My new Lacie D2 Network drive is Time Machine compatible. That means it’s really easy to setup with Time Machine – no hacks required, it just gets detected.

LaCie D2 Network – Time Machine

Then, you get blamed for running a .exe from a share on it. That exe was the MS Office installer. Why was that a problem? EXEs are not compatible with the drive’s operating system !

It was related to running the .exe file on the drive.  The file is proprietary to an OS such as XP, Vista, or Mac OS X.  Running the file on a non-conforming OS is going to create severe havoc and other issues.  I am glad the reset resolved the issue.

Lacie Tech Support doesn’t know what a share is

And then, you ask them about firmware updates to fix some small issues here and there, and this is what they tell you, barely over a year after you bought it:

Since this type of unit is no longer made, it’s unlikely there will be any further firmware updates for

So am I surprised that my piece of junk Lacie D2 NAS does not support the latest AFP protocol required for Time Machine?

Of course I’m not. But who cares, it’s not like I trusted the thing as my main backup anyways.

Cause: The LaCie NAS OS does not support Time Machine with Mac OS X Lion.
Solution: Use Mac OS X 10.6.x or earlier when using Time Machine to back up your Mac to a LaCie network hard drive.

But I’m sorry. The solution is actually to buy hardware from a company that at least pretends to give a damn. Apple should be ashamed of allowing this junk in an Apple store. I don’t care how cool your USB sticks look or how fast your Thunderbolt drives are, LaCie, I’d rather use old Sony 1.44inch floppies. Oh, and I called my D2 “Lassie”, cause it runs like a dog.

If you “jailbreak” your AppleTV, you can then install their Airplay module on it. To activate it (license), you connect to it using the Remote HD App on your iOS device.

I’m not sure how long it will be until Apple finds a way to block it from theApp Store. It is pretty expensive now but it is a useful app, and sure is cheaper than an AppleTV 2.

Instructions quoted below can be found at http://www.remotehd.com/AppleTV/Download

If you are not using the latest Apple TV Software (version 3.0.2), update the Apple TV software from Settings > General > Update Software.
Unlock your Apple TV using opensource atvusb-creator.
Step by step instructions can be found here and here.

Connect to your AppleTV using your preferred SSH client:
Host: appletv.local
Username: frontrow
Password: frontrow

Recommended SSH clients are:
OS X: Use the buit-in SSH command line client using Terminal.app
Windows: Putty Download putty.exe from here

Here’s an example of how to connect to the Apple TV using Terminal.app on OS X:

ssh frontrow@appletv.local
Password: frontrow
Once connected, run these commands one by one.
These commands will download, uncompress, install/upgrade Remote HD plugin and restart the Apple TV interface.

scp ssh.remotehd.com:RemoteHelper.tar RemoteHelper.tar
tar xvf RemoteHelper.tar
./install-RemoteHelper

“frontrow” without the quotes is the default password.
If prompted with a security prompt to confirm connecting, type in yes.

Thats it, you’re done! Now grab your device and have Remote HD scan for available connections. Your Apple TV should show up in the list of available WiFi-connections – just tap to connect!
The default password is empty.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4245

If the Wi-Fi network router that you are connected to uses a firewall or security software to restrict Internet access, contact the network administrator and reference this technical article. To use FaceTime on a restricted Wi-Fi network, port forwarding must be enabled for ports 443 (TCP), 3478–3497 (UDP), 16384–16386 (UDP), and 16393–16402 (UDP).

Make sure those UDP port ranges have a good priority in your QoS configuration and you should be good to go. It is worth noting that DNS and HTTP must be open to the outside as well, but they are probably used only to establish the call (same for HTTPS/443) so the QoS config should not matter.

I know there are 2billion iPhone 4 reviews out there already, but I know some of my friends want to know what my take on it is. I’ve had my 32GB iPhone 4 on Fido for a few days now.

Build Quality

It feels solid in your hands, and feels quite dense. As it is thinner and slimmer than the 3g(s), it really does feel heavier even though it is but by only 2 grams. It doesn’t twist, and looks great. The Micro SIM card is probably the most impressive thing about it. As you eject it, and see the precision work that went into it, you instantly realize that the iPhone has industrial design that is far better than most consumer electronics. However, the ergonomics are not so good. First of all, when it is in your pocket, you have to touch either the volume buttons or the home button in order to know what side is where. It also gets rather slippery if it’s hot and you have moist hands, and considering it won’t survive a drop on concrete, I’m going to watch out..

The buttons also feel pretty good. The home button clicks well, which is a nice change from my old 3g, but I don’t know how it compares how the 3g was when it was brand new.

Screen

Impressive is the only word to describe it. I read a PDF of normal text on a 8.5×11 sheet without zooming in. You’ll need to be wearing your glasses because the text can go so small but it is incredibly clear and easy to read. The pixels are closer to the surface, so it looks like you’re reading on the glass and not through it.  It is so good that I now find my laptop screen completely ridiculous.

Cameras

The main camera is a lot better than the camera in the 3g, that is for sure. Back then, we didn’t even have tap to focus. The video filming is very smooth. It is a bit hard  not to shake while holding it though, so maybe some videos will need to be stabilized after the fact. Pictures look OK, but don’t expect it to outclass a good point and shoot. The flash is lame, but is better than no flash. For me, it is good enough, which means I can ditch the point and shoot for most occasions, and when I need to take real pictures, I can bring the DSLR.

The main camera seems to be pretty good for its main purpose which is facetime. Framerate looks smooth, resolution is good enough for a face !

