Tech DC » Apple

Unlock SIM for International Travel

Rick — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 19:27:35 +0000

If you travel internationally, it’s nice to be able to put in a local-country SIM card for Internet and calls. This is far cheaper than International Roaming.

AT&T won’t do it

I just confirmed with AT&T that they changed their policy. They no longer unlock the SIM card on iPhones, even for customers in good standing for over a year. Compare this to Verizon that will unlock a phone after 3 months.

So if you are buying an iPhone and travel internationally, don’t chose AT&T as your carrier.

iTunes Match

Rick — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 02:11:02 +0000

Benefits

iTunes Match accomplishes a few things for me:

Updates my collection to 256 kbps aac files (higher quality)
Backs up my collection online (iCloud)
Makes it easier to use other Apple products for my music collection without needing to download everything. This makes it easier to use a lower capacity laptop, iPhone, or iPad.

It’s worked pretty seamlessly for me and costs $25/year, although you only need one year if you just are interested in accomplishing #1 above.

Updating to 256 kbps

I followed the Macworld instructions to create a Smart Playlist that shows just the songs needing an upgrade (see picture). Hold down option key when clicking the plus to add the conditional rule for iCloud Matched or Purchased.

Then I selected all the files and deleted them, making sure to NOT select to delete them from iCloud. Then I downloaded the files over a couple of days.

Kindle Fire Is Disappointing

Rick — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 03:43:29 +0000

Lower Your Expectations

Wow, I had low expectations given the $199 price, but the Amazon Kindle Fire still managed to disappoint me.

Pros:

$199

Cons:

Hardware

Backlight bleeding all around the edge of the screen.
Power button is badly placed and I’ve accidentally shut off the Fire several times when holding it.
Super-reflective screen. Much more reflective and finger-print-showing than other tablets. (See picture)
Poor battery life, at least compared to the iPad.
6 GB of usable space so you can’t load this up with movies. I guess Amazon wants this to be more of a streaming device. But you’re left with little space if you need to load this up for travel away from WiFi.
Surprisingly heavy. I suppose this is because I’m used to holding Amazon’s similar sized e-ink tablets. But when you hold the Fire, the weight is the first thing you’ll notice.
No mic, no cameras, no bluetooth, no SD card slot, no gyroscope (for better gaming control).
No hardware Home button or volume buttons. From some pages, it takes a few software button presses to get to the volume controls.

Software

Carousel interface for all your items is a terrible idea, made even worse by the fact that once you launch anything it goes in the Carousel and can not be removed. So you end up with a really long carousel with stuff you don’t want.
Inconsistent UI. For example, when you reach the end of a scroll page, some pages bounce while other pages brighten on the edge.
Slow UI response in many places such as pinch-to-zoom.
Apps crash. On each of three Kindle Fire units we tested, Angry Birds crashed on first launch. It worked after that. The browser had several crashes.
Flash works, but Flash videos are jerky to the point of being unwatchable.
Slow browser. This is especially disappointing given that Amazon promoted the speed of it’s Silk browser.
AppStore allows you to buy apps that don’t work properly on the Kindle Fire.
AppStore search doesn’t work. Searching for “Netflix” resulted in four apps, none of which were the Netflix app. (See picture)
AppStore has very few apps compared to other Android devices with Google Market.
The magazines are just scans of the magazine. These aren’t nice PDFs with embedded fonts. So when you zoom, the text gets fuzzier. The aspect ratio of 16×9 doesn’t fit magazines well. There is empty space at the top and bottom when viewing the full page.
There is one odd thing I haven’t figured out yet. When scrolling a web page, it looks as if the page tilts in the direction you are scrolling. I haven’t been able to capture this on camera. I can’t tell if this is a UI decision or a weird screen drawing or refresh issue.

Alternatives

I’m not just being an Apple fanboy here. While both the iPod Touch are iPad are far superior to the Fire, so are the Samsung Android devices which are faster and have a better UI. And if you want to just read, the e-ink Kindles are great. The Kindle Fire is just not a fully developed product.

Happy iPhone 4S Day

Rick — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:54:30 +0000

Because the 4S was available for preorder, the line at the Clarendon, Virginia store is about 10% of what it was for the iPhone 4 launch.

RIP Steve Jobs

Rick — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 21:12:25 +0000

by Tony Auth

Keynotes – Amazon and Apple

Rick — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 23:34:23 +0000

It’s been an exciting week of product announcements from Amazon and Apple. Decide who does a better Steve Jobs impersonation.

Amazon Kindle Press Conference – September 28, 2011, New York, NY

Apple Special Event – October 4, 2011, Cupertino, CA

Mac Eject Key for External Disk Drive

Rick — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 21:57:24 +0000

Apple keyboards have an eject key in the upper right corner that works with built-in Mac DVD drives. If you have a new Mac Mini without an optical drive, you might want to use a 3th party external disk drive. The problem is that the eject key doesn’t work for these drives.

Thanks to tjb1 at MacRumors who gave instructions on how to make the eject key work.

