J2 Consulting

Reaction to today’s Apple announcements

jjmarcus — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 01:18:35 +0000

Apple TV

1) At $99, they’re likely to sell a gajillion!

2) I love the ability to stream data. Curious if it will confuse people to have to work it through iTunes.

3) Netflix. Awesome.

4) I’m gonna be disappointed if they don’t allow other apps and services like Pandora.

5) Micro USB means they’re trying to make it hard to hack, which is annoying and hopefully not a dealbreaker. I need to get non-MPEG content on there.

iPod touch

With a mic and two cameras, that thing becomes an awesome communcation device, no AT&T contract required. You could do wireless off of a Mifi or whatever and have VoIP and Facetime everywhere.

iPods nano and shuffle

Very smart updates.

Ping??

I just have no idea what to think.

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Prepare a new hard drive for Time Machine

jjmarcus — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 22:58:55 +0000

(I like the LaCie d2 Quadra 1TB. These instructions assume that model, but can be applied to any.)

Make sure the drive is on. Go to spotlight at the top right of your computer screen, a little magnifying glass. Type “disk.” Open Disk Utility. In the left sidebar of Disk Utility, if the hard drive is on, you should see a line called just LaCie, with a blue logo. Click the line above it that looks like “Lacie 1TB” or something like that with numbers.

Click the partition tab. On the right. Change Current Scheme to 1 partition. Click the options button below, choose “GUID Partition Table” and hit OK. Name the volume (top right of the window) something like “Backup 1.” Hit Apply at bottom right. You’re good to go. Your Mac will ask if you want to use the new volume for backup. Say yes. If it doesn’t go into Time Machine preferences and choose “Backup 1.”

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On Airport

jjmarcus — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 16:34:21 +0000

“Unplugged all Airport satellites — wifi now works from the Airport Extreme. I guess I will try replugging in the others one at a time.”

Ok, here’s the root idea, with details below: you do have to start with one base station as the hub, the master. Test basic connectivity and range.

Then plug in and reset ONE Express. When you get that one green-lighted, stop. Then use your network for a few days and see how it feels.

Test network range, speed, and ease of connection with all devices, e.g. taking a computer or phone away from the house, using a different wifi network, then bringin’ ‘em home and seeing if they hook back up without you having to kick ‘em in the pants. Also, test any peripheral services such as AirTunes — playing audio wirelessly from iTunes and other applications; you gotta know about Airfoil (http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/)! — and printing to a printer plugged into the Express’ USB port.

Then call me to discuss.

Now, some details, sort of psychological:

Networking is a real arcane process. You gotta either know what’s up, or do what the software tells you.

Airport devices are actually easier than other manufacturers, but they are still the least Apple-simple items in the consumer lineup. You have to be ready to reset all of them to factory defaults and start from scratch one airport at a time. It’s also important to know that Apple doesn’t sanction using more than three airport devices on a given network. Multiple base stations (comprising both Extremes and Expresses) should be connected as an atom looks: a nucleus with satellites, as opposed to in a chain or series, which configuration I have found unreliable.

The most crucial recommendation I can make about configuring a wifi network is to have patience, about 3 or 4 hours worth on your first try with multiple base stations. You’ll get it, you just have to turn the puzzle pieces around a couple of times.

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Links to the free iPhone/iPad apps I download for everyone

jjmarcus — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 20:56:09 +0000

Flipboard (iPad only)

A couple that more people should get into:

Evernote

Simplenote… hey, where did Simplenote go? Oh, here it is, revved up just a touch with tags and stuff.

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Picking an internet service provider in San Antonio

jjmarcus — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 04:18:57 +0000

For the record, my order of preference for ISPs in South Texas is:

1) Time-Warner – very fast, decent customer service, not AT&T

2) Grande Communications – often very fast, offer Fiber-to-the-Home in some places, good pricing, sometimes excellent (but sometimes bozo) customer service, and at least they’re not AT&T

a distant last) AT&T …
… Let me tell you, these jokers are probably the worst company we have to deal with. If they have even the smallest opportunity to screw something up, they will. I’m serious:

Call to change your billing address, they cancel your internet service. We ask them to install internet, and they put it dangling smack dab in the middle of the office and charge our client a mysterious $300 for moronic work, and then we have to come back and arrange things logically and have to charge for another couple of hours. We ask AT&T to troubleshoot a modem, and they log onto my client’s #$^%@! server, and change the IP address – a huge no-no — which shuts down file access, and forces me to make a bloody emergency call to set right.

