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Update on: Just found a bug in OS X Lion and there is nearly no way to tell Apple!

admin — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 09:47:41 +0000

I described a problem related to Samba shared drives on Windows and connecting them with Mac OS X Lion here.

After three months and two more versions of Lion there is still no solution. The guy from Apple never called back and never replied to my email.

I see this problem on all Macs running Lion in my company. So this is not my machine.

Apple support was one of the best in the industry for many years. Today it is just like the rest of the support hotlines. It takes hours to explain and it gets never solved.

Thanks! I liked Snow Leopard better because it actually worked!
Do I have to move back to a PC? After all these years?

Why Android phones suck and why the iPhone wins the game

admin — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 15:32:39 +0000

Honestly, since the beginning of the iPhone vs. Android war, there has been not a single Android phone I am interested in. Starting with the Android G1, which looked for me like a Fisherprice toy to the current, Samsung Nexus S – not a single one that really nailed it for me. It is no secret I like Apple stuff, but just comparing the two different ideologies behind the phone, shows you simply why Google is not going the right way with its mobile OS.

Android Version 1.0 was bound to a Gmail account. Means you had to have a Gmail account to get your contacts and mails. There was no POP3 or IMAP client pre-installed and I would doubt there was one on day one. You had to save everything in the cloud. Not optional, you had to!

People are often say that the platform that Apple provides is under total control of Apple. That is true and it is not always good, but on the other side, it gives you the safety that an app is not doing anything dodgy with your contacts, SMS application or anything else. This has been seen within the Android eco system quite a lot within the last months.

Here are a few examples:

Nasty Android Virus Fails To Inform You Your Calls May Be Recorded

Android hit by rogue app malware

Google removes 21 apps infected with malware from its Android Market, report says

And to bring it down to the point – if you want to run stuff that is not in the iTunes store on your iPhone just UNLOCK the damn thing!

Back to the release cycle

To be honest they pretty fast release new versions, which is from one view very impressive, but if you read this really good article at “the understatement” you will pretty soon realize that this is Androids biggest problem!
Apple always at least supported their hardware from the OS perspective at least for 3 years. Means a phone that is 3 years old (iPhone 3GS) is able to run iOS 5, which is while I am writing this, the current OS version of Apple.

If you look at the graph you will see that basically every Android phone sold is already out dated the moment you buy it.

I think this pretty much nails it down!

Buying a phone that is already out dated and rebuying a new one, just because the OS is not providing the latest features or having support for at least 3 years!

Just found a bug in OS X Lion and there is nearly no way to tell Apple!

admin — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 09:29:36 +0000

What an interesting experience!
I found a bug in OS X Lion related to Finder and connecting to SMB / windows shared drives. Basically whenever I try to access a company wide shared drive on a Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise 64bit via SMB thru the Finder, I get a message saying like “You don’t have permission to access this object”. Interesting thing, trying to mount the drive via Terminal on the Unix Shell and accessing the drive, opening files, saving files etc. work just fine. So it is related to the Finder.

I wanted to submit my bug to Apple, but didn’t find anything on the webpage. So I called the hotline.
The guy in the first level support told me that words like “Terminal”, “mount” and “smb” don’t mean anything to him, but I could not compare mounting a drive on a unix shell with the Finder. He said this is something completely else and I have to talk to my local windows administrator. THIS GUY HAD NO IDEA! He first refused to forward me to someone from second level support first and tried to solve it by himself. Good idea, but he absolutely had no idea about OS X and shell commands.

After a while I got forwarded to the second level support. I am waiting for feedback now, but it looks like Apple is only opening bugs thru the hotline.

For everyone who has the same issue, you could open a Terminal and access your drive by going to /Volumes/NAMEOFSHARED .

Checkpoint secure client on Mac OS Lion

admin — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 10:12:44 +0000

Good news! Same trick as described on my post about Checkpoint secureclient and Mac OS X Snow Leopard works on Mac OS Lion. So no worries when upgrading.

Waiting for the Lion to come out of his cage

admin — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 11:58:45 +0000

Rumours say Apple is about to release the next version of Mac OS X called Lion TODAY.

To be honest I can’t wait to see what Apple has developed the last two years on.

Common Apple, released the next cat.

Solved! Checkpoint SecureClient on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

admin — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:53:32 +0000

Unfortunately, the SecureClient from CheckPoint doesn’t support 64bit environments. Nearly every Mac you can buy today supports 64bit as default. Brings a lot of benefits, but thats a whole other topic. So, the CheckPoint client currently only works in 32bit Snow Leopards.

There is two ways to achieve that.

Default boot into 32bit. This is described in the Knowledge Base entry on the Apple page here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3773

Second: Press 3 + 2 while booting up the system. Guess which key combination you have to press if you want a 64 bit system!?

Hope that helps.

Setting up a VPN Server on Mac OS X 10.6 >

admin — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 08:29:39 +0000

I was just looking around for a possibility to connect to my computer at home secure thru a VPN. Unfortunately my router at home has no VPN feature implemented. As with most broadband packages, you get the cheapest router possible from your ISP. In my case I rely on the router as I get my television signal thru my internet connection and the router works as an authentication device for the media box from my ISP.

Anyway… I found a pretty exciting tutorial about setting up a VPN server on a Mac OS X machine on theilluminatedengineer.com.
Took me about 10 minutes to set it up and have it up and running.

Activate PHP5 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard

admin — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:56:32 +0000

I blog this, because it took me some time to figure that out and is so simple to fix.

I just bought a Mac Mini Server with Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server. There is a nice interface to configure apache2, mailserver and everything else. By default there is no php5 enabled.
If you look into the module list in the server admin interface, there is the php5_module. Just check the box, the server will perform a gracefully restart.

I just installed a little script with the following code in it.

After that I opened the site in the local webbrowser.

The result was:

Mhhh??? What went wrong?

The answer is quite simple. Mac OS X Server comes with NO php.ini and PHP comes with short_tags disabled by default.

So, just at a php.ini file or add to your script.



Nativ NTFS writing with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
admin — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:07:51 +0000
I found this little how to on Macrumors, that shows how you can enable writing on Windows formatted harddiscs with Snow Leopard. 
Nativ NTFS for Snow Leopard.
The problem is that Microsoft still owns the rights on NTFS and is not that amused if someone else is using it. This thread will be helpful for everyone who is a switcher from Windows to Mac. 



How to connect Logitech Freepulse with iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS
admin — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 12:27:50 +0000
A year ago, I bought a Logitech Freepulse Wireless Bluetooth Headphone to listen to my music without getting in trouble with cables. 

Normally you need the headphones and a little bluetooth box you plug into the audio device. With the iPhone 3G and 3GS, Apple added the A2DP protocol to listen to music using Bluetooth. 
There is a way to use your Freepulse without the little box. Just push the ON button on the headphones for 15 seconds. Wait for the light to flash in blue and red. If the light is flashing, you can easily connect to the headphones from your iPhone.