geekery – Page 2 – Out of a Jam Solutions

OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, or the Evolution of the Lion

February 22, 2012 by Michael Miller

With all rumors focused intensely on the upcoming iPad that seems almost certain to drop in March, I felt pretty blindsided by Apple popping up and going “Hey! New version of the Mac OS is here! Guess what comes after Lion? Mountain Lion. Bwa ha ha ha.”

So, 10.6.8 is on the horizon, and in time honored traditions, it adds Stuff to the operating system and Opinions to the Mac nerds out there. Of which I am one. So I have Opinions, and I get to Share! I love capitalizing things.

Mountain Lion continues, not surprisingly, what Lion started: merging what you find on the iPad and iPhone (iOS) into the Mac (Mac OS). I’ve started putting the various OS’s in parentheses so people can ignore them, as I’ve found the minute I utter a phrase like Mac OS eyes begin to glaze. Acronyms are the most powerful eye glazing material known to man.

Aaat any rate, there are a bunch of new features, like moving notes out of Mail and into it’s own application (thank goodness), renaming iCal into Calendar (bittersweet but obvious) and making it be a little less lame at the same time.

I’m going to hit the top 3 points for me:

New Windows Logo

February 20, 2012 by Michael Miller

The new: The old: The progression:

Creating Symlinks to shared folders and volumes

December 16, 2011October 17, 2011 by Michael Miller

I like to keep resources for current projects organized in specific folders on my hard drive, but for projects in which I’m collaborating it makes a lot more sense to keep them on the server, where everyone working on the project can pool their resources.

Creating an alias to something mounted on an AFP shared, however, won’t work that well. It’ll work from within the Finder, but if you use some other application that is setup to automatically pull up the project folder (like, for example, Transmit) it will just error out.

iPhone Error 3014: Just because I’m panicking doesn’t mean you should.

November 9, 2011October 17, 2011 by Michael Miller

Udate: It’s come to my attention that a number of people are wondering what, exactly, it means if your phone DOES give you an error of 3014.

In my case, it was caused by Apple’s servers being overloaded, and iTunes couldn’t complete a connection to verify the update – IE, if iTunes can’t talk to the server, you won’t be able to update your phone. The other thing to note is that even just a slow internet connection can muck up your update, or any firewall issues. Bottom line, make sure that your computer has fast, unrestricted access to the internet.

A couple of days ago I, like many other millions of iPhone wielding techies, gleefully downloaded the latest update to the operating system, iOS 5. And it promptly bricked my phone.

I knew something was wrong the moment iTunes informed me, with clinical detachment, that an error of number 3014 had occurred and to please try again.

This is the sort of thing that makes ice trickle down my back when I’m at a client’s house – interrupted installs are never a good thing, in the same way that half-baked meatloaf is never a good thing.

But this wasn’t a client’s phone. I was in the inner sanctum of my office, so to speak, where computers go to be healed, not corrupted. So I spent a few moments frowning and poking and only then did the ice start to trickle on the spine.