Computers – Primarily Mac – Black Frog Guitars

The product I want to see next week at WWDC – Apple TV 2014

Whoa! Hey!

Apple’s amazing World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) starts next Monday June 2 in San Francisco. As a geek, it is truly an amazing week and the pinnacle pilgrimage for most of my Apple loving colleagues to attend. I am quite thankful to have been one of the lucky 5000 that attended the last three years and have thoroughly enjoyed the time with fellow developers, the terrific product introductions, the excellent sessions, and the delicious seafood and biking within the beautiful city of San Francisco! I have seen tremendous progress in developer tools. I was there for Steve’s last keynote and introduction of iCloud. We were there to see the introductions of iOS 5, iOS 6, iOS 7 and some of my favorite OS X updates including multi-touch gesture support, the fantastic magic trackpad, and AirPlay. I even saw the Alex Skolnick Trio ditch real amps and jam thru an iPad in a nearby hotel lobby. Yes, they were three fantastic years!

Sadly, I will not be boarding a plane this weekend. I will not be biking the bridge and sniff sniff I will not be getting up at the crack of dawn this year to join the long line of fellow geeks eagerly waiting the infamous 10am Monday morning Keynote. I do vow to return next year but for next week I will be watching every move and every announcement from our office in Ohio. I will be sitting on the edge of my seat, streaming the live stream with much anticipation and excitement. Why? Because I hope (and if you know me, you know I have been ranting about this for almost 2 years) that in these 90 minutes of product announcement euphoria we will finally see my dreams of the new Apple TV, SDK, and App Store come to fruition. This is all of course in blunt ignorant defiance of the several recent rumors to the contrary.

Here are the simple and rather modest specs of my dream machine!

Note this picture is from my 720p model and yes I know I need to dust!

Introducing! The 2014 AppleTV set top box –

Design – no change
Memory – 32GB
Processor – A7
Runs iOS 8
Proudly introducing the new App Store for AppleTV – finally play your latest candy crushing, zombie eating, farm animal game here!
802.11ac (might as well update the Airport Express too or better yet just integrate it)
Price – $99

So there you have it. I am not asking for too much! Amazon has the Fire TV, Google is working on iteration x of y, and Roku yeah… If you agree that this would be a splendid addition to Apple’s existing lineup, how about a RT, +1, shoutout, hell yeah, or whatever!

For those heading to dub dub next week, enjoy a truly stellar week! Please take at least some time to see the beautiful city and safe travels my friends!

Apple TV more than just a hobby…it’s time for war!

Whoa! hey!

For the last couple of days I have been ranting more than usual on Twitter about the Apple TV. Why? Do I hate it? Quite the contrary, I think it is a great box and over the last couple of years I have bought more than a half dozen of them as either gifts, for use in my home, or for business. They are a great little box for a great price and the time is ripe for them to mature beyond the “hobby” phase!

I know there are many of us who have grown to love the current capabilities of the Apple TV but are even more excited about the possibilities of what it could be! The changes that I am talking about are actually not that significant and until the last couple of days I have had fairly high expectations that we might see these before the holidays.

Here are the two major changes I have been hoping for:

1. Open up the API to developers and expand the App Store to the Apple TV
2. Do a small hardware refresh of the current Apple TV set top box

That is it! Just a couple little things–well the first request is a bit bigger but Apple should have enough engineers/magicians to pull that off!

You see, even though I am intrigued by what a full-scale Apple iTV might be or look like, I realize that the content is likely to continue to push that out for at least another year or two. Content is important to many but what I believe is more important is staking out the battle grounds now! Later this week, the PS4 will be here with the Xbox One to follow next week (unless you are one of the lucky few that they already shipped units too). Since WWDC, I have felt very strongly that Apple could really grab a large percentage of the gaming market just with these updates. I know, most gamers will think this is ludicrous but I am not talking about those types of games. I am talking about a logical extension to the games popular on iOS today that could have big benefits beyond AirPlay.

You see, there are a couple hundred thousand iOS developers who would love to have a new extension to their beloved platform of choice. They would love to push some slightly updated hardware to its limits for both games and entertainment. They can and would drive adoption!

So why have I been ranting on Twitter the last two days? Yesterday, there were reports that the Apple TV efforts have been delayed significantly to refocus priority on the wearable computing efforts. Today, new reports came out supporting this-noting that it may be due to reduced Apple TV sales in 2013. I really think much of the reduced sales are people waiting for the hardware update. According to MacRumors, it has been 615 days since the last update. Apple, it seems like you may be big enough to squeeze in a minor update! You can even release it to the stores quietly like you did with the new retina mini.

