Vinko’s Thoughts On…

Many of you know I owned an iPhone (1st generation) since June 2007 and had to unlock and jailbreak it so that I can use it here in Hong Kong.

In the past 12 months I had unlocked/restored my iPhone over 30+ times, and documented much of my experience and findings with fellow readers. Much of these repeated unlocking and restoring was because I was testing various “unauthorized” 3rd party applications (”hacks”) for the iPhone, and some of them were not that stable.

So when Apple released the iPhone firmware 2.0 on July 1, 2008, I was very excited about the functionalities that it will delivers and was eager to find available an unlock & jailbreak method that will allow me to upgrade my iPhone (1st generation) to the new firmware.

The wait was finally over this past Saturday night (July 19 HKT) when the iPhone Dev Team released their “Pwnage Tool 2.0″. Although, I was eager to try it, I did not want to jump too quickly into the process, due to my past experience over the year of the various methods used to unlock/jailbreak the iPhone.

I held myself back for 24 hours to give iPhone web sites: ModMyiFone, Hack the iPhone, MacGeekBlog, etc. time to refine the procedures and all the possible things that may go wrong during the process.

Now I am happy to say that I have now successfully unlocked my iPhone running firmware 2.0. The process went without a hitch.

I did not have to do anything to my already unlocked iPhone running firmware 1.1.4. All I did to prepare myself for the unlocking was the following:

1. Upgrade my iTunes to 7.7
2. Download the firmware 2.0 (5A347), placing this firmware (IPSW file) in ~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates/ folder on your Mac.
3. Ensure there is an empty ~/Library/iTunes/Device Support/ folder on your Mac.

The rest is simple. You can choose one of the well written tutorials from either ModMyiFone or Hack the iPhone

Enjoy and do share you experience with rest of the readers here. Particularly iPhone users from Hong Kong.

After 5 months of testing, back and forth with Mozy support and eventually being assigned a Mozy Macintosh developer to resolve my issues encountered I was finally able to backup my selected files to the Mozy server automatically.

This was all accomplished with version 0.6.2.4 of Mozy Client for Macintosh.

Today Mozy informs me that there is a new version (0.6.4.0 (24503)). Strangely my Mozy client did not know there was a newer version, even though the Mozy Preference “Install updates automatically” was set. I guess and hope this is because Mozy Client for Macintosh is still in Beta. Read the rest of this entry »

After being assigned a specific contact, Ben, from the Mozy Macintosh Support, the responses from Mozy has become much more efficient and specific. I hope this is something that Mozy has recognized and changed for future Mac users.

Anyway, on with my experience on this version of Mozy for Mac (0.6.2.2 (23015)) which Mozy released on August 24, but I was not able to try it out until this morning. Read the rest of this entry »

Today I received a reply from Moyz Support on my last report of problems with their Mozy for Mac version 0.6.2.0 (1.0). This time it only took 3 days for them to reply.

The one thing different about this, is that during the past 3 days, someone from Mozy sent me an email saying that a specific Mozy Macintosh Technical Support representative (Ben) will follow up on my issues. Read the rest of this entry »

As many of your may have heard Apple Inc. released new versions of the iMac line last night (HK time).

It had been an upgrade that was anticipated and over due for the past 12 months. In my opinion, they did not disappoint.

They changed the industrial design of the machine but kept the machines the same thickness as the previous versions. There are 4 standard models to choose from, plus Built-to-order (BTO) versions, where you can choose different internal hard drive capacities and memory combinations; with the 24″ model able to upgrade the default processor also. You can see the chart below and click on it to see an enlarged version.

As I always say, one should always choose a computer based on what they intend (plan) to use the computer for, rather than choosing based on price and MHz. Having said that I will start off by describing three hypothetical users.

A. A first time computer or Macintosh user

This user will use his computer for general Internet surfing, visiting information sites, online banking sites and photo album repositories. They will have a web based email account. He will download photos from his digital camera and manage his collection of audio CDs on his computer.

B. A user who may have used the Macintosh before but definitely a computer

This user has the same requirements as user A, with the following additions. He will upload and share photos on online repositories (ie. Flickr), he will download and edit videos that he had taken with his DV (digital video) camera.

