Tag: apple

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Your iPhone is tracking you!

Oh yeah, time to freak out, because your iPhone is tracking you! Well, it’s tracking itself, or cell towers, or wifi access points, or… something of interest, but sadly, it’s not doing a great job at it.

For some people, this is “Big Brother” type of scare… and for others (fans of geo-tracking) it’s not quite good enough.

I grabbed iPhone Tracker, and dug through some of my files, and took a look at the SQLite database, and was fascinated by the data (I tend to get fascinated by data) but I didn’t feel like alerting the media about it…

Will Clarke has a nice blog post about this as well. It’s worth a read.

Here’s some data that was marked 2010-12-29. I’m not sure what that date refers to, but this seems to show my trip taken on 2011-01-01. I find it interesting to see this data. Back in mid-2010 I wrote some code to make an archive of my Foursquare data, with the thought I would map it all out at some point. Sadly, I’ve collected a lot of data, but haven’t done anything useful with it yet. Maybe it would make more sense for me to just get my geo-data directly from my iPhone. I mean, I don’t even have to check in and it knows (roughly) where I’ve been!

This seems to do a poor job of showing where I was. I mean, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t in all of these location. Maybe it was just my phone connecting to towers in all of these locations…

A nice table view of some of the geo-data the iPhone records. Now to figure out how to use it for something good. Or bad. Or somewhere in-between.

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Kill that Screen Sharing Dialog Box

As long as we’re taking about OS X, I have a fix for when you try to screen share another computer on your network and the dialog box hangs… Really, this is super-annoying. You can get rid of it by rebooting, but I hate rebooting. You can’t easily hide it because it floats above other windows, and you can’t force quit it. Well, not easily…

In your favorite terminal program (I personally like iTerm but Terminal.app will do) type the following: 

ps aux | grep NetAuthAgent

And you should see something like this: 

pete  38146  0.4  0.2  2823072 13644 ??  S  8:28AM 0:43.59 /System/Library/CoreServices/NetAuthAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/NetAuthAgent
pete  40131  0.0  0.0  2425700   264 s001 R+ 10:26AM 0:00.00 grep NetAuthAgent

That first line, with the /System/Library/CoreServices/NetAuthAgent.app bit is the one you want. See the first set of numbers in that line? That’s the process id (or PID.) Once you know the PID, you can do the following:

kill 38146

Typing the kill command followed by the process id should get rid of the dialog box.

Alternately, you can type: 

killall NetAuthAgent

killall is a little more risky, as it kills processes based on name, not the PID, so if you have multiple process with the same name, it will kill them all. Hose things up enough and you’ll need to reboot, which is what we wanted to avoid doing in the first place.

Aren’t bugs fun?

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Fixing an iDVD “locked” file

I still use iDVD a lot, because it’s quick and easy to spit out a DVD either with simple menus, or an as auto-play disc with no menus at all… but every now and then, I get this warning about the file being locked.

This specific error came up when I copied the file to another Mac, but I’ve seen similar locking problem even on the same Mac and even with the same user…

Here’s the fix: command-click on the file in the Finder, and select Show Package Contents from the contextual menu. This will open a Finder window showing you the files.

Go into Contents, and then Resources, and look for the project.lock file, and delete it. That should fix it.

Bonus Tip: If you want a fast way of recursively opening all folders in list view, select the main folder, and hit command-option-right arrow. Want to close them all? command-option-left arrow.

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Three Apples

Three Apples

Milwaukee-based developer Josh Dean wonders what Apple product he should get?

Well, I’ve got two of the Apple product he’s considering, so I thought I’d share my opinion…

iPad
I’ve only had an iPad about two months now, and for me, it’s a consuming device. I do very little creating with it. That said, it’s an amazing consuming device. I use it for reading, mainly with Google Reader, for which there are many good clients. I also use it around the house as it’s often much more convenient to grab it for quick searches than any full-fledged computer. If you took away my iPad, there would be a hole in the way I access information around the house. That “around the house” bit is key to my usage. I rarely take it out of the house, but that’s just me. I could live without an iPad and still get all of my work done. For me, the iPad is much more about enjoyment and fun than it is about work.