What do we need from a hardware update? Not much! Bump the processor up but more importantly add enough memory for the apps we will want to install. It would also be great to add that new wireless chip for 802.11ac!

So what do you think? Can we get these updates for the 2013 holiday season? Can I and all of my iOS developer buddies start writing some great apps for an already excellent device? Can the Plex folks put the app on the TV where it belongs instead of resorting to hacks? Apple, the time is now to lay your claim to the big screens we already have! Microsoft and Sony are ready for a full scale attack with this round and they would like to forever seal the fate of our beloved little black box.

The new iPad Air

As a mobile developer and tech enthusiast, I am thrilled to have the new iPad Air on launch day. I know unboxing videos are lame and everybody does them but I figured with all of the excitement, I would add my own lame unboxing video. I had recorded a song months ago that mostly turned out terrible but there was a brief part of it that I have been wanting to release. So…if nothing else this was a means to do that.

Enjoy!

I haven’t spent much time with the new Air yet but I am so far very impressed. It is quite snappy as you should expect and it really does feel quite refreshing to use – just more balanced!

WWDC 2012 – Opening Day

Whoa! Hey! It has been a really long time since I have posted anything new and for that I am truly sorry. Looks like my last update was from The Big Nerd Ranch’s incredible Advanced iOS class near Atlanta. Interestingly, a few months later, I find that my next post is from the World Wide Developer Conference in San Francisco – WWDC 2012.

Nearly 2500 miles and hundreds of hours of development time exist between these great developer experiences and I find myself working harder than ever developing new apps and crunching as much iOS knowledge as possible. I have a lot I would like to say about what I have been doing since my trip to the BNR but for now I want to focus on today’s Keynote.

Last year around this time, I was attending my very first WWDC and was able to see Steve Jobs do one of his last (if not the last) presentations. It was amazing to get to see and hear him live! His enthusiasm and presentation style can fully energize a room like none other that I know. I truly missed the way he would always save something special and spectacular for the end – “…one more thing.”

This morning we didn’t have Steve nor “one more thing”, but that didn’t stop the crowd. WWDC 2012 sold out in 1 hour and 43 minutes. Thanks to some great friends, I was one of the exuberant few who were fortunate to purchase a ticket.

This morning, I slept a bit later than I did on Keynote day last year but still joined the line 2.5 hours before show time. At that point it wrapped completely around the block surrounding Moscone West with many people already inside. Regardless, we slowly marched around the block to roughly where we had started over the next 2+ hours. The weather was beautiful with pure blue skies and tremendous amounts of hot sunshine which was in surprising stark contrast to last year’s weather.

Despite my late arrival to the line, I was fortunate enough to get into the main room and make my way up one side about half way up the room just a couple of minutes before a special introduction to the conference from Siri. The Siri intro was quite comical and set a great tone for Tim Cook to take the stage. Tim doesn’t yet have Steve’s presentational polish, but it was clear over the next couple of hours that he has successfully led the team of magic elves that reside in Cupertino. They have really been cooking some great stuff since WWDC2011.

Three main announcements were featured: updates to the Mac notebooks, updates to OS-X, and updates to iOS. All three had nuggets of goodness that caused many a developer to sit straight up on the edge of their seat.

The next generation MacBook Pro really is pretty amazing. Not only is it absolutely beautiful, the resolution and performance appear to be top notch. I really wish they had released this a month ago when I had to get a new MBP! The attention to detail and care in even the placement and efficiency of its fans received huge approval from the audience. It is hard to imagine running a screen with 2880×1800 resolution!

The Mountain Lion update for OS-X is set to arrive next month (July) and is only going to cost $19.99 to upgrade all of the computers in your household! The features of particular interest to me are full air-play support (I have two AppleTV’s and AirPort Express so big YAY), more iCloud integration, Reminders, and iMessage! With these changes, I may actually move to Reminders and off of Google Tasks. I have been wanting completely integrated reminder functionality across all of my devices for a long time! If your home computing and mobile ecosystem is completely Apple, you will really benefit from this release. Notification and Safari updates are pretty sweet too.

The area of most professional interest to me is the announcement of iOS6. As with Mountain Lion, there were more than 200 new features added. The biggest new feature here is a completely new mapping system. Google Maps has been replaced and while I was skeptical when I heard the earlier rumors, the demos today were amazing! We FINALLY get turn-by-turn directions but with Siri integration. I know my Google friends are laughing as they have had turn-by-turn for years. Regardless, the integration of features now has a very complete feel to it. When demoed, the progression of asking about restaurants, seeing the map complete with 3D flyover, and integration with Yelp for reviews and Open Table for reservations looks elegant and has that fluidity and user experience finesse that makes you feel like it has always existed and just works.

