The case of the gabonkadunk iPhone ... uh, case

Apple just released probably their most ballyhooed product in recent years, and I'm not talking about the "iPhone Watch" or the Apple Pencil. They released this:



Everyone has been writing about it, blogging about it, reporting about it, and talking about it. And what is it? It's an iPhone case with a battery built in. You can tell by the bulge. There's a battery in there, that looks like it's bursting to get out.

The Verge wrote 3 articles (!) and had a video about this on the day it came out. One was lamenting the fall of Apple's ability to make sound design decisions, other's have joined the choir and ramped up on the chorus echoing through the blogosphere, that Apple is going down.

My humble opinion is that this might be the most clever marketing Apple has ever done. By making a design so radical, that everyone's talking about it is not easy to pull off these days. I haven't seen hype about a design decision like this since maybe the inception of the first iPhone.

Junk in trunk or not, the hump has made it's bump.

HOW TO CIRCUMVENT HOTEL-INTERNET RESTRICTIONS, AND GET YOUR APPLE-TV ONLINE.

So you've checked into a hotel, and you brought you AppleTV to enjoy your movie collection in the cloud while on vacation. But alas.... the internet in the hotel, requires you to agree to "terms and conditions" which is a page that you're re-directed to in Safari when you choose the WiFi. Or, a panel that comes up when you log on via an iPhone. But the AppleTV doesn't have Safari, and no panel pops up, so the internet won't work. What do you do?

Well, here's what you do. You need to spoof the MAC address of the AppleTV on your Mac, to get the device approved on the network. That's a very complicated technical way of saying that your AppleTV has an ID and the ID needs to be put on an "approved list" that the internet in the hotel has sitting somewhere in it's memory.

A MAC address has nothing to do with Mac and Apple, but is a word that basically means network-ID. No devices on the planet has the same MAC address, and hence a network can blacklist or vice versa specific devices.

Alright, so all that tech mumbo-jumbo is out of the way; here's how you do it.

First you have to figure out what the "Wi-Fi Address" is on the Apple TV, and write that down somewhere, let's call that the "AppleTV Wi-Fi-address". Then you have to figure out what is on your Mac, so you can set it back after you're done.

So here goes:

1. Go to Settings on your Apple TV and choose "Network" and jot down the thing under Wi-Fi Address. It goes something like this: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
2. Open up the application "Terminal" on your Mac. It's located in the Utilities folder within the Applications folder.
3. In the terminal type the following, or copy it from here and paste it and hit enter. networksetup -listallhardwareports 
4. It shows you a list of all the network interfaces on your computer. The one you're looking for is either called en0 or en1. Note the the one that's called Wi-Fi and write that down, or copy it somewhere. Let's call that "Mac Wi-Fi address".
5. Now here's the magic. Type in the following and hit enter, but replace the "xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx" part with the "Apple TV Wi-Fi address". sudo ifconfig en0 ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
6. It will ask you for your computer password. Type that in, and hit enter.
7. Then go to the Hotel Wifi, and then launch Safari and accept the terms and conditions.
8. Disconnect from the wifi (Choose another one, or "forget the network").
9. Go back into the Terminal and type the following: sudo ifconfig en0 ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx tand replace the x's with the "Mac Wi-Fi Address" and hit enter.
10. Go to your Apple TV and connect to the hotel Wi-Fi again, and voila, you're online.

List of places that accept ApplePay

I've noticed that there aren't really any OFFICIAL list of ALL the places that accept ApplePay, and since I'm a huge fan of the service/thing I decided to keep a list of places I have found that accept the technology.

Fairway (Grocery chain in New York)
D'agostino
Container Store
Christian Louboutin
Gourmet Garage
New York TaxiCabs (TLC)
Union Market (Houston Street)
Push Cart Coffee (on 25th and 9th)
FIKA
CitiBike (new stations will enable you to unlock with ApplePay)

aside from all the obvious ones:

Duane Reade
Wallgreens
McDonalds
Subway
Foot Locker
Bloomingdales
Apple Store

How to remotely run FSCK on a mac.

Have you ever had a client that had disk problems on his mac, and the only way to fix them would be to boot into single user mode, and do an /sbin/fsck thingie? Well, you really can't do that if you're not there in person, can you .... or can you?

Turns out you can!

http://www.jeremycole.com/blog/2012/10/10/how-to-remotely-run-disk-repair-fsck-on-os-x/

But the article fails to tell you how you set the whole thing back after you're done, thus avoiding the user having to type in "exit" at a DOS looking prompt every time she/he wants to use his computer.

So here's my take on the manual. To enable single user, and make the Mac run fsck at boot; do the folllowing:

1. Open up the Terminal / Utilities folder.
2. type: cd .. and hit return a couple of times
3. type: sudo su
4. then type: sudo su - 
5. then type: nvram boot-args="s" (this sets the boot type to single user boot, you can revert this by typing: nvram boot-args="")
6. then type: sudo nano /etc/bashrc
7. then copy paste this block of text at the end of the file

singleuser=`sysctl -n kern.singleuser`

if [[ $singleuser -eq 1 ]]; thennvram boot-args=""/sbin/fsck -fyrebootelseecho Not in single user modefi

1.  You wanna save the changes by hitting CTLR and O to do a write out. Hit enter.
2. And then restart.

If you wanna revert the process, then remote log in after the Mac has restarted automatically, do all the steps again, but remove the block of text you just added, and change the start up mode from single user mode, to normal by removing the S as described in step 5.

Inverse selection in finder

Basically this little video shows you that if you have marked a few files and not marked a few other ones in finder, and you realized you did it wrong, you can hold the command key and drag to INVERSE the selection. This changes EVERYTHING.

Replacing a home-button on an iPhone 4

These iFixit guys are uncanny:

Gain control over your Time Warner Cable modem.

It's simple. We kill the Batman.
No, just kidding.

If you feel like being reemed over and over again by TWC, this guide might be for you. Especially if you're tech-savvy, and want to control your modem, instead of waiting around for guys from TWC to show up and amble around for 20 minutes.

1. Unplug the COAX cable from your Motorola SBG6580 Modem.
2. Plug an ethernet cable from the first port on the modem into a PC/Mac.
3. Hold the reset button down on the back of the modem with a pen or some small thing that can go through the little port hole. Hold it down for 30 seconds, until the modem restarts.
4. Go to a browser and type: 192.168.0.1
5. Log in with admin/motorola

There, you're in. You can turn the modem into bridge mode, turn wireless off and so on. When you've made your changes, plug the COAX cable back in and restart the modem.

You've wielded your first Motorola!

See this original post for more detailed geeking around:

http://enshinkas.com/forum/showthread.php/469-How-to-Getting-a-Motorola-SBG6580-into-“Bridge”-mode-on-TimeWarner-Wideband