mac
SIRI released for jailbroken iPhones – Warning sends your data to China!
Dec 21st
The word on the street is if you have a jailbroken iPhone 4 now you too can access the full functionality of SIRI using a Cydia program called H1Siri. But, Before you run and download your copy know that they will send ALL YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION TO CHINA!
According to Gizmodo – Grant Paul has detected that the hack sends your personal information through a server in China. And with personal information I mean email, SMS, calendar, contacts and location. Good luck with that.
Beware of the hacked Siri! If you really want it be patient or go get a damn 4s!
_ThejailBrokenAdmiN_
I have flash working on the iPad – kinda…
Apr 13th
So out of necesisity (My little one really wanting to play NickJr video games on her iPad) I was able to rig up some working flash action. I needed to use a remote desktop application (VNC will work as well) and remote into a workstation on my home network. Using this computer I have full access to not only flash but also all of the Windows applications on the machine.
This works great for remoting into any of your internet accessible machines over your G3 connection or WiFi. I will throw together a tutorial in the near future but I had to share this with you in the mean time.
Have you had any luck getting
The new iPad and what it means to you….
Mar 3rd
When we bought the first generation iPad for our three year old we thought it was awesome. It is a great learning tool and can keep her busy for extended periods of time in the car. It has replaced our portable DVD player and has given my wife and I some entertainment from slinging Angry Birds. The one thing I thought it was lacking was a front facing camera (or any camera for that matter!) This is 2011 - after all a free cell phone comes with a camera, right?
Why oh why would Steve Jobs hold off on the camera? Especially since he was seen with a iPad with a camera before the first genearation even launched. There has been code discovered in the first generation device pointing to a non-existant camera. The only reason could be to sell more of their next generation iPad 2.
I just finished reading a post titled Hands On With the New Apple iPad 2 By Clayton Morris via Fox News here. You can read the excerpt below and click through to watch the video. More of my comments follow this excerpt.
“Wicked fast” processor? Check. Lighter and thinner? Check. Over 10 hours of battery life? Check. Front and rear facing camera? Check. With Steve Jobs on medical leave, Apple senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller was widely rumored to be taking to the stage. That didn’t happen. Steve showed up and said “I didn’t want to miss this.” I was at the launch event, where Steve Jobs unveiled the new Apple iPad 2, and got to spend a few minutes hands-on with the iPad. The brand new case, called the Smart Cover, automatically wakes the iPad when you open it up. There are sensors built into the side of the iPad, and magnets on the cover and along the edge of the device combine to create this function. The magnets also mean the case is conveniently removable. Don’t want it on while you’re using the iPad? Just tear it off. In terms of the new features the iPad 2′s iOS 4.3 brings, one of the biggest is GarageBand. With it you can play drums or compose on a full-screen keyboard. I can already imagine my seven-month old sitting here, pounding on the virtual keys. I can record right from the app as well. With iMovie, the other big new addition, you can edit and watch movies right on the iPad. iPad 2 now includes two cameras, a front-facing VGA camera for FaceTime and Photo Booth, and a rear-facing camera that captures 720p HD video, bringing the FaceTime video chat feature to iPad users for the first time. More than a year after igniting the tablet computing craze, Apple’s Steve Jobs surprised the world by taking to the stage in California to unveil this: the second version of its blockbuster iPad
And here is more information on the specs and release information from suite101.com
- Design – Applying the less is more method much like in their Mac computer that fit into an office internal envelope, the iPad 2 is dramatically thinner. It has been reduced by a third or 33% making it now 8.8mm in depth instead of 13.4mm. This also makes it thinner than the iPhone 4.
- Weight – It has also lost some weight from 1.5lbs to 1.3lbs. The aim behind this was to make the device easier to hold.
- Colour – iPad 2 comes in black and white, and Steve Jobs has stated that white will also be shipped from day one.
- Networks – It is available on AT&T and Verizon.
- Cameras – Two cameras have been added to the front and back. They are designed for FaceTime video calling, which works like a webcam. The front camera puts you and your friend face-to-face, and the back camera allows you to share your surroundings during your video call. The back camera is HD and also works like any other webcam or mobile phone camera allowing a person to take pictures as and when.
- Video mirroring is new for iPad and for every media app requiring to be shown to a big audience. All one needs to do is plug in the Apple Digital AV Adapter or Apple VGA Adapter and your HDTV or projector becomes a bigger version of your iPad.
- Gyroscopes – This is the same as what is featured on the iPhone and iPod touch. The iPad 2 has a built-in accelerometer, meaning that the user can rotate the device to portrait or landscape, or even upside down, and the screen adjusts. With iPad 2, the accelerometer three-axis gyroscope, and compass all work together sensing which direction iPad is heading making it easily more sensitive and interactive.
