Answers...

to commonly asked questions.

Jun 2013

Ubee router not getting along with Extreme

Scotty—It is critical that I find a voice memo that I recorded on my phone but somehow disappeared.  It was in January 2012.  I tried looking today and got this screen.  I closed the window and then it said there were no memos.
Pasted Graphic
___________

I feel like the only way we may be able to retrieve those prior January voice memos would be to check to see if you have a prior iOS backup from that approximate time.  Those voice memos do not live in the cloud.  They are stored locally on your phone so they would be included in a backup.  I could take a dummy phone, restore from that time period (provided you backed up locally to a computer around that time period) and we may be able to retrieve them.  

If however, you were using iCloud to back up, then those may be gone.  When was the last time you remember seeing that voice memo?  January?

I want to sell my iMac.

Can you have a look at this and let me know if this is advisable. I have been missing some emails recently so thought that this might be a solution. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/business/compare-office-365-kiosk-plans-FX103178917.aspx
___________


So this company would most likely be taking over control of your business email account.  They would be moving it from godaddy (who I think you are with now) over to a Microsoft exchange account.  

I'm not sure that will solve the problem but it's possible.  I would be interested to find out what emails you are missing, look at those to find a commonality then solve the problem within your current godaddy environment.  

I use godaddy IMAP based email myself and rarely have a problem.  If emails are not getting to you, here are a few reasons:

1. sender spelled the email incorrectly.
2. godaddy's filtering method was over zealous and moved it into your spam folder
3.  your email program (Apple's mail program) considered it junk and moved it into the junk folder.

Moving to a new email service provider will only solve the problem if number 2 is the cause.  If 2 is the cause then you should still be able to find the spammed email in your spam folder in your godaddy account.  

Why do hard drives die?

HI there! Hope all is well.
I am trying to get all my pics of my main computer and bring them with me on our vacation so I can do projects on my laptop while we are gone. Can we do a screen share session where you can help me download/transfer what I want?

Or..wait a minute...
I think all my pics are on the old orange external hard drive...Can I just bring that??
___________


The file you would need to deal with is called the "iphoto library".  It holds the entire set of pictures within iPhoto and can be found in your pictures folder.  
It's a little involved but...

Drag that to an external drive.  connect the drive to your laptop while you're away.  Hold down the option key when opening iphoto on your laptop and point iphoto to the external iphoto library sitting on the external drive.  Work from that drive then when you return home, move the iphoto library back to the original pictures folder where you got it from and choose to "replace" because the newer version will now need to overwrite the older out of date version.

Moving contacts to OS X server.

Dear Scotty,
Thanks for all your help over the past few weeks.  Before I click the wrong button, if I want to repopulate my calendar on my desktop (currently empty), do I go to system preferences, go to Mail, Contacts and Calendar, and then merge the mac calendar with the icloud?  thanks,
___________


yes.  system prefs, icloud, check calendars

Pasted Graphic

Restore an iPad

Scotty,

I hope you are well.  Dawn and I have just moved (to a home in the same zip code) and we ran into a problem with our Extreme Network.  This might be a longish e-mail, and I will attach pictures to clarify what's going on.  If the answer is a simple one, hopefully I can fix it, otherwise, we'll have to schedule an appointment ASAP.  Here's what happened, apparently while we were in the process of setting up out airport extreme to the "Ubee" modem from TWC we had an electrical/lightening event at our home, which fried modem and the airport extreme.  We got a new modem from TWC and I bought the new a tower version of the airport extreme, but have been unable to get internet service.  I used my daughter's brand new MacBook Pro with the most updated software (as of yesterday) to try to configure the network. I am able to see the network and get a wifi signal, but there is an exclamation point superimposed on the wifi signal indicator and I can not connect to the internet.  I know the modem has internet connectivity because if I plug the ether-net cable directly into the computer I can get on-line, plus we had to get a micro-cell tower from ATT because of poor phone reception, and that is now working with its ether-net connection going through the new airport tower.

I have attached some pictures to help show what is happening, but as you can see in picture 2 it says the internet is unavailable. I have gone thru the airport network diagnostics program, allowed for modification of the system network configuration, restarted the airport, but it keeps asking to restart any devices, such as a router, which I did, but still no internet connection.  

