Kibbles & Bytes Blog

  • Passbook and MLB

    As I write this, “*my beloved O’s*”:http://www.orioles.com have pushed their postseason run to game five in the ALDS, and I couldn’t be happier. __(OK, well, a World Series win would make anyone happier.)__ I have had the pleasure of going to two games at Camden Yards this year (both Opening Day and more recently in September, when my very own brother threw out the first pitch), and I must say that I am very excited that MLB has embraced “*Passbook.*”:http://www.apple.com/ios/whats-new/#passbook

    When iOS 6 was announced, Passbook was regarded as an integral, highly streamlined feature that many declared would change your travel and entertainment experience. While I think that still holds true, when iOS was actually released, Passbook was met with confusion and frustration, for multiple reasons. The app and its promised integration are in its infancy, meaning that many companies and retailers haven’t become fully Passbook-compatible — either because a companion app doesn’t exist, or that when you show up in person to redeem your ticket (say, for the movie you’ve reserved), the employees aren’t all trained to know what to do.

    Just as much as the latter speaks to the frustration that many users felt upon trying to use Passbook, the first part — the app — speaks to the confusion. You mean, now that I have Passbook, I have to download other apps, too?! From the original description in the keynote touting iOS 6 and its features, I, like many others, assumed that Passbook would be all-inclusive. That somehow, Apple’s developers would figure out a magical way for this app to talk to all of the other apps I already had, making them unnecessary, and that it “would just know” the businesses I used based on data that I could enter. However, it’s not quite that simple. Consider Passbook to be the vehicle (travel pun intended) to take you where you need to go, but you still have to pack your bags.

    To quote Victor Agreda, Jr. from “*TUAW,*”:http://www.tuaw.com/2012/10/09/valpak-coupons-when-passbook-finally-clicked-for-me/ “Passbook … has created a sort of commercial hub of simplicity. I am getting offers I want, delivered where I want.” Though he was not used to using coupons and doing things this way, he also noted, “That’s significant. Getting consumers to change behaviors is incredibly hard.”

    But, back to MLB and how they plan to utilize Passbook. As one of the major businesses to embrace Passbook, MLB is ahead of the curve (oh, the bad puns continue) and CEO of MLB Advance Media, Bob Bowman, described their reasoning thusly: “Passbook — which allows tickets and loyalty cards from a variety of outlets to be delivered to one iPhone app — proved to be an instant hit with fans.”

    “*Per Market Watch,*”:http://www.marketwatch.com/story/on-deck-for-2013-the-end-of-the-baseball-ticket-2012-10-09 they did a test run during the last two weeks of the regular season, and they found that about 12% (roughly 1,500 e-ticket buyers) chose to use delivery via Passbook. Bowman said, “That adoption rate really floored us — there is no question our fans want digital tickets … [they] can use the tickets, forward them to a friend, resell them, or even donate them to charity — and they never get lost or left at home.”

    Yesterday, “*on our radio show,*”:http://www.smalldog.com/sdspeaks I shared that I once had to repurchase airline tickets because I had lost my original paper tickets in a move. (Never was I happier to see a transition to digital reservations after that $500 mistake.) While the initial list of Passbook-supported apps is small (14 at the time of this writing), I anticipate that businesses will continue to come on board rapidly, saving countless others from a similar fate. Here’s hoping it’s a smooth ride (last one, I promise).

    To see the full list of apps and to download, head to the iTunes Store, click *Apps* within the iTunes menu bar, and then select *Apps for Passbook.*

  • MAC TREAT #190: Notification Center Alerts in Calendar

    One of my favorite features in Mountain Lion is Notification Center. I have been using “*Growl for years,*”:http://growl.info and the impact Notification Center has on my workflow is very similar, and it’s an added bonus to see it on both my iPhone and now my Mac.

    In Calendar, you can set alerts for birthdays and events, as well as turn off any shared calendar notifications and invitation notifications. Why is this helpful? I like to see a window pop up reminding me that it’s [insert someone very special here]’s birthday, so that in my increasingly hectic life, I can make sure I won’t forget. However, I __don’t__ need to see every single event I have going on.

    To get there, go to *Calendar* (formerly iCal) > *Preferences…* > *Alerts.* Then, customize as necessary. Of course, this works best if you actually have birthdays entered for your contacts, so if you do that, and then actually pick up the phone once you’ve been notified, your friends and family will thank you!

