HKMacs

I bought this drive with USB adaptor in February last year and it has given me endless problems which Seagate seem to be unable to fix. The problem is the drive constantly goes to sleep even in the middle of file transfers causing Finder crashes that require the computer to be force restarted – not good! Despite endless correspondence with their technical support I have been unable to resolve this issue and they reply with the same solutions , none of which are any use. A quick look at the Amazon pages for Customer Reviews will show that I’m not alone with this problem. My advice is do not buy this drive under any circumstances.

I have just completed tests with Lion Server 10.7.2, iOS 5 and Profile Manager and pronounce success. I have also completely documented my entire set up and configuration procedure for doing this and can now offer this service for clients.

From Apple’s website:

“Profile Manager offers you simple yet powerful ways to set up and remotely manage computers running Lion and iOS devices such as iPad and iPhone. It also simplifies the creation of new configuration profiles and user accounts for mail, calendar, contacts, and chat; enforcement of restrictions; PIN and password policies; configuration of system settings; and more. Because it’s integrated with the Apple Push Notification service, Profile Manager can send out updated configurations over the air automatically. And it includes web-based administration, so you can manage your server from any modern web browser. Profile Manager even gives users access to a self-service web portal where they can download and install new configuration profiles, as well as clear passcodes and remotely lock or wipe devices that are lost or stolen.”

Please contact me at info@hkmacs.com or call (852) 93486884 for further information.

I saw this today on Macintouch. If it works, which I presume it does, it’s very clever:

MacInTouch Reader

I often use “local” SIM cards when traveling overseas. To continue to receive incoming calls, here is what I’ve done:
For a minimal fee (much less than international roaming) get a “Skype In” phone number. Also charge up some “Skype out” minutes.
Before getting on the plane, forward your cell phone to your Skype In number. (You don’t have to give people the number.) when you get to your destination, have Skype forward calls to your local cell phone when you’re not logged in. People calling your mobile in the US get through to you on your international mobile and you pay minimal rates. The same thing can be set up with google voice and some other VOIP solutions.

One of the most compelling reasons for upgrading to iOS 5 is iMessage which allows you to send text messages (SMS & MMS) for free, bypassing your carrier’s rip-off fees.

Messages bypass carriers’ systems whenever you communicate in the app with another iOS 5 user, whether on an iPhone or an iPod touch or iPad. For iPhones, your phone number is registered in the system, while an email associated with an Apple ID is connected for all iOS hardware. You can later add other email addresses. You can even start a conversation on one of your iOS devices and pick up where you left off on another.

Start a message to someone whose phone number or email address is registered in iOS 5, and Message switches the color of the text balloons from green to blue, and displays “iMessage” in grayed-out type in the field in which you tap in text.

iMessage works across carriers and international borders, and is free. When a message is received, Messages shows the word “Delivered” in small type under the corresponding blue balloon. An iOS 5 user can configure Messages to also show when a message is read, but you may find you’re giving away too much information to the sender. (Apple turns that option off by default.)

Using iMessage and WhatsApp, you’ll never need to pay for another text message again.

I will be available to upgrade your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch to iOS 5 subject to my usual fees. If you have any of the models listed I will download the update in advance and come to your home or office to upgrade (within Hong Kong only):

• iPhone 3GS
• iPhone 4
• iPad (any model)
• iPod touch 3G or 4G
• Apple TV2

Please call +852 9348 6884 or email to info@hkmacs.com for further information

Yesterday I was introduced to Dragon Dictation for the iPhone and iPad. It is a remarkably useful and accurate dictation software for mobile devices and what’s more – it’s FREE! After downloading it in the pub I was amazed at how accurate it was transcribing speech with an incredible amount of background noise. Set up is relatively simple, just choose your location for the legal agreement, choose your language (most European and Chinese) and you’re all set. It does however ask you to upload the names in your Address Book but as they say in their Privacy Agreement: “In order to improve recognition accuracy, Dragon Dictation will only upload names from your address book when permission is provided… no emails, addresses, phone numbers, or other personal information are uploaded. This information is not used for any purpose other than improving the usability of the application. Dragon Dictation will also utilize the data in spoken messages collected over time to continuously improve and provide high speech recognition accuracy. All data is stored in secure data centers according to stringent privacy and security standards.  For more information, please view our end user license agreement http://www.dragonmobileapps.com/EULA-dict.html” Make of that what you will but since so many other applications have this info such as Facebook, Twtter, MobileMe, GMail etc does it really make any difference.

