tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-212873362012-01-24T00:37:18.697+11:00Thoughts from tonza... what else would a blog site from me be?tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.comBlogger381100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-29617980878260847812011-12-05T23:45:00.001+11:002011-12-07T23:38:51.526+11:00

I wrote the following to Apple's MobileMe Feedback page in response to the recent decision to close down MobileMe on 30 June, 2012: This is my general comments to the MobileMe team and, particularly, to senior management at Apple, regarding the planned decommissioning of MobileMe services. The following prose describes my disappointment and concern over Apple's recent policies and attitudes

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-60307399450130997822011-09-04T01:21:00.001+10:002011-09-04T01:21:29.350+10:00

Or rather, with iWork.com. Noticed that iWork.com is still going to operate after MobileMe goes down—since iCloud is not going to provide a way to publish data to other iCloud accounts, iWork.com may be the only Apple service available to distribute media to others that you nominate. Most likely, those photos (and maybe movies) that you send to friends and family may end up as Keynote files

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-82610037634554654342011-09-04T01:15:00.001+10:002011-09-05T19:49:00.198+10:00

When HTML was devised back in 1993, and evangelised heavily in 1997, the idea was that user agents (Web browsers) should be able to pick and choose the data they could render or present, and ignore the data they couldn't use. But in recent years in the new century, as developers tie in forgiving HTML and CSS with unforgiving JavaScript (a language with strict object binding rules) and

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-39716789056408319882011-09-04T01:00:00.001+10:002011-09-04T01:02:44.849+10:00

More and more Web sites are pretending to be mobile Web apps when they are not. Worse, these so-called "mobile" sites often provide limited functionality compared to what would otherwise be delivered for PCs (and Macs). Meanwhile, mobile Web browsers, such as MobileSafari for iOS, or Chrome for Android, are capable of fully supporting and easily interacting with those Web sites that appear on

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-28559169772412463792011-09-04T00:31:00.001+10:002011-09-04T00:46:34.979+10:00

Have you ever tried running applications on your computer with the network disconnected? Applications on the Mac are starting to malfunction (hang) when a network connection to the outside world cannot be established, particularly: PCalc 3, by James Thomson. (Sorry to pick on you, James! But to be fair, your excellent DragThing 5 doesn't have the same problem as PCalc does.) Applications

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-41453167883129755242011-09-04T00:06:00.001+10:002011-09-04T00:08:43.600+10:00

Now before I start, I know that I could look for alternatives to iCloud , but I won't do this here. The aim is to compare how iCloud uses a Mac's local storage with how MobileMe services uses iDisk. With iDisk leaving the cloud next year, what would iCloud offer that is synonymous with what iDisk used to offer? Taking a look at some of the lightweight MobileMe services—BCC syncing, Find My

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-57195507265677527972011-09-03T23:58:00.001+10:002011-09-04T00:08:17.657+10:00

In Daring Fireball's article about iMessage, John Gruber says: "It also means iPhone users with iPhone-using friends and family no longer need SMS. I’ll cancel my SMS plan as soon as this ships." More like it means that iPad users, for the first time, can actually send other iOS users text messages! (As MacRumors suggests.) Question is, are Mac users includable in their conversations, or will

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-6545771420563764292011-09-03T23:53:00.001+10:002011-09-03T23:53:40.171+10:00

One of these days I should make a bug report to Apple about how Mac OS X asks for administrator passwords... I have come up with this idea before, but I don't think I have made a bug report of it before. The problem is that the Mac tells what process wants the password, but there is never a reason presented for why it wants it. I think developers need to provide the operating system with a

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-7689831409000036532011-09-03T22:58:00.001+10:002011-09-03T23:28:30.621+10:00

This story is rather old, but still well worth telling. It was originally written on the 2nd of May, 2011. In yesterday's debugging of iTunes authorisation difficulties, I almost missed the following rather hillarious console log: 30/04/11 8:51:19 PM usbmuxd[4234] _MobileDeviceConnect_locked (thread 0xb0081000): This is not the droid you're looking for (is actually

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-57674974245840455752011-09-03T18:05:00.001+10:002011-09-03T22:45:25.614+10:00