- Connectivity – Every iPad is built with advanced 802.11n wireless technology that automatically finds Wi-Fi networks. It is also available with 3G connectivity on the above networks. You can also now stream wirelessly to HDTV and speakers via AirPlay and print things wirelessly using AirPrint. Alterative connectivity is Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR technology, or Wi-Fi + 3G (Verizon model).
- Battery – This is the same built-in 25 watt rechargeable lithium-polymer battery as the original iPad providing 10 hours of battery life or over a month of standby time. The A5 chip and iOS keeps battery life consistent.
- Storage – This is the same as before with 16GB, 32GB or 64GB.
- System Requirements – As before the iPad 2 will need to be configured from a Mac System Mac computer USB 2.0 port, with Mac OS X v10.5.8 or later, or Windows System PC with USB 2.0 port, Windows 7; Windows Vista; or Windows XP Home or Professional with Service Pack 3 or later and both will need to have iTunes 10.2 or later, an iTunes Store account and Internet access.
- Maximum operating altitude: 10,000 feet (3000 m).
Dual-Core A5 Chip
The custom-designed A5 1GHz dual-core chip is really the heart of the device. It comprises of two powerful cores in one chip meaning that iPad 2 can do twice as much work without compromising on speed. At the launch Job’s stated that they concentrated on faster graphics with nine times faster performance which is an asset for:
- Displaying photographs;
- Video game;
- Surfing the web;
- Watching films or editing video with iMovie;
- Making FaceTime (webcam) video calls; and
- Switching from app to app, to name a few.
iPad Smart Cover
The iPad 2 Smart Cover is a detachable magnetically hinged cover. It is scored vertically so it can be folded up and used as a digital photo display stand, or as a prop if using the iPad as a keyboard. It is very thin and acts as a protector when the iPad is not being used, which may eliminate the need for transparent screen protectors. It comes in and assortment of colours and textures.
iPad2 pricing
Apple have been extremely clever against its competitors here and kept the price the same as the model before, starting at $499.00 for 16GB version, $599.00 for 32GB and $699.00 for 64GB.
The Apple website is advertising the iPad 2 being available for delivery in the United States from 11 March with free shipping, and the Europe release date is 25 March 2011.
If the estimated sales figures predicted in the ‘Whats Old and New with iPad 2′ are anything to go by, the iPad 2 will definitely see Apple retaining their global lead in the tablet PC market for 2011.
So what is a guy to do with one of these first generation devices? We would love to use the iPad for iPad to iPhone FaceTime between my daughter and I. Now we will have to take a hit and loose money to upgrade. It really never pays anymore to jump on a products bandwagon until the second generation or after a service pack has been released. What are your thoughts? I would love to hear from you in the comments below.
Locking your Snow Leopard Mac’s Screen when connecting using VNC
Mar 5th
So as you probably know I have been supporting more and more Mac’s in my previously Windows Shop. Now I had to allow Windows home users to connect to their Macs in the office and lock their screens or monitors as they worked in case they were doing confidential or stupid stuff…
This should have been easy. Macs are supposed to be easier to use than Windows machines right? Well no dice. You could not do it with out modifying they system. I tried over and over using VNC, Logmein, PcAnywhere and more… Everyone of them would open my screen right on up, so anyone walking by could not only watch me work but also move the mouse or type on the keyboard! It was the end of the road when someone type hello into a spread sheet of a Production manager… Sonofabitch!
I found a hack courtesy of ArtOfGeek and added my Vine VNC server and a new port for the win! My favorite quote from the article has to be:
I know, enough with the chatter, get on with the tutorial! Just follow these steps and you’ll be locking your Mac running Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard like it’s running Windows XP! Wait, did I just write that? Shudder. Sorry, I think I just threw up a little bit in my mouth.
Here is the nitty gritty for ya:
- Open Automator (in your Applications folder) and choose Service from the list of templates provided and click the Choose button.
- In the left hand column under Library, select Utilities.
- In the second column, drag “Run Shell Script” to the right hand pane.
- At the top of the right hand pane where you dragged the Run Shell Script action, click on the menu next to “Service receives” and choose “no input”.
- Copy and paste the following Terminal command into the empty text area of the Run Shell Script action:
/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\ Extras/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -suspendThe entire command should be entered on a single line and note there is a space after “/Menu\”.
Completed Automator action, ready to save (click to enlarge)
- Choose File–>Save, and give the new service a meaningful name like “Lock Computer” that will appear in the Services menu. Once you’ve done that, you can go to the Services menu (located in the current application menu, next to the Apple menu) and your newly created service should appear there.
