category_name=blog%2Fapple
iMac bluetooth problems gone, but how?
August 1, 2010 | Comments Off
My 27″ iMac has been having some very strange bluetooth problems lately. As mentioned in a recent blog post, all bluetooth devices were unavailable according to the operating system. Reboots didn’t fix the problem. Checking through the console logs turned up messages about the bluetooth drivers not working properly. Fortunately I had a USB keyboard so I was able to make a full backup of the system before scheduling an appointment with the genius at the Apple Store.
Now it has been a couple weeks and I have the machine back and Apple didn’t find anything wrong. In fact, they say the bluetooth works fine. I turned everything on and it works fine here too. I had a hunch that this might be the case. Last week my 13″ MBP had the exact same issue. No bluetooth devices would work with it. In this case a full reboot did correct the problem.
So, what bluetooth devices do I have, and which one is misbehaving and causing all of these problems? I don’t know for sure, but I suspect either the new iPhone 4 or the Plantronics Bluetooth Headset I have. The Apple Bluetooth Keyboard and Magic Mouse seem to be working fine. I have noticed other issues with the bluetooth on the iPhone 4 when it syncs with the Alpine IWA-505 head unit in my truck so my money is on the iPhone 4 being the cause in all of these bluetooth problems. Time will tell.
Wireless Keyboards and Mice are Great Until….
July 13, 2010 | Comments Off
Tonight I sat down at my 27″ iMac to get a little work done. The first thing I do is tap the keyboard and move the mouse to wake the machine from sleep mode. The machine awoke and then quickly displayed the Connection Lost graphics in the middle of the screen for both the mouse and keyboard. My first thought; no problem, it’s just the batteries so I replaced them. Still no connection (and it did seem kind of odd for both the mouse and keyboard batteries to be dead at the same time.) Looking up at the system tray I see an odd Bluetooth icon. Here’s a closeup of what I found:
The Bluetooth: Not Available message in the system tray is not a good sign. Next I opened up Console.app to see if there were any indications of what the root cause for this behavior was. It appears there is truly something wrong with the Bluetooth Module. Here is what it showed:
![[AppleUSBBluetoothHCIController][FindInterfaces] some interface pipes were not found. Device is no good a a transport](http://www.idevelopsoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Console2.png)
A visit to the support forums at Apple led me to an idea to reset the SMC on the iMac. I tried that and still nothing. At this point I’m not a happy camper. It is looking like the Bluetooth Module in my iMac has given up the ghost.
Next step, the iPhone Apple AppStore application to make a Genius Bar appointment.
If you have read this far then you might be wondering why I’m telling you all of this. The reason is simple. Without a USB keyboard and mouse laying around somewhere none of the troubleshooting above would have been possible. Having a wireless bluetooth keyboard and mouse ship by default with the iMac is a really odd choice on Apple’s part.
Thankfully I have a keyboard and mouse from the Xserve in my garage. In case you forgot what these old fashion beasts look like, here’s a picture of the dynamic duo that saved my bacon tonight!
Busy Folks at Big Nerd Ranch!
May 1, 2010 | Comments Off
The folks over at Big Nerd Ranch are really busy these days. In addition to building a new learning center it looks like they are writing no less than three new books to be released this year. If you have ever read through Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass or had the fortune to attend one of his classes then you already know that these new books will likely become a core part of your programming library in the future.
The first new title is iPhone Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide, written by Joe Conway and Aaron Hillegass. According to Amazon this book will be available for purchase on May 4th in paper form and May 6th for the Kindle. You can pre-order it now.
The second new book is titled More Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide and is being written by Aaron Hillegass and Juan Pablo Claude. According to Amazon’s web site this book will be available in mid-July, 2010. At this point it appears the book will only be available in print form. Hopefully this will change and a Kindle version will be made available.
The third new book will be titled Objective-C Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide and is being written by Aaron Hillegass and Mark Fenoglio. Amazon pegs the release of this book sometime in December, 2010. Cover art for this book has not been released yet.
iPad Review – First 24 hours
April 5, 2010 | Comments Off
My experience with it so far is mixed. Like you I tried to touch-type on the keyboard and that really didn’t work at all. I have tried to do the two finger plus thumbs approach and am not that fast typing like that. The keyboard is big enough that I find it kind of weird to hold it in one hand and type with the other. My hand has to move too far to get all the keys unlike on the iPhone where everything is much closer together. I have not tried to hook up a bluetooth keyboard yet either. I expect that to work much better for things like typing e-mails.