This story is rather old, but still well worth telling. It was originally written on the 1st of May, 2011. Well, I actually have two white iPhones; a new iPhone 4, and my predecessor, an iPhone 3G. When I actually got the new toy to replace the old one, I was rudely encumbered when I tried to erase and reinstate the iPhone 3G, which failed because it would not be re-authorised by the iTunes

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-43836991597753714452011-07-11T09:37:00.005+10:002011-08-07T00:05:42.602+10:00

This is an attempt to write just plain text into a blog to see how it appears. The problem is multiple paragraphs... can blogs appear as intended without using HTML tags? This very blog entry demonstrates the problem. It is difficult to write blogs when over 35% of your typing incorporates HTML tags! While the use of Style Sheets may simplify the blog entry process to some degree, it's still

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-46818518615842695682011-07-11T00:50:00.000+10:002011-07-11T00:50:02.249+10:00

I think I can, I think I can... ... but it's really difficult using iOS' software keyboard! I made this blog entry using an iPhone and Blogger's editor, and it is a bit of a slog getting HTML entered into the page. You definitely want to keep your blogs short and simple this way! —tonza

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-43521809276350764222011-07-03T20:35:00.001+10:002011-07-03T21:30:09.519+10:00

I once said about the venerable optical disc drive: ... once a main source of getting large masses of data into and out of your computer, or the only way to rip and burn music and your home movies onto CDs and DVDs, these optical drives are fast becoming superseded by the ever-more-imperative and ever-so-heavily used network interface. With the impending closure of MobileMe, I am now about to

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-37122600417958543502011-05-25T21:47:00.001+10:002011-05-25T21:47:46.357+10:00

This is outrageous. Not that I am denying that holocausts ever exist, or global warming is a fallacy, but I expect that a computer manufacturer should not be nannying for its customers whenever some imbecile wants to play a practical joke on people and get their computers to own up to hoax viruses and infections! Because this sort of action would be teaching people nothing about responsibility

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-2623743061269575102011-05-11T01:47:00.001+10:002011-05-11T02:01:15.356+10:00

I have seen products taken over by marge companies, only to see them die a slow and painful death due to lost direction, bad leadership and sheer greed. First, you have Karelia Software's Watson (completely devoured by Sun Microsystems and outright plagiarised by Apple Computer as an inferior product) and then Konfabulator (left to languish by Yahoo!). Both products lost any opportunities to

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-91860642420370808242011-03-16T06:51:00.001+11:002011-03-17T02:42:20.530+11:00

It took a while, but I have finally made my first Mac App Store purchase! All I can say is, Apple are getting rather "crafty" with their developer tool offerings, since this is the first time in 10 years that Apple have charged non-subscribing developers for their tools! And... Apple are no longer giving non-subscribers the entire developer tool suite—all you get is the Xcode application, and

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-86429763649854962582011-02-28T00:19:00.001+11:002011-07-03T20:36:41.330+10:00

I have two laptops that both have a piece of equipment which I hardly ever use in either of them... it measures approximately 12.5 cm by 14 cm by 1 cm, are both mounted internally, and both never see more than 3 hours of use a month, but are always powered up for use whenever the system is alive—it is the once-dependable optical disc drive. Once a main source of getting large masses of data into

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-51722783640081266342011-02-12T13:02:00.001+11:002011-02-12T15:42:27.507+11:00

I have stumbled on this article at Chitika Insights, a mobile ad data analytics firm, where the article exposes some really interesting, but not surprising, research data about iPhone users who are also Mac users. And I think I can speculate as to why there is a huge proportion of iPhone users that are also Mac users. It's the simple fact that, if one was to go out and buy a competing mobile

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-13255510814407906692011-02-07T00:41:00.001+11:002011-02-20T14:11:29.512+11:00

I wrote about some drawbacks of the Mac App Store a while ago... when it comes to quality software titles for the Mac, I have to admit it's not all bad. There are some familiar examples of Macintosh applications on the Mac App Store, mostly from seasoned Macintosh developers, including Apple themselves. But I have noticed a trend amongst such knowledgable developers that may deter or fool