Reception

Reception is hard to judge for now. I was running 4.0 on my 3g and I have 4.0.1 on the new one, which means bar levels are considerably lower on the new phone. I got a call in an area where I’ve always had major issues speaking on the phone, and the call was clear even though I only had 1 bar. Death gripping it resulted in “skipping”. 3g download speeds also seem impressive, though lately Rogers/Fido has been slower than ever, so I don’t have any numbers to back that up. But I did download some stuff on MxTube once at a very great speed (close to 5mbps) which is something I hadn’t seen on the iPhone 3g before.

OS/Experience

The OS is exactly the same as what I had on my 3g, so no big surprises there. I had enabled multitasking on my old one, and I can say that on the iPhone 4 with 512megs of RAM, application switching is absolutely great. Sbsettings pops up so fast now, and Cydia is actually usable ! Running trapster in the background also seems to work nicely. Browsing sites with Safari is a charm with the great resolution and faster CPU. Make sure you keep it on 4.0.1 so you can jailbreak it !

Battery life

I managed a bit over 4hours of usage (reading in safari, playing Galcon Labs, watching a few videos in mxtube, shooting a few test videos) and a day and a half of standby on my first full charge. The battery should be good enough to avoid having to recharge during the day even if you use it quite a bit.

Facetime

Are you kidding? With the current shortage, I’ve heard that there isn’t a single person in this city that owns an iPhone 4 and knows someone else who does ! Short of giving out my number in a forum, there’s no way I’ll get to try Facetime soon. Anyways, I don’t really care. Why can’t we initiate calls on Facetime? I’d like to be able to call people in Europe over facetime but I don’t want to pay long distance for the first minute or so..

Bottom line

Buy it, unless you hate really high pixel density screens and a fast phone which responds in a very snappy manner. Then, Jailbreak it and install Sbsettings, 3g unrestrictor, lockinfo, etc..

With the latest iOS 4 supporting multitasking or with any other version of iOS that has been set free from its jail, I’ve noticed that my old, slow iPhone 3g has been having memory issues.

With iOS 3 and multitasking applications such as backgrounder, I could at least manage what app I wanted to leave open in the background. Sure, it took more CPU but at least I could manage it.

With iOS 4 (multitasking enabled using the latest pwnagetools) – many apps will keep using RAM in the background if they support Fast App Switching. As more and more apps get recompiled with iOS 4 and fast app switching enabled, I noticed I needed to reboot my iPhone from time to time or manually close these apps. And as we know, task managers, blowing it, etc…

Here is how I enabled swapping on my iPhone – sorry for not quoting any definite source, the knowledge I found was spread out through many forums and no clear source could be found. In any case, I’m certainly not the one who thought about this.

iOS is a stripped down version of OS X, which supports swapping, obviously. However, the flash in your iPhone is not made to handle thousands of writes and this is why Apple doesn’t do swapping on it. Be warned, this will probably end up killing it. How fast? Hard to say. Considering my 3g is 2 years old and I’m eligible for an upgrade soon, I just don’t really care. Please inspect the file before you upload it and understand what it means – I’m not responsible for you nuking your phone. Back it up in iTunes first, too, just in case you have to restore using DFU Mode.

1. Jailbreak your iPhone ( I recommend pwnagetools )
2. Install OpenSSH From cydia
3. Connect to your iPhone using an SCP client (Cyberduck, WinSCP, Filezilla..)
4. Download this file and rename it from .txt to .plist com.apple.dynamic_pager
5. Upload this file to /System/Library/LaunchDaemons
6. Reboot

You will now notice that even after opening a few apps, available memory reported by SBSettings will remain close to 30-35Mb.

On top of that, if you browse to /var/vm , you will see that it created a swap file.

Applications would have their separate data, and a simple user switching locking screen would do the job..

Then again, Apple probably prefers not to do that as it would be “complex”. And people will buy multiple iPads.

End of useless post

However, Time Machine is clearly designed for drives that are used ONLY for Time Machine. This is great when you have a drive that is dedicated to backing up a single machine, but this device being a NAS, the point is to use it for multiple computers, and multiple purposes.

The easiest way I’ve found to limit the size that time machine will use is to:

1) Create the share where you want to host your Time Machine files, make sure you make it Time Machine compatible.
2) Enable Time Machine. It will create the file and start ‘Preparing’. As soon as you can confirm the .sparsebundle file has been created in the share, stop time machine, and disable it.
3) Copy the filename of the sparsebundle file. (It should be something similar to your hostname_mac_of_eth_card – but I figured it’s easier to copy it.)
4) Open a terminal and run this command. Replace the comment and the filename by your own of course, as well well as the size of the volume we’re creating. In my case, I created a 40gig volume for my Hackintosh, since I don’t keep much there. You can create the file locally, it won’t really take 40g (or whatever space you specify) as it is only a maximum.


hdiutil create -size 40g -fs HFS+J -volname "Backup of Blah" blah_000000000000.sparsebundle


5) Move that file on the share you created for Time Machine purposes.
6) Turn on Time Machine and point it to that share again. It will discover the file, it should start backing up to it, and should not go over the space you assigned to it. That way you can fully use your NAS to backup many computers while keeping some space for music and videos !

Then suddenly, we stopped hearing about it. Apple was acting like it never happened.

Now, with the iPhone OS 3.0 released, it is finally a reality. I strongly recommend that anyone interested in decent instant messaging on the iPhone get BeejiveIM 3.0 . It is about 10$, but worth every penny once you compare the security model with other applications, and push notifications make it so much more useful, it’s great.
With the iPhone locked, it will ring (if you want it to), and display the message you have just received in a small popup window. As you unlock it, it launches the app and takes you to that message.

Try it out !