Newton Poetry

Our Airport Extreme Base Station connectivity issues are over. Life can begin again.

This, friends, is a new day. Thanks to one lost, but helpful, Apple support site, the issues I had with connecting to my Airport Base Station’s wifi signal and USB hard drive have been solved.

The trick, like anything else, is knowing where to look.

If you’re having issues like I was (Mac wouldn’t connect to base station’s wifi signal, air disk support was totally lost, etc.), first open up your Airport Utility app. I’m using version 5.1 after finding 5.2 to be too problematic (many others found this too – browse the support discussions at Apple.com sometime). Double-click on your base station (above), which will bring up the more detailed manual window.

Then, select the Base Station menu at the top, and click on “Upload firmware…”

You’ll see the options above, thanks to a drop-down menu. I selected firmware version 7.3.1, which was the previous firmware download. In essence, you’re overwriting the firmware – version 7.3.2 – already on your base station with the previous version. Out with the new, in with the old.

After you select your version and hit “Okay,” Airport Utility will download the firmware and automatically replace the 7.3.2 firmware.

I reset my base station a few times, with Airport Utility, just to make sure everything was a-okay. But when Airport Utility recognized the fresh old firmwared-version of my base station, I saw that it worked:

Hoo-ha. Version 7.3.1. We’re now running on the old software in both Airport Utility and on the base station itself. And see that little button with the 7.3.2 update on it. Don’t dare touch it. We know better now.

Hey, if Apple can’t came out with great new stuff, we’ll just use the old stuff that works, right?

But now came the test. Would my iBook find the base station’s Airport signal? Could I connect to the USB drive and actually save some files and open my iPhoto library?

You bet. Everything now works as normal. I can connect to wifi, and my USB drive’s wackiness comes to an end.

So lesson learned: wait longer than normal on things like firmware updates. And when you can’t find a solution, revert back to the old way of doing things. This is a problem, though, when security issues are addressed in new software updates. If you revert to the old version, do you risk leaving yourself open to attack?

Shame on Apple for not fixing the Airport Extreme Base Station firmware and Utility. We just have to do it ourselves in a roundabout way.

Two days and about $15 later, my “Yikes!” PowerMac G4 now features full USB 2.0 capabilities thanks to the PCI card I installed on Thursday.

More… »

[Update: I think I found a fix – see here.]

Just when I thought I found a solution to my Airport Extreme Base Station issue, the problem crops up again.

To refresh: after installing the latest base station firmware (7.3.2) and the Airport Utility update (5.3.2), both my n-powered base station connection and my external USB hard drive went haywire. My iBook’s Airport card, nor my iPhone, would not recognize the base station. An Ethernet cord connected to the base station made Internet access possible, but any sort of wireless connection was a no go:

Even though my wireless card saw the base station, it wouldn’t connect. Weird, huh?

A few weeks ago, I followed an Apple Support forum poster’s advice by reverting back to the previous firmware, 7.3.1, and reinstalling the Airport Utility fresh from the disc that came with the base station. A fresh start, I hoped, and for a while it worked. Yesterday, though, I noticed my Airport wifi signal dropping out, and my iBook lost the ability to connect to the base station over wifi.

Worse, I lost the ability to connect to my USB drive. As soon as I tried to open up the Airport-connected drive, it signaled a disconnect. The file structure inside was messed up, too: iPhoto crashed immediately after opening as it searched for the drive’s iPhoto library, I couldn’t save files to folders beyond two or three levels deep (see here), and any backups pointing to the drive failed miserably.

Here I had set up a nice system on my new project PowerMac G4, where my iTunes library was synced from the external drive hooked up to the base station. Before, I thought it would be a non-starter because (a) the PowerMac doesn’t have an Airport card, and (b) it didn’t have OS X 10.4 Tiger or the updated Airport Utility. While searching the network, however, the PowerMac spotted the base station and allowed me to connect to the USB drive with a password:

No longer. When I try opening up the drive, it disappear in a cloud of aqua-colored smoke, giving me the above “server connection interrupted” message.

Running Disk Utility showed the drives had some sort of problem, but I’m not smart enough to figure what it means.

And I’m not the only one. Updating to the new firmware and Airport Utility has plagued others, too (in several Apple Support forums), even after the consensus said that reverting back to the previous firmware/utility versions solved the problem. It didn’t solve the problem. The problem came back, for me, after several weeks.