Well, I need to get to sleep as day two starts tomorrow! I have taken many pictures and will hopefully update this to share some shortly. Not sure if it will be this week as the wireless in our hotel is more than a bit spotty especially since it is full of people downloading the latest updates and betas.

Happy WWDC 2012 everyone!

My Computer Museum

Well I finally did it. “Did what?” you say… Listed my first awesome and lovely Apple computer on ebay. This was my first MacBook Pro – a computer I talked about buying for probably 3 years before I actually pulled the trigger and spent the money. You see I really never cared much for the Macintosh until OS-X. I loved UNIX and in particular the SGI and SUN Workstations I used to do my job. It wasn’t until after Steve Jobs returned to Apple and after the Classic Mac OS (OS-9) was replaced that I became interested in what these machines could do. My general rule of thumb has always been if I can’t get to the shell, it isn’t a real OS.

As I listed this machine on ebay I began to think about how many computers I have bought, built, given away, traded and sold. Pleasant memories of some my favorites started coming to mind and I started listing them out. If you don’t like computers this post probably isn’t for you!

It all started around 1980 with my first computer, the Commodore Vic 20. I can remember pretty clearly that my brother and I had asked (no begged) for an Atari 2600 for Christmas. Our friends had them and the games were amazing. My dad thought that if we had a game machine we would just play games and never learn anything and he was probably right so that Christmas instead of the 2600 we found a rather ugly off-white plastic keyboard under the tree called a Commodore Vic-20. I don’t think we had any games with it though it did have a cartridge slot in the back. Later we did end up getting Cosmic Crunchers and the Temple of Asphai (on 6 cassette tapes).

If my dad had caved on the Atari, I may never have experienced the life that I have. I may have never had an interest in computers and software and mobile devices, HTPC, automation, engineering, computer animation, art, music, and on and on… That computer, that plain looking little box hooked to the tv with a cheap RF modulator was the beginning of an obsession that continues to this day. Thanks mom and dad!

So here it is, my list of computers that I have owned. This list excludes work computers (laptops, workstations, desktops, etc) and excludes mobile devices (iPads, iPhones, Windows phones, internet appliances, touch screens, and big fancy calculators – maybe they will appear in a future article)

The Commodore Years – 1980 – 1993

Commodore Vic 20 – my first computer with only 5k of RAM and a tape deck for storage – yes we stored programs on audio tapes!
Commodore 64 – very briefly as I really wanted the 128.
Commodore 128 with 1200 baud modem
*Commodore Amiga 2000 with 40MB Harddrive, 2MB RAM and 2400 baud modem – 1989 – this machine cost almost $3000 and still has a very special place in my heart – which is why I still have it.
Commodore Amiga 1200HD

The Clone War Years – 1993 – 2007

After the industry decided to abandon the Amiga and I would argue the FUN part of computers, I started building a steady stream of Windows and Linux based PCs. This started around 1993. I wanted to start my own BBS and feature both Amiga and PC software as well as gaming and to build a community around computing. The BBS software options seemed better on the DOS/Windows platform at the time. I didn’t like the idea of paying Compaq, Packard Bell, Dell, Gateway, or any of the other clone makers lots of money for substandard overpriced hardware when I could tailor the whole experience from case to graphics card to my own demands and budget. I also hated Intel at the time and built machines with AMD processors.

1992-3 – Built first computer using AMD’s 286 equivalent and added a Practical Peripherals 14.4k modem to start a BBS
1996 – Home built AMD-X5-133
1998 – Home built WinXP AMD K6-2 300MHz, 6.4GB HD, Gigabyte GA-5AX
2002 – AMD D1000 on an ECS K755A
Home built AMD-K6-2/400
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton on Soyo KT600 Ultra Platinum, 180GB HD, 768MB RAM
Home Automation Server- AMD Sempron 2.6GHz on Biostar K8NHAG-07 with 512MB RAM
Home built WinXP HTPC AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton on Soyo KT600 Plus, 160GB HD, 512MB RAM

The Apple Years – 2008 –
As mentioned at the start, when the aluminum body Mac’s running OS-X came out, it became my new pursuit to try one. These machines were not only beautiful on the outside but had a stable OS that wasn’t built like a house of cards (yes I’m talking about Windows Mr. Gates). When we finally saved enough to buy our first Mac it brought back the pure joy and fun that I had missed since the Amiga years. I still have a couple of rogue Windows 7 boxes in the mix currently but only because I had previous investments in license keys for HomeSeer and SageTV.

