iPhone 6 predictions

Want I'd like to see;

• Larger form factor & bigger screen
• Better camera
• Faster wireless mobile / cellular data capability
• Enhancements to Siri
• Better battery life
• Faster processor / more memory / better graphics
• Additional multitasking functionality / dual screen functionality
• More reliable / robust / less buggy / lower failure rate
• Beautiful new design
• Smart bezel to have some interactivity with the bezel of the device with the screen
• Larger choice in colour?
• Better quality speakers / higher volume capability
• Reversible USB / Lighting connection
• Enhancements to the iBeacons technology / reliability / frequency reading capability
• NFC capability to enable the digital wallet in your phone

Let's see how many of the items I get right!

Spotify not working on MacBook Pro Retina

Spotify stopped working, first I was getting the error regarding "Missing framework", then it wouldn't even start. This is on the MacBook Pro Retina, Mac OS X.

To rectify the situation do the following;

1. Close spotify
2. Delete spotify app, and empty trash
3. Hold down the "option" key and click "Go" in the menu, Library will now appear.
4. Find the caches folder, and delete anything with "spotify" in it and empty trash.
5. Now reinstall spotify
6. Should work.

iOS 7 first impressions

What I like about it;

- Lock screen with access to camera, notifications and control centre is excellent

- New control centre, is fab way of accessing quickly some certain commands e.g. turning on/off wifi, airport mode, discrete mode

- Notifications is awesome, works much better, the notification alerts/bars look much better, and it's better integrated. Only downside is the post to twitter and Facebook share widget has gone, which is annoying.

- Calendar app is really good, as is the new camera app and photos app

- The email app is improved, looks good, and has now got some (limited) smart inboxes

- The look of the new iOS is fresh and new and the animations are cool

- The apps that have been re-engineered for iOS 7 look really good

What I don't like so much / or problems I've had;

- Siri's voice - Siri now sounds very strange

- Weather not appearing in notification centre - this was fixed by turning location services on, from within restrictions

- Post to twitter and FB has been removed

- Search from siri is unfortunately going to Bing rather than Google, and it doesn't appear to be fixable at the moment

- Loading/updating apps very confusing - initially the icons were very confusing, but I now understand how this works

- Where have events gone in photos - thought I like the way photos are grouped together

- All day events not appearing under notification centre - haven't been able to figure this out yet

  

Wifi Issues with OS X Mountain Lion - temporary fix

Today I've been experiencing a critical Mountain Lion OS X issue on my MacBook Pro. Googling it gave indicated a short term fix is to use the ping command in the terminal, and ping to your router, and that will stop the Wifi going to sleep, and won't impact the internet speed.

This problem is affecting OS X 10.8.3 and 10.8.4 :-(

1. Open Airport Utility to find out the IP address of your router (assuming using an Airport Extreme or Time Capsule)
2. Open terminal window
3. Type "ping 10.0.1.1" where 10.0.1.1 is the ip address of your router
4. Leave this running and it will keep the wifi awake.

I hope Apple fix this soon.

Time capsule unrecognised volume error and not restarting

I tried backing up today and got a "unrecognised volume error" - that my disk had changed identity and a question whether I wanted to proceed to use the current disk. I chose yes but the backup failed.

So I tried powering off the Time Capsule as I thought that would resolve the issue. Only the time capsule rebooted with an orange light and was making strange clicking noises. I left this for 10 minutes but it still didn't reboot. And there was no connection to the Time Capsule through Airport Utility and no wifi.

So I thought I'd give it another reboot, this time it seemed to get further as after 5 minutes it was making some loading sounds then it stopped making noise and was still on orange, with no Airport Utility connection or wifi.

At this point I googled for the issue and there were lots of reports of Time Capsules dying without any kind of solution.

I was now thinking I may need to buy a new Time Capsule. But before doing that I thought I'd ask Apple Care for assistance. On the website I put in a problem with backing up on my MacBookPro (which has Apple Care) and I was able to get them to call me immediately.

Initially the support analyst asked me to do a software update on my Mac, then I explained I had rebooted the Time Capsule and it was showing an orange light (and I had no wifi), he then said we need to fix that issue first. Then the support analyst instructed me how to do a reset/reboot by pressing in a small button at the rear of the Time Capsule (I didn't know about this!). Unfortunately after several attempts that didn't seem to do anything - it was meant to make the light start flashing.