  • _Dear Friends,_

    It’s Kali, writing for Don this week, as he’s left us to travel overseas to China. While he’s checking out trade shows, new products, and the factories where some of our Hammerhead products are produced, we will be holding down the fort.

    The internet is buzzing about the possibility of a new product announcement next week, and everything that has “been revealed” so far has been speculation. As dizzying as it can seem, one of my favorite things about being in this industry __is__ the buzz. It’s amazing how popular Apple’s devices have become, just in the time that I’ve been “in the biz” (eight years). One thing is for sure: whatever Apple announces next, we’ll be all over it. That said, I haven’t yet found the need for an iPad because it doesn’t feel that much smaller than my MacBook Pro. If only they could think of something…

  • On the road again…

    Hi All,

    I am really looking forward to next week when I’ll be traveling to Austin, Texas and meeting with Apple Specialists at the bi-annual ASMC conference. I will be in Austin Tuesday through Thursday and I would love to spend some time with you to discuss our new products and how we can work together.

    Contact me if you’d like to set up a time to meet!

    I will also be taking part in the Vendor Fair the evening of the 18th. Please be sure to stop by our booth to say hello and check out the latest and greatest Hammerhead and Chill Pill products.

    One of our new product lines includes Hammerhead Neoprene Cases that we have developed for the MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros.

    “*See them here.*”:http://vendor.hammerheadcase.com/pricelists/SS_neoprenecase_laptop.pdf (Opens a PDF)

    These have already proven to be a popular seller — your price is $15 for the 11″ and 13″ models, and $17.50 for the 15″ MacBook Pro. With an MSRP of $29.99 and $34.99 respectively, this makes for a great margin and and an easy sale!

    Also on the horizon, we’ll be introducing a Dual USB Adapter that will charge an iPhone and an iPad simultaneously — very handy! We expect to see these soon, and we’ll keep you posted. We are also proud to announce a new Bluetooth version of our ever-popular Chill Pill mobile speakers which is also coming soon (in time for the holidays)!

    I look forward to seeing you all next week. If that can’t happen, please know that I am available to you at any time and am always happy to help.

    For prices and information on all our products, “*click here to check out our latest price list.*”:http://vendor.hammerheadcase.com/pricelists/SS_dealer-pricelist_09.12.pdf

    Thanks for reading!
    Tony

  • Why Did It Wake Up?

    Have you ever been fast asleep only to be woken up by your computer waking itself from sleep? Ever wonder exactly why it…

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  • SSH in OS X Terminal

    Secure Shell (commonly known as SSH) is a secure way to connect two computers over a network, even though the network itself might not be secure. Most often used for remote administration, SSH provides an encrypted data link between the two machines, so the connection is secure even over an inherently insecure network like the internet. (Wow…that sounds pretty boring — even to me.)

    Basically, SSH lets you log into another machine somewhere with full access to a Terminal window (also called a shell) on that machine. Many people have probably seen some kind of remote login, either using Microsoft’s Remote Desktop, Apple Remote Desktop, or even just via having another computer in the Finder window. SSH is basically the same, with some differences (as follows).

    Firstly, with SSH, you get into the command line, not the GUI. Anything you can do in Terminal you can make another machine do remotely. SysAdmins love it — many are serious Terminal users and being able to have secure remote access from anywhere to the command line on servers and client machines is a huge benefit for them. SSH can be a useful troubleshooting tool. On machines with no video output, SSH can tell you a lot about what is happening inside the machine. If a process has frozen the GUI, many times accessing the machine via SSH will let you identify the problem process and kill it if desired.

    The other main feature of SSH is security — the connection is encrypted. Data going between the machines is secure. Well, mostly anyway — there is a vulnerability that would allow a small bit of data to be read by someone who knows what they are doing. But really it’s pretty solid. Anyone looking at the data stream will not be able to read it.

    Let’s SSH in and see what’s up! This assumes you have two Macs on your local network you can play with:

    1) On one of the machines, go into the Sharing preferences in System Preferences and enable Remote Login. You will see an indicator that Remote Login is active, and text that reads:

    “To log into this computer remotely, type ssh yourname@yourIPaddress”

    2) On the second machine, open Terminal, type ssh yourname@yourIPaddress and hit enter.

    After a bit you will see the following: In this case, it’s fine that the host can’t be authenticated — you can be pretty sure you are connecting to the right place! (Always check to make sure you typed the right address in though.)

