Can’t use the new “multitasking” finger-swipes on your iOS 4.3 beta iPad? That’s probably because you updated your iPad in iTunes. You have to restore it in Xcode’s Organizer and click “Use Development Mode” to get the new four and five finger-swipes. You need a valid iOS SDK developer account to do this, it’s not enough to have the iPad’s UDID registered with someone else’s dev account. Read more »

Most major NAS (Network Attached Storage) manufacturers claim their NAS units support the Time Machine backup feature for Macintoshes. What they usually don’t tell you in advance is that this support is somewhat limited – at least if you plan your NAS to backup multiple Macs with Time Machine. Read more »

Do you own a Wake-on-LAN (WOL) capable NAS (network attached storage) unit? Is your computer a Mac? Want to save on your energy bill?

The consumer NAS units you can buy these days are actually small Linux computers with a software RAID and a bunch of S-ATA hard drives inside. Depending on the make and model, some NAS units consume a considerable amount of energy even in standby mode. For instance, my QNAP NAS still consumes around 25W after all disks spun down. However, once I shut my NAS down, it only consumes 1W in deep sleep mode. It just keeps its network adapter barely alive so it’s able to “hear” a Wake-on-LAN signal.

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I have a bunch of photography tutorials in the Flash video .flv format which I want to watch on my iPad. As you may be aware, everything with the name Flash in it doesn’t play too well on Apple’s iOS devices. VLC Media Player for iOS is able to play the .flv format but Apple doesn’t allow 3rd party software devs to use the built-in H.264 hardware acceleration for video playback. As as result, .flv videos usually don’t play very well on iOS devices. Besides, I prefer to manage my video collection in iTunes instead of dragging every clip onto an app icon.

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I just finished installing the 10.6.5 update on my 2010 MacBook Air using the Software Update utility. The installation process went smoothly but my 2 week old  13″ MacBook Air didn’t come back to life after the restart. It’s dead. No picture, no Apple logo, no chime, zilch! The only thing I hear is the fan when I press the on/off button long enough. During the update process the fan came on (until then I didn’t even know there was one). Maybe some component on the main-board overheated? Just speculating here.

I’m still in the process of trying all sorts of keyboard combinations to reset PRAM and stuff but so far, none have worked.

Dank Rainer Ullrichs ruKernelTool kann man sich ab sofort eine neue, internationale Firmware auf die schweizer Version der AVM FRITZ!Box 7390 herunterladen und anschliessend auf die Box flashen lassen. Im Firmware-Filter des Download-Reiters einfach 7390 eingeben, dann sieht man die neue Version sofort. Read more »

Some smart folks over at macprime.ch found out that the Swiss iTunes store is being populated with movie titles for the first time. I fired up my Apple TV 2 to see if it sees the movies in the Swiss iTunes store as well but as of now, they don’t show up yet (see screenshot below). In iTunes, the non-HD rentals have a price tag of CHF 3.50 and HD-rentals will be streamed to you for CHF 4.50. TV shows don’t seem to be available at all. Read more »

Wie bereits in einem anderen Beitrag erwähnt, lässt sich eine in der Schweiz gekaufte AVM FRITZ!Box 7390 mit der internationalen Firmware auf die deutsche Version patchen. Dadurch lassen sich beispielsweise die neusten deutschen Firmwares aus dem AVM Labor einspielen, was bei der internationalen Version der Box nicht möglich ist. Am Ende des Beitrages stellte ich die Hypothese auf, dass neuere Firmwares sich nach wie vor über die Benutzeroberfläche einspielen lassen sollten. Ich habe dies heute mit der neusten Laborversion 84.04.86-18419 getestet. Read more »

A few days ago I received the re-vamped Apple TV 2 (or 2G) in the mail. The iOS version in the new Apple TV is listed as 4.0. I was very curious to try the new AirPlay feature that Steve Jobs announced in his keynote in early September. AirPlay enables the ability to stream any kind (well, obviously the format needs to be supported by iTunes) of audio and video from any iOS device to Apple TV 2. I have yet to find out why this feature could be useful but hey – at least it’s pretty cool, isn’t it? ;-)

To be able to stream content to Apple TV 2 you need to press that small antenna icon on the right to the volume slider and a dialog pops up to choose the target iOS device. I tried both, the iPad and iPhone 4, to stream a movie to Apple TV 2 but unfortunately, only the audio stream is being recognized by Apple TV 2. Read more »

This topic is irrelevant to my English readers. So, for a change this post will be entirely in German.

Wie bereits schon mal in einem anderen Post erwähnt, besitze ich seit ein paar Wochen eine AVM FRITZ!Box 7390 und betreibe diese erfolgreich an einem Swisscom VDSL2 Anschluss (siehe auch hier). Es handelt sich dabei um die internationale “avme” Version. Diese Version unterscheidet sich von der deutschen Version zum einen in den zusätzlichen Sprachbundles (z.B. Englisch) sowie auch der Möglichkeit, die Box an einem Annex A Anschluss zu betreiben. Letzteres ist die Voraussetzung um die 7390 an einem analogen Anschluss mit DSL zu betreiben in der Schweiz. Die internationale Version kann im Gegensatz zur deutschen Version zwischen Annex A und Annex B in der Konfigurationsoberfläche umgestellt werden. Die deutsche Version wird nur mit Annex B ausgeliefert.

