I watched Steve at WWDC 2011 keynote announce that MobileMe did not work and is no more.

It did not go well with me because I just renewed my annual subscription on May 12, just over three weeks ago. Immediately I logged in to my account at cancelled the service for a full refund. Information on Apple web site about account canceling and refunds said that refunds will be processed within 40 days. My refund was posted to my credit card account in only three days.

I had MobileMe or .mac as it used to be called on the beginning for several years. My thinking was that since I do some Mac related work it would look good to have an email in the form of myname@mac.com and later as myname@me.com.

Nobody even noticed my attention to detail. I still believe that it looks better if you have email address at the domain of your area of work.

If you own a domain name and have a working web site (“working” is imperative) then you list your “www”.your_domain_name.com on your business card. Your contact email address better be your_name@your_domain_name.com because I look at it first and judge your knowledge of basic business sense on that.

Ask yourself, how would it look to the customer if you work for AT&T and have email like bite_me@verizon.com ?

Are there deals like this for MS software?
Not any time soon.
If you are still waiting – now is the time to jump the sinking MS ship.

You have tried to update iPhone firmware 1.1.3 to 1.1.4 and you got the picture above with the error text below:

The iPhone “Your-iPhone-Name-Here” could not be updated. An unknown error occurred (1602).

The solution shown here applies to iTunes on Mac running Leopard.
I believe that the new firmware requires more strict control of user privileges. The proper way to solve the problem is to login to user account owning the iPhone. When you login to new user account, open iTunes and plugin the iPhone, the message informs you about downloading and installing new firmware. Each user must have the new firmware in a file named /Users/user-name/Library/iTunes/iPhone\ Software\ Updates/iPhone1,1_1.1.4_4A102_Restore.ipsw

The simplest way is to have each user download and install the firmware. The file is large – 160 MB. If you have a lot of users, downloading is a waste of resources (time and space). The firmware update file can be downloaded once and copied to users folder. The firmware file iPhone1,1_1.1.4_4A102_Restore.ipsw must reside in /Users/user-name/Library/iTunes/iPhone\ Software\

Make sure that folder and file ownership are set to the current user.

For me the simplest way to copy files and folders between user accounts is from command line. Below are the Unix commands executed from Terminal. There are only three lines. I know you can combine them into one, but that would be cheating and complicating things. Substitute user1 and user2 with your values.

Explanation shown below.
1. (su -) switch to root user account
2. (cp -R) copy folder and its contents from user1 to user2
3. (chown -R) change permissions for the folder and its contents from user1 to user2

Unix commands shown below.
Direction of the slashes is important. Second line is long and may show here as being broken. It should be typed as one line. You can reduce size of your font untill the line has no break and copy and paste it.

Your-Mac:/ root# su -
Your-Mac:/ root# cp -R /Users/user1/Library/iTunes/iPhone\ Software\ Updates /Users/user2/Library/iTunes/
Your-Mac:/ root# chown -R user2 /Users/user2/Library/iTunes

I have upgraded four iPhones using this method. Let me know if this works for you.

I do not do Windows, but I have windows to look outside.

What is the Microsoft Windows blue screen of death doing on my Mac?
I waited today half an hour for this thing to do something other than sit there. Nothing happened. Had to stop the virtual machine and close Parallels Desktop to get rid of it. This is normal behavior and usually I just close it without waiting. Today I wanted to see what happens if I give it some time and wait. Same thing. Nothing.

I do run MS XP Pro on my Mac when I have to check something in the native MS Windows environment using IE browser. I do not have physical machine to run that crap anymore. Parallels Desktop for Mac is perfect to run it. For $79.99 and the cost of XP Pro you get to have Windows on Mac. It behaves exactly like real XP, down to the blue screen of death. When I shutdown XP it gives me the standard windows closing sound and the blue screen.

I use it to check IE browser compatibility of websites, read documents in Word, Excel and PPS formats. I could convert the documents or use OpenOffice. However, it is infinitely better to use native platform on which the original was created. It is intuitive and obvious that use of native environment is best for quality control.

Last night I accessed the website content that required Flash Player plugin. Why would I need it? I had CS3 Web Premium already installed on my PowerBook. I was certain that it included the Flash Player. Anyway, I clicked the download button already. It downloaded, installed and nothing. A blank, white hole without any buttons to push. Restarted Safari, same white hole appeared. Since upgrading to Leopard I noticed that Safari behaved weird sometimes with plugins that worked before upgrade.

I fired the Firefox on the same site, the Flash Player appeared with all its buttons functional. Meanwhile for some reason the Adobe Updater started and asked if I wanted to download 136.5 MB of updates now or later. I let it rip. What choice did I have? Now or later, how about, go away you bloatware.

An ugly window opens up with the question – do you want to upgrade now? close all browsers and push go button. So I did. A long empty bar appeared and started filling up with a blue moving stripe. It stopped moving and got stuck almost halfway trough the empty bar. I waited ten or fifteen minutes. Nothing. still stuck in the same spot, right under the letter h in Flash. Cancel, reboot and try again. Same thing, stuck under letter h. Enough fun for today, it is too late, go sleep, will try in the morning.

In the morning the blue stripe got stuck in the same spot, I let sit there for half an hour. It started moving again and got stuck close to the end. I waited another half an hour. Nothing. Cancel and reboot. Do it again. Stuck again at the end. Wait, talk on the phone, do not pay attention to it. Check fifteen minutes later – success, done.

I do not have any problems upgrading any other applications. None require closing browsers and upgrade themselves while previous version is still running.

It is obvious from this abnormal behavior that something is wrong with Adobe software. What is in 136.5 MB of upgrades for one application? Replacement of the whole code that can not even replace itself?

Presentation of the Adobe wares is excellent. Watching the Flash demos on their website makes you want to have the software. That is how they got me to buy their new CS3 for Mac. Perhaps the people making the presentations should be involved in writing the application software, so the customer will get exactly what is being advertised, not the extreme bloatware that is being produced now.