Vancouver Garbage Strike

Originally uploaded by leojmelsrub
Found this poetry in an alley off of Main Street.

A first hand account of the Battle of Quiberon Bay in 1759 (more from Wikipedia) from the decks of the HMS Coventry, a 28-gun Frigate of the Royal Navy commanded by Captain Francis Burslem.

From Naval Yarns: Letters and Anecdotes … – Google Book Search.

Technorati Tags: Burslem, HMS Coventry, Quiberon Bay, Naval Yarns

A bit of a slap in the face really. Especially to the early adopters and the hardcore Apple fan base.

But I’m also not sure a low price point is a good thing ultimately. Sure they might sell a million iPhones the first year – but at what cost? Quality. Churning these things out is going to affect the one thing Apple used to be known for.

Apple’s rush to go mainstream is frankly starting to worry me a little. I don’t want them to become the Starbucks of computers. I still think they make the best consumer electronics and computing equipment out there but lately I find myself more and more disappointed with the folks in Cupertino.

Just a few things I’ve struggled with

• Problems with Airport Extreme Base Station Air Disks
• iPhone not connecting to WiFi
• Warping lid on my BRAND NEW Macbook Pro

Apple’s new found fortune may be too much of a good thing if it can’t get it’s QA under control. I hope the can.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone

I just recently upgraded my Airport Extreme Base Station to the latest version of the firmware (7.2.1). Up until that point my network had been working flawlessly – I had 2 external hard drives and a printer plugged into the USB port on the router and all my computers were able to see them just fine.

That all changed with this latest update however. Everything broke. I could see the drives in the AirPort configuration panel, but try as I might, I could not get them to mount. I thought I was going crazy.

Usually when I’ve reached wit’s end, I head over to the Apple Support Forums to see if I can figure out what was going on. Sure enough, I was not alone. Seems 7.2.1 is causing a lot of grief for a lot of people. (Read BUG FOUND!! in Airport Disk programming …)

One user helpfully pointed out that you can fix the problem by reverting back to the old firmware. Thankfully Apple has made this extremely easy to do:

• to change the firmware update
• go to Airport utility
• select manual setup
• go to summary
• go to version and change it to 7.1.1

Worked perfectly for me. I rolled back the patch, my router reset and up popped all my drives again and connected without a hitch.

This is really quite slopping work from Apple, and quite uncharacteristic of the company. I would really hope to see a new firmware patch shortly – but until then, if you use AirPort Disks, avoid 7.2.1 at all costs.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Airport Extreme, Base Station, Firmware

That’s when I read about itoner, I was really excited. From their web site:

iToner enables you to quickly transfer custom ringtones for your iPhone – without modifying, hacking or having to reset your iPhone. Simply drag and drop your MP3 or AAC audio files on iToner’s window, click the Sync button, and you’re done. Even better, your ringtones will continue to work with future iPhone OS updates

I downloaded the trial of iToner and gave it a shot – sure enough, it worked flawlessly. I had my MP3 version of the Airwolf Theme as my ringtone, just like on my old BlackJack.

15 bucks is a bit steep for the software. Especially since Apple might just offer the same service for free. I’m going to hold out for the moment and see how the announcement on the 5th goes. But if it goes as expected – iToner might just be getting my money.

Technorati Tags: iPhone, Apple, iPhone ringtones

I love my new iPhone, but am a little disappointed that Apple has not opened up the platform to allow third-party developers to create native applications for it yet. Sure – there are ways to hack it and add all kinds of neat features, but I’m not going to go there myself. Call me chicken, but it’s a $600 investment and I’ve already bricked phones in the past.

In the meantime however, there are some greats apps developed specifically for the Safari web browser on the iPhone:

Google Reader – Reeds your feeds on the go or at your leisure.
iPhone Facebook – Update your status and keep in touch with your friends
iPhocal – iPhone interface to Yelp. Find a good coffee shop or restaurant nearby.
SeeqPod Music – All the music you could ever want. (Needs WiFi connection to stream)
Meebo – Hook up to all your IM clients.
PocketTweets – Twitter your presence anywhere.
(mt) iPhone Account Center – Manage your MediaTemple hosting accounts.

Just for Fun:

Bejeweled – Play popular time waster on your phone.
Rock Me – Rock on!
iPhone BattleFleet – You sunk my Aircraft Carrier!

It (should) go without saying. You’ll need to hit each of those links with an iPhone to get the full effect.

Technorati Tags: iPhone, iPhone apps, iPhone applications, Apple, Apple iPhone

Thinking of you, bud.

Come home soon.