apple

Shooting myself in the foot

I am incredibly thankful that 1Password family accounts can be recovered. I am equally thankful that I had configure my wife’s account correctly so that it could be used to recover my account.

This all started last week, when I changed my 1Password.com password, mistakenly thinking that it was separate from my 1Password master password. I didn’t think too much about it, because I still had access to 1Password on my laptop (unlocking with Apple Watch and TouchID). I noticed that my phone and iPad weren’t syncing, but I chalked that up to the 1Password.com password change.

Earlier today, I tried to update the password on my iPhone, but I was unable to unlock 1Password on my laptop. My master password wouldn’t work. What had happened quickly dawned on me. Of course I had my new Emergency Recovery Kit, but I had not written down my new password (which was a random string, generated by 1Password – ugh). I started to panic, especially when I looked at my wife’s laptop, and found that she was logged into my 1Password account.

After about ten minutes of pure panic, I was able to login to 1Password.com with her account, and I was able to initiate the recovery process for my account.

I’m probably the only person dumb enough to make this mistake, but just in case – here’s a word of caution – Remember that your 1Password.com and 1Password master password are one and the same. Don’t use 1Password to generate a random password for your 1password.com account, as this will eventually lock you out of 1password completely.

 Watch hindsight!

Boy was my crazy prediction wrong! I thought that the prices would be:

  •  Watch – $349 / $369-$399
  •  Watch Sport – $349 / $369-$399
  •  Watch Edition – $3,000 – $10,000 or more

What they really are:

  •  Watch – $549 – $1099
  •  Watch Sport – $349 – $399
  •  Watch Edition -$10,000 – $15,000

First off, I have to admit that I just don’t get the pricing. In regards to the  Watch, unless the sapphire crystal is a $200 part, it’s hard to justify the price difference. I ‘m mostly disappointed in the price of the link bracelet. I had missed the fact that these bracelets took more than 9 hours to manufacture. A large part of the disappointment is based on the fact this is the band that I most wanted.
The  Watch Edition is the most confusing to me. Unless I’m missing something, you could buy the “low” end version for $10,000 and the classic buckle for $149, as opposed to the version which includes the classic buckle brand for $15,000. Could there really be $4,851 worth of gold in the parts of the band that connect to the watch? I know that’s not the point, but it’s hard for me to fathom not having to care about that much money.
For me, the final question is which version is right for me. The version that I want (42mm Space Black Case with Space Black Stainless Steel Link Bracelet) is way out of my budget. One model that could fit into my budget is the 42mm Space Gray Aluminum Case with Black Sport Band. However, the bands that ship in the box aren’t big enough for my wrist. My wrist is at least 215mm.
I will more than likely stop into a retail store once they’re available to try on, and see if I’m wrong. Assuming that I’m not, and it doesn’t fit, I will be waiting until Apple or (more likely) a third party produce a band large enough for me to wear comfortably. I’ve been down the road before. The band that shipped with the Fossil Abacus was almost big enough for my wrist, but was too tight to wear comfortably. My all-time favorite watch is a Fossil that I purchased almost 20 years ago, and I still remember needing to have 2 – 3 links added to the band so that it would fit correctly.
For the time being, I’ll wait in the wings and see how this all shakes out.

Comparing Newton MPs and iPads

I’ve been checking out ebay auctions for Newton MessagePads, and I started thinking about the differences between the Newton and iPad from a system perspective. As a long time Newton user (I started with a MP120 and graduated to a MP2000,) the thing that was missing on the Newton was RAM. Newton users who had the pleasure of using a MP2100 will tell you that the extra heap that was present in the MP2100 made it more useable. Users of the MP130 would probably say the same in comparison to the MP120. From my perspective, if the heap (system RAM) had been doubled on just about every version of the Newton, it would have fixed most if not all of the problems that users had with it. I for one loved the MP2000’s handwriting recognition. In fact, I didn’t have much of an issue, even on the MP120.
This is where the iPad gets it right. Sure, it doesn’t have 16GB of system RAM, but it has more than enough RAM for what it does (for the record, the original iPad had 256MB of RAM, the iPad2 had 512MB of RAM and the iPad 3rd generation has 1GB of RAM.)

MobileMe iDisk vs. Dropbox

Over the course of the last month, I started moving some of my data into the cloud. I chose to move my some of my personal data to my iDisk, and some of my work data to Dropbox. While both of these services work, there are some differences.
First off, let me say that I configured iDisk so that a local copy is kept on my MacBook. You don’t have to configure iDisk this way, but it seems like the most convenient option to me. This allows you to have access to our iDisk when you are not online, and then sync changes the next time you have a connection.
This decision was at least partly influenced by my desire to use my iPad as my main portable computer. That being the case, keep in mind that if you make this move with the intention to use / share documents via iWork, then you are stuck using idiskas the iPad iWork apps don’t (yet?) support Dropbox natively.
The hardest part of this process was the first upload to the iDisk. I took the time to organize some of my folders during the move. Some of these changes caused the iDisk sync to fails, and I spent a bit of time double checking and removing duplicates. In my opinion the problem was that I was moving thousands of files, but this should not have been an issue. I may go back and see if this would have been less of an issue with the local copy turned off.
Dropbox on the other hand, just worked. My only annoyance is that the Dropbox space is segregated to its own folder. Other than that, no complaints. If you need or want to use Dropbox to store iWork documents, you are not completely out of luck. You will have to use the Dropbox app to open the documents., and then you can use send to dropbox to save your files from iWork via email. UPDATE: I’ve just found dropdav which allows you to connect to Dropbox via WebDav which is a lot easier in my opinion. Using dropdav you can copy files to and from the iPad.
To be honest, as much as I want to like iDisk, I could not help but to think that the only thing that could make iDisk better is if it worked just like Dropbox.

How To: Updating a non-active iPhone

Let’s say you have a 1st Gen / 2.5G (aka EDGE) iPhone, and you’ve upgraded to an iPhone 3G or iPhone 3G S, and you want to update your old (1st Gen) iPhone to iPhone OS 3.0. If you do, you’re old iPhone will need to be activated. It might not be obvious, but all you need to do is

  1. pop the SIM out of your activated iPhone 3G (S) and pop it into the old iPhone.
  2. Connect the old iPhone to a machine with iTunes, and it will activate.
  3. After that, you can take the SIM out of the old iPhone, and put it back into your current iPhone, and will is well. At least until the next iPhone OS update.

WWDC Predictions

Sadly, I won’t be at WWDC this year. I thought I had all much ducks in a row, but it looks like it was not meant to be. Here’s my take on what will be announced:

  • iPhone OS 3.0 will be announced, and available on Monday. This is based on the fact that iTunes 8.2 was released last week, with support for iPhone OS 3.0. Hopefully this will avoid the server overload that Apple experienced during the iPhone 2.0 upgrade last summer.
  • No new iPhone hardware. The time that is spent on the iPhone during the keynote will be related to the OS, not new hardware. If we see new hardware, we’ll see that at a special event later in the month.
  • Snow Leopard Release Candidate or Golden Master. At this point, Snow Leopard should be ready to go. If there are any last minute API changes we might see a release date later in the summer, just so that devs can get their apps ready for the release.

I don’t think we will see any new hardware at WWDC. WWDC is usually about software, and not hardware. I know they introduced the iPhone 3G last year, but I think that’s the exception, not the rule. Only time will tell.
UPDATE
Well, I was mostly wrong. We get iPhone 3.0 SW on June 17th, new iPhone 3GS (and I’m just outside of the 30 day return window,) and Snow Leopard won’t be out until the fall.