FoxBoom!

It would be nice if the “Birthdays” calendar was updated independantly of iCal.

If I add a new contact with a birthday on my iPhone, that birthday doesn’t appear in Google Calendar (via BusySync) until I open iCal.

This is not the best.

In Mac OS, if you’re trying to mount a shared folder from a Windows Vista machine and you see “The volume ‘whatever’ could not be mounted.” then it could be that you haven’t assigned any guest permissions on that folder. In Vista, right-click on that folder and select “Share…”, then in the “Choose people” combo, pick “Guest” and add ‘em.

If you’ve mounted the folder, but when you try to copy a file into it you see “You may need to enter the name and password for an administrator on this computer to change the item names ‘whatever’.” then you might not have actually entered your real username. In Vista, right-click on the folder and select “Properties…”, then click the “Security” tab. In the “Group or user names” list, look for your Windows account name; the username you need to enter when you mount the folder is in brackets after your name. So, in the list, if you see “AdminVixen (VIXENBOX\fox)” and your Windows account name is “AdminVixen” then your username when you mount the folder is “VIXENBOX\fox”.

And once, I mounted the folder but files I copied into it disappeared immediately. I suspect I put the wrong password in, but I’m not sure.

Also, if you want to install a VNC server on your Vista machine, UltraVNC works a treat for me. RealVNC doesn’t.

AND NOW YOU KNOW.

So, the plan for today is to setup Vista on this new PC, set up some shared folders for me and Spirit to drop our media into, and have Windows Media Player monitor those folders so our Xbox-es can pick them up through the Windows Media Centre interface.

Then maybe in a couple of months, I’ll get a Linksys Media Center Extender DMA2100 for the living room, and rebuild the media server as a much, MUCH lower-power box with a terrabyte of storage. That should keep me going for a while.

So I grabbed a second hand Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard off Spirit to build into a little media server for the PCs and Xbox-es around the house.

One the first day, I plugged DVI out into my TV’s HDMI, and nothing happened. Turns out my TV couldn’t sync down low enough. Poop.

On the second and third days, right after the POST, we were getting “Keyboard is locked out — unlock the key.”

Well, I checked for shorts, I reset the CMOS, I pulled the battery out. And just now, I figured it out. The keyboard wake-up jumper (KBPWR1) was missing. I plugged it back into the default (pins 1 + 2), and it’s done!

With thanks to page 2-15 of the A7N8X manual.

I think “unlock the key” is gonna be my new motivational slogan.

Also, if you choose to access your Google calendar in iCal via CalDAV, you cannot edit that calendar’s events on your iPhone.

Poop.

This is the kind of stuff I’m passionate about.

This is why I’ll never get a boyfriend.

If you try to access your Google Calendar in iCal via CalDAV, but iCal tells you “account information not found” or “calendar (whatever) bould not be found”, then check your calendar URL. You probably copied it from the support page with a space on the end.

And yeah, that’s “bould”.

D’oh!

MobileMe webmail is broken again. I still haven’t had the 30 day credit applied to my account. The support team are impossible to get hold of.

Fuck you, Apple. Fuck you for getting us all excited and not giving a damn. Fuck you for charging $100 a year for a service Microsoft, Yahoo and Google are all giving away for free, and goddamn you for not getting it even close to right.

Ever since MobileMe was announced, I’ve been evangelising it to everyone. You’ve made me look like a real world-class idiot. I am FUCKING sour. I am TIRED of the jokes. For the first time in my life, I’m embarassed to be associated with you.

I’m moving back to Google Apps, and we’ll never talk about this again.

I know I keep complaining about it, but I really don’t have anywhere else to go.

Really. $100/year doesn’t actually seem to buy any kind of customer support at all.

MobileMe has wiped all my phone’s contact details. All the support agents have gone home (don’t we outside the US pay for support too?), they don’t accept phone or e-mail support anymore, and the discussion boards are offline.

Seriously, who at Apple thinks this is acceptable?

MobileMe has deleted my iPhone’s contact details again.

The support team don’t accept e-mail requests any more, and all the live chat agents are busy.

MOBILEME REALLY FUCKING SUCKS, OKAY?

