Having just purchased an Apple MacBook Pro, one of the initial things I wanted to do was install Parallels so that I can run Windows on top of the MacBook Pro.  Given that the laptop is to replace one of my Windows XP machines, it seemed like running Parallels Transporter would be a great thing to do.  Copy the Windows XP system over to the MacBook Pro, make sure it was all happy... and then consign the old system to the recycling process.

However, it didn't work out that great so far.  Everything seemed to work out at first.  I installed the Parallels Transporter Agent on the XP system.  I installed (after purchasing) Parallels on my MacBook Pro.  Then came problem #1 - Transporter on the Mac couldn't find the Transporter Agent running on the network, so the XP PC wasn't listed in the choice of systems I had to choose from.  I tried providing the IP address of the XP system and that still had no luck.  Thankfully, I'm a network geek with plenty of different kinds of cables around, so I simply put a crossover cable between the two of them, manually configured their IP addresses and... ta da... Transporter could see the Transporter Agent!  All looked good.

The migration began but then when the blue progress bar had moved maybe 1/4 of the way across the screen, it stopped suddenly with this error:

During disk(s) migrating an error has occurred.

Nice!  Wonderfully descriptive!  I retried with the same effect.  I then set to work on the XP system... I did "Disk Cleanup", then I defragged... then I defragged again.  Still the same problem. Judging by this thread on the Parallels forums, it seems like it might be some issue with a single file somewhere on the disk.  Now, the curious thing is that when I do the Disk Defrag, it tells me that a file was unable to be defragmented, but doesn't say what the file is!  The box where this is to be indicated is empty!  So perhaps this is the issue... or perhaps not.

Anyone out there have a similar problem with Parallels Transporter?  If so, did you ever get it to work?  (And what did you do?) Thanks!

Tags: apple, macbookpro, parallels, parallelstransporter

Nike's latest venture with Apple, the Nike+iPod product, seems to be taking off as runners seize on the opportunity to gather data about their run and display it on their iPod. But as reported in the Register, some university researchers found that the information transmitted from your speakers could be easily picked up by nearby receivers. Now, granted, you need to be within 60-feet or so and have a receiver... and you have to be able to link a unique identifier with a person (which can be done by visual observation), but it does raise some interesting issues around tracking. Also measurement... imagine if you had one of these devices located near a popular running path... you could use it to track every Nike+iPod user that ran by. Do that over time and you could have a pretty good measurement of when certain people are at that point in their run each day.

Note the interesting implication for stalkers... if you know that id "A1 23 44 9F" equates to a certain person, and you find that he/she runs past a certain point every day at a specific time, you can develop a profile which can let you know when to attack. Scary stuff. More details, a FAQ and a technical report can be found at the university website.

Tags: apple, ipod, nike, nike+ipod, privacy, security

This morning as I was packing up in the hotel getting read to drive south to Vermont, I did a quick check in iTunes "Recently Added" to be sure I had copied all new files to my iPod. Then in doing some final websurfing I wound up going to the page for one of the podcasts I listen to and there I suddenly saw that there were two new episodes that I didn't have in iTunes. I checked Juice, where I subscribe to most of my podcasts, and it wasn't there. So I looked in iTunes "Podcasts" page, and sure enough, it was there along with a couple of other podcasts - and iTunes had stopped updating the podcast!

It's been a while since I had used iTunes as a podcatcher, so I had forgotten this particular element of iTunes. If you don't play a podcast episode after some period of time - as denoted by the "Played" count within iTunes - then iTunes will very helpfully stop updating the podcast, assuming, I guess, that you might want to conserve disk space.

NOTE TO APPLE - don't take away my control like this!

In my particular case, I manually update my iPod from the laptop, largely because I connect it to a couple of different computers and so I don't do any automatic syncing. The net of this, though, is that my "Played" count is never copied back from my iPod to iTunes. So it has no idea how many times I have played anything. However, even when I was auto-syncing, there were times when I might go several weeks without listening to a certain podcast, queueing up the episodes for some long trip. iTunes should at least provide the ability to disable this timeout on updating... if it's in the menu system, I certainly can't find it.

The net of it is that I deleted the subscription in iTunes and added the subscription to Juice, which is a FAR better podcatcher than iTunes for so many reasons. The big ones are that it doesn't stop updating, and more importantly has a very easy interface to clean up my subscriptions and the files on disk. (I've also been using it since well before iTunes came out with podcast support, so I'm just very used to it at this point.

Tags: apple, itunes, podcasting
Current Mood: annoyed

Upon launching iTunes tonight, I was informed that iTunes 7 is now out. Given that I had some challenges with the last upgrade (to iTunes 6.0.5), I may wait a bit before updating. Actually, my big concern is whether Juice will still work (as I still use it for most of my podcast subscriptions). I posted a note in the Juice support forum, so we'll see what comes back in response.

UPDATE: It appears that right now Juice<->iTunes 7 integration is broken. Keep watching the Juice support forum for more info.

