalmacuser[at][gmail][dot][com] with the subject line “I want to win some Ambrosia” One winner will be picked randomly during the last show of each month . You can win a license to any software product from Ambrosia Software.
Congratulations to the March winner.
Show Notes:
Reviews
Listen to the show to find out how you may win a copy of Track Time . Scotty the developer has graciously donated some licenses for me to give away. This is a first come, first win opportunity, so good luck.
Also get 20% of Track Time now just for being a listener. Click here for a special discount page. Thanks to Scotty for his generosity and for offering this discount to all of us.
Using Disk Utility repair disk permission
MacFixIt’s complete tutorial on preference files
Force Quiting applications
Choose Apple menu > Force Quit, select the application in the list, and click Force Quit.
Hold down the Command and Option keys and press Esc. Then select the application in the list and click Force Quit.
Hold down the Option key and press the application icon in the Dock.
Upgrading a hard drive on a Macbook pro (Marworld article)
Other World Computer hard drives
Other World Computer hard drive installation
by: George Starcher, Associate Editor
Well, let me tell ya. I had some fun today. First my day started off ok. I had a dentist appointment today so I started early by logging into work from remote to do a few things. It didn’t make sense to drive 30 mins into my office and back again in time for my appointment. Especially at today’s gas prices. All in all everything was going ok, then I noticed my wife’s mac (my old iMac G5) was not on. I turned it back on and man it took some time to boot. An unusually long time. Then I find it does not see the attached firewire drive used for her Time Machine backup. Nor does it see the network. All that in time to go get a crown put in at the dentist.
I come back home to get back to stuff for work and find my Internet is out. I did the reboot chicken dance and no joy. Partial connection with Comcast but it never quite comes up. So I go to look at the web page of my Motorola cable modem. Of course you cannot view this on a mac. You have to use… wait for it…. Internet Explorer. Good thing I have VMWare fusion with an XP VM ready. A call to comcast and I get one of the signs the world is indeed ending. I get a tech who listened to what I said and simply said a tech would call me back. No hour long hoops to jump through. Now for the ending of the world… The tech calls me in 5 minutes and says he will be here in 30 after I read him the signal data from the cable modem web page. He was here in 20. He had me fixed up in 15 minutes. Some loose connections and tarnished connectors. He replaced them and I was back up. At least I fixed an emergency issue at work using my Sprint network card while I waited on the Comcast tech to show up and fix the signal issue.
THEN it gets better. My linksys with ddWRT firmware starts dropping out. Most likely it is interference from neighbors on the same channel. And a linksys is not the strongest wireless unit in the world. Well I had a new Extreme N router I bought with my birthday gift card from my mom. And this no wireless thing was cramping my style in staying connected to work. I quickly swapped out my old Extreme N to the new one, giving me gig wired connections for things like my Intel iMac and Xbox360. I then reset my old Extreme N (10/100 wired) to take the place of my linksys. That put me back in business to finish my issues for work. The reason for the two Extremes is one provides my N-5GHz radio wireless network. The other my N/G 2.4GHz network for my Wii, iPod Touch and PowerBook. The plus side? At least for me, revenge on my RF jamming neighbors. Now I have the big bad Apple radio on N on the 2.4Mhz band. =) I doubt *MY* connection will drop any more. Can’t say much for theirs though.
After dinner tonight I decided to take a deep breath and trouble shoot my wife’s iMac G5 some more. I plug the external Time Machine drive onto my PowerBook and check the disk. At least it is ok and has all her data, itunes etc on it. No file system errors either. BUT I find no matter what I do, the network cable won’t connect. It doesn’t see the internal Extreme wireless card. I even tried booting the mac in firewire disk (Target) mode. My PowerBook would never see it.
So a completely fun day of playing tech support across the board. With the joy of a new crown at the same time.
Now to see when the Genius Bar can take the iMac for a potential motherboard replacement. I believe the AppleCare has not run out on it yet. If not, then this will be the second motherboard it has saved me from. Well worth the initial minor cost of the AppleCare itself. Otherwise I’ll have to get her a mac mini and restore from her Time Machine drive. Makes me feel better to know Adam Christianson already proved out that process for me. Wish me luck.
Call the Listener Hotline 951-281-6332
Tonight’s show is brought to you by:
This show is a member of Friends In Tech
Tonight co-host is Allison Sheridan from the NosillaCast . We had a blast talking about our favorite ways of finding software, the iPod Touch and what we do to push away from the keyboard once in a while. Or, what we don’t do. It was great having Allison on again.
Show Notes
Feeder from Reinvented Software
Together from Reinvented Software ( and yes Steve the developer totally rocks)
Erica Sadun blog (read it , live it)
Associate editor George Starcher covers the last part in this series on how to set up and ue OpenDNS. For ipod and iphone versions please go here and download.
George Starcher covers part two of this three part OpenDNS tutorial. You can get the iPhone and iPod versions here.
Visit and support our show sponsor
