Tomorrow is iPhone 14 Pro Day, and I’m having a hard time getting excited about it.
Tomorrow will be the first time in a long time that my Dad and I won’t be getting our new iPhones together on launch day. For me, iPhone launch day is my own personal event day, much like WWWD keynote day. Since I’m old, and not a developer, a better analogy is MacWorld Expo. I’m partial to the 1987 Boston MacWorld Expo.
This year, do to server overloads during the 8:00am EDT hour, I couldn’t get my iPhone 14 Pro Max pre-order placed until 9:30am. My Dad’s pre-order wasn’t put in until 2:30pm.
While I am excited for my new iPhone, it just won’t be the same without the early morning pickup, the drive to our local Apple Store, standing in line and talking to other customers and store staff before the huge glass doors magically slide open. I’m bummed. My Dad’s bummed. The Newtons and OG iPhone are bummed. This year just generally stinks.
I know I’m going to love my new iPhone, but I just can’t get excited about it this year.
Happy iPhone 14 Pre-Order Day to all who celebrate it. Good luck with your pre-orders and I hope that you get the model and color you are looking for!
This year, I plan on ordering the iPhone 14 Pro Max with 256GB of storage in the Silver finish. I also will be ordering the Forest Green leather case.
iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro pre-orders begin at 8:00am Eastern, 5:00am Pacific. Sales begin next Friday, 9/16.
Update 9:00am
This year’s iPhone pre-orders are off to a rough start this morning. While trying to place our pre-orders, my Dad and I both experienced trouble with the Apple.com website and the Apple Store iOS app. For starters, the Apple Store didn’t update until about 8:10am for us. Then, once the store finally did open, there were problems trying to process the pre-orders. By 8:12am, my local Apple Store was offering pickups at 10:30am, having slipped from 8:00am to 10:30am in just a few minutes of pre-orders starting. Once the online Apple Store iOS app started working again, it took multiple attempts to process my order with my Apple Card that was pre-authorized on Wednesday.
All-in-all, I was able to get my pre-order placed for the iPhone configuration that I want, but at the cost of my annual 8:00am “launch party” at my local Apple Store. I’m a little miffed that I’m not getting my iPhone when the store opens, but at least I’m getting my iPhone on launch day! Even if it is at 1:30pm.
Update 3:00pm
On the way back home, I stopped over to see my Dad and try to help him get his iPhone 14 pre-order setup. By 2:30pm, all of the website and credit card processing issues were fixed, but his iPhone will be shipping to the house by October 17. Not exactly what we were hoping for.
I was recently given a 2012 MacBook Pro from a family member who asked me to wipe their data and recycle the computer.
Erasing the hard disk was easy enough – I just connected it to a SATA to USB-A bridge box that I have and reformatted it from my Mac Studio.
Where I ran into trouble was trying to load a clean install of Mac OS X 10.11.6 El Capitan on the MacBook Pro. I kept running into an error that read, in part:
"OS X could not be installed on your computer. No packages were eligible for install."
I tried a couple of variations on reformatting the disk from another MacBook Pro and a Windows 10 PC with no luck.
With a Jan. 2017 date, my MacBook Pro happily installs El Capitan now
It turns out that the date needs to be rolled back to 2017 to get the installer to run properly. Here’s how I fixed the problem:
Boot the Mac from your install media. Make sure any network connections (Ethernet or Wi-Fi) are disconnected or disabled.
When the OS X installer screen appears, click Utilities > Terminal.
From the Terminal application, issue the command: date 0115124517
The response from Terminal should be a string that reads something similar to: January 15 12:45:00 2017.
Quit the Terminal app.
Reconnect your network connection.
Follow the on-screen prompts to complete your Mac OS X install.
As you can see, the processed worked for me. The problem related to the El Capitan’s installation certificate has expired. As a result, the installer returns the error message about no eligible packages being available to install. When you disconnect the Mac’s network connections and roll back the date, you are ready to party like it’s 2017 and reinstall El Capitan.
Mac Studio running Windows 11 on VMware Fusion, credit: VMware
VMware, the desktop and server virtualization company, has finally caught up with their competitor, Parallels, and released VMware Fusion with VMware Tools support for Windows 11 late last month.
The July 28 VMware Fusion 22H2 Tech Preview was announced by Michael Roy on the Fusion blog. Now, Mac users with either an M1 or M2 Apple Silicon-based Mac can run Windows 11. Sort of.