I ended up purchasing the 64GB version instead of the 16GB version. The change was based on a recommendation I heard on MacBreak Weekly. They mentioned that based on their preview use (had it for about a week before April 3rd) they feel that if you are going to use it to read books then you will easily fill the 16GB and then have to pick/choose which items to sync to your iPad. With the 64GB version you can just dump all the books/PDFs you want on it and not worry about running out of space.
I have the Kindle for iPad application on it and pulled down all my Kindle books. Very cool! It just works! I also downloaded the iBooks application from the App Store. That application reads the ePub format. I have purchased a number of technical books in the past few years from Pragmatic Programmers. All of their books are available in ePub format so I downloaded that version and loaded them into the iPad too.
So far I really like having all of my technical books in one place like this. I have not tried reading out in full sunlight, but expect it will be an issue. For reading indoors it works fine. Not as easy on the eyes as the Kindle, but it shows all of the technical illustrations in the books in full color which is much better.
I purchased the Pages, Numbers and Keynote applications from Apple also. They really show off the sort of things you can accomplish with the iPad, but the crash a lot. I feel more like a beta tester of these apps than just a user. Sort of a let down, but then I have been here before with other Apple products. Eventually these will be great applications.
With the iPad I also purchased the Apple case for the iPad. I was really surprised when I opened it up at home. The quality of the case is really bad. It only cost $39, but it sucks compared to the case that Amazon sells for the Kindle. After about 2 hours of using the iPad in the case I got so annoyed with it that now I am using the iPad without a case. I am shopping for a different case now.
I have had Safari crash on me more than once now on the iPad. It seems like the crashes were always on very long (lots of scrolling) web pages so maybe it is a memory issue. I’m not sure, but the end result is you are just reading along on the page and all of a sudden you are back to the menu of icons wondering how you got there.
Even more surprising than the crashes of apps on the device is the crash I experienced this morning of the Xcode development environment on the desktop. Apple released an update to Xcode that includes all of the iPad development tools yesterday. I was working on a sample application this morning, following the instructions on how to build an app when all of a sudden Xcode just up and crashed on me. This is very unusual. Earlier versions of Xcode have been very stable for years.
Over all I think purchasing one as a developer at this point is a good move, but for basic consumers it is probably more sensible to wait about 3 months before jumping on the iPad bandwagon.
Mac Market Share Increasing!
January 17, 2009 | Comments Off
I was at the local library today to do a couple hours programming in a quiet environment without the normal distractions of my home office. To my surprise when I looked around I saw a sea of Apple MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops. Sure, there were a few Toshiba or HP laptops too, but the majority of the machines in the room had shinning bright Apple logos on the screens.
My unscientific survey in the library today yielded the following numbers:
| System | Count |
|---|---|
| White MacBook | 2 |
| Unibody 13″ Macbook | 1 |
| 15″ MacBook Pro | 2 |
| 12″ PowerBook | 1 |
| Toshiba | 1 |
| HP | 2 |
| IBM | 1 |
That breaks down to 60% Apple, 40% Microsoft.
Now that’s what I like to see! Maybe the recent discussion on the macsb about Mac market share isn’t so far fetched after all. Here are a few interesting links:
Who knows if this is all true or not. With the recent announcement that Steve Jobs will be taking a six month leave of absense from Apple due to health concerns the future for Apple is less clear than it once was. I’m sure Apple will do just fine over the next 12-18 months since there are a number of products already in development. The big concern has to be about the sort of innovations that Apple can concieve of and execute on after the current pipeline runs dry. Will there be other folks at Apple with the same vision and forsight as Steve Jobs? Probably, but it is far from certain.
Atleast for now it seems like the market share for Apple will continue to climb. Microsoft will have to hit a home run with the new Windows 7 operating system if they want to fend off the onslaught of Mac OS X. Being a long time developer on both platforms I can say that from my point of view having more users on the Mac makes me happy! I look forward to developing, releasing and selling more applications on the Mac platform.
