Now With Firewireless Networking

Apple updated their laptop product line this week, giving the Macbooks a shiny new aluminium enclosure as well as a hardware upgrade for all existing Macbook, Macbook Pro and Macbook Air models. Although, somewhere in the middle of the switch to those new aluminium cases, Apple apparently forgot to cut the opening for Firewire (IEEE 1394) port.

Previously Firewire – a standard Apple itself has helped to build, promote and support – has been present on all Macs, desktop and laptop. Most Macs came with a single Firewire 400 port while the recent high-end models (Mac Pros, MacBook Pros) also featured the high-speed Firewire 800 port.
The new Macbook Pro-model still includes the Firewire 800 port, but the Firewire 400 port as seen on the previous MacBook models vanished somewhere. Lost to the sea of half-assed excuses like “nobody used it anyway”, “all cameras use USB 2.0” and “just buy the Pro model” probably.

I own, let’s see, a one camera and three hard drives that use Firewire. I intentionally chose drives with both USB and Firewire, so I’ll be able to still use them if I upgraded, but the camera would be a no go. If I upgraded to MacBook, that is. No matter how nice the design, I have to say that this has me eyeing for good deals on previous generation models…

This is not a good sign, probably they’ll axe the connection from Mini and iMac next. I’d understand if they’d just upgraded the port to newer FW800, as it’s faster and still backwards compatible when used with an adapter, but this makes no sense.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog asked their readers for feedback on this issue and apparently this is a big deal for many. It should be, as many consumer-level PC laptops carry Firewire and it’s rather hard for a firewire device owner to replace perfectly good devices and switch to an inferior connection type. For example, USB is much more processor intensive than Firewire. And yes, USB 2.0′s theoretical speed indeed is better, but the real world-performance is far from that of FW400, let alone FW800.

Bye, Firewire. For now. I hope Apple someday again affords the $2 it costs to implement you on low-end models as well…

Asus WL-500W Wireless Router

WL-500W Wireless Router closeup

NOTE: This article concerns firmware version 1.9.85 and prior ones. Newer versions may suck more/less and address some of the issues mentioned here.

WL-500W Wireless router is Asus’ offering for users wanting the next generation wireless speed today. Based on draft N-specs, the max speed is around 300 Mb and it should skate circles around 11g devices even in average speeds. Some of the features the device has to offer, in addition to N-speeds: WPA/WPA2 encryption, RADIUS-support and wireless bridging. There are four ethernet-ports, but unfortunately none of them support gigabit speeds. For configuration Asus supplies a web-based interface for the unit.

The router also has two USB-sockets, which can be used for several purposes. First of all, there’s an in-built print server, so you can share an USB-printer for network printing. WL-500W also supports webcams, so you can hook up a webcam to an USB socket. This allows you to watch the camera via web browser. There’s also Security mode, which allows attached webcam to act as a surveillance device, monitoring and taking images whenever movement is detected.

External drives connected to USB slots can be shared over the network with FTP-server, and WL-500W also has media sharing features as well, so you can stream the media files on connected storage. One special feature Asus advertises is called Download Master. This is related to an in-built BitTorrent-client the router has. You can assign torrent-files to the router, and the files will be downloaded on connected USB-storage. This way you can download files separately from your desktop computer: just assign a torrent file to the router and WL-500W will do the rest.

I’ve yet to test some of the router’s advanced features, such as webcam support and bittorrent-server. On my network, the WL500 first served as a wireless bridge, so there was no need for the advanced stuff. After a while I changed the network topology, and made WL-500W the primary access point, but haven’t managed to test the advanced features still. No chance to test the webcam-support due to a lack of webcam, and haven’t had time to try out the Download Master-features. I’ll try to check these both out someday, although Download Master being Windows-only limits it’s usefullness a bit.

Based on my initial experience with WL-500W and bridged-mode, I had very mixed feelings towards it. On the other hand, it had a nice feature set, was theoretically very fast and got the job done. On the other hand, it had numerous issues with speed and reliability that severily limited is usefulness. With first few firmware revisions even the wired port throughput was remarkably bad. To be exact, the performance was equivalent to an ancient 14 kbps modem. Or less, since modems at least managed to keep the transfer somewhat steady. The performance on those router ports would start ok, but soon slowed down to a crawl. This issue made WL-500W basically useless for… well let’s say… anything. Even web browsing was out of the question, as the connected computers generally managed to load the first page and choked on the following ones, regardless of the site.

Fortunately, Asus did not give up on device firmware, and managed to fix most of the issues. By the time they released version 1.9.85, the performance had improved and I generally did not experience the same problems the prior versions had. In fact, the operation is quite stable now: the router works much better, both as a wireless bridge and as a wireless access point.