Anyway the next step was to unplug the Time Capsule and leave for 10 seconds and plug it in again. Miraculously the Time Capsule started flashing an orange light, making booting sounds and then it went green. I checked the computer and there was wifi and the Airport Utility could talk to the Time Capsule. I then kicked off a backup and this time it worked.

Thank you Apple Care!

I really like the new iTunes

Things that I really like are;

1. Browsing and playing albums is much much better now
2. Can scroll view albums graphically
3. Then when you play one it opens up and shows the album track list with the background colour the same as the album artwork (very clever and looks really nice)
4. You can add albums or individual tracks to the next up list - this is brilliant as it resolves the problem of playing multiple albums that the old iTunes used to have.

How to restore Mac to factory settings / how to sell on your Mac

I did a google for “How to restore Mac to factory settings” and all the hits back seemed to be talking about deleting everything manually and then restoring the operating system from a disk! There is a much better way; I’m assuming your intention to restore to factory settings is because you want to sell on or pass on your Mac to someone? Follow these simple steps and you will effectively do what the title suggests.

1. Make sure you have a full back up of all your files, and you have transferred them to a new Mac and it is working and you have verified all your files have been copied.
2. De-authorise your computer in iTunes on the Mac you are getting rid of
3. You should have already disabled Time Machine on the Mac you are getting rid of, as part of the transfer to the new Mac.
4. Now create a user account with admin privileges for the person you are passing the Mac onto, if you don’t know who this is going to be make it something generic like “Administrator” - the most important thing is that you give them full admin privileges that you current account has.
5. Check that you can log in to the new account, and that it has admin rights. This can be done by unlocking a setting in System Preferences where it will ask you for your admin password.
6. Make the hard drive appear on the desktop by going to finder > Preferences > and choose “Show hard drives” on desktop.
7. Change the hard drive name to take our your name; right click on the hard drive > get info > update the name.
8. Change the name of the computer to take our your name. Go to System Preferences > Sharing > the change the computer name.
9. Now under System Preferences > User & Groups, unlock for changes and then choose the user account you want to remove and click the minus sign. It may take up to 10-15 minutes to process (giving a bouncing ball and even saying “unresponsive” in system monitor - however it will come back).
10. Once you get to the next screen you will be able to choose to delete the home folder of this user and its contents and choose “delete securely”, then click ok/apply.
11. Leave the computer to delete the account - this may take up to 12+ hours depending on the size of the user account (for me it took this long for 200GB+ user account). You can monitor progress by doing a get info on the hard drive and watching the available disk space increase over time.
12. Once deleted there should now be lots of spare space.
13. The remaining steps are manual, if you have any files stored outside the home directory then these need to be deleted. Apps do not get deleted, so these too will need to be manually deleted if you don’t want them transferred to the new user.

And that in a nut shell is it - you’ll then be giving the new owner basically a brand new laptop reverted to factory settings.

iPad naming convention

So the iPad is now know as "the iPad 4th generation", and the iPad is now no longer referred to as "the New iPad", rather the "iPad 3rd generation". In stores you can buy the iPad Mini, the iPad 2 and the iPad 4th generation (referred to as the iPad with Retina display).

I did predict some of this, and my explanation was that they wanted to make the iPad launch less of a big event then it had been previously. This is to (a) be realistic that there isn't significant hardware feature changes coming at the moment (and so to reduce expectations); and (b) to allow them to release and refresh the series whenever they want, like the other hardware lines (MacBook Pros, iMacs, Mac Minis, etc). They haven't gone the full distance though as they are still referring them to as "nth generation" like the iPods rather than like other hardware that isn't referred to by generation but rather the year that it was made on. For example my previous MBP is referred to as a "late 2008 MacBook Pro 15 inch", and my new MBP will be referred to as a "late 2012 MacBook Pro 15 inch with Retina Display".

What this means is I don't think the next iPad will be a called an iPad 5 or an iPad 4S; it will be known as the iPad 5th generation, and will probably still be called the iPad with Retina display. Will it be released in March 2013, that is quite interesting, and I'm going to make the prediction that they will indeed refresh early 2013 to give the 5th generation a speed increase, and potentially some additional ports, it's unlikely it will get a higher res screen. It may get thinner, have a slightly different look, and perhaps have an even longer battery life.