C. A user who had used the Macintosh before

Like user B, will have the same requirements as A and B, with the desire to use the computer as a primary video viewing platform.

Now based on these three hypothetical users I will now recommend the appropriate iMac (August 2007) for each. In all cases, I would suggest a minimum of 2GB of memory. Depending on where you purchase the new iMac, you can probably find cheaper memory upgrade from reseller other than Apple. If you do choose that route, make sure these memory chips (RAM) come from reliable sources and a respectable manufacture. If you have faulty RAMs that’s more problems than you will ever want to deal with.

Let’s jump into the recommendations. For User A I suggest the basic model for him. The reason is because he does not have a great need for video and hence quick redraw of the screen for images. As a result the entry level iMac (August 2007) with 2GB of total memory will be sufficient.

For User B I suggest the minimum the 2nd “standard Apple model” of the iMac (August 2007) (aka. “the 20″ model with the 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor”, since I do not want to emphasis the MHz differences of the models). This is not because of the slightly faster processor, it is mainly due to the much faster (almost twice) video card in this model. Due to this user’s need for editing and processing his home videos on his new Mac, this is the minimum configuration I would recommend.

Finally, for User C I recommend he purchase the 3rd “standard Apple model” of the iMac (August 2007) (aka. “the 24″ model with the 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor”). This is because his need for using the computer as the primary video viewing device. With the 24″ it has the screen pixel resolutions to support full HD (High Definition) video content.

Speaking of HD video content, the new line of iMacs all have video capabilities to playback protected HD video (HDCP).

I am sure your needs and computing requirements will be different than User A, B or C, but I hope you find this useful and if you need, please feel free to contact me with your specific “computing requirements” and I am happy to brainstorm the perfect Mac for you.

iMac (August 2007) hardware specifications

When the set up and scanning of my Mac went some what smoothly I thought Mozy has finally corrected all the problems for this “Alpha class” software for the Mac.

After numerous attempts of the background Mozy application trying to back up my 2.2GB of data to Mozy server. I spent some time looking at the mozy.log (/var/log/) file that Mozy support and pointed me to previously. What I found was very disturbing. I see many many occurance of error:

2007-08-19 05:12:41.651 MozyBackup[7590] (triton) NSCFInputStream error: NSError “POSIX error: Operation timed out” Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=60
2007-08-19 05:12:41.651 MozyBackup[7590] (triton) disconnecting…
2007-08-19 05:12:41.653 MozyBackup[7590] (send) Batch failed: NSError “Error com.berkeleydata.Backup.ErrorDomain -2147483648? Domain=com.berkeleydata.Backup.ErrorDomain Code=-2147483648 UserInfo={
ErrorCodeNameKey = ConnectionError0;
ErrorMessageKey = “Unable to connect to backup servers”;
}

Over the 2 hours that the backup had ran so far, it encountered this error 8 times. The most disturbing part is that after each occurrence the backup would continue from an arbitrary spot.

Although, I have yet to find out from Mozy support what these errors means, but it is not making me feel secure that Mozy is a reliable backup mechanism.

My recommendation is still… DO NOT RELY ON Mozy on the Mac at the current version.

Hopefully more to come after I receive some responds from Mozy support.

Please see my original article “Problem with Mozy” for background.

I finally have time to try Mozy again. So I installed it again, followed the setup and allowed it to run in the background. After Mozy ran for 2.5 hours an error dialog appeared with the following message:

Unable to connect to backup server (ConnectionError0)

The dialog has a hyperlink on the error message, when I clicked on it, it brought me to a web page on Mozy’s site telling me that this is a rare error and that I should send the following information to Mozy (supp...@mozy.com):

1. The operating system you use (i.e. Windows XP)
2. The version of Mozy you are using. (Right click on the orange “M” icon in the bottom right by the clock and click “status.” When that window opens you should see a version like 1.8.2.3)
3. Do you have any firewalls on your computer?
4. Who is your Internet service provider?
5. Do you have any anti-virus or spyware software?
6. Which error code is displayed? (i.e. MozyClientError2, ConnectionError1)

Of course I again reported this to Mozy Technical support (macs...@mozy.com). So now I just have to wait for Mozy to reply.

Please see my original article “Problem with Mozy” for background.