Resetting the base station doesn’t solve it. Unplugging it for a while doesn’t solve it. Resetting my cable modem doesn’t solve it. Disconnecting my USB drive doesn’t help. Even the old revert-back-to-a-previous-version method does nothing. The old strategy was to wait on system updates like this: watch what happens, see what problems erupt, and then download the fix. But who the hell knows when Apple will get a firmware or utility update out? Who would trust it when it is released?

This is a serious issue. Sure, Apple had enough trouble keeping MobileMe up and running, and soothing all the iPhone headaches, but given the choice between a cheap-o Linksys router and an Airport Extreme Base Station, buyers now have a better reason to go with the more affordable option. Who wants problems like these? When I can’t even back up my files without fear of crashing my whole system, Apple’s ease-of-use philosophy is in serious doubt. I can’t imagine what someone with half my patience would do.

It’s hard to put a number on how many base station users are affected by this, but judging from the multiple Apple Support forum discussions addressing this problem, I’d bet it’s no small deal.

Consider this a plea for help. Anyone else having a similar Airport Extreme Base Station issue?

The above shot was taken on Sunday’s Macsurfer homepage. Just look at those headlines. If that isn’t a PR nightmare for Apple, I don’t know what is. This after they did such a super job before the iPhone 3G was announced.

Fortune talked about the perils of “event marketing” – how, yeah, a big huge event like this is fun and draws attention, it’s catastrophic when something breaks down. As it did on Friday. Apple is an expert at drawing press attention. That only makes the scrutiny laser beam that much hotter.

Despite everything that happened, it could’ve been worse. But I’m starting to wonder how. Just from personal experience, this week has been a bummer with my Apple gear. First, I updated my Airport Express base station’s firmware. Afterward, the thing crashed, and now I can’t use my external USB hard drive.

The update must have damaged my USB drive somehow, because I had to repair the thing in Disk Utility and now iPhoto crashes every time it tries to load my library from the disk. Even worse: my iBook and Airport Utility won’t even recognize the base station:

So much for a helpful “update.”

Then, after I thought MobileMe was actually giving me a chance to try it out (I set up my account, and could log in online), I find out that OS X 10.4 has issues connecting with MobileMe. In fact, the .Mac icons won’t even change over:

Just when it looks like MobileMe (or .Mac, or .Whatever) is going to sync my contacts and calendars and whatnot, I get this:

At least this is just the 60 day trial. If I were paying for this, I would not be a happy Apple customer.

And that’s just it. Even amidst Friday’s hellbroth during the iPhone 3G launch, I still played the dedicated Apple soldier. Most of the folks in line with me understood, too, that these things happen, and we were still a part of Something Special. But when the nuts of bolts of Apple’s operation start to come undone, that’s when you get people angry. People will stand in line for hours for the iPhone, no matter what activation issues are taking place, with a gritted smile on their face. That smile soon disappears, however, when basic things like Airport and “Exchange for the rest of us” (more like, “for the most patient of us”) start breaking down.

Apple has got a mess on its hands, it seems, and I wouldn’t want to be their PR department for the next week or so. The least they should do is offer some sort of apology, admit their mistakes, and fix their damn software. Those are the basics.

Do that, and we might forget our USB drive crashing through Airport Disk Utility. Might.

What would we do without eBay? Found two 256 MB RAM sticks on eBay for less than $20 (with shipping), and couldn’t pass up on the deal to boost the PowerMac G4’s RAM from 320 MB to…well, strangely, only 704 MB…

But before we get to the goofy math, let’s explore how we got this far.

More… »

Look what I found at my recycling group’s most recent e-waste drive: a beautiful-condition PowerMac G4 and Apple Studio Display.

The guy who dropped it off said it “worked perfectly.” His family was simply upgrading to a newer Mac. All the volunteers at the e-waste drive immediately brought it to me and asked me if I wanted it. The answer to that one is obvious.

An older guy dropped off a Macintosh IIci and an Apple Extended Keyboard II, as well, but those are going to my friend Curtis, who helps me out with classic Macs.

Now, what to do with the G4?

More… »

I always wonder about the Mac Mini.

Every time I see one I want to touch it, and I’m always on the look-out for a cheap enough model to buy. But I wonder how the Mac Mini’s sales are doing.

When it was launched, people predicted the Mini – then a G4 – would sell pretty well. Then, last summer, sites predicted the death of the Mini. Since Leopard was release, the Mini just hangs in limbo.

It’s a shame, too, because people love the pint-sized Mac enough to mod the heck out of it. Media centers, car computers – you name it, someone has put a Mini inside it. But how well does it sell overall?

