A few words about forked-daapd and its malfunction

As soon as I am cleaning up old business on a Saturday afternoon here in Los Angeles, CA…I should mention forked-daapd.

I recently tried setting up the most recent version of Ubuntu Linux, 12.04 Pangolin, and installing the version of forked-daapd, 0.19, in the repositories.

Well, it worked for 2 songs or 5 minutes; then it died. Same as before.

I don’t know why this happens. Julien Blache in France takes care of the updates to forked-daapd. He is a genius programmer in my opinion. With the European economic situation being dire, I assume he has devoted his attention to paying jobs.

I don’t know of a solution to the iTunes Music Server problem right now other than buying an older Windows computer and installing iTunes on it. Linux is not an answer as far as I know.

For those of you looking for an older Windows machine, I can suggest Discount Computer Warehouse here in Northridge at 8845 Shirley Avenue. For those of you on the East Coast, I can suggest PC Retro in the Washington DC area.

For those of you who have installed netatalk and avahi on your Linux boxes, well, I have used my Linux box as a networked drive with my Mac. The Cog music player worked well with this setup. Just drag and drop your Music folder from Linux onto Cog. Plays FLAC and Ogg as well as Apple’s M4A format and of course, MP3.

Tom Briant

Editor and Media Manager, MacValley UG

Oops! Thanks to Mad Mac in Madison, WI

I forgot to mention that Holly McEntee, the editor of the Mac Mad News in Madison, WI, prominently featured Jacqui Cheng’s article on backing up your iDisk files as soon as possible. That brought it to my attention and hence to yours.

Muchas Gracias, Senora Holly!

So back up your iDisk data promptly! LIKE NOW!

Tom Briant

Editor and Media Manager, Macvalley UG

It's time to backup all those old documents, pictures and media on iDisk before Apple deletes it

Dear Everyone:

Please take the time to read Jacqui Cheng’s article on Ars Technica before June 30th. It will give you instructions on how to back up your data from iDisk.

Remember iDisk? It predates Dropbox and Sugarsync. TurboTax and Quicken had the option to back up data, such as Tax Returns, to this site.

Tom Briant

Editor and Media Manager, MacValley UG

Tom's Big Post about his presentation 6-6-2012 on the iPad

Hello and welcome to the big post-presentation blog post! I’ll go through the topics I discussed and then on to WWDC rumors (yes, iOS 6 is coming!)

First, I covered 4 apps to use with your Mac to enhance your iPad, plus a neat piece of hardware that you can control from your iPad.

Type2Phone lets you use your Mac as a keyboard for an iOS device. Your iOS device must support Bluetooth keyboards (iPhone 3GS, iPad) and run iOS 3.2 or later. It’s available in theMac App Store

Type2Phone runs with 10.6.6 or later and works great with OS X Lion.

Printopia lets you print from your iPad to a printer connected to a Mac, whether locally through the USB port or as a network printer. You can also “print” PDFs or JPEGs to a Printopia folder within your Mac’s Documents folder or to a Printopia folder within your Dropbox folder. That way, you can share your work from your iPad to all your Dropbox connected devices.

Printopia is available directly from Ecamm.com for $19.95. It installs as a preference pane in System Preferences. It requires OS X 10.5, 10.6 or 10.7. Your iPad and your Mac must share the same Wi-Fi network.

Q: What are Printopia's system requirements?

A: You'll need Mac OS X 10.5, 10.6 or OS X Lion on your Mac. Your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch will need iOS 4.2 or newer including iOS 5 and must be AirPrint capable. (Older devices such as the original iPhone, iPhone 3G and 1st and 2nd generation iPod Touch do not support AirPrint.)

Can you find other products for adding AirPrint to your Mac or PC? Sure. FingerPrint from Collobos Softwarehas versions for both the Mac and PC. PrintSharing from Avatron is an iOS app (as opposed Printopia and FingerPrint, which run on your Mac) and works with a Mac or a Linux (!) machine with CUPS installed. This means Ubuntu Linux will work with it.

But I can personally attest to Printopia working great. Download the free trial and give it a whirl for 7 days.

I next turned to AirServer, which enabled me to walk around with my iPad while displaying my presentation on the projection screen.

AirServer uses the AirPlay protocol, which enables you to stream audio and video from your iPad to an Apple TV or a Mac using 3rd party software. It offers a free 7-day trial, so try it out first. They also have a version for the PC.

The PC version is not as full-featured as the Mac version, but it does offer mirroring.

What iPads does AirPlay work with? AirPlay requires iOS 4.2. For mirroring, you need a iPad 2 or 3.

Now I have read that you can “jailbreak” your iPad 1 to make it work with AirPlay mirroring. “Jailbreaking” is done at your own risk and you could turn your iPad into a $500 paperweight. You have been warned.

I should mention AirParrot and Reflection, which compete with AirServerApp. AirParrot allows your Mac running 10.6 or 10.7 to mirror its screen to an Apple TV or a Mac with AirPlay capability. Reflection is a product that competes with AirServerApp.

I mentioned Air Display next, but couldn’t demonstrate it. Air Display lets you use your iOS device as a second monitor for your Mac. You can use your finger or stylus to manipulate text and images and files on this second screen. You can even mirror your Mac’s display, giving you a mini touchscreen Mac.

Microsoft Excel 2008 didn’t work out so well as a touchscreen application on a 9.7” screen, but try a paint application instead.

After I finished discussing those 4 apps to enhance your iPad, I turned to streaming music and video from iTunes to your iPad.