Tags: apple, itunes, juice

It seems that I am not alone in having problems with Juice and iTunes 6.0.5. Bummer... and I have to wonder if there is some kind of issue here causing my other problem with iTunes.

Tags: apple, ipod, ipodder, itunes, juice
Current Mood: out-of-sync

Arrgghh... more iPod annoyance lately... this time with the new video iPod. The iPod / iTunes syncing has all been working fine until just this week when suddenly when updating I get this wonderful error:

Attempting to copy to the disk "DAN YORK'S" failed. An unknown error occurred (-69).

And then of course the update stops. Given that this is an unknown error, there is naturally no information to be found on Apple's web site - nor could I find any in a Google search.

It seems to block on downloading certain files to the iPod. If I remove those files, it then proceeds to download perfectly fine - until the next time it does this. However, those "files" are just random podcasts - nothing special about them that I can see. VERY bizarre... and VERY annoying!

Tags: apple, ipod, itunes
Current Mood: frustrated

I was exceedingly frustrated this morning to have my iPod completely die today.  As I recently wrote, it was not syncing to my PC, but at least it was working.  Today, I power it on, with the intent to reformat/restore it tonight and... ta da... after a long spin, the "unhappy iPod" symbol and the URL "http://www.apple.com/support/ipod"  Ugh... been there before.

In fact, twice before.  Both times I have spent a significant amount of time trying to fix the issue myself and then ultimately had to send my iPod back to Apple and wound up getting a replacement.  Yes, indeed, this is iPod #3 for me!  And, of course, since I did not purchase Apple's "AppleCare" support plan, I have had to pay to send the iPod back and forth.  Very annoying.

So why do I continue with it?  Why don't I just buy another MP3 player?  Well, I keep thinking about it, but the reality is that I like the way the iPod works!  When it works, that is.  I've tried the user interfaces on other players and they just don't work as nicely (in my opinion).  Ah, well, I'll see what it takes to fix it this time.

And if you are considering buying an iPod, this is one UN-satisfied user who can very much recommend that you make sure to purchase an AppleCare subscription when you buy the unit, because if your  experience is anything like mine, you are probably going to wind up shipping it back to Apple at some point!

Tags: apple, ipod
Current Mood: annoyed

I am about to get in the car to drive up to Ottawa.  All is going well.  I do a final sync of the iPod to my PC and all is looking good.  Then... for some reason... the update from iTunes seems to just, well, hang.  The iPod has the usual warning "Updating - Do Not Disconnect" but yet it shows no activity.  Sooner or later, I run out of patience and what do I do?  Why, I disconnect, of course!

Now, the reality is that I've done this fairly routinely and the iPod has come back to life perfectly fine.  However, this particular time... well... when you reconnect it and eventually you see a message from iTunes that says "This iPod is not recognizable and needs to be formatted for your PC.  Click here to run the iPod Updater"... well, that doesn't make one feel overly well.  A quick check of the Music menu shows there is nothing on the iPod.

Oops!

Now, the prospect of a 4-hour drive to Ottawa with listening to only commercial radio is absolutely NOT appealing... so here I am running the update software... sigh...  let's hope it works quickly.

Tags: apple, ipod

So Apple did it again. When Steve Jobs said a bit ago that he didn't see the point in having video on such a small screen... he was just trying to deflect expectations... the old iPod is gone... now the only iPod has more capacity, a smaller form factor... and includes video.

Yet to be seen is really how much value there is in this. If I look at my personal habits, I use my iPod when I am in the car, walking around, killing time waiting for something or flying on a plane. Only in those last two cases would I be really in a position to watch a video, and those don't happen all that often. Still, it is intriguing to see and will only further push the world of video podcasting.

Yet another interesting move by Apple...

Tags: apple, ipod

Given some problems that I have been having with my iPod ever since I upgraded it to the 2005-09-23 update (firmware 3.1 for my particular iPod), I figured that perhaps the issue was a problem with iTunes 5.0.  I had heard of the iTunes 5.0.1 so I downloaded it and went to install it.  Bad move.  At least, a bad move to do when you are in the middle of a whole bunch of other things.

We have all seen the notices when installing software that are something like "it is recommended to shutdown all other applications before proceeding".  What Apple doesn't tell you is that this is pretty much mandatory... and is in fact enforced the installer for QuickTime and iTunes.  During the install process, you get a screen that tells you that some other application (and the application name is shown)  is using a file that needs to be updated and that you should shut that down and then hit "Retry".  There is an "Ignore" button, but how safe do you feel in not updating all files?

So what needed to be shut down on my system?  All of my browser windows (Firefox and IE).  My mail client (Lotus Notes). My IM clients.  Various assorted applications.  Essentially I had to shutdown everything I was doing.

All just to install an update to a audio/video app?  C'mon, Apple, you can do better than this!  I am decidedly NOT a happy customer right now...

Tags: apple, itunes
Current Mood: annoyed