Even though the router is reliable for everyday use, I’ve yet to successfully complete a firmwire update via the web interface. Unfortunately the process is as unreliable as it is easy. To this date I haven’t been able to complete the update without having to go through the device recovery process. Granted, I might be hideously bad at this, but it just doesn’t work the way it should. I’ve even tried several browsers, no difference. After a new firmware is uploaded from the web interface, WL-500W starts the update and ends up with a red light orchestra. The device keeps blinking all the lights and stops responding to anything. In order to fix this the device must be put into recovery mode and firmware needs to be deployed with Asus’ own flash recovery program. Afterwards, everything is ok.

When handling firmware updates using the Asus program, there are no problems at all. Using web update, problems are all you’ve got. Unfortunately, like all Asus software, the Firmware Flash -utility is Windows-only. Linux and Mac-users are out of luck, and have to upload the firmware using other means, such as TFTP.

Google Calendar With CalDAV

Today I found out that Google has added CalDAV support to their calendar. Now CalDAV compatible clients are able to both view and edit Google calendars and the sync goes two ways.

What makes me a happy camper is that now I can finally use iCal and gCal together. I could subscribe to the Google Calendar before, but it wasn’t possible to edit the calendar on iCal. Now it works both ways, so all iCal users can rejoice. Or at least the iCal 3.x users (OS X 10.5 Tiger) as earlier iCal-versions do not support CalDAV. And, of course, there’s always that Mozilla option for those not liking iCal.

Read Google’s instructions for configuring iCal with Google Calendar.

Touch of Upgrade

Though iPhone 3G’s release pretty much stole the spotlight, all iPod users can also sing and dance as the new 2.0 software brings the joy of App Store to iPod Touches all around the world. The iPhone you can’t call with just got a bit better.

After playing with the new software for about a week, I can say that while the iPod Touch software version 2.0 is a great ugrade, it leaves room for plenty of improvement. Recommended for all iPod Touch owners nonetheless.

Read about it.

iPod Touch Software 2.0

iPod Touch. [ image courtesy of Apple ]

Much more to touch

On 11.7 Apple released the hyped 2.0 software version of iPhone software. The following day the update also became available for iPod Touch users, costing 10$ (7,99e). As the update brought many new features, I decided to shell out the cash and try out the new software.

UPDATE: I also covered the iPod/iPhone software update 2.1, so remember to check that one out too.

I’ve now played with 2.0 for a few days and while it is a great improvement over the previous version, it’s also surprisingly lacking in many areas. As some of the long known issues haven’t still been fixed, it leaves me to wonder if they just ran out of time or just plainly ignored these. More on that later. Let’s see the good things first.

NOTE: Focusing on iPod Touch here. I don’t own an iPhone yet, so no comments regarding the topic can it make toast or not and would making toast be an essential part of the mobile experience or something that all other smartphones either have or should have. There. (Replace toast with MMS, bluetooth access, user replaceable battery etc.)

The big thing of 2.0 software is, of course, the AppStore. When iPod Touch first came out, all it had was pretty much the standard iPod features (music, photos, videos) besides Safari and a calendar you couldn’t modify. Can’t recall if contacts were part of the original package or not (probably were), but doesn’t matter. In the beginning of 2008 Apple released a software update that brought Mail and Notes alongside few other apps in exchange for your money. Around then iPod Touch was starting to be more than just a fancy iPod and early February I bought mine.

Despite of the update, there still wasn’t much besides mail and web you could use Touch for PDA-wise. Google Maps, Notes and Weather. Of course, Jailbreaking (modifying the iPod so that third-party software could be installed and on iPhone also allowed to unlock the phone) gave access to many other applications for those who bothered going that route. I didn’t, since I decided to see first what the announced AppStore would bring on to table.

iPod Touch menuTouch 2.0 loaded up

Store of Dreams

Now the AppStore is here, bringing hundreds of free and commercial applications for iPod Touch and iPhone owners everywhere. They have still a long way to go as it takes time before the developers get to know the platform and start cooking up truly innovative and useful software. It’s a start of a long run.

Currently the App Store offers hundreds of programs, some of them free and others ranging from 1€ to around 80€. Unfortunately there is no way of testing the program before purchase, so it’s a bit of a gamble. As time goes by and the reviews start piling up it becomes a bit easier to choose.

Due to being a cheap bastard I haven’t invested a dime in applications yet (Besides the 2.0 upgrade). Luckily there’s plenty of free software and I’ve managed to get something to throw at my iPod. Here’s a few examples:

NetNewsWire: version of the popular Mac RSS-reader. Brings RSS feeds to Touch.

Evernote: Client for the Evernote online service. Allows you to save webpages, audio, pictures and text as notes you can tag and search.