To stream music from iTunes, you need to set up Home Sharing in Tunes. Go to the Advanced menu in iTunes to set this up.

When you turn on Home Sharing, you get this:

You’ll need an Apple ID, which you created when you activated your iPad or bought music from the iTunes Music Store. Or you can create one on the spot.

Once you’ve set up Home Sharing on the Mac, it’s time for the iPad. Go to the More menu on the bottom of the Music app on your iPad/iPhone/iPod touch.

You want the Shared item at the top of the pop-up menu. You should see all the music libraries you can log on to, from your iPad’s local selections to the iTunes libraries on your Mac or PC. “Thomas Briant’s Library” resides on my Mac, while “Thomas’s Library” is on my Wintel 7 machine.

To show videos from iTunes, such as music videos or full-length movies purchased from the iTunes Music Store, go to the Video app. Under the Shared item, you’ll find your videos from iTunes.

The above illustration shows my shared videos from my Wintel 7 machine.

I then demonstrated four iPad applications.

Paper is a quick sketching application. It’s not as full-featured as AutoDesk’s SketchBook Pro and it’s not intended to be. I reviewed it here.

Kid’s Paint is a fun painting application intended for kids of all ages. I liked the ability to take a picture and draw on it. I reviewed it here.

Star Walkis just awesome. Apple chose it as one of the apps to demonstrate the iPad when it was introduced.

Finally, Angry Birds Space. This takes the birds and the pigs into orbit, where you have to deal with the effects of gravity. On the plus side, you can fire a bird around the back of a planet or asteroid to sneak up on the pigs!

As always, comments are welcome, but I will delete obvious plugs for products.

Tom Briant

Editor and Media Manager

MacValley Users Group

Attendance Jumps at MacValley’s June General Meeting

Last Wednesday evening was a landmark event for MacValley. We had one of the best presentations we’ve ever had. Tom Briant showed us what can be done with the new iPad, and it was stellar. He’ll have his blog on this up soon, and my advice is if you’ve got a new iPad, or if you’re thinking about getting one, read Tom’s Blog. He’s amazing. 

We had 35 people show up at the meeting. This may not seem like much to some, but this was the third straight month where our attendance increased. We had about four new people there. There was one man who joined MacValley in February. He was there with an older man. There were also three members who had not come to a MacValley meeting for years. And we had one couple that I never got to talk with. That’s a total of ten people. Plus 25 of our regulars. Wow! 

First Look at Windows 8 Release Preview

Well, Microsoft calls it Windows, but it’s not Windows as I’m used to it. I set up this latest Release Preview on Virtual Box virtual machines on my Mac mini and my Wintel 7 machine Friday evening. Here’s my take on it.

The Metro interface with these large tiles is very interesting. At least it’s not a blatant copy of OS X, but real original work. Full screen applications if you have the Metro SDK.

The applications written for the Metro interface look great. I especially liked the News and Music applications.

Now if you did not write your application for the Metro interface, you end up on the Desktop page. Desktop itself is a Metro application.

Your Windows application ends up on a desktop resembling Windows 7 with a trashcan icon on the desktop and a task bar at the bottom. Your application’s windows float in the middle. You can change the desktop’s theme same as Windows 7.

You don’t have a Start button, which I think will frustrate many new users. It took me a while to realize two ways to accessing the Start page. I could hit the Windows key on the keyboard. Boom, I’m back.

Second, which tablet users will have to use, you hover your cursor in the lower left-hand corner of your screen. A miniature version of the Start page appears and you click or tap on it.

Now the Start page doesn’t present all the apps on your computer. On my Mac Mini’s touchpad, I tap twice with two fingers to make a button appear that will show a list of all apps. On my Windows machine, I only needed to to right-click on a blank area of the Start page for this list to appear.

I can tell that Microsoft has a lot of work to do yet. The Control Panel is still the same Windows 7 version. Wordpad is still a Windows 7 app. How MS Office fits into this remains to be seen.

As I mentioned, Windows 8 at this stage reminds me of OS X 10.1. At 10.1, OS X lacked original apps written for it. You could run an app for the older OS 9, get an app that would run in both OS 9 and OS X (the Carbon apps), or wait for a native OS X app.

When I got my first Mac in 2001, I could dual-boot it between OS 9.2.2 and OS X 10.1. I could run older apps in windows that resembled my HP desktop with Windows 98. So Apple eased the learning curve for me. I hope Microsoft builds in help for idiots.

I wonder how many users will insist on dual-booting their systems if their employers want to inflict Windows 8 on them.

I look forward to seeing the first Windows 8 desktops, laptops, and tablets. Will consumers get confused by tablets with the x86 architecture vs. the ARM architecture? “I wanna run MS Office on this tablet! Why can’t I run MS Office, which I paid good money for, on this tablet?”

Speaking of MS Office, will it come out for the iPad in November as speculated?

Tom Briant

Editor and Media Manager

MacValley UG

Insiders always get the best deals and here's how to become one

Where can you find a really good deal? -- 

Everybody’s oversold these days. Of course, you already knew that. But what you may not know is that a MacValley membership is about as close to a freebie as anything you’ll ever run across. 

Our yearly membership is $25. That includes a full-family membership, along with the MacValley Voice, our monthly newsletter. 

In the Voice every month we have wonderful deals and discounts listed. And that’s for members only. That means that any of our members can get some truly great deals on Mac & Apple related products  that are listed in the Voice. And those great buys will probably save more than the $25 cost of their membership. 

Now that is one fantastic deal. 

Cristael Bengtson

President, MacValley Users Group