Dealing with texting woes on iPhone 3.0

I just got a new iPhone. Good riddance to the old cracked up, patched up and duct taped dying device I had for years. PLUS... the new iphone have the new 3.0 software, with cut and paste and everything.

BUT... unfortunately, in texting terms... it hasn't all been bliss. If you ever encounter an error, saying simply that it couldn't sent. And that error keeps happening. And it's driving you nuts? Well then, look here.

1. In the conversation with that one person that you can't send to; tap the "edit" button.
2. Then hit the "Clear all" button up left top.
3. Tap "Done", and then "Back".
4. Then swipe over the empty conversation with the name of the person in question. Hit the red delete button.
5. Finally. Quit the texting app by hitting the home button.

Phew. Then try it again. Start a new text to that person, and it should work now.
Downside is that you are gonna loose a lot of texts, so here's hoping it's only a select few of your phone book this issue is tied to.

Sleep spasms of the macbook

Technology is so fragile and precise like clockwork, that the slightest alteration can make everything go haywire.

For some time now, I had the pleasure of trying to diagnose a macbook that would never fall to sleep, or really not wake up either. It was some times impossible to shut down, and once in a blue moon just as hard to start up. Furthermore the cd drive would make weird noises, and the computer in general seemed to be growling. Very odd behavior from a machine.

The great thing about computers is that there is ALWAYS a perfect reason for even the oddest symptoms. In this case I through much research found out, that the USB constantly felt like someone or something unplugged something. Or maybe even plugged something in. In any case, that normally causes the mac to wake up. Or halt whatever it is doing. Which was probably why the whole experience felt a little like driving in heavy rain, on an ice surface buttered up with grease.

By restarting and holding down the apple and s key, the problem became apparent. The computer kept repeating this line:

"IOUSBFamily could not enumerate a device."

I whipped out my screwdriver set and took off the top case, disabled the cd drive and behold: No more growling, or misbehavior.

a macbook with no cover

You can always judge a good cook, from the meals he makes for himself. A gourmet cook probably lives off fries and fast food. The mechanic that is highly regarded for his unique skills, drives around in a converted old worn out VW. And I, as a mac doctor, have the crappiest old Macbook that I've taken apart one too many times. Literally.

The fan was driving me nuts, as it had become misaligned and was emitting the sound of an old single engine airplane getting ready to take off. I cranked open the hood while I was working on the computer, to try to realign it so the horrible noise would seize. But that didn't work. What it DID do though, was that the connector cable between the keyboard and the physical computer snapped in half, rendering my keyboard and trackpad completely unusable.

Sigh. The death of my trusty old Macbook had long been underway. Just really had hoped that the day, wouldn't have been today. I had shut the computer off, before I realized what the problem was. And was now unable to turn it on again. Crap.



Well, fear not. If you ever get in this situation, it is certainly rectifiable. By using a flathead screwdriver and inserting it into the connector that used to be for the keyboard, I was able to simulate the short circuit that the power button is normally responsible for thus bringing my mac back to life.

For now I have to live with an external keyboard, and wait until I receive a new top cover for my mac. Those cost around 139 dollars.

Time travel is wee bit difficult...

I like to start all my articles differently, but basically I'm just keeping this blog for my own purposes so I will remember how I finally fixed something. If you who are reading get something out of it too, then I'm only glad to have helped.

In this case, I had a client who had purchased the Time Capsule in the belief that it would help him backup. But that was hardly the case, as it hasn't really worked for at least a year now. Or something in that order. The problem wasn't that it wasn't working, it was just working exacerbatingly slow. Like it would take days, just to copy a few megabytes. And when you have 80 gigabytes to go, it can be a patience test to endure.

Up until now it has been postponed again and again. But finally this week, I got around to trying to figure out what was wrong. To sum it up, the result was that it now works pretty fast, and reliably. But there was a lot of trial and error to get there.

So without further ado, these are the settings that I found to be working best.

1. Make sure that if you have an airport network with more units than the time capsule, that they are ALL compatible with 802.11n.

2. Make sure that the other devices are NOT extending the range of the network. This can be checked off in a checkbox under wireless, in the apple airport setup utility, under the specific airport base.

3. Make sure that the MultiCast rate is set as high as possible. In a nut shell: Higher multicast rate, means higher speed, but less range.

4. Check mark "Interference Robustness" on the internet connected, or first, airport base station.

With those settings I was able to get a pretty good throughput. My test file was 4.5 GB and would take 15 minutes to copy over to the mounted Time Capsule drive.

5 games that really MUST come to the iPhone!

I recently read an article about games that should be ported to the iPhone, and while the list consisted of a good collection of games, most of them had already been released. So that sucked. But as I luckily have had my first iPhone bestowed upon me, by the sheer generosity of a former client, I can now join the club of making silly lists that no one reads.

So here goes.

The iPhones lack of controls could be a huge drawback in terms of finding games suitable to port. But no. Not really. As the iPhone excels in one very specific area. Point and click! And therefore there are tons of turn based strategy games out there, and the good old fashioned adventure point and click games.

5. Fallout / Fallout 2

This game would be AWESOME to have ported. Not only is it one of the best Role Playing Games out there, but the scope and the longevity of these games should be reason enough.