Aurora Feint: A puzzle game with a few RPG-elements. Kind of like Puzzle Quest.

Remote: Apple’s software for remote controlling your iTunes-library. Now you can change tracks while lying on your sofa.

iTunes free appsThe price is right

What else is there?

All right, we’ve covered the App Store. Does the 2.0 bring anything more to the table? Well, there’s Exchange and pushmail-support, for instance. Now with the introduction of Apple’s MobileMe-service your calendar, email and contacts are automatically pushed to your devices. Theoretically, that is. Currently the entries are instantly sync in MobileMe, iPod Touch and iPhone, but there’s a 15 minute delay on computers. So, not quite as pushy as it was supposed to be. But hey, it works. After they get first get some reliability to MobileMe, my life’s not dependant on instant push.

On Exchange support I can’t say much as I don’t use Exchange. Supposedly it works and works quite well, but not without some issues. Other changes include the fancy ability to finally delete multiple messages on Mail, ability to save images from web or email, support for multiple calendars (now with colors too) and a scientific mode for calculator.

As you can see from the images around this article, 2.0 software also allows you to take screenshots. Screenshots are saved under Photos and are taken by holding down the Home-button and pressing power-button.

Six Things Still Not Cool

  1. No Copy & Paste

    2. Despite all the added features, iPod Touch’s software has a long way to go. It’s filled with many little things that just cry to be fixed (even more so on the iPhone side, or so I hear) . But, 2.0 update wasn’t the cure here. First of all, no copy & paste. Still. This can hardly come as a surprise since there’s never been. I can understand why it’s sought after and find myself wishing for it every so often.

  2. No native keyboard for you

    3. The second annoyance I’m listing concerns probaby only my fellow Europeans, or at least the Scandinavian ones. European languages tend to have their own special characters which are needed every now and then. for example, in finnish (and swedish too) the ones you mostly need are a-umlaut (ä) and o-umlaut (ö). So, it would make sense – now that the software supposedly has a finnish keyboard layout – that those keys would be available easily. No dice. The way to go is holding down letter a (or o) until a pop-up menu comes up and you get to pick the letter there. Mighty handy and slows your writing to a crawl. Now that also iPhone is available in Finland you’d think they would’ve fixed it. I mean, they have support for chinese which requires a little bit extra than just adding two keys…

    Finnish iPod-keyboard.Typing the Finnish way: fast as lightning and twice as accurate.

  3. Notes and todo crippled

    4. Onward. No way to sync your notes. No sync whatsoever. Which is weird because the Mail-application in Leopard supports notes. currently you can’t do anything with the notes you write in Touch. You can’t email them or even copy the text elsewhere since there’s no copy & paste. Sure, they work as Notes on your iPod, but this limits the usefullness of Notes a great deal.

    As for Todo-tasks, iPod Touch doesn’t even come with an Application that supports Todo. Which is kind of a basic feature on every other gadget out there, ranging from PDAs to phones. App Store partially corrected this as now there are like 10 different solutions, but the fact is that none of them support the Todo-tasks built in OS X 10.5 Leopard’s mail client. Why Apple didn’t think of these in the first place is beyond me. Sure, lots of more high-priority stuff to do, but these have been missing since day one.

  4. Cry me a Wifi-switch

    5. This is the smallest of my complaints, but here goes: there’s currently no way to turn wifi on and off fast. Want to switch off wireless? Tap settings, then Wi-Fi and then the off-switch. Not a big deal, but since Wi-Fi’s a bit of a power-hog you need to switch it off every now and then to conserve battery. It would’ve been nice to do this with a single tap instead of three.

  5. Invisible wall

    6. As for Application Store, the developers weren’t given free hands and it shows. Apps can’t run on background yet and as far as I know there’s currently no way for to access the low level functions of the operating system (They can’t add those two mighty keys to keypad, for example and my guess is that they can’t do the wifi-button either). On Apple’s side I can see why they’ve put the boundaries, but only time will tell if it was a good choice or a bad one.

Final Thoughts

On many levels the 2.0 update is great and definitely an improvement over the previous software version. Well worth the money for iPod users as well. Unfortunately while the 2.0 version brings a lot of new features, it doesn’t fix many of the shortcomings of the previous version. Now we’re in a situation where more features are added to the soup with their own bugs and gripes in addition to the old ones people have been crying about ever since day one (copy & paste etc).

If you own an iPod Touch (or iPhone) with 1.X firmware, you should definitelly upgrade. I just hope the future updates focus more on fixing instead of adding. The platform was great, now it’s even better and by improving those small things it could achieve all that it’s set out to be.