Software Design: Want vs. Need
January 13, 2009 | Comments Off
I am always surprised at how short-sighted some folks are who design software. It seems like there is no shortage of people who feel that you just have to listen to your customers to build great software. In my experience, if all you do is build what the customer says he/she wants then your software will likely be obsolete in a year (maybe even less time) and your customers will ultimately be very unhappy with you.
To build great software you have to listen intently to what the customer is saying so you can identify the pain and suffering that usually lies unexpressed just below the surface of comments like “All I need is a widget that does X.”
Check out what BusinessWeek magazine had to say about this phenomenon:
“It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”
– BusinessWeek, May 25 1998
Probably my favorite quote about building great software came from someone on the team that built the NeXT computer. I think they really understood what it takes to build quality systems (software and hardware) that last.
“It took us three years to build the NeXT computer. If we’d given customers what they said they wanted, we’d have built a computer they’d have been happy with a year after we spoke to them – not something they’d want now.”
– Someone on the NeXT Team
It all comes down to making a decision to apply your knowledge and understanding of technology to address the immediate problems for the customer and to push beyond so you can give the customer a system they can grow with. The ultimate measure of success is when a user says “Hey, now I need to do Y with the widget.” and you can reply with something like “Okay, this is how you do that with the system we built.” If you find yourself replying with something more like “Hmmm, we could add that to the software but it will cost you.” then you are doing it wrong!
MobileMe Mail Error
July 12, 2008 | Comments Off
Here we go again. Software Update just notified me that “.mac is now MobileMe” and that an update to Mac OS X was available. Being a masochist I went ahead and ran the update. Everything went smoothly for the most part. I was even able to connect to MobileMe Mail using Safari. I logged in successfully and started poking around the web interface. Guess what….
Yup, once again Apple’s servers are not up to the task. Here is the message I was greeted with shortly after the initial user interface was displayed in the browser window:
Apple builds some killer hardware, a great desktop OS, a great music device, some excellent applications, and a really cool phone. They just don’t seem to be able to get server computing right though.
I’m not sure if it’s that they don’t allocate sufficient engineering resources to the problems, or if their data centers are under-powered or what, but these problems just aren’t acceptable. This isn’t new territority. Companies in the on-line space such as Google, Amazon, eBay and AOL have been doing this for years. Building scalable, robust server farms that can handle the kind of load .mac subscribers (oops, I meant MobileMe) exert on the infrastructure just isn’t rocket science.
The new user interface in MobileMe looks promising. I just want it to work reliably and to always be there when I need it.
Come on Apple. You make great XServe servers. Throw more of them at the problem if it’s just a resource issue. Looking at the growth of Apple stock share prices, the increased sales of Mac desktop and notebook computers, and the insanely successful iPhone I think you can afford to hire some top-gun server developers if what you need is more engineering talent to correct this problem.
Please, make MobileMe something everyone loves and can’t live without. Show the rest of the on-line world you mean business here!
Finally, accepted into the Apple iPhone Developer Program!
July 11, 2008 | 1 Comment
The subject of this post says it all. I just received an e-mail from Apple indicating that I have been accepted into the Apple iPhone Developer Program and that I need to fill out some information to complete the registration process. I sure hope everything goes smoothly. I, like many developers, have been waiting to try my application on the iPhone for months.
Upgrade to iPhone OS 2.0 Fails – Unknown Error (-9838)
July 11, 2008 | 6 Comments
The new iPhone 3G went on sale this morning at 8:00 AM and I’m sure there are long lines at various Apple stores around the country. I already have a first generation iPhone and was looking forward to the iPhone OS 2.0 upgrade. Sure, I’ll still have to live with the EDGE network speed when not connected to a WiFi hotspot and I won’t have a GPS, but other than those two shortcomings (and not being able to get one in white) my first generation iPhone is working just fine.
So, this morning when I sat down at my desk and pressed the “Check for Updates” button in iTunes with my iPhone connected it said that the iPhone OS 2.0 update was available for download and installation. I ran through the process and everything seemed to be going well right up until when it restarted the iPhone with the new 2.0 software. Then I get the dialog box shown below.
