Can the iPhone cut it as a corporate solution?

Originally, I had wanted this to be a very positive post.  I'm in the process of rebuilding my laptop and as a result needed to get iTunes up and working with my iPhone again.  I thought it would be a relatively easy process.  After all, everything else with the iPhone is.  Not so much.  Two days and three calls to Apple Support later and it's working.  It appears I haven't lost any info, but I was fully confident all along the way that I would. 

 

Since this was a voluntary reinstall, I had the opportunity to back everything up first.  I backed up my music folders as well as a complete copy of my user profile to minimize the chance of losing anything.  After reinstalling, I plugged my phone in and the first thing iTunes told me was "You can only sync with one computer at a time, if you sync your phone will be erased and replaced with what's in this instance of iTunes" (it's been a couple of days and I don't have the exact error message, sorry).  Warning bells!  So, I called Apple Support.  I spoke with a very nice fellow who told me "Oh, it's really easy.  Just plug it in and make a backup.  That'll repopulate iTunes and you'll be good to go."  Sweet!  Nope, wasn't to be.  I did this, but when I looked, none of the music had been put back as had none of the applications. 

So, I did a little research and found information on the "Transfer Purchases" option when you right-click your phone in iTunes.  It'll put any applications or music you bought from the iTunes store back from your phone.  Grand!  That seemed to work, but when I went to sync, I got the same dire warning that everything would be erased.  Hmmmm...now, keep in mind, I use the iPhone primarily to access the Cloud.  The vast majority of the data I use is out there, but I do keep some things on the phone.   Most specifically pictures of my daughter, but I have data in the Notes application, Calendar, To Do, Checklist, etc.  The pictures are easy enough to back up, but the others aren't.  It wouldn't be the end of the world to lose some of this data, but I figured it could wait until the morning when I had a chance to talk to Apple Support again. 

 

The second tech was just as nice, but easily one of the most clueless people I'd ever spoken to.  I had to explain that a monitor going into power save was not the same thing as the computer going to sleep.  She even told me that if I didn't check the boxes that said "Sync Music" or "Sync Applications" that it would still do so.  Apparently, in her mind, checking those boxes meant to do some kind of SPECIAL sync that erases everything and starts over.  As long as you pushed the Sync button on the Summary tab, it'll sync everything everytime regardless of what you told it to sync.   I got off the phone with her, tried a few things and decided to try my luck again with Support...third time being the charmed one and all.  This last tech did have a clue, but was completely unable to help me as well.  In the end, I finally had to just give up and tell iTunes to go ahead and do whatever it planned to do and if I lost data, I lost data.  It looks like I didn't (although I did have to relogin to every app that stored one like Facebook and Linkedin), but the experience has really soured me.

 

It really shouldn't be this hard.  The iPhone is about ease of use and convenience, and this experience didn't match that.  I never told the techs I'd done a manual reinstall as I wanted to avoid the "Oh, of course you reinstalled...you're on Windows" rhetoric.  I told them I'd had a hard drive crash as I figured there must be some kind of procedure available to deal with that situation.  Apparently, though, I'm the first person out of the millions of iPhone users that had a hard drive crash and had to restore.  One of the techs simply shrugged it off "I think most people will just reinstall and not bother to try to keep their data".  Yes, most of the drones who bought the iPhone solely because it has an Apple on the back won't care.   I also acknowledge that perhaps I got a little overanxious about the situation.  But when I have error messages that specifically state "you WILL lose everything on your phone", I can only take those at face value.  Compound that with a string of support techs that don't even have the faintest idea of how the software works and what am I supposed to think?

 

At my workplace, my team supports the messaging environment and therefore has a hand in supporting the mobile workforce.  When management came to us and asked to validate the iPhone with our Exchange environment, the team came back with a "No" because it couldn't be reliably and consistently wiped in the case of a theft or loss.  If Apple wants the iPhone to compete seriously in the business use marketplace, it's going to need to understand that this kind of laissez faire attitude towards people's data doesn't apply in business.  They've spent the last couple of decades complaining that Microsoft makes inferior products and have used their size to "bully" other people out of the marketplace, but these experiences prove to me that Apple's failings are completely due to their own misunderstanding that the needs of business users differ significantly from the needs of home users.   