The original idea was to offer up a below-$1,000 Mac so that Window users, who already own a capable monitor and keyboard/mouse set, could jump ship easily and cheaply. The Mini could run OS X and MS Office software and anything else you could throw at it, and users could expect a machine to help them “learn” the Mac OS without whipping through 40 Photoshop filters at top speed. You knew it was a modest system. You didn’t expect a whole lot.

As it stands today, though, people are switching to Apple – but mostly through the notebook route. What’s the Mac Mini’s role in all this? A new MobileMe-only device? A music server?

Plus, OS X 10.5 requires more powerful hardware, and the Mini’s modest specs seem to not up to the new iMac’s standards, I guess I’m just worried the tiny Mac will get lost in the (non-iPod) shuffle. If sales are sluggish, would Apple just drop it? Would the monitor-less experiment be over? And what about the dreaded xMac?

If anyone knows, I’d love to hear about it.

This week marks the tenth anniversary of the Apple iMac.

I’m lucky enough to own one of the Bondi Blue beauties; it’s mostly my finance and gaming (WarCraft II) machine. I like to mess around with Photoshop on it, and I also got a copy of Adobe’s proto-web WYSIWYG editor PageMill to play with.

I’ve got mine running OS 9, but they originally shipped with OS 8, I think. It’s my truly “classic” machine, and also my Newton MessagePad hub. It still runs like a dream, humming along at 233 MHz with 160k of RAM.

So thanks, Steve Jobs, and thanks, Jon Ive, for bringing such a wonderful machine into being.

What did I tell you?

Apple investors and those they associate with are bat-shit insane. That includes me.

All this after reading the news from CNNMoney.com today. More specifically, it’s that Shaw Wu of American Technology Research that’s driving the crazy bus to Looneyville. Turns out, AAPL stock may be worth purchasing after all. To wit:

In a research note, Wu said he may have jumped the gun in cutting his rating on Apple’s (AAPL) stock just one day before it delivered its second-quarter earnings results…Wu added that Apple’s stock is likely to remain “extremely volatile despite being universally loved,” by investors.

Universally loved by those that actually buy from and use Apple’s product line; extremely volatile by one-man bullhorns like Wu.

“May have” jumped the gun? These people have way too much power. When has this stuff been remotely predictable? Okay, maybe sometimes. But still.

While I’m glad to see AAPL sitting at $180+ after this winter’s skydive, all the stress that comes with these peaks and valleys is enough to make one consider a drinking habit. There’s no sense or order to this business news racket. Jesus, even Fox has a business network now. What does that tell yoU?

This experiment has its consequences. I’ve got to come to grips with that fact. Even Einstein said, “Uh, maybe The Bomb wasn’t such a good idea.”

Too late. Poobah Wu says a product “vacuum” in Apple’s lineup could still suck us all under its collective madness. He even adopts his prognosticator garb to mention “a radical redesign” of Macbooks and Macbook Pros since, you know, we’re due any day now.

Maybe this is a lesson in the fallacy of objectivity; for me, it’s been like riding piggy-back on a manic-depressive yet excitable hunchback. I’m holding on, but I’m wondering about the wisdom of the prospect. My goal is to make it to WWDC in June.

After that, all bets are off.

Owning a two-and-a-half year old iBook is not without its drawbacks. That clean white Apple finish? Totally gross from palm sweat and finger goo.

But I’m here to testify to the power of the Magic Eraser.

It all started when a friend of mine bought a new white MacBook. I brought my iBook G4 over to show her how things have changed. She took one look at my keyboard and said, “Yuck, is that how mine’s going to look?” I said probably, but I was kind of embarrassed. I love Apple’s white, clean look. I didn’t want mine all dirty.

So I bought a sample pack of the Magic Erasers at the dollar store, and gave it a try.

In a word: wow. It’s like a whole new laptop.

I was worried that the Magic Eraser’s intense abrasive action (it works like super-powered, but gentle, sandpaper) might damage the iBook’s finish. But no worries. One swipe and the palm rest looked brand new. And the keys on the keyboard? Gorgeous. A simple application of water, wring the Eraser out completely (don’t want any water sneaking in anywhere), and a paper towel to wipe up the excess. That’s all it takes. It’s like an undo button for your Mac.

Now I just wish I hadn’t waited so long to try it out (others have met similar results). I also wish I had taken some before and after shots, just to show you how nice my iBook looks now.

Next up are the apartment walls and my iPod, whose scroll wheel is looking a little worse for wear.

[Image courtesy Mr. Clean.]