MacBook Pro
I have a MacBook Pro, and before that, I had an iBook, and before that, a PowerBook… A laptop, for me, is a supplemental device to get more work done, or be able to work anywhere. I tend to do probably 80% of my work on desktop machines, but having a laptop lets me take the show on the road, and also lets me do two things at once. As a sidenote, the iPad has filled in much of what I used to use the MacBook Pro for around the house. As for work, the MacBook lets me do (almost) any work I need to do away from the office. It’s got FireWire, USB ports, an SD Card reader, video out, etc… The MacBook Pro is a full-fledged computing device for creating anything I need to create.

MacBook Air
I do not have a MacBook Air, and I don’t think I’d get one. It looks like an awesome netbook (though Apple will never call it that.) I used to use an Asus Eee PC 701, the first real netbook to hit the market. I loved the small size and light weight of the device, but it left a lot to be desired (not running Mac OS X was one thing.) The netbook was limited, but I learned to live within those limitations. I think the MacBook Air would be a little limiting for me, but then, I tend to want to do hardware as well as software stuff, and I need FireWire. If was just a developer writing code and didn’t need to worry about interfacing with certain hardware or having an optical drive available, the MacBook Air would probably be fine. Still, I tend to prefer the extra features a MacBook Pro affords, but again… that’s just me.

I don’t know if this will help Josh, or anyone else, make a decision, but I figured I’d share my opinion.

Here’s a few previous blog posts that may also be helpful:

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iPad First Impressions

iPad

I got an iPad. It was a gift from Z2 Marketing. I hesitate to call this a “review” and I’ll just say “First Impressions” for the following observations…

Despite my best efforts to avoid being called an “Apple Fanboi” I do somehow own a Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, Mac mini, iPod, iPhone, and now an iPad. In my defense, I’ve been using Apple products since about 1979, and have used them professionally in my work for about 17 years. I’m not the kind that runs out and buys anything Apple sells… but I do get what I think I need to do my work, or make my life more enjoyable/easier.

With that disclaimer out of the way, I’ll start with this, the iPad is pretty amazing… at what it does. If you’re fine with the limitations of the iOS, then you’ll probably like the iPad. The typical iOS issues that bug me with the iPhone and iPod exist here as well, no access to the file system, the walled garden of the App Store, the closed nature of the device… that said, within the parameters of Apple hardware and the restrictive iOS, it’s a pretty stunning device.

The iPad is probably not something I would have bought for myself since I’ve got a number of computers/devices which do much of what the iPad does. That said, the iPad fills this space between the MacBook and the iPhone, which is probably right where Apple positioned it. (See my post Consume / Create – Apple Products for my previous thoughts on the matter.)

A few days after getting the iPad I was feeling under the weather, and ended up spending a lot of downtime on the couch and in bed, and in both cases the iPad really fit the bill as far as the device to use. Reading RSS feeds, wasting time with Twitter or Facebook, watching Netflix videos… the iPad excels at these tasks! I have not done much writing on it, and would probably not want to use it for extended writing of any sort.

Speaking of writing, I did try to pair it with an old Apple Wireless Keyboard (using Bluetooth) but it didn’t work… the iPad would not pair with it as Apple does not support it. Charging is another interesting topic. You can’t just use the same charging methods you use with an iPod or iPhone. The iPad comes with a 10 watt charger. The plain old “USB Chargers” I use all the time don’t kick out enough juice. There’s a few notes I’ve found that talk about charging, but I’ve not dug into the subject very much yet. The battery does seem to last a long time… but also takes quite a while to fully charge up.

Update: Yes, it does charge via USB (when not using the 10 watt charger) it just charges very slowly…

All in all I’m really liking the iPad, and what it can do, as is the rest of the family. What would be nice? Support for multiple users, an upgrade that makes it more even feature-wise with the iPhone 4 (camera(s), slightly different design, etc.) a more open platform… but honestly, it’s a pretty cool consuming device, and for what it is, I’m very happy with it.