The light shines on you

You know that feeling you’re getting something nice in the mail but it proves to be just a bunch of ads? So do Wii owners with Super Mario Galaxy. Nintendo Wii has a nice little feature of illuminating the disc slot with blue light every time that you either get a message from a friend or a system update is available (proving that WiiConnect24 is on). This way you immediately know if you have a new message, even if the console is not on.

Apparently Nintendo uses this feature also on games. I noticed that on Super Mario Galaxy you’ll get messages from the game’s characters as you progress. The problem is that these guys are constantly spamming you with their notes. That’s right Mailtoad, I’m looking at you… Now I get to experience the joy of constant illumination. Guess this is what being popular feels like and inflation just struck the awesomeness of blue lights.

Wii console

Despite of running a disc-slot disco, Mario Galaxy is a great game. And after finally completing Twilight Princess, I have time to play it. A truly epic quest, it was. Making Twilight Princess last almost a year was not an easy task, but I somehow managed to do it by always having some other – usually useless – things to do, getting stuck and generally hating the water temple. My console also broke in the middle of the game, so that slowed me down too.

The problem with snail’s pace in gaming is that new releases start piling up on you. On Wii I’m still in the middle of completing Mario Galaxy and already a handful of other must-buy games await. Mario Kart and Smash Bros Brawl, for example. Dragon Quest and Nights might be worth a look too. And don’t get me started on Xbox 360. Mass Effect is currently sitting on my shelf, just waiting for that right moment.

Fix it until it breaks

Apple’s patches have generally worked well for me. The latest 10.4.11 patch for Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) also brings Safari 3 for Tiger users alongside fixes. I usually apply the software updates pretty fast, usually a couple of days since the release, at most. I’ve probably been in luck, since this is the first update I’ve had problems with.

I’m not alone with my problems, apparently, as there have been reports of the update breaking the system to a point where it doesn’t even get past startup.

I chose to install the update for my Mac Mini through the software update a bit after it became available. Download went fine, but the installer decided I wasn’t ready for the future and quit installing less than halfway through. After that it threw the install package to trash. Ok, I thought, decided to reboot and try again – just in case anything funky was going on.

This proved to be a mistake. Mac Mini didn’t seem to be able to locate the startup disk anymore, getting stuck on grey loading screen flashing with folder icon and question mark. First thoughts were hardware failure, and – sure enough – Apple Hardware Test indicated a memory error.

Apple Hardware Test

I replaced the faulty memory, tested again and it came out ok. Yet OS X refused to start. Checked the disk with my laptop only to find out it was fine, and finally chose to do a repair install on OSX. After that everything was back to normal, except Safari kept crashing constantly and identified itself as version 3 while rest of the system was still version 10.4.10. Because of the unsuccessful update? Let’s try it again. No dice. Again a failed install and a system unable to boot…

Reinstall #2 returned things to normal (aside from a still broken Safari). This time I decided to download the combo update and guess what, it installed with no problems whatsoever. Everything still worked after reboot and even Safari was back to normal.

Now, had I downloaded the 350 megabyte combo in the first place, none of this would’ve happened. Except the faulty RAM, of course. That sucked. Unfortunately, I installed the 110 MB package that came through software update and so did many others. Makes me think that either someone at Apple slept through the testing phase or none of their systems suffered from this. Or they tested with the combo update…

Amusingly the PowerPC-version of the same update that botched up an Intel Mac Mini did not have any issues with my iBook G4. Magic of working RAM I guess. Wonder what are the odds of memory going bad just as you install a system update?

I see a New Wii

The Wii has returned to the household.

The warranty report I got from Nintendo simply said “console replaced”, so whatever it was, wasn’t easily repaired and they sent me another console instead. Fortunately they were kind enough to transfer my data to the new console: all game saves and settings were intact, as were Miis. I had to redownload the channels though, but that was no biggie – especially since I could still download Internet channel for free.

A few things still come to mind:

  1. Although Miis were transferred, I can no longer edit them. Since they were made on another Wii, the system now tells me they weren’t made by me and disallows editing despite of my account being transferred to the new Wii.
  2. What was the issue in the first place? Obviously it was serious enough to have the console replaced, but it took them three weeks to deal with it. Either it took more than a week to diagnose the problem or they’ve got a nice backlog of consoles waiting to be repaired (that, or serious understaffing issues). Still, it would’ve been nice to know what was wrong with the console.

On the bottom line, though, I’m happy I decided to send the console for repairs. Few more months and the warranty would’ve expired, making this possibly an expensive deal.

Who would’ve thought that my Wii goes sour before my Xbox 360? I’m knocking on wood with that one still and glad Microsoft extended the Red Ring of Death warranty. Playing with the console sometimes feels like playing a game of russian roulette and my turn hasn’t been yet.