I signed up for reQall yesterday, and I noticed it has a Jabber interface for adding notes and events and getting reminders, so I set it up.

(Incidentally, the website doesn’t actually mention the reQall Jabber ID, so I wrote to their technical support. They got back really quickly, and it’s “reqall@im.reqall.com”.)

The problem was, reQall didn’t authorise my Jabber subscription. Then I realised, things had been rather quiet on Jabber since I moved to Google Apps. So I did a bit of research, and found this artlcle on enabling users to chat outside the Google Talk network. But since I can’t modify my domains SRV records with 123-Reg, I seem a little stuck.

And so, I’ve gone back to “foxboom@googlemail.com” for Jabber. reQall’s working great, and I’m seeing more people online than I have for ages.

Apple have got a brand new service status blog for MobileMe!

Steve Jobs has asked me to write a posting every other day or so to let everyone know what’s happening with MobileMe, and I’m working directly with the MobileMe group to ensure that we keep you really up to date. [MobileMe Status]

This is seriously the best thing Apple could’ve done to get my confidence back. I said earlier that I didn’t know if any managers at Apple knew or cared about the problems, and this status blog really proves they do. And I’ve been reading snippets and rumours around the web about the MobileMe development and support teams taking the outage personally, and the blog really backs that up.

This is a leap in the right direction, and I’m really grateful that Apple are making it easier for me to be passionate about a product I want to see succeed.

Since last night, MobileMe’s been pretty speedy. Could this be the end of the troubles? Am I terribly naive? When do I get my 30 day free credit?

Also, I’m posting this from the iPhone Wordpress app. This is a neat little interface!

Happy Friday everyone!

Oh, goddamnit.

At the moment, I read Spirit’s calendar through BusySync, and he reads mine through iCal publishing to ical.me.com… and goddamnit again, I just realised he’ll only see my calendar changes if I launch iCal and let it sync.

This is all just one massive problem.

I was hoping to convince Spirit to sign up for MobileMe. With MobileMe being “Exchange for the rest of us”, I’d assumed calendar sharing would be built right in…

It isn’t.

And I’m all like, OMFG, no push calendar subscriptions?

So I just left some more feedback.

On my way home from work this afternoon, I was flicking through my contacts on my iPhone, when I noticed the little push spinner get to work in the title bar, and then…

All my contacts disappeared!

I figured I’d give the MobileMe servers a couple of minutes to sort themselves out. And, well…

…I’ve got names and birthdays, but no phone numbers or addresses.

HOLY FUCKING CRAP APPLE JUST REMOTE WIPED MY ADDRESS BOOK AND THIS IS AN AWESOME USER EXPERIENCE.

Selecting Automatic in Mac OS X allows your computer to immediately sync and update when there are any changes on the MobileMe servers. Those changes can come from your iPhone, iPod touch, the MobileMe website, or another computer. Changes made on your computer will be synced to the MobileMe “cloud” once every 15 minutes (or every hour in Mac OS X 10.4.11). [Apple KB article TS1155]

So yeah, don’t go editing any contacts or events right before you shut down your PC, because that change might not get pushed for a maximum of 15 minutes. The best bet seems to be to make changes through the MobileMe web apps or the iPhone.

So I went to the support site to send an e-mail about resizing the mail columns in MobileMe, but this time there was an option to chat with a support agent instead.

So I did.

And man, it was by far the most positive support experience I’ve ever had out of Apple. Sarah might just be an anomoly, but I’m hoping she’s part of a whole new culture. Y’know, one that listens and understands and cares. Good God, please don’t let her be an anomoly.

But yeah, it turns out you can’t resize the columns. But I did get a link to the feedback form to see if I can get it fixed.

Since I’m just about to send my fourth support e-mail to the MobileMe team, I figured I’d keep track of them here.

First, I can’t find the option to use UK date formatting instead of US date formatting. Then I noticed my inbox wasn’t even in date order at all. Then I noticed the message count isn’t right. And just now, I realised the column resize grippers don’t do anything.

This is .Mac sucking cheese all over again.

Just when I thought the 2.0 software upgrade was working without a hitch… my iPhone’s playing The Polyphonic Spree instead of Meatloaf.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again… Apple’s technical support sucks.