WTF! An unknown error? What sort of an iTunes Store failure is this? My phone appears to be bricked at this point. All I can do is make an emergency call. Oh boy, just what I wanted from Apple! If only I could make an “emergency call” to the Apple technical support line maybe they could let me know what the -9838 error is. I am not very happy right now.
The dialog box says to try again later. Well, I have retried this operation by ejecting and reconnecting my iPhone at least ten times now, and each time I see the same dialog box.
When I get this resolved I will post an update. For now, if you are eager to get the iPhone OS 2.0 I would suggest that your best bet is to go buy a second iPhone. Clearly Apple has not fully baked the iPhone OS 2.0 support for the first generation iPhones. How disappointing!
Update @ 9:05 AM
It is now 1 hour after I started this upgrade process and the iTunes Store is now reporting a different unknown error code.
What fun!
Updated @ 10:12 AM
Still no luck getting my phone to work. I am getting the “unknown error occurred (-4)”, and have been for more than an hour now.
There is a discussion of this issue on the Apple support site. Here is the link:
Topic : Cannot connect to store (error -9838): can’t activate iPhone !
Someone at Apple should be held to the flames for not anticipating this sort of issue and taking steps to eleminate it. They had very similar problems when the first generation iPhones were released and people couldn’t activate them.
Think Different, indeed….
Updated @ 10:20 AM
Finally!
Apple is very fond of reminding people that they build great user interfaces for their applications. Here is a perfect example of where they failed miserably. I think a lot fewer people would be complaining about this server scalability issue if the iTunes application had a “retry” button. Instead of just asking you to try later the software should do that for us. After all, the computer is more than capable of retrying the connection until it succeeds. There is no reason at all for all of us humans to be sitting here clicking on play lists and then clicking on the iPhone item and then waiting for an error and then repeating the process FOR TWO AND A HALF HOURS!
Apple, you need to put more engineering resources into this sort of thing. The scale you are dealing with on the iPhone and the iTunes Store and now the App Store is way beyond what .mac ever was. You need to THINK DIFFERENT!
iPhone developers put on hold by Apple
June 12, 2008 | Comments Off
The Apple World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) for 2008 kicked off Monday with a keynote presentation by Steve Jobs. As was expected, a new 3G iPhone was announced and there was a lot of discussion about the new capabilities in iPhone OS 2.0. Steve mentioned that the iPhone SDK has been downloaded 250,000 times since the release in March and that 25,000 developers have signed up for the iPhone Developer Program. Of those 25,000 developers Apple has selected 4,000 for participation in the beta program.
No mention was made of when (or if) the remaining 21,000 developers who wish to participate in the beta program will be permitted to do so.
Based on the numbers I think it is clear that developers are very excited about building and selling applications on the iPhone platform. Unfortunately, Apple seems far less excited about helping these developers get started. They have let a mere 16% of interested developers into the program. The remaining developers cannot build and test applications on real devices. Effectively Apple has put all these developers on hold. They want to build applications that use the accelerometer, the camera, the GPS, etc., but cannot since the simulator has none of these capabilities.
To illustrate what a ridiculous approach this is for supporting developers take a look at the following post that recently appeared on craigslist. Whoever this developer is, he/she really wants to get their application tested and running in time for the Apple AppStore launch.
Someone with influence at Apple Computer needed (santa clara)
I need my application to the iPhone developers program approved so I can get a certificate to test my applications on a real iPhone. Without one I can only run it on a simulator. I have a compelling application that I am working on that will be sold commercially.
Apple computer received my application two months ago and they have my credit card number for the $99 fee.
In return I can give you some cash or services or maybe a gift certificate for dinner someplace. Whatever you think is reasonable.
Apple and Steve have been positioning the iPhone OS (CocoaTouch) as a new platform for application development. The developer community seems to agree with this and wants to develop applications for the platform. Apple, please let the remaining developers who signed up for the beta program in. We all want to give you $99 so we can start running our applications on real devices. We all want you to take 30% of any revenue from the sale of our applications when they are sold through the AppStore. We all want to help make this a great new platform for application development.
The simulator just doesn’t cut it! Give us the ability to run on actual devices, PLEASE!!!!!