The interesting thing is that the iPad 2 still lives on, but the iPad 3rd generation has been killed off; I can see the rationale as now we have 3 iPads at different price points; the iPad mini, the iPad 2 and the iPad with retina display (4th generation). But what happens when the 5th generation comes out next year? Will Apple continue to sell the iPad 2 at a discounted rate? You know I think with the iPad Mini they now have 3 viable products - and so I predict that the iPad 2 could be enhanced (but non-retina), so we will then have an iPad Mini, an iPad and an iPad with Retina display. Alternatively the iPad 2 will be dropped and we will just have the iPad Mini and the iPad. With the iPad having a retina display - this will probably not happen until the MacBook Pros are merged with the MacBook Pros with retina display.

It will be interesting to see what will happen. And now there is an iPad Mini will we see an iPad Mini with retina display? And will the iPad Mini get refreshed early 2013 as well?

Backup disk not available - Apple Time machine

After migrating from one Apple MacBook Pro to the next, Time Machine / Time Machine then complained that "Backup disk not available". What follows is details of how I was able to resolve the issue;

1) Turned off Time Machine on and off again to no avail
2) Can access time capsule via finder
3) In time machine options/preferences chose "select disk" and from the available disk I selected my computer "data"
4) It then said "inherit backup history" previous computer will no longer be able to backup - say yes
5) Then there is a long wait whilst time machine is "looking for backup disk"
6) Then it said "the backup disk ***sparsebundle is already in use and cannot backup
7) So I logged on previous MBP and went to Finder and opened the time capsule folder and clicked "Disconnect" at the top
8) I then tried selecting the disk again, error again that it is in use
Checked the log/console by filtering on "backupd" and it showed the sparse bundle was already mounted and it couldn't unmount it
9) So I went to finder on my new MBP and clicked the circular eject button next to it (The Time capsule drive)
10) I retried selecting the disk in time machine preferences and it asked me if I wanted to inherit again
11) This time the log looked better, and the time capsule went into "preparing mode"
Warning, it remained in "preparing mode" for a very long time before it started generating any further logs and doing anything
12) It disconnected part way through over night, I started it again, and it failed without an error message, I kicked it off again this time it started but it wanted to back up 200+GB, so I cancelled it, then I read that it will delete old backups when it runs out of space - so I have restarted the backup again, fingers crossed.
13) The backup is now working and it is logging its progress (occasionally) as it writes the backups

iPhone 5 iWant

So what is new on the iPhone 5?

1. Larger screen - not sure how existing apps are going to render on the new aspect ratio? We'll see. So viewing of widescreen videos without a black bar, and an extra row of apps on the home screen.
2. New processor - New A6 chip is meant to make the iPhone twice as fast, and for an already quick phone, this is great!
3. 4G/LTE - Great ... but not so much as the UK doesn't have a 4G network yet, but when it does this will be great.
4. Thinner and lighter - Always good - though I read the lightness makes it feel less solid ... 
5. Better camera - Camera optics are enhanced, higher resolution, increased facial recognition (so better focus?) and new panoramic view which is great
6. Better iSight camera (front facing camera) - can now take 720p FaceTime chats
7. Larger battery - so battery life improved (but still not as good as 4 apparently, but can't be worse than 4S?)
8. New dock connector (Lightening) - new dock connector, though it's not clear what the advantage is other than being able to plug in either way round. Unfortunately you'll now need to buy new connectors and accessories ...
9. Moved earphone port - I think this may be a disadvantage - e.g. when you've got it rested in the cup holder in the car, we'll see...
10. New look design - Not only is the screen bigger, but the look has been re-designed - not revolutionary, but now has a cool aluminium back panel.
11. iOS 6 - Further Twitter & Facebook integration, new maps, new 3D fly over, new turn-by-turn directions, PassBook and enhancements to Siri (Open apps, post to Facebook, integration with Movie reviews, restaurant booking and sports scores - though these are probably US only...)
12. New earphones (EarPods) - New redesigned earphones called "EarPods".

Though not revolutionary, and all this information had been pretty much leaked, I was not disappointed. The larger screen and increased speed are major pulls. However I am probably going to wait for the iPhone 5S, maybe I'll save my money for the new new iPad (iPad 4).