2007 Mac Mini
2008 2.4GHz Apple MacBook Pro
Home built HTPC (Windows 7) AMD Phenom II X2 560
Home built computer for son (Windows 7) AMD Phenom II X2 555
2011 Mac Mini
2011 27″ iMac

So there it is a brief journey thru the computer parts of my life. Over the years I have used two other boxes that were simply spectacular in their day but way too expensive for me to own – these are the SGI Indigo and the NeXTcube. Let’s hear from you? What hardware and software brings a twinkle to your eye?

Create Smart Playlists to find those lost Christmas favorites

There are only a few more days until Christmas. Time to enjoy those delicious once a year peppermint milkshakes from Chick-Fil-A and peppermint blizzards from Dairy Queen. It is also time to enjoy your favorite holiday tunes. If you love Christmas songs but have trouble finding them in your ever-growing iTunes library, consider this quick tip.

Set up some Smart Playlists!

Most people are familiar with Playlists which allow you to add a bunch of songs of their choosing to a named list. Playlists are a great way to help manage a music library that doesn’t change much.

Smart Playlists takes things to the next level. This is a feature that was actually added to iTunes several years ago. Sadly I didn’t catch on and try it until this past Halloween when I was trying to find some spooky songs for trick-or-treaters. For managing things like holiday song mixes or favorites within a constantly growing library it is AWESOME and best of all completely fluid. As you add new songs to your library, those new songs will appear in your smart playlists dynamically if they match the rules that you define.
To set up a new holiday playlist in iTunes, hold down the Option key (see my other post about the magic of the option key). This will turn the + sign at the bottom left to a gear.
Smart Playlists have this gear image next to them to indicate they are different from the regular playlists. You will now have a form to fill out to define the rules of your new lists.
Here are the rules that I use for my Christmas music selections.

Note that you can add more rules to get more specific. If you are good about rating your songs with stars you could add a rule to only play your best (3 stars or greater). You can also nest rules. Once the rules are set, when you select this new smart playlist in iTunes it will immediately show you EVERY song in your library matching your set of rules. If you make the rules too broad, you will get more than you want. If they are too narrow, you will have too little. Play around with your own set and see what you get. If you come up with something you’d like to share, post it in the comments! Have fun and Merry Christmas!

No sound from the TonePort – fixing the bouncing red clip led problem

I am a pretty big fan of Line 6 gear. Their modeling has gotten better and better over the years. I started with a PodXT many years ago and now have their flagship HD500 which I am very happy with and hope to post a future article on sometime soon. In the meantime, this little post will hopefully help someone else who like me has wasted several hours trying to figure out how to get their TonePort to work again.

To keep this story from being too long, I got the TonePort UX2 – which is a nice computer recording interface/tone box for Christmas from my wife several years ago. It is really a marvelous little box offering very good sounds for both guitar, vocals and bass. I love the thing but it has brought some headaches along the way. I used to use it with a Mac Book Pro which worked well but was a pain to always disconnect the wires as I needed to move the machine around quite a bit. In August, I got my dream computer – a 27 iMac and couldnt wait to get my magical little TonePort running against it to do some recording. It has been months since then and I had never really gotten it to work with my new computer. It was running briefly a couple of weeks ago but then last weekend started just blinking the red clip lights back and forth. I had tried reinstalling drivers, using their license manager, etc. but nothing worked. Just blinking red clip lights! UGH!

This week, I need to practice a TSO song to play next weekend and I really need this box to run again. Tonight I decided to spend some time to solve the problem and I am happy to say I think I found the root cause. My theory – which was kind of echoed by one of Line 6s support forum posts is that the Mac Migration Assistant that I used when I migrated my files from the MBP to the iMac brought along some extra garbage with it. Thus my attempts to reinstall the drivers were silently failing. The Line 6 uninstall tool apparently doesn’t always work and in this case completely failed. It acted like the old drivers were removed but they were not!

Bottom line – you need to completely eradicate those drivers from your system and reboot before you can use your TonePort again. Though this is specific to my circumstances (a UX2 migrating from one mac to another mac, I would expect this to apply generally to any TonePort on any machine. Perhaps the uninstaller is more reliable on a PC. If you know, please chime in on the comments below.

I’m guessing the uninstaller failed because the Line 6 tools, drivers, etc are spread across so many different directories. Below are the steps I took to remove the old drivers. I noticed on some other posts in the Line 6 forums that some folks were having success by removing EVERYTHING tied to Line 6 on your computer. That is the approach I took and it did work but realize that I lost all of my custom tones in the process for all of my Line 6 gear that were saved on my mac. In my case, everything is backed up via Time Machine so no big deal, but before you continue make sure you understand the risks and make sure you have things backed up!