Download and install KeyRemap4Macbook. Restart is required for use.
Open System Preferences > KeyRepma4Macbook
Make sure you are on the “Change Key” menu and click in the search bar in KeyRemap4Macbook, not the search for System Preferences.
Type “eject” in the search bar and check the box next to “Eject to Command+Control+Option+Shift+E”
Exit System Preferences and open Automator.
Choose the template “Service” and hit “Choose” at the bottom right.
In the search bar at the top left, type “Run Shell Script”
Drag “Run Shell Script” from the left to the Workflow Area.
At the top above “Run Shell Script” click the arrows next to “Service receives selected text” and pick “no input” at the bottom of the list.
Next delete “cat” from the Shell Script and type this “drutil eject”
While in Automator go File > Save As > Eject
Close Automator and open System Preference > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts
In Keyboard Shortcuts choose Services in the left box.
In the right, scroll down to “General” and you should see “Eject” listed.
Make sure the box beside “Eject” is checked and double click on the right side, left of the scroll bar. This should open text box where you hold down Command+Control+Option+Shift+E. This will enter those keys as shown here.
Restart the operating system.
Close System Preferences and the Eject key should now eject your external cd/dvd/blu ray drive.

2011 Mac Mini Hard Drive Upgrade Video

Rick — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 15:27:46 +0000

We just upgraded a 2011 Apple Mac Mini to have an SSD, a second hard drive, and new RAM.

Video

.
Also available on YouTube in High Definition or Standard Definition.

IMPORTANT NOTE: at 2 minutes in, you should pop the fan cable up, not forward toward us, to remove it. Some people recommend using a plastic spatula to pop it up. (Thanks to Jon in the comments for pointing out this error)

Parts List

OCZ 120 GB Vertex 3 SATA III 6.0 Gb-s 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive VTX3-25SAT3-120G
Western Digital 1TB Blue WD10JPVT 5400RPM, 8 MB cache, 2.5 inch, 9.5MM height hard drive
Corsair 8 GB DDR3 Laptop Memory Kit CMSO8GX3M2A1333C9
Apple Mac Mini Model MC816LL/A 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 dual-core processor, AMD Radeon HD 6630M graphics, 4GB RAM, 500GB hard drive
Cable: Apple Part 922-9560, also called “Apple Mac Mini Server (Mid 2010) Bottom Hard Drive Server Flex Cable” or “Hard Drive Flex Cable Bottom”. We used part number 1009005 at welovemacs.com. This is sold as a kit from ifixit.com.

Alternate Parts List

The OCZ Vertex 3 is the fastest consumer SSD at the moment. Other SSD’s that you might consider include:

Highest reliability SSD: Intel 510 Series 120 GB
Best value high capacity SSD: Lexar Media Crucial 512 GB m4

The Western Digital Blue drive mentioned above is high capacity and quiet. For a faster spinning hard drive consider:

Western Digital 750TB Black WD7500BPKT 7200RPM, 16 MB cache, 2.5 inch, 9.5MM height hard drive

The dedicated graphics in the mid-tier Mac Mini make it worth it for me. But for the cheapest Mini, consider:

Apple Mac Mini MC815LL/A 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5 dual-core processor, integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000, 2GB RAM, 500GB hard drive

UPDATE: My video shows adding two 9.5MM height drives. I just upgraded another Mac Mini with a 9.5MM SSD and a 12.5MM standard hard drive. As with my first upgrade, the hard drive goes in the bottom slot (the side closest to the top of the case when upright). This does fit. But first you need to slide the logic board out slightly. Be sure to remove the IR port adapter before sliding out the logic board. The OWC video shows how to do this. I used a cut up coat hanger to insert into the logic board holes and slide it out.

First Boot

Starting with a blank hard drive is easy on the 2011 Mac Mini. Hold down Command-R to boot into Lion Recovery which allows you to format the drives and download Lion over the Internet.

TRIM Support in Lion

For optimal SSD performance, enable TRIM support within OS X Lion. Grant Pannell describes the terminal commands to enable TRIM.

Photos of Upgrade

Opened

Fan Removal

WiFi Connection

Empty Drive Bay

Original Hard Drive

Drive Bay Side View 1

Drive Bay Side View 2

New Hard Drive & Cable

New Hard Drive Insertion

New SSD

New SSD & Drive Cables Attached

New RAM

Attach Fan

My New Spotlight in Lion

Rick — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 15:57:46 +0000

Here’s a funny glitch that eventually corrected itself. After installing Mac OSX Lion, spotlight initially thought it needed 5 years to index all my files.

Accidentally put an SD card in the iMac’s DVD drive?

Robert — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 20:20:46 +0000

Apple usually puts a lot of thought into the design of their hardware. However, the placement of the SD card slot right below the DVD drive has always escaped me. I always suspected people are looking directly at their screen and put the card in the slot by feel. As a result, it is probably all too common to accidentally put the card in the DVD drive which is right above it. I recently saw this happen for the first time.

My first thought was to take apart the iMac including the DVD drive. Unfortunately, this requires specialized tools and 1-2 hours of time. I tried shaking it out (a scary thought with an expensive piece of hardware) but it didn’t budge because of the foam guards at the end. Finally, I created a high tech tool just for the job.

This is a piece of cardboard cutout to have a little extension at the bottom. I inserted this at the top of the drive and pushed as far back as possible. I then slide it down and pulled it forward and the extension pushed the SD card right out. This is a rather thin piece of cardboard which is probably necessary. Be sure to be gentle as you don’t want to damage the DVD drive in any way.