First, the good news. With the Fusion 22H2 (aka, second half of 2022) Tech Preview, VMware now includes the first pre-release version of VMware Tools. VMware Tools are the drivers that get injected into the guest operating system to provide emulated hardware compatibility with the host computer’s hardware. The beta release of VMware Tools that comes with the new Fusion beta offers support for a virtual Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 chip, a Microsoft requirement for Windows 11, drivers for 2D graphics and VMX3 networking drivers. During this beta period, VMware continues to offer Fusion as a free download. New VMware Fusion licenses start at $149.
Now, the bad news. Fusion 22H2 is still in beta. While my first run experience with the latest build of Fusion is running well, the setup and installation process is not for the casual user. This all stems from a licensing deal between Microsoft and Qualcomm. In short, Qualcomm is the exclusive manufacturer of ARM SoCs that are used by Microsoft, and a select few partners, for OEM devices the run the ARM edition of Windows. The exclusive nature of this deal, therefore, prevents Microsoft from selling ARM CPU editions of Windows directly to customers as they do with versions of Windows that run on Intel and AMD processors.
As end-users, the only way to get a Windows for ARM installer is to enroll in the Microsoft Windows Insider beta program. But the Microsoft provided installer comes in a Hyper-V .vhdx virtual disk image file. While Parallels Desktop 17 does a good job of automatically downloading, converting, and installing Windows 11 for you, there is no such option with Fusion. Honestly, that’s a bit of a letdown, in my opinion. To get the ARM version of Windows 11 to run on the Fusion 22H2 technical preview, you are left to download the .vhdx Microsoft installer file and then do the .iso file conversion on your own. Otherwise, you are left with the option of downloading an untrusted and pre-converted .iso file from the Internet. If VMware plans on making Windows 11 compatibility on Apple Silicon Mac’s a selling point, my expectation is that they will need to do a lot of work to give customers a smooth onboarding process like Parallels did.
Windows 11 Pro running in VMware Fusion 2H22 Technical Preview on my Mac Studio
And therein lies the crux of the problem. There are no companies mentioned here that officially support running Windows 11 on an M1 or M2 Mac. Not Microsoft and certainly not Apple. VMware and Parallels don’t either, but both vendors now ship software drivers that make running Windows 11 on Apple Silicon Macs possible.
It is possible to get the ARM edition of Windows 11 running on an Apple Silicon Mac and then activate Windows with a Microsoft license key. I was able to activate my Parallels Desktop 17 Windows 11 install with a Windows 11 Home license key that I purchased from NewEgg.com. While my install of Windows 11 Home is now legally licensed, my configuration is absolutely not supported or endorsed as a valid configuration. This hodgepodge approach is good for anyone who wants to tinker with Windows, like I do at home. However, as an IT professional, but is certainly not a production-ready solution. Without official support and legally purchased Windows ARM edition SKUs, this solution has no place in a commercial organization.
One day, I expect that Microsoft/Qualcomm exclusivity deal will come to an end. More CPU vendors will make ARM-based processors for PCs, and Microsoft will be able to sell Windows ARM licenses to OEMs and customers. Until then, virtualized ARM editions of Windows belong in the lab. Apple, Parallels, and VMware have proven that the foundation is there and that it works. Now, Microsoft just needs to end the Qualcomm contract.
Until then, I’ll be dreaming of the day when I can have a 14-inch MacBook Pro with a Windows 11 Pro VM running on my desk at work.
Excellent reporting by Lawrence O’Donnell and The Last Word team at MSNBC.
During the The Last Word telecast on July 21, O’Donnell details the facts of the case, as we know them, and raises very serious questions about the deleted Secret Service text messages from Jan. 5 and 6.
In summary, O’Donnell reminds us that:
The Secret Service has a budget of $3B annually
The first of three emails informing staff to preserve records was sent by the Secret Service Office of Strategic Planning on Dec. 9, 2020
In an undated Jan. 2021 and a Feb. 4, 2021 email, sent by the Secret Service Chief Information Officer, reminds staff of their obligation to preserve records and includes instructions on how to do so
The Secret Service received the first written records preservation request before the physical act of exchanging agent smartphones for new devices
Ornato was promoted to the political post of White House Deputy Chief of Staff
The Secret Service runs a sophisticated cyber-crime organization and knows the legal obligations it has to handle and preserve records
In my previous post on the Secret Service deleted text message fiasco, I suggested that we wait until more details about what happened by brought to light before placing blame on an IT staffer. Now it is beginning to look like the Secret Service, led by Director James Murray, either willfully ignored record preservation requests and established records and information management governance policies, or directly issued orders that the text messages be deleted from Secret Service issued smartphones. With a $3B annual budget, the Secret Service has more than enough money, in my opinion, to digitally and physically archive any Secret Service agent’s smartphone that was even remotely involved with the events leading up to and taking place on January 6, 2021. To suddenly have digital records be deleted and no discussion that I have seen about going back to the physical devices used on Jan. 5 and 6, is unfathomable to me. The Secret Service knows how to perform digital forensics and records preservation.