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-70482509143065513852011-02-02T10:55:00.001+11:002011-02-02T15:27:20.781+11:00

This Australian Broadcasting Commission web page shows the path of Cyclone Yasi crossing over the shoreline of Queensland, Australia, into Cairns, Innisfail and surrounding towns. This is seriously scary. I'd classify this information as public-critical-to-know—that is, it's potentially life-saving on a massive scale (> 10,000 people). But what's glaring to me is that the ABC has chosen to

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-87458638532137274372011-01-29T21:34:00.001+11:002011-02-07T00:46:31.745+11:00

I have recently spent time looking at the Mac App Store and, well, I really love the concept (see my article "Things I'd Like To See in Mac OS XI 11.0") and it appears just as I've imagined. It even figures out what apps I have installed on my Mac despite the fact that I haven't actually bought any Mac applications from the Store yet, and marks them as "Installed"! Nice! However, one thing I

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-71685680746067224772010-11-18T22:59:00.001+11:002010-11-18T23:15:03.230+11:00

iTunes 10 changed the way users were presented with a way to hide or show categories in the iTunes sidebar. Instead of using a standard Macintosh disclosure triangle—a user interface control that can be used to hide or reveal content in a document window—to hide and show your list of devices, playlists and so forth, Apple thought that a normally hidden, mouse-over-sensitive word be used instead

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-21267079936005813372010-11-11T17:31:00.001+11:002010-11-11T23:32:55.505+11:00

iOS 4 introduced a concept whereby, on the Home screen (called SpringBoard), you can group icons together and give the collection of icons a name, thereby saving valuable real estate on the iPhone or iPod touch display. This feature on iOS 4 is called "folders". But shortly after Apple introduced Mac OS X 10.7 Lion as a sneak preview, I wondered about the usual attention to detail that they give

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-62860052256582529902010-09-05T03:02:00.001+10:002010-10-29T21:29:38.593+11:00

A while ago, I wrote about my positive impressions of the Apple TV after I recently acquired one and discovered feature after useful feature. In particular, I wrote how surprised I was that it suited my desire for a music and video jukebox that could play content on its own accord. Not that I emphasised it at the time, I was rather pleased to know that the Apple TV was capable enough to free my

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-42617658921139247962010-07-29T01:56:00.001+10:002010-11-11T22:34:26.294+11:00

With the introduction of MobileMe Calendar, those of you who are still using Mac OS X 10.4.11 Tiger are going to be in for a disappointment when the .Mac System Preferences will no longer function properly, with inexplicable hangs in both the "Sync" and "Advanced" panes. The loss of system functionality is not significant to MobileMe users, since syncing calendars with iCal in Mac OS X Panther

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-19642888435320965852010-03-22T03:23:00.001+11:002010-10-29T21:25:35.402+11:00

In a recent TUAW blog, I stumbled on the opportunity to tell them (and hopefully the world) on what I'd like to see in Mac OS X 10.7. So I upped the anté... instead, I thought I'd tell the world what I'd like to see in Mac OS XI 11.0 (that's Mac OS Eleven to those who keep pronouncing the "X" as Ex rather than Ten!). Just in case it never made it to TUAW, I thought I'd reproduce it (with slight

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-26991077816480731782010-03-14T23:34:00.001+11:002010-03-14T23:53:06.059+11:00

I glanced upon this AppleInsider article which quickly touched on the fact that Apple TV has taken back seat to the array of iPod devices that are a part of Apple's iTunes ecosystem. That made my enthusiasm for the device sink slightly, just because it was reported that Apple's attitude to the product is "it's only a hobby, for now." I have tried quickly to find an Australian movie rental outlet

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-49692821025819629912010-03-09T02:27:00.001+11:002010-03-14T23:55:25.482+11:00

When are computer software developers, whether open-source or commercial, and/or user interface designers, going to stop ripping off from existing designs and come up with their own insanely great alternatives that are not a derivative of Microsoft Windows or Macintosh? Well, OK, IT history is full of repeat presentations of the same concepts and designs in computer-user interfaces: Windows 2.x

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-49951409749104475702010-02-09T01:29:00.001+11:002010-02-09T01:29:31.161+11:00