 

In the end, though, I still love my iPhone.  I'm just glad it's only for personal use.

 

Every journey begins with a first blog entry

As part of my daily news and learning routine, I read a lot of sites.  I read on a wide variety of topics from computers to astronomy, philosophy to finance, comic strips and news.  One of the sites I have subscribed to in my RSS reader of choice (Newsgator) is Get Rich Slowly, "a blog about sensible personal finance".  Today, I read an interesting article called 10 Essential Steps to take BEFORE You're Laid Off.  One suggestion was to start a blog to serve as my "living resume".  So, since I was taking advantage of Microsoft Live's SkyDrive, I might as well kill two birds with one stone.  So, here's my blog where I'll discuss the stuff I DO want employers to find.  :)

Hopefully, it won't be boring for you...

Harry Potter and the Order of the Visa

We're watching a show right now about the "Secrets of Harry Potter" on A&E. A good show, but something's really bothering me about it. Then, after watching the same Visa commercial for the 2000th time tonight, it hits me. It's a training exercise. Seriously, think about it. Who's going to be watching this show right now? 14-16 year olds? The perfect age to start training them that "using cash is bad". You should use your Visa to buy everything. People who pay cash are stinky and make you wait in line. Don't you hate that? Every commercial break so far has lead in with the Visa commercial and lead back with it.

How easy are we swayed?

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Performancing for Firefox

So, I've decided to try and spend a little more time with my blogs. My peeps deserve that, afterall. They do love me for a reason, so I have to keep giving it up! :)

But, blogging can be a pain in the ass...enter Performancing for Firefox. It's a nifty little extension for Firefox that allows you to blog pretty easily. Just install it, restart FF and you're off. You then setup your accounts and done! It puts a little button on your statusbar and when you click it, your window splits in half and you blog in the bottom. There's even an addon to publish to Myspace blogs. Pretty cool stuff!

Foxyproxy...nice!

Been a while, huh? Wonder if anyone has me in their RSS feeds to see if I update this again. Hehehehe. Well, I'm going to try and be a bit more regular with all of my blogs, let's see how that works out.

Anyway, wanted to stop in and tell you how cool this Firefox extension is...FoxyProxy. I used to use the SwitchProxy Tool because I was using my laptop both at work and home. SPT allowed me to right-click and use the proxy at work, then right-click and use no proxy at home. Made life easier...until Firefox 1.5 came out and the developer stopped working on SPT. Fortunately, at about the same time I got a real desktop at work, and didn't need to switch proxies anymore, so I wasn't concerned...

...until a couple of weeks back when they "upgraded" the proxies at work. Now they're up, they're down, they're left, they're right. Half the time I can't even get out. Fortunately, there's five of them, so if one's down I might be able to get out on another. Back to needing a proxy switching util...FoxyProxy, how wonderful a tool. See, after upgrading the proxies, the rulesets aren't the same on them anymore. So, for example, the primary proxy I use (which is closest to my location and fastest) won't allow me to go to RPGNow to see what's new. However, the default one used by most folks will allow it. What a PITA to have to switch, no matter how easy FP makes it, back and forth between proxies for one or two sites.

Not so! FoxyProxy allows you to set patterns for URLs, so it can use different proxies depending on where you want to go. So, I use my "close" proxy for all URLs, unless it contains "*.rpgnow.com/*". Then, it uses the user-default proxy. All of this happens behind the scenes and I don't have to even think about it. Nice!

If you need a proxy solution, this is so the way to go, folks.

Little webmin thing

Webmin: think of it as a web-based MMC for your Linux box. That oughta piss off a lot of people, huh? :) It's a great tool once you get it setup. Fortunately, on Fedora it's as simple as yumming it down and it'll be preconfigured for the way things are setup on that OS. Otherwise, I recommend following the docs for installation. It's as simple as putting it into the directory it will eventually run from (think /opt!), and running setup.