While it will likely be years before the full story comes out about what happened to Secret Service text messages from Jan. 5 and 6, it is, in my opinion, growing more obvious this situation has less to do with an IT staffer having a bad day and that something much more politically motivated, possibly with criminal intent, has taken place.
Earlier today, I was skimming the space news in the Apple News app for macOS. Most of the time, I read Apple News on my iPhone 13 Pro Max.
While reading a USA Today article about the James Web Space Telescope (JWST), I decided that the text was uncomfortably small, and I wanted to make the printer easier to read.
But I couldn’t figure out how to do it. Unlike the iPhone version of Apple News, on macOS, the font control appeared to be missing.
Let’s take a look at Apple News on iPhone.
As you can see in the screen captures above, the iPhone version of Apple News has a prominent double A icon in the article header (on the left) that allows you to control the font size (on the right). Tap the larger capital A and the font gets larger. The smaller capital A decreases the font size.
Now, let’s take a look at Apple News on macOS.
Look at all that open space in the the window and toolbar controls region!
The important thing to note here is that the macOS version of Apple News is essentially the same version of Apple News that runs on the iPad. This is due to a behind-the-scenes technology called Mac Catalyst. In short, Mac Catalyst apps are a quick way for developers to release their iPad OS apps for Macs that have either an Apple Silicon M1 or M2 CPU in them.
Here’s the same article as it appears in Apple News on iPad.
Looking at the controls region at the top of the screen, again, there is a lot of open space! Knowing that the iPad has the font control clearly visible in the article header makes the lack of a double A font control on the Mac even more frustrating. As an Apple One subscriber and Apple customer, I felt like I was doing something wrong.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to find the answer: Use the Command and Plus or Minus keyboard shortcuts!
Option 1: Use the keyboard
To use keyboard zoom control shortcut, hold down the Command key (on either side of the space bar) and then press the Plus key or the Minus key on your keyboard to enlarge or shrink the print size.
This keyboard shortcut has been around for a long time in macOS and Windows web browsers. When in the browser, this is a muscle memory reaction to make things readable. I use this shortcut on NYTimes.com all the time.
Option 2: Use the Menu Bar
If you have a hard time remembering keyboard shortcuts, there is an alternative – the View menu. It’s easy to forget about the macOS menu bar if you use iOS and iPadOS devices all the time. Outside of the Apple News app window, use the View > Zoom In or Zoom Out commands to increase or decrease the font size in the Mac Menu Bar all the way at the top of the Mac screen.
If you want to revert back to the article’s default text size, you can either use the Command + Shift + 0 keyboard shortcut or the View > Actual Size menu command.
In Conclusion
I get it, application and OS platform maintenance is hard. Apple is trying to upgrade developer tools, manage macOS, iOS, and iPadOS on annual scheduled with new features, and, I hope, keep application feature parity. That’s supposed to be the whole point of Catalyst. Write one app and easily package it to run on iPad and the Mac. My small font control gripe shows how there are still holes in Apple’s plan. If Apple can’t, or won’t, keep application parity, how are customers supposed to stay on top of the differences between the same Apple application on different Apple platforms?
And that is the real problem. Customers should never feel that they are doing it wrong.
“The Department notified us that many U.S. Secret Service (USSS) text messages, from January 5 and 6, 2021 were erased as part of a device-replacement program,” he wrote in a letter dated Wednesday and obtained by The Washington Post. The letter was earlier reported on by the Intercept and CNN.
There are a couple of details that are interesting about this situation.
The first is the that the messages are reported as having been deleted as part of a “device-replacement” program being run by the Secret Service.
If you think about how we switch from and old iPhone to a new iPhone, we do a backup to iCloud, switch over to the new iPhone, and then restore the iCloud backup to your new iPhone. But a large organization like US Secret Service, will be using a mobile device management (MDM) solution.
MDM solutions allow IT departments to remotely manage a fleet of mobile devices. They don’t necessarily backup devices. They are used to enforce security features, automate software deployments, and, in the case of a lost or stolen device, securely erase devices that still have Internet access.
In my opinion, having managed a corporate fleet of smartphones, the most probable answer is the most likely answer. New smartphones are purchased and activated, given to their new owners, and the owner signs into the MDM tool on the new smartphone to deploy the default configuration.
While corporate email is stored on the server to be downloaded by the new device, plain old text messages, the ones that use the cellular network, are not.
Specifically, what is and what is not backed up and restored during a smartphone refresh effort depends, obviously, on the migration software and procedures used by technicians during the cutover.