One of my favourite bloggers, Daring Fireball showed me this take on global warming... In response to this, I would like to ask a counter-question: if global warming is not happening on this 3rd planet of Sol, then how come it's so damn hot where I live?! Tasmania and Victoria broke records last year. And this summer in south east Australia saw the highest averages for summer in the last 4

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-82614499105501800032010-02-04T01:05:00.001+11:002010-11-11T22:42:20.119+11:00

Newton MessagePads running Newton OS may be showing signs of old age, as of last month. Today, my MessagePad's battery got flat accidentally to the point where it lost its clock settings, and as I tried to set the clock back to today's date, Newton OS failed to set the clock correctly. Attempting to set the clock beyond 4th January, 2010, 2:00 AM causes the Newton OS to either set a date back

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-5768665779756706092010-01-01T14:21:00.001+11:002010-10-29T21:00:38.123+11:00

I have just finished some unsolicited, painstaking work in recovering from one of the weirdest computing accidents I have ever had in my entire computing life on the Macintosh, where I unexpectedly happened to trash two of my most important hard disks on my otherwise trustworthy computer system! Boot Camp for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard allows you to mount HFS Extended volumes as read-only

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-18954921734910192072009-11-24T02:01:00.001+11:002009-11-24T02:01:30.385+11:00

I don't know if anyone has noticed this, because it's not something that has been advertised on the 'net. But I have more than noticed something rather shocking about my iPhone 3G (it's the 16 GB model of last year.) Yes, my iPhone has given my hand a mild electric shock! Serious! I was surfing the 'net over 3G whilst riding home on the bus this afternoon. My bus ride takes me through

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-39783286530731031152009-08-10T22:27:00.007+10:002011-01-30T16:01:07.122+11:00

I have waited a while to allow people other than those I know to comment on this blog because of the simple fact that I don't blog much... until I realised that, well, this thought-dumping thing is in a one-way street. Until now. I have decided to relax the restrictions a bit to allow OpenID registered users to post comments on tonzaThought. Now you can vent your spleen all you like... at me (

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-43314418395545762662009-08-09T19:59:00.003+10:002011-01-30T16:00:53.858+11:00

You'd think a hard drive with S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) would be able to reliably tell you whether it is about to die or not. Well, for a Hitachi IC25N040ATMR04-0 40 GB hard drive in a PowerBook G4, this is not the case. Disk Utility (a tool for managing hard disks in Mac OS X) produces a S.M.A.R.T. Status for this drive as "verified", but the hard disk

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-47859583039163473882009-08-09T11:41:00.008+10:002011-01-30T16:00:37.958+11:00

I've been looking long and hard on an issue which was causing me some grief in relation to backing up my computer system using Time Machine on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, and I think I have nailed it! Stating the specifics of my predicament, I am not using Time Capsule to back up to... rather, I am using locally attached external hard drives. Also, I am backing up an external hard drive onto one of

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-65253488911880385822009-06-28T13:56:00.004+10:002009-06-29T00:33:41.921+10:00

I have lots of blank media. CDs, ZIP disks, floppies... they are now hardly ever used to store the masses of data I have on my sizable home network. But let's fact it... using CDs and DVDs, ZIP disks and floppies to back up data is just painfully slow and involves me sitting in front of the computers just swapping media around periodically, and that straps me to my desk more often than I would

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-20203443963789937732008-07-26T21:17:00.009+10:002008-07-26T23:41:39.056+10:00

... that: "We'll see how this [blog] goes. If it works, great! If not, well, I lost next to nothing." about me dumping my thoughts onto this blog. Well, it wasn't happening for over 2 years! Time to change that! All too often, I get some ideas, peeves, suggestions and other stray thoughts which ought to be jotted down, just in case anyone out there does a Google search and has a tendency to

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21287336.post-1137825894079033112006-01-21T17:38:00.000+11:002006-03-11T23:11:17.500+11:00

Welcome to tonzaThought ... ... just some place where I can ramble about things I like, don't like, care or don't care about... mostly! We'll see how this goes. If it works, great! If not, well, I lost next to nothing. —tonza

tonzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05891328245494826708noreply@blogger.com