I was hoping this was going to be easy, especially since I was using the new MacBook to interface with the airport extreme, but no luck.  Is there a simple solution that will get me out of the dog house and allow us to access the internet and re-join modern society?

Thanks for any advise.


___________

There are a few things to consider here. 1: the Ubee router is handling DHCP (or the passing out of sub network IP addresses). That should really be the airport extreme router’s job. Two routers should not handle DHCP. That is the job for only one router.

2. The ubee router is not giving it’s IP address to the apple router because it’s already assigned it to another device. You may try reseting the ubee router by unplugging it and pulling the battery out for a few seconds if it has one.

I would be happy to assist in person if you need. You can schedule online when you are ready.

What should I buy?

Im trying to sell my computer its an i mac n i don't know how much i should sell it for its in great shape i never used it, i don't know much about computers heres the info on it Hardware Overview:
I purchased this in Nov,2012 - I only used it for pictures.
Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac8,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 2 GB
___________


I suggest checking ebay for comparable models like the one listed here:
iMac 24" A1225 MA878LL A Mid '07 Intel C2D 2 4GHz 3GB 256MB 320GB 45DAYS WARNTY | eBay

Take a few days to monitor sales on several then average the price together.  I suspect it will be around 500-600$ for that model.

10.8 killed all my old applications

Scotty,

Why do hard drives die? What causes this to happen?
___________

Every hard drive dies.  They are spinning plates that are read with a small magnetic needle.  All moving parts have a 100% failure rate eventually.  Just like humans. So go get a backup, check the spare tire in your car, and be sure you’ve made out a will. Nothing lasts forever.

wrong outgoing email address outgoing

Scotty,

I need to know about setting up the OS X Server. What I would like to have is a unified Contact database, so that all of the contact info for the entire church is the same on all of the devices that the employees, and pastors have access to.

An issue has arisen where one individuals contacts are different from another's, and now I'm tasked with cleaning it up. I do not want to change them both to be identical, but I do want them to be accurate.

An example of what I'm talking about is that I prefer my Last names first, then the First name following. I put notes in my contacts, to help me remember certain things. I do not want to lose this info, but I want all of the other info correct. 

Let me know my options please. And I do know that this is going to e a lot of fun.
___________


First, if you haven’t already, you’ll need to purchase the server package from the app store. Available here. The next thing I might suggest is going to each individual’s computer or iCloud account and exporting a card containing all of their contacts. Don’t choose archive. This would overwrite the data of the previous contacts when trying to import. After you have a vcard for each employee’s contact. Now import all of those into one address book on the server. You may want to create sub groups for each employee. While the entire database will contain everyone, each subgroup would only have the contacts that particular person had in their own address book. They will loose their own subgroups in this process.

After you’ve done all that you will next want to make a backup of that state. Now choose “archive” from the export menu. You now have a copy of the total number of contacts before you merge and possibly damage them. Next, choose merge under card in the menu bar. You should see the number of contacts go down. In this process, no data “should” be lost as the process takes two contacts who have different data but the same name and puts it into one card. If they had 2 different addresses, now they have one card with 2 addresses. etc…

The notes (if they were in the notes field) will all merge into the notes field of the new card however it is important to remember: These notes are visible to all contact subscribers from the server. So if you put a personal note about your boss in your contacts notes field, they are going to see it.

The first name, last name concern you mentioned is controlled locally with each person’s preference. This is called sort order and can be found in the iOS settings or the Mac’s contact preferences. The server does not control display order.

The big thing to consider here is this. Some people don’t pay attention when they enter a contact so they will often type the entire name in the “first name” field and leave the last name field blank. Or they will type the last name in the first name field and vise versa. If you have anyone that has done this, it will make your job extremely more difficult to weed out and correct the contacts.

After you have accomplished all that, it’s now time to set up your server and start sharing contacts. By the way, nothing is preventing each employee from keeping their own contacts as well as subscribing to the server list. They will have many duplicates but that may solve your personal notes issue. But it would be confusing.

Remember, backup after each step so if you go down the road road you have an exit strategy. May the force be with you.
This image is a theme.plist hack