Das grosse Problem bei der internationalen Version ist, dass sie der deutschen Version Monate hinterher hinkt. Aktuell verfügbar für Deutschland ist der Firmware-Stand 84.04.86 (bzw. es gibt bereits eine neuere Laborversion der .86er Firmware), während die internationale Version derzeit noch mit einem Firmware-Stand vom letzten April ausgeliefert wird (84.04.83). Die internationale 7390 lässt sich über die Benutzeroberfläche nicht mit einer deutschen Firmware updaten, weshalb allen Besitzern der internationalen Version viele tolle Features bis zum Erscheinen einer aktuelleren, internationalen Firmware verwehrt bleiben (z.B. WLAN Gastnetz, IPv6 support, Photo-bei-Anruf, HTTP-NAS-Oberfläche, DNSsec usw.). Grundsätzlich wird bei der deutschen Version nur Annex B unterstützt, was in der Schweiz und Österreich zu grösseren Problem führt, weil die Box so nicht an einem analogen Anschluss mit DSL synct. Auch auf Anfrage konnte AVM keinen Termin für das Erscheinen einer aktualisierten, internationalen Firmware-Version nennen.

Für alle wagemutigen Update-Junkies mit einer CH/A Version, die nicht auf eine aktualisierte, internationale Firmware warten wollen oder gerne mal die deutsche Laborversion aufspielen möchten, zeige ich hier eine Lösung, die trotz der deutschen Firmware Annex A fähig ist und damit mit Swisscom VDSL2 am analogen Anschluss einwandfrei funktioniert. Read more »

I just got myself an AVM FRITZ!Box Fon WLAN 7390 (CH-edition) router to replace a rather aged Swisscom branded Netopia 7347-84 VDSL router I received for my internet subscription. The FRITZ!Box 7390 really is the jack of all trades:

• ADSL/VDSL modem
• WLAN 802.11n/b/g/a (including the 5 GHz frequency band)
• DECT base station for up to 6 cordless phones
• Telephone system for Internet and fixed-line network phones
• Answering machine
• Fax receiver
• Network attached storage (NAS)
• UPnP-AV media server
• Gigabit ethernet
• DynDNS support
• A ton of configuration options (a must have for the true gadgeteer!)

Here’s how to setup the FRITZBox 7390 router for Swisscom’s VDSL network. Read more »

I just updated my ASUS P6T Hackintosh to the latest Mac OS X 10.6.5 developer build and it looks like there aren’t going to be any changes regarding the support for the SSD TRIM command for the official release of Mac OS X 10.6.5.

  Model:	INTEL SSDSA2M080G2GN
  Revision:	2CV102HD
  Serial Number:	CVPO942200DA080BGN
  Native Command Queuing:	Yes
  Queue Depth:	32
  Removable Media:	No
  Detachable Drive:	No
  BSD Name:	disk0
  Medium Type:	Solid State
  TRIM Support:	No <--

My 2nd generation Intel SSD supports the TRIM command in Windows 7 even though Mac OS System Profiler thinks it doesn’t. By the way, aside from the AppleHDA-kext replacement the update process from 10.6.4 to 10.6.5 went smoothly as usual on my ASUS P6T rig.

To use Apple AirPrint on an iOS device like the iPad or iPhone you either need an AirPrint enabled printer or a printer that’s connected to a Mac. Here’s how to use a printer that’s connected to a Mac. In order to be seen by any iOS device, the printer needs to be shared on your local network. Go to System Preferences -> Sharing and activate the checkbox for “Printer Sharing”. Click the “Open Print Preferences” button. In my example, I’m going to share my Lexmark C530 laser printer. Read more »

I took me quite some time to figure this out (again). Actually, the solution was already provided in one of my posts from 2008 but I had completely forgotten about it. I recently downloaded the new 64-bit USBtoUART SiLabs driver (the package contains a 32-bit driver too) to hook up my Holux M-241 GPS logger to a USB port on my Mac. Every time I tried to connect the GPS client software BT747 to the Holux data logger I received the following exception: Read more »

Lately, my Mac was having two weird problems.
First, it didn’t go to sleep after the amount of time set in Energy Manager anymore. In fact, it only went to sleep if either I pressed the sleep button on the case or selected the sleep menu entry in the top left Apple-icon menu.

The second problem was that unused hard disks didn’t go to sleep anymore. If I manually ejected an unused hard disk it only went to sleep for a short time. After about 30 seconds I could hear the disk spin up again. Well, obviously something I installed on the Mac was preventing it from going to sleep properly.

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