In this first case, there is likely a contract IT staff member who is having a very bad day today if they made a mistake that prevented text message data from being migrated.
The second detail, and the one that can land someone in legal trouble, is if someone in the Secret Service or their IT management firm, willfully instructed someone to erase smartphones, or by omission, leave out a migration step to transfer or archive text messages.
The Apple //e was my first Apple-branded computer. My first computer was an Apple II-series clone, the V-Tech Laser 3000.
As I am slowly working on restoring my main Apple //e, I’ve been buying other machines to pick up various parts that I need. For example, the second Apple //e that I purchased came with an Apple DuoDisk drive and an Apple Monitor II.
For purchase #3, I am on the hunt for expansion cards. Specifically, the Apple Mouse Interface card.
Here’s my vintage Apple //e unboxing video and a first look at the cards inside.
After buying a replacement Apple //e earlier this year, I wanted to find and Apple Disk II Controller Card and at least one Disk II 5.25″ floppy drive.
It took me a while to find a reasonably priced used Apple Disk II controller card and Disk II floppy drive on eBay. The card and drive needed a good cleaning before I tried to use them. While there was dust in the floppy drive, the read/write head was still remarkably clean. The card had a bent pin 1 on the drive 1 connector. I carefully bent it back into position. I used 70% Isopropyl Alcohol to clean the card and some DeoxIT D5 in the Apple //e’s expansion slot to ensure a good contact between the card and the computer.
Apple Disk II controller card
Apple Disk II 5.25″ floppy disk drive (1978)
Disk II with the case removed, showing Woz’s custom disk drive analog board
One thing that I did learn was that I was unable to have both a Disk II controller card and the newer Apple I/O controller card, for use with the Apple DuoDrive, in the same machine. To get my Apple //e to boot from the Disk II controller card, I had to remove the Apple I/O controller card before the computer would boot properly. While you apparently can’t mix and match these two types of 5.25″ Apple controller cards, you can have two Disk II or two Apple I/O controller cards installed at the same time. Just not one of each. In my experience using the //e back in the mid-1980s, you either had two Disk II drives or a single DuoDisk drive. You never mixed the two systems.
Disk II History
The Disk II system for the Apple II, II+ and the //e offered users improved data transfer rates over cassette tape-based storage systems and allowed for the direct access of a file by name, according to the 1982 version of the Disk II Installation manual.
According to the Disk II article posted on Apple2History.og, Apple CEO Mike Markkula wanted a faster way to load programs on his Apple II. Steve Wozniak set out on the task of creating a custom disk drive controller board. Steve Jobs brokered a deal with Shugart Associates to sell Apple stripped down versions of the SA-400 disk mechanism.
The Disk II Floppy Disk System, consisting of a Disk II controller card and a Disk II floppy drive, was made available for pre-order at a cost of $495 in June of 1978. Once Apple started shipping the Disk II, the price increased to $595.
A single Disk II controller card was able to drive up to two floppy drives. The drives received power from the controller card which is plugged into an expansion slot on an Apple II-series motherboard.
Early versions of the Disk II system were able to store up to 113.75 KB when using Apple DOS 3.2.1 and earlier. With Apple DOS 3.3, the version of DOS that I use with my Apple //e computers, Disk II was able to write 140 KB disks. Apple provided a 13 to 16-sector conversion utility to upgrade disks for use with newer versions of Apple DOS.
Apple iPod with Dock Connector (2003) and dual FireWire (charge) / USB-A (sync) cable
This Public Service Announcement (PSA) deals with early generation iPod music players. If you own a first generation iPod with Scroll Wheel (2001), a second generation iPod with Touch Wheel (2002), or third generation iPod with Dock Connector (2003), you need the FireWire charging brick and a FireWire to Dock Connector cable or the FireWire/USB-A to Dock Connector dual-headed cable. The combo cable was pretty crazy: You connect the FireWire end into the charge brick and the USB-A end into your Mac or Windows PC so you could sync and charge your iPod at the same time.
Apple iPod with Dock Connector (2003) with FireWire Charger and Cable
When Apple announced that they were retiring the last iPod, the 7th Generation iPod touch from their product line up, like many of you, I pulled out my old “Classic” and “Touch” iPods to take a stroll down Memory Lane.
Apple iPod with Dock Connector (left), iPod Video, iPod touch 1st Gen, iPod touch 6th Gen
In my May 11 iPod look back, I was trying to charge my third-generation iPod with Dock Connector, I was doing so from an Apple USB-A charging brick. It wasn’t until I pulled out my FireWire charger and cables was I able to wake up my oldest iPod from it’s slumber.