4. Diablo / Diablo 2

Once again; games where you do nothing else than point and click. Also spawned a whole generation with mouse click infections in their clicking joints. Diablo has a safe place in my heart as the two games I've spent most time on ever. Would be sweet to pull out your iPhone at the subway, for a round of demon slashing action between stops.

3. Monkey Island 1 + 2 + 3 + ....

And then some. If LucasArt could pull themselves together a little, they would discover that they are sitting on a cash cow ready to be milked. In the early nineties they were releasing one amazing graphic adventure game after the other. Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Sam & Max Hit The Road and so on. The list is long, and the games are great. A little updating with better graphics and we are golden.

2. Alone In The Dark

A semi adventure, action game. Spawned a horrible movie by Uwe Boll, but the games were pretty good. And really scary for the time. Which leads me to a PlayStation classic:

1. Resident Evil

This one would need a little modding, and it's a really long time ago since I played the first one. But I think it would be possible to do with point and click. Maybe I'm wrong. Tell me in the comments....:)

That's it. The iPhone has just begun the gaming game.

the mac mini TV of death syndrome

One of my friends around the bend thought it would be a good idea to show off some slides from his website, on his friends TV connected Mac Mini. Only problem was that he tinkered too much with the resolution settings, and rendered the Mac Mini incapable of displaying anything at all. This can be upsetting, and in this case was mildly more than that. Our common female friend thought it was less than amusing, as she doesn't even own either TV or Mac Mini, and the owner would come back to his apartment within a short narrow time frame. Out of his wits, my friend obviously called me for desperate help.

What do you do, when neither restart or take the power cable out makes any significant difference? Call Dr. Mac : )

Well anyway, I thought I had to try different options so I brought my landlords old first generation iMac keyboard to hook up to the Mini, as it only was equipped with a wireless keyboard. Wireless keyboards takes a backseat when it comes to troubleshooting a problem as they are first recognized when the computer has started up right.

But my remedies were not working, as either zapping of the PRAM (a list of default system preferences being zapped by holding down a number of keys during boot, or deleting the windows preferences file through single user boot. This is very technical, but in layman terms it means that what I had hoped would work, didn't.

By some heavy thinking I came up with a solution, which is posted here for your convenience, should you ever be so unlucky of being in a situation with a Mac Mini and a TV stating: Invalid Format.

1. Restart the Mac Mini with a connected USB keyboard. Hold the T button down, until a nice big firewire symbol fills the screen, or just hold it down for 15 seconds.

2. Connect a firewire cable from the Mac Mini an external mac laptop. Remember this has to match in terms of processor type. Intel Mac Mini + Intel Laptop, or PowerPC Mini + PowerPC laptop.

3. Restart the laptop, holding down the option key to get a list of disks to boot from. Choose the disk of the Mac Mini that is connected via firewire. Click the restart button underneath the selection.

4. You are now starting up on you laptop as the Mac Mini. Once logged in, go into System Preferences via the Apple menu, and choose "Sharing" Put a check mark under "Screensharing". Make sure to note the network the Mac Mini is connected to (wirelessly).

5. Restart both the laptop and the Mac Mini, and disconnect the firewire cable.

6. Once again the screen will go black and give you an ominous error message, but fear not. Help is on the way. Once the Mac Mini and your laptop has fully restarted, and you join the same network on the laptop; Take a look at the sidebar in an open finder window under "Shared". Here is the Mac Mini, and next to it a button called "Share screen".

7. Click the Share Screen button, and type in username and password. Voila, you now have access to the Mac Mini remotely.

8. Find the Displays option under System Preferences, and fiddle until you get the settings right, and the TV once again displays an image.

Good luck!

Restoring error with brand new iphone?

Here is the solution.

I had a client that just got his brand spanking new iphone. Excited about it, he of course wanted to get all his music over so he could enjoy all the wonderful features of his new acquired gadget. But much to his dismay, the iPhone did not turn up in iTunes upon connection. So he of course called me. I was befuddled, and confused by this. His computer very well stated that there in fact WAS an iPhone connected (in system profiler). So what does one doctor do?

Well I tried numerous things. The least remote option would be to reset the iPhone, but that only got us further into trouble. The phone would NOT be reset, even in recovery mode. It would only turn up with an annoying, and repetitive error, that both of us would grow to hate. iTunes simply said "error 1604" every time a recovery was attempted.

Then I whipped out my doctormac guide book, to find advice. I put on my genius hat, and paced like I never paced before. All sorts of different apps, of hack nature was tried and consequently failing in fast succession. INdependence, ZiPhone (never use this app!!!), iFuntastic and so on. All gave up on the deceptively simple task of reviving the poor unfortunate iPhone. My client was growing angry, and I was frustrated. Or was it vice versa. In any case, I was about to give up as something completely illogical dawned on me. One last attempt. Even though I had told myself, the last attempt would be to install iTunes in windows to see if that worked. Which it didn't.

But downloading AppZapper. Complete obliterating iTunes from the face of the hard drive platters, and reinstalling it, did the trick!

Now recovery, reset and syncing are working just perfect. And my client can finally enjoy his new purchased iPhone in all its glory.

YAY!