UK Mac Wizards

Your network settings have been changed by another application

I have come across a number of clients who get this message if they open Network Preferences:

“Your network settings have been changed by another application”

They click the OK button and it just keeps coming back immediately, effectively locking them out of the preference pane. It has cropped up for a lot of people, as is evidenced by threads like this one: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1715241&tstart=30 and there were a host of workarounds to try when I last tried to fix this issue. However, the most effective solution then was to do an “archive and install” of the whole OS X operating system because you can only play detective so long on someone else’s time and money.

However, when it works, the best solution I have come across is a one-click fix:
Go to the Security preference pane, and check the check-box next to “Require password to unlock each System Preferences pane”. That’s it.

I suspect it stops whatever is taking over using that extra layer of security. Which would be ironic as the consensus seems to be that it is an Apple Security Update that causes the issue.

If this works for you, please let me know!

To sleep or hibernate?

Some evolutionary flaw has made it so that human beings cannot hibernate through winter. This would be a worthy thing for us to learn and for modern science to perfect.

Modern Macs at least have the option. Instead of just sleeping you can set them to hibernate; a sleep state in which the contents of RAM memory are written to the hard disk, to be remembered when the Mac is switched on again, and presenting you with things exactly as they were when you last looked at the screen.

However until I came across SmartSleep I thought I had to decide in advance which sleep state to select for my MacBook Pro. This was somewhat troublesome because normal sleep is fast – as soon as I close the lid. Hibernation takes longer as the 2 GB of memory are written to disk for safe keeping. That takes 40-50 seconds in which time it is best not to move or pick up the Mac. Now with SafeSleep my Mac decides depending on how much battery power it has remaining. If the battery is getting low it elects to hibernate and power off, if there is more it sleeps instantly, and I see the slowly flashing LED to let me know it is sleeping softly. Ahh.

Homescreen buttons on iPhone

I love the way you can add a website bookmark as an icon on the homescreen of the iPhone. It appears as an icon from the website when you chose the option when adding a bookmark in Safari.

So for instance going to the BBC iPlayer site and adding the bookmark from there adds an iPlayer icon to your screen and takes you straight there next time. This makes firing up a favourite website so much more immediate.

Easy back-up

Just a quick blogette to plead with mac users to back-up their stuff. I just came across another iMac with a disk that had suddenly become unuseable. Years of precious photos gone. I tried every disk utility I could find but no joy. If you think backing up is too much like hard work then upgrade to leopard os x 10.5 and with TimeMachine and a USB hard disk it is 2 clicks for hourly back-ups forever

OK, I know, I have more chance of selling a pension scheme.

Twitter

My enforced severance from broadband is now over. During that time one of the things I tried (to give some feeling of being connected with the rest of the world) was Twitter and the Twitter clients for iPhone (lots). Twitter is like broadcasting to the world via SMS.

The best client was Twinkle for its simple interface and geographical awareness. It actually got me communicating with people, which I guess is what it’s about, and I can choose to receive ‘tweets’ from increasing distances from my present location.

I also liked Twittervision, which has an iPhone app as well as an online version which can be seen here. It gives a picture of tweets happening right now, and where in the world they are coming from. You might just find someone talking about something that interests you.

Now that I am online again it remains to be seen whether it can keep my interest. But seeing as I think I have reached more people through it than I have through this blog, quite likely I will.

I will also be intrigued to see whether debates in bites of 140 characters can really change minds. Amazing to see how the Presidential Election is being debated in this medium. As somebody who couldn’t believe it when America re-elected Bush, I will at least be able to ask some real Americans why if they shoot themselves in the foot again this time around.

Some iphone shortcomings

Forced by a broadband fault to max out my iPhone usage… I will be really happy to be corrected about anything in what follows.

Although email is able to receive some attachments it doesn’t seem able to send them.

I can’t resend an email. I had made a typo in the address (not one of my contacts) and it had bounced back so I wanted to send again to the right address. This would have been easy with cut n paste. Instead I had to forward it and I didn’t like the fact that it indicated the forwarding with a blue line in the margin.

I have experimented with Writingpad because it allows me to write a generic email and then pass that to the email app and make modifications before sending. Then I go back to Writingpad to send again making further modifications as necessary. This does work well except it is really impossible to type in a URL because it insists on putting a space after every full point.

When reading PDFs links don’t seem to work. I have a 200 page PDF to go through and I only seem to be able to scroll.

I really miss handwriting recognition. I can write very quickly on my SE p990i and it makes very few mistakes whereas typing on this iPhone is laborious.

No caps lock.

The screen rotation in safari is really good but I need it in email!

Some really basic mobile phone functionality is missing:
MMS – I have to go to O2 in Safari to get the message!
Bluetooth – only good if you want to use a headset, not if you want send anything.
Video – guess there’s an app somewhere that does it, but not ‘out of the box’