One you have dictated you can do the following:

• Voice-to-text transcriptions that may be sent as SMS, Email, or pasted into any application using the clipboard
• Submit text to Social Networking applications – Twitter and Facebook

The only problem I’ve come across so far is that the send button will not work on an iPad2 in horizontal mode with iOS 5. Maybe a bug.

Very useful app. If you don’t have an iPhone 4S with Siri, this is probably the next best thing!

Like many others I ran into quite a few problems upgrading to iOS 5 but finally all is resolved and I’m quite happy.  Initially my problems were probably due to overloading of Apple’s servers but then I ran into further problems restoring the iPhone. First of all none of my apps were restored and then every app I owned appeared on the phone. Once I had that sorted out various other error messages came up namely a mysterious -34 error and appeared to be stuck in Recovery mode for most of Thursday. Basically it seemed not to want to use the last good backup but suddenly after a reboot at the end of the day it restored itself. Up until then I had no Bookmarks on my phone but then they all came back. The music and photos seemed to be running out of space also, so on Friday I removed all photos and music and added back bit by bit and everything is now back on the phone with free space. I’m guessing there was some kind of “black hole” or in terms of the coloured capacity bar in the bottom of Itunes, some unaccounted “Other” space. I do find this graphic to be misleading. In future I would remove all photos and music before upgrading. My Address Book has been bothering me for some time now as each record that has an address (home/business type) seems to have duplicated these entries, so finally I bit the bullet and went through all my contacts and cleaned them up. I now have total synchronicity across all devices with MobileMe and GMail.

The iPad 2 upgrade in comparison was hassle-free.

Overall I’m very pleased with the upgrade. The improved Notifications is good. Tabs in Safari is finally with us plus a dramatic speed increase. The new instant access to the camera is excellent as often it was too laborious and slow if you wanted a quick snap. Now you can get to the camera from the lock screen immediately. Wifi synching works well but I’m not updating to iCloud from MobileMe any time soon. In fact MobileMe has been very unreliable within the last two weeks and there appears to be a distinct possibility I might have lost emails to my principal alias account hkmacs@mac.com, so, please if I haven’t replied to your email please resend to info@hkmacs.com.

I recently went on holiday to Vietnam  and decided to put the iPad through it’s paces and finally leave the MacBook Pro at home. Generally it was a delight to use and a great replacement for email, web-browsing, maps, reading etc. As I was on holiday I didn’t need it for serious work.

Most of the places we stayed at had free WiFi but in most cases this was insecure. Passwords were pretty well non-existent and if there was any encryption at all it was invariably insecure WEP. Also being a communist country access was sometimes limited to certain sites, particularly Facebook, Twitter and GMail so it is advisable to use VPN wherever possible. I used My Private Network and it worked well.

Google Maps was incredibly useful for getting around as long as I was on WiFi but on one occasion a taxi dropped us off blocks away from where we wanted to go and there was no WiFi within easy reach. After that I bought a local “pay as you go” 3G iPhone 4 size SIM card and put it in the iPad and it worked fine. However to top up the allowed data I needed to put it temporarily in my iPhone so that the shop assistant could send the activation SMS. How difficult would it be for Apple to include Messages app on the iPad for this purpose? Not everyone is using a fixed data plan.

Before I left I bought the iPad Camera Connection kit and transferred all my photos daily from my little Olympus VR310 with no problem. With MyPad+ I was able to put some photos on Facebook, but only one at a time so it was a bit limiting. On return I quite happily imported all my pictures and video into iPhoto.

For a travelling guide I used Worldly. There are probably better guides around but we went at short notice and I didn’t really shop around for other guides. In conjunction with Trip Advisor we generally managed to find reasonable places to stay and it provided  good guides to the places we visited.

Before I left I put an anti-glare film on the iPad screen and it was quite readable in bright sunlight. It was also light enough to carry everywhere in my small backpack.

If you want to restore colour icons in the Finder follow the instructions here. The usual caveats apply. SIMBL has caused problems in the past as it is an unsupported hack for the OS, so use this at your own risk!