Undocumented 3G iPhone reset?

Not sure if this is a legitimate fix or not but several techs have posted that a dead 3G iPhone can be revived by holding the power button (top) down and rocking the volume button (side) back and forth.

Normally this isn't something I'd post about but I just used this tip to get a non-functioning 3G back to the Apple screen. Quick restore after that and it's purring like a kitten.

Share the info!!

-ZuCom

GpGMAIL for Snow Leopard-Fix (AGAIN) 6/2010

Snow Leopard Mail update will break GPGMail plugin.

Download the update

Steve Jobs on Flash

Steve Jobs open letter on Flash... all great points, perhaps the most well rounded statement against flash I've seen http://bit.ly/9Lt9wD

-ZuCom

Snow Leopard Roundup

Well it's been over a month now since Apple released "Snow Leopard" (version 10.6 of it's popular operating system OS X). From first reports, the upgrade seems to be a non-event for most. Two enterprise clients (those with at least 1000 upgrades) are reporting a 98% success rate on the upgrades while the power user community (the hardest group to win over) is reporting satisfaction ratings in line with past upgrades.

The roundup of popular issues and potential fixes:

BLUETOOTH

Several reports that Bluetooth devices fail after the upgrade. While ZuCom has not seen this in volume we can validate that deleting the devices and re-paring quickly solved the problem

NETWORK

In most cases we've seen no issues however some wireless network profiles needed the password (WEP Key, WPAx Password, etc.) re-entered

HOME FOLDERS

CNET has reported that "several" users have lost there home folders and even posted a detailed account of how to restore the home folders. While we've not seen this at all, the potential may exist, and especially in consumer environments where setup profiles can "drift" from the norm. Another reason to do a full backup before you do any upgrade.

GPG-Mail

The wildly popular open source GPGMail v1.2.0 plugin for OSX Mail.app does not work in Snow Leopard. This is something that was found in the later beta's and remain's a major problem in the Power User community. At issue is the use of an undocumented API in the mail bundle that is no-longer supported in the new v4 of Mail. A developer has posted an interim fix for the community which can be downloaded here. Simply unzip this file and copy it to the /Library/Mail/Bundles folder and re-start Mail and your back in business.

More updates will be posted as they come in. As usual Apple has made the upgrade process painless and smooth. Considering this upgrade is for most the first time they will migrate from a 32bit to 64bit platform it's been relatively quiet. This is a feat that many accomplished technology leaders expected to bring a litany of problems but has really been a non-event. Kudos to Bertrand Serlet and team for getting this one right. If you haven't made the jump yet, just back things up and pounce (pun), from all accounts it's another non-event with many benefits.

-ZuCom

Apple, the iPhone and Mobile, The Barbarians are at the gates.

It's hard to argue with the success that Apple has seen in it's mobile platform. Entering it's third year on the market the iPhone continues to to break new ground and is as popular as ever. Some pundits say that it's just savvy marketing coupled with great timing, others believe it's the leading edge of a revolution. As with most things when history looks back at this time it will undoubtedly fall somewhere in-between, but one thing is undeniable, .....with success come the barbarians.

In no particular order, there is Google developing a very similar looking phone called the Android and has accompanied it with an Application Store similar to the iTunes App-Store look and feel. Palm has come out with the PRE and claims to have a developer platform that rivals Apple and Google, not to mention the virtual plethora of others.

Outside of those beating down the hardware path there are software giants who are keen to get in on some of the spoils. Many of the corporate software giants have been forced to play by new rules in order to get past the proverbial "gates". Rules set by mobile carriers, platform SDK owners and hardware limitations, something these giants aren't used to dealing with. The revenue and market shift to mobile is palpable and thus a few of the big boys have found ways to capitulate. Still others have chosen to take matters into their own hands. This week Adobe announced that Flash CS5 would support the creation of native iPhone apps. As of this writing it's unclear if this is a defection or something that has been condoned, but suffice it to say that many foresee a day where tightly controlling the move to mobile won't be possible, and we may be seeing the first signs of that coming.

-Robert Zullo

ZuCom

The Book to have on the iPhoneSDK

The fundamental prerequisite for anyone looking to develop iPhone applications. Whether you are new to Cocoa or just the iPhone SDK this book will quickly get you up and running. From concept to working code the author's approach is both easy to read and quick to understand. The code samples get you up and running applications in very little time and the step by step approach makes the learning process effortless.

Hands down this is the best fundamental primer on iPhone Development on the market today.

Leopard Sharing Snafu

Apple has dramatically changed the file sharing preferences pane in Leopard.  Much of what has changed is just in the GUI but for many who only use this layer some features are very new.   At issue is the Users window inside the preference pane (see pict below).  This area gives you the ability to set user permissions on a shared folder.  By default the Everyone group shows up in this list with read only access to the public folder of the user who is currently logged on.  Pretty standard and not anything new for most.  Apple has disabled the ability to remove the Everyone group from this pane by greying out the '-' option in the field.  While the exact mapping of the "Everyone group" to a standard Unix group like Wheel is not clear it would appear that Everyone is very important and really is something integral to the system function (post if you are aware what group it maps to).  Now comes the area where it gets tricky.  If you select the Everyone group and hit the DELETE key on your keyboard, you can remove the Everyone group from the share entirely.  Logic would follow that this would action should simply remove the permissions from that folder as it would in any POSIX system but the results of doing this actually have a much bigger impact.  The result of this action is the actual removal of this "Everyone" group from the root of the drive thus rendering the system unable to boot.  While several have reported this as a bug, and it may be, the behavior seems to be something that was missed in user acceptance testing more than a bug (save the fact that the root of the drive is involved).  

Several posts claim to have a fix, that will save the system.  Our testing was able to reproduce the problem consistently but recovery efforts, while successful, were not as consistent. 

In the end the message here is "DON'T REMOVE THE EVERYONE GROUP" from your shares here in Leopard's preferences pane.  CHMOD is still a great way to control access to folders and files in your system and one that gives you the control over the details group assignments more detailed fashion.

-ZuCom

iPhone 3G + Enterprise Support = International Reach

With the announcement from Walt Mossberg that the next iPhone will be 3G the potential impact of this unique crossover entity might just be moving towards a Corporate International audience.

Arguments can be made that iPhone is already a corporate entity in the international market but as most non-US readers know, the limitation of not having 3G is a real concern on the international scene.

Let's face it 768k is only called "broadband" in the US. Most international markets reserve the term broadband for much higher data transfer rates. While Walt refers to content and marketing angles as his main points, the rub with enterprise I.T. managers becomes what to do if this 3G option is now part of the iPhone platform. While dismissing the iPhone is a hard thing to do even today, 3G support would really make this naysayers look more like pundits.

Walt references a 60 day timeline so time will tell, but should Apple decide to take that angle with the iPhone, it's clearly added another threat to the existing Mobile market.