- Next open System Preferences –> Keyboard –> Keyboard Shortcuts and select Services in the left column.
Setting the keyboard shortcut (click to enlarge)
- Scroll down to the bottom and under the General category, you should see your newly created service listed there. Select it, then Double-click close to the right side of the selected line to reveal a field where you can enter a custom keyboard shortcut. Enter an easy to remember but unique keyboard shortcut (I decided to go with ctrl+option+command+L), and then quit System Preferences.
That’s it! Go ahead and test your keyboard shortcut! That locked your screen right? Now you can install Vine VNC Server on your machine change the port that it is listening on to 1111 or something other than 5900. Connect to your Vine server using UltraVNC using the IP address and the port like this 192.168.1.1:1111. That will keep your Mac locked and allow you to log into your machine keeping the screen locked. If you try to lock the screen and log in on port 5900 (built in screen sharing) you will arrive at the login screen and defeat the purpose of this hack!
You can read the full post at ArtOfGeek here
_TheMacinAdmiN_
Moving Emails from Outlook (Windows) to Entourage (Mac)
Mar 9th
Given:
Microsoft Outlook – created by Microsoft. Platform: Windows.
Microsoft Entourage – created by Microsoft. Platform: OS X.
Requirement:
Move emails from Microsoft Outlook to Microsoft Entourage.
Common sense suggests:
In Windows, launch Microsoft Outlook, export everything to a .pst file. Copy this file to a USB drive or burn it to a disc. Copy it to Mac OS X, launch Entourage in Mac OS X and import the .pst file.
Well, that’s what I thought.
The real solution:
It turns out Microsoft does NOT support email interchange between Outlook and Entourage. I was horrified shocked Not Surprised to learn about this lack of interoperability.
Entourage can only import from it’s own archive format .rge or mbox files (text format files). Unfortunately, Outlook can NOT export to either of the two.
After doing some research and reading about convoluted methods of exporting one folder at a time from Outlook, converting those to mbox format and importing it in Entourage, I stumbled upon this excellent utility.
It’s a Windows application and costs $10. You can download it and pay for it online.
Simply install it on your Windows OS and launch it. It will automatically read your Outlook files and convert them to Mbox format, and PRESERVE the attachments!!
Once the export is over, copy the newly created mbox files and port them to Mac OS X. Launch Entourage and import the files. You will lose Outlook Rules though. Also, the folders will be renamed per ASCII standards i.e. no blank spaces. Blank Spaces will be replaced with underscores.
It’s possible that Entourage may suddenly not recognize mbox files either but don’t worry – there’s a work around. Import the mbox files in iMail. Then, import iMail emails into Entourage.
Another Microsoft horror story? What’s your take.
Why am I getting Winmail.dat files on my mac from Windows users?
Jan 12th
Jodi writes in:
I wasn’t sure who I should contact about this, so i am sending this to you. As of late, word attachments coming from my friend on a Windows XP Machine appear as “winmail.dat” files.
When I try to open these, the text runs about 150pp long, (it’s a 4page doc) and the text looks like this:
?<‡META †[1]0 ?Xt=”‡$.
It shows garbage like that over and over again. Admin Can you help me open them? If I forward the message on to a windows user it is fine! What gives?
Jodi have been dealing with this one for a while and there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to when they appear and when they don’t appear. We investigated the possibility of drag and drop causing it – but that wasn’t it consistently. But we found a utility called TNEF’s Enough for our Mac friends here:
http://www.joshjacob.com/macdev/tnef/
You can simply drag winmail.dat into this application and BAM! There is your data ma’am, can we do anything else for you today?
UPDATE: Fix this on your exchange 2007 server by doing this:
On the exchange server, go to global settings, Internet Message Formats, Default Properties, Advanced tab, for “Exchange Rich-Text Format” select “Never Use”.
This will prevent your Exchangeserver from using Rich-Text Format and creating winmail.dat files.
From TNEF’s website:
TNEF’s Enough allows Macs to read and extract files from Microsoft TNEF stream files. The files are usually received by SMTP based e-mail programs from Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Outlook users. The SMTP based e-mail program will usually receive either a MIME attachment named “winmail.dat” or a MIME attachment with the type “application/ms-tnef.”
The file is a rich text (or MAPI) message that is sent from Outlook to Exchange. When Exchange sends the message to an outside server it writes the MAPI message as a MIME attachment. The unfortunate side effect of this plan is if the Outlook user has someone in their address book as a person who can receive “Rich Text” then the user will receive the TNEF file whether the user uses Outlook or not.
TNEF’s Enough is a freeware application