Plus their internet is like 1/3 the speed of everybody else’s. At one of my clients’ office, it feels like a dial-up connection, and they say they can’t make it faster.

For the love of all that’s good and right in the world, do yourselves, your employees and loved ones, and your IT contractor a favor, and don’t make us use AT&T’s crappy internet.

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Taiwanese TV explains Antennagate

jjmarcus — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:11:43 +0000

Awesome cartoon with Jobs as heir of Vader.

Taiwanese TV explains Antennagate
NMA News, the Taiwan TV station that recreates news events as ‘fly on the wall’ 3D animations, has applied its gift to Antennagate. It starts slow, but really gets going when the lightsabers come out. Bonus: Gizmodo is mistakenly referred to as “Gizmondo.” Hat Tip: Thanks, Michael Logan!

J2 Consulting ~ j2mac.com/calendar ~ 210.367.3420

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BBOD, the feared “beach ball of death”

jjmarcus — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:20:38 +0000

> I am having BBOD “beach ball of death” issues.
I’m going to phrase generally, for the sake of a blog post:

Please check Activity Monitor (in /Applications/Utilities/). Look in the System Memory tab first (low memory is the usual cause of beach ball). If the green slice of free memory is small, reboot.

Then look at CPU. If you have more green or red or blue than black, reboot. Finally, storage: again, if hard drive available space is small (below 10% of capacity), then we need to clear some space, possibly downloading Disk Inventory X from http://www.derlien.com/.

If, after check CPU & RAM, you’re still seeing the BBOD, we have several possibilities:

1) We could reinstall Leopard, but the G5 in question just recently got that upgrade, so I think it unlikely that that would fix it.
2) We can cast a baleful eye on your hardware, particularly your hard drive. It’s fairly likely that, on this older machine, the system disk is bad, and that makes for a lot of real bad BBOD. Changing a drive out is easy and cheap on a Power Mac or Mac Pro, and might be a worthy idea anyway. Here’s a link: http://amzn.to/SeagateBarracuda500GBonAmazon

3) I’m gonna say to any G5 user that it’s time to upgrade. This may not be in the budget at the moment, but it should definitely be a priority. Snow Leopard is an important update for productivity, stability, and future compatibility. Call me to discuss!

P.S. It is worth noting that, whenever I pick up my laptops — on which I’m always running 10 apps and 17 web pages, along with countless other 3rd-party utilities — I’m almost guaranteed to encounter the BBOD. And both laptops are current-generation units with 4GB RAM and plenty of disk space. But my iPad… Always smooth, cos I can only keep one thing open on it at any given time. And it keeps me focused on the task at hand. I know the tablet doesn’t work in a production environment, but I find the change in paradigm interesting.

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Search tips: What every googler should know

jjmarcus — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 03:06:34 +0000

http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/features.html

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In case it’s not said anywhere else

jjmarcus — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:52:19 +0000

In case it’s not said anywhere else: please try not to try to delete your “All Mail” folder in your mail client. Also, try not to select and delete all the messages in All Mail.

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iPhone 4 antenna hasn’t bugged ne

jjmarcus — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:57:35 +0000

It’s actually totally fine. Every phone has an antenna weakness somewhere. In the iPhone 4′s case, it’s a little more easy to trigger, but it hasn’t affected my experience at all (and I’m left-handed, and haven’t been concentrating on holding it a certain way). Also, while Apple’s response — “buy a case” — came out pretty douche-y, but as an independent, I can second that suggestion as something you need anyway. FWIW, the 4′s reception on GSM, 3G, and GPS has been markedly better than my previous units (and I’ve had ‘em all). On Jul 12, 2010, Steve wrote:

> Ouch! Perhaps a chink in the armor….
> > From The New York Times:
> > Consumer Reports Says iPhone 4 Has Design Flaw
> > Consumer Reports said signal problems with the iPhone 4 were a result of a flaw in the phone’s antenna design, and that it could not recommend purchasing the phone. > > http://nyti.ms/d7xZrx

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