Now, as we know, I like to have as much of my network and systems available on the web. The problem is, Webmin uses its own internal webserver, and that server runs on port 10000 by default. Dang! That ain't gonna work from the office, and I hate typing in URLs that include port numbers. Fortunately, there's good instructions on setting it up behind or with Apache here. However, I learned the hard way that they ain't complete (once I finish this post, I'll send them an update). I use the third method provided on that page where I use Apache as a reverse proxy. This hasn't really worked very well for me in the past, but I finally figured out why and here's the solution:

Firstly, my Apache only runs in SSL mode, it doesn't accept connections on port 80. When Webmin is installed, it too sees that SSL is installed and apparently enables it in itself, so it expects you to make https requests. If you keep getting "this server is runnning in SSL mode, try https://..." after setting up your Webmin, you have this problem. To fix, firstly this should be the setup in httpd.conf:

RewriteRule ^/webmin(.*) https://127.0.0.1:10000$1 [P,L]
# ProxyPass /webmin/ https://localhost:10000
ProxyPassReverse /webmin/ https://127.0.0.1:10000/
SSLProxyEngine On

(Note, I use rewrite, rather than ProxyPass. I've left the commented ProxyPass version in place.)

You see, without that, the proxy only makes plain requests to Webmin, but it wants SSL. You also need the SSLProxyEngine On statement to enable the right requests to be presented to Webmin (also missing from the docs).

That's it. A simple solution to a problem that's been bugging me for some time.

Bash completion

You know what's funny? I "grew up" using both Linux and Windows. Unlike most people, I find Windows a whole lot easier to use, a whole lot more stable, and generally a better day-to-day OS. Linux is fun to play with, but I get so aggravated trying to do the simplest stuff some days. It's just not worth the level of aggravation! The latest thing that was bugging me has also been bugging me for years, I just never got around to seeing if there was a solution. Turns out a solution's only been around for a short while anyway...

Believe it or not, there IS a command line in Windows. Not only that, but if you've got a clue it can be quite a powerful tool. Since NT 3.1, the shell processor of choice has been cmd.exe. Command.com was available, but it was a DOS-emulation mode that lacked certain features. The most important of these to me being command line completion. See, I type really fast. I think the last test I took had me at about 85 wpm. Not bad for someone who can't touchtype. :) The problem is, I can't type as fast as I can think, so anything that helps me type faster is critical.

Now, bash has command completion, too, but it works significantly different from the cmd.exe version. With cmd.exe, if I hit tab, it cycles through my choices. So, if I want to enter "cd \program files", I'd hit "cd \P-tab" and be there. Bash works the same, unless there's more than one file or directory that begins with "p" in the root. With cmd.exe, tabbing again would cycle through the "p" filenames and then I could hit enter to execute the command. With bash, it would bitch, then if I hit tab again it'll list all of the choices and then I have to continue to type until I've pretty much narrowed it down to the file I want.

Personally, I prefer the cmd.exe way of doing things. And, it's not because "that's what you're used to". I've used both shells over the years equally enough to make an informed decision, and I find the Windows version faster and easier. Apparently I'm alone in this thinking because in searching for a way to make bash act like cmd.exe I found a lot of people bitching about how it doesn't act like bash. Just yet another example of how *nix nerds are incapable of learning something that they're not used to. It's that whole "projection of shortcomings" thing. :)

Anywho, I did find the answer here. It seems it's a simple (and poorly documented) matter of adding the following four lines to your /etc/inputrc. In my case (currently using Gentoo, that's a story for another day), I didn't need to make any other changes than the addition of these. I've split the configs from the comments since Blogger squinches the pages down.

set completion-ignore-case on
# Ignore case when doing completion

set mark-directories on
# Completed dir names have a slash appended

set visible-stats on
# List ls -F for completion

"\C-i": menu-complete
# Cycle through ambiguous completions instead of list

#set show-all-if-ambiguous on
# List possible completions instead of ringing bell

You can edit the file and test it using bind -f /etc/inputrc to activate your changes immediately.

BTW, if your command shell doesn't currently support this feature, that's because it's disabled by default. Here's a post about enabling it, with the obligatory clueless and wrong Windows bashing (enabling this feature does NOT cause anything to crash. It never has, it never will. I've enabled and used this feature on literally THOUSANDS of Windows boxes and never had a problem with it).