I removed all of the files directly via the terminal. Please be careful when doing this and understand that if you accidentally delete the wrong libraries or other system files you will have more problems than you started with. Do not do any of this without a backup. If you have any doubts in your ability, I suggest you contact Line 6 and request a better Uninstaller app that actually works.

BE VERY CAREFUL DELETING FILES IN THESE DIRECTORIES. ONE BAD MOVE AND YOU WILL REALLY HOSE SOMETHING UP! ONLY DELETE THE LINE 6 stuff and NOTHING else!

Here is what I removed.

/Library/Audio/MIDI Drivers/Line6*
/Library/Audio/Midi Devices/Line 6
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST/Line 6
/Library/Audio/Plug-ins/Components/POD*
/Library/Frameworks/L6TWX*
/Library/Application Support/Line 6
/Applications/Line6
~/Library/Preferences/*line6* – only files with line 6 in the middle of the name

There was a forum post at Line 6 that also going to /private/var/db/receipts and running sudo rm -i com.line6*

Once you have eradicated everything Line 6 on your machine, reinstall the latest Line 6 Monkey software – this is their main hub for installing everything else

Now verify that the Line 6 license manager is installed and run it. I made sure that both the iMac AND the Tone Port are listed. You may have to rescan devices after licensing your computer to find the Tone Port
Install and fire up Pod Farm 2 and play!

Remaining Issues

Things are still not perfect yet! I used to use GearBox as my main app to access the goodness of this little box. Now, GearBox appears to be outdated and replaced by Pod Farm 2. Well that is fine except us old timers don’t have software licenses that fully supports PF2! Reinstalling GearBox today is not an optimum solution since the link from the Monkey refers to GearBox in an outdated complete package. i.e. it is a link to a big archive that includes outdated drivers, outdated Monkey, and GearBox. Not sure why they bundled it but I sure dont want to have to go thru all of this again. I have issued a support ticket with Line 6 and am awaiting their response. Hopefully us long term Tone Port users can get grandfathered in!

Update 12/13/11 –

Heard response back on my support ticket today copied here for anyone interested:

The POD Farm 2 license is built into the newer POD Studio devices by design. All owners of previous generation Toneport hardware are not ‘grandfathered’ in to get a free POD Farm 2 license. This is not a feature of the device that you purchased, so if you want to use the POD Farm 2 software the license must be purchased. You CAN use the POD Farm 1.12 software for free which will provide you all of the models that you get with the basic model set of the Toneport UX2:

I am not terribly thrilled with this response. Basically it sucks if you are an early adopter into the TonePort family of products. If you want to use it and have the same features and sounds as the folks buying the same hardware today, you need to pay them an extra $99 for that privilege. I suggested in my reply that they take some of the profits from the folks that agree to this to devote time to fix their broken device uninstaller. The problems with that uninstaller are the reason this post was written.

What’s up with the Option key?

Learned something new today! While reading about iTunes Match and how to replace your existing music files with higher quality matches from the cloud, I took a moment to examine smart playlists. This led to a side search on finding duplicates and intelligently removing them. In an Apple support article, it showed how to quickly find duplicates with the somewhat familiar File->Display Duplicates option. I have used that option before but always wanted something more.

I wanted a way to discover duplicate songs only if they were on different albums. i.e. there are times when I may want to hear an album in its entirety like for example if I want to just hear Kansas’ epic Leftoverture album. There are other times when I may want to listen to every song by artist. I’d search for Kansas and want to hear all of the songs but not listen to “Carry On Wayward Son” six times. Obviously I have gotten off track, but the point is that in this support article, it listed a separate mode of discovering duplicates – “Display Exact Duplicates.” This is only shown if you hold the Option key down while the menu is open. WOW! I didn’t realize Apple had hidden optional menu choices available for their various apps. I am not a great fan of hiding behavior in menu’s particularly behind an option key, but I am happy to have this new menu item available. It got me wondering what other cool features may be overlooked because they only show up while holding down the option key???

Back to my second music listening case above. If I choose to listen to a particular Artist, I would still like to be able to quickly listen to all of their songs and not hear duplicates. I am pretty sure that the Smart Playlists feature will let me do this but have never tried it. This feature appears to offer a lot and sadly I have not realized its full potential. Looking forward to taking a few minutes to build some interesting lists!

What have you done with Smart Playlists? What are your favorite hidden menu options? Add a comment and say hey!