    If all goes well, you will be presented with a command line prompt that shows you as logged onto the other computer. Let’s test it with the say command. In your Terminal window type say hello. If the volume is up on the other machine, it should say “hello” to you. Silly, but very satisfying!

    Soo, we have a way to log into another machine’s command line via a secure connection, but what now? Besides some dorky system stuff, it’s hard to see what it might be useful for. It certainly was for me! There are a ton of things you can do with SSH, but one of the most useful is when you browse the web via a secure SSH connection no matter where you are (such as a coffee shop, bookstore, or airport) — it’s kind of a poor man’s VPN!

    More on that next week, and other SSH stuff coming soon. Feel free to email me any specific questions or feedback you have.

  • Mdworker and Your Mac

    When discussing system CPU usage on a Mac, you cannot exit the conversation without discussing mdworker and mds. In Activity Monitor, this process will not appear unless you select all processes, and then, these processes seem to be ubiquitous and resource hogs. So, what are they?

    Mdworker is short for Meta Data worker. This is a background process on your Mac that spends time indexing your files for Spotlight. Without mdworker, your Spotlight searches would be less than accurate at times. Mdworker returns its results to mds which builds your Spotlight database.

    Why is it that it can be processor intensive? As it indexes your files, it must first read all of them. As it reads them, it then exchanges the information with mds to create the database.

    So, how do you minimize mdworker and mds? You don’t. You could choose in System Preferences to stop indexing of all volumes in Spotlight and that would prevent these processes from being active. Often, you just have to let the processes run. Certainly, if you plug in a large external HD and do not want it indexed, or connect to a Time Capsule infrequently, you could disable the process from searching these volumes — reducing their workload when those volumes are preset.

    Ultimately though, you would not be able to use Spotlight for searching those external devices effectively in the future also. While mdworker and mds can seem to be processor-intensive processes, their benefits far outweigh their costs in the long term.

  • Why Did It Wake Up?

    Have you ever been fast asleep only to be woken up by your computer waking itself from sleep? Ever wonder exactly why it woke up? I found a tip on the web recently that gave a great and easy way to try to determine what woke the computer up.

    You’ll have to dive into Terminal a bit to get this information, and you may not necessarily get an answer. After your machine wakes up launch Terminal and type the following in:

    syslog |grep -i “Wake reason”

    You’ll then get a report from your OS that will give a code that tells you why the machine woke up. The article I found give some common error codes:

    OHC (Open Host Controller): This likely means an external device like a USB keyboard or mouse woke the machine. It could also be an external FireWire device like a hard drive. To my knowledge, this should also include Thunderbolt devices as well.

    EHS (Enhanced Host Controller): Similar to OHC except it’s usually wireless or Bluetooth devices.

    USB (Universal Serial Bus): A USB device woke the computer.

    LID0: This literally refers to the lid of your laptop. You shouldn’t see this code if you’re on a desktop.

    PWRB: This refers to the Power Button of the computer.

    RTC (Real Time Clock): This refers to wake-on-demand services like scheduling your computer with sleep and wake times in the Energy Saver settings.

    As always, mess with Terminal at your own risk. Before you all start emailing me with other ways to do this, the article does point out that that there are other ways you can monitor this in the Console application, but this way you don’t need to wade through extensive logs filled with gobbledygook.

    “*Read the original article here.*”:http://osxdaily.com/2010/07/17/why-mac-wakes-from-sleep/

    “Image Source”:http://www.zazzle.com/eat_sleep_computer_green_cut_out-153807245435309722

  • Hello readers,

    It has been cooling off last couple of weeks, but as usual, I forget what it actually feels like to be cold! It’s in the 40s at night now — we will likely see frost down here near the lake by the weekend and there are people skiing in the mountains already. So it’s not really cold, but just enough to remind me of what is coming (or not, if we get a repeat of last “winter”).

    Business is brisk in service, with upgrades to Mountain Lion currently being one of our most-requested jobs. Upgrading from 10.5 is a chore that requires erasing the hard drive, installing, and restoring data. Upgrading from 10.4 is all that and more — the newest OS will not migrate data from Tiger; it must be manually copied.

    We are getting lots of requests for upgrades from people who would rather have an experienced tech take care of their machines and data during this process. Please let us know if we can help any of you out there as well. But of course as Tech Tails readers, you can handle it I’m sure! Hope you are all having a good fall.

    Thanks for reading.

    Liam
    “*liam@smalldog.com*”:mailto:liam@smalldog.com

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