Caught a GMail for my domain 502 server error for the first time today.
We’re sorry, but your Gmail account is currently experiencing errors. You won’t be able to use your account while these errors last, but don’t worry, your account data and messages are safe. Our engineers are working to resolve this issue.
Please try accessing your account again in a few minutes.
A post by BigBoss detailing steps for a successful 2.0 to 1.1.4 downgrade for “those of you that updated to 2.0 and realized what a mistake it was.”
As much as I enjoy the iPhone 2.0 software, I’ve been shocked at how often it crashes, freezes and hangs. This simply wasn’t the case with 1.0.
When I first updated my original iPhone to 2.0, I chalked these problems up to the fact that I’d tweaked that iPhone in innumerable ways and probably needed to wipe it clean and start fresh.
But, having just started using a fresh out of the box 3G model, I’m seeing the same thing. Here’s the four crashes, freezes and hangs that I’ve seen most often and how I’m dealing with each-
Application crashes-
Many times an application will just bomb out and drop you to the home screen. This is likely due to bugs in the application. Most of the time the application can just be restarted and you can go about your business (or gaming).
Application fails to launch-
This one is a bit more frustrating and seems to be triggered more often with larger or more complex applications.
I had to smile when I bought a the $10 de Blob application and it wouldn’t start. When this happened a second time after I’d just finished installing Pinball RC, I though to myself: “What are less technically minded people doing? Throwing their iPhones out the window?”
The not-so-obvious solution is to reboot the phone. To reboot, hold down the Power button until the “slide to power off” option appears. If that doesn’t work, continue to hold the Power button with the Home button and it will trigger a forced reboot.
Phone OS crash and reboot-
This one is really fun and I trigger it at least twice a day when I launch Twinkle (my favorite Twitter client). Yes, you heard that right- tap and app icon and the whole iPhone OS crashes and reboots. Usually, the reboot clears up the trouble except for when this turns into the…
Apple logo and spinning wheel of death loop-
This misfortune has struck me twice so far. The first time, I had to restore the iPhone in iTunes to fix it (essentially reloading the OS). The second time, I was able to power off the phone and plug it into iTunes. Instead of the full restore, a backup began and soon I could hear the “bing” of the mail coming into the phone. I let the backup complete and the phone worked normally.
2.1 can’t come soon enough, but in the meantime Apple isn’t fooling anyone with the unobtrusive crash to the homescreen with no alert message.
Apple has posted the iPhone Enterprise Support Page. Included is the 58-page iPhone and iPod touch Enterprise Deployment Guide. Something tells me this is going to get a lot of traffic.
So what about this “Huge, Crazy, Ridiculous OS X Security Hole” that has been making the rounds on the news sites?
Well, it’s very simple. There is no security whatsoever in place to prevent AppleScript messages between users on a local machine. This means that any user can tell an app running as root to do something malicious. And, according to Charles Srstka, author of the popular Pacifist program, this security hole was reported as early as 2004! Wow.
Rixstep has an excellent writeup on the issue entitled “Huge, Crazy, Ridiculous OS X Security Hole.” It’s a must-read for anyone interested in the issue.
update: Rixtep’s followup article has even more gory details.
One of the numerous Mac OS X 10.5.3 changes is the addition “Back to My Mac” diagnostic messages in the .Mac preference pane. The indicator is visual with green, yellow, or red status lights. Seems useful, but it would be nice to see more technical information presented (even if it was logged in the console).
Awesome tutorial on getting Firefly Media Server working on the 1.1.4 iPhone by Rupert Gee.
The problem boiled down to the fact that it was built pre-“mobile” user and a simple configuration line needs to be updated. I’ve got fresh music streaming for the weekend now directly off my iPhone.
Something about the latest build of Last.FM is causing trouble in my iTunes-land. I’m getting a lot of spinning beach balls. I wrote this quick applescript to “Quit iTunes Gracefully” and avoid having to force quit the application and potentially corrupt the iTunes Library file.
tell application “iTunes”
with timeout of 10000 seconds
quit
end timeout
end tell
Download Quit iTunes Gracefully
MacOSX Leopard tags files downloaded from the web with a special metadata bit. This bit is later referenced to warn about running downloaded apps and scripts. Even archived files maintain this tag through the compression/decompress process.
I needed to update the firmware on my Canon PowerShot SD1000 camera and couldn’t get the camera to recognize the file. Turns out the com.apple.quarantine xattribute was set. To fix:
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine *.FIR
xattr does not have a man entry. Use:
xattr -h
I found most of my information on this helpful post.
How to fix Word 2008 crash on quit. (Office 2008 Mac)
1. Delete or move ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Normal
2. Delete or move ~/Library/Application Support/User Templates/Normal.dotm
3. Delete or move ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Word Settings (10) (Or the whole folder)
