Apple

Unlike most apps that will provide a proxy web service to your computer through your iPhone PDAnet will provide a complete network solution for tethering your computer. Basically, you can use your iPhone as a computer wifi device, without restriction. While proxy apps will work well for web applications, it doesn’t work for stuff like email, ftp, ssh, etc. PDAnet can handle all network traffic. I’m using my iPhone right now to access the internet from my Macbook Pro and it’s quite fast! Check PDAnet out! http://lifehacker.com/5086490/the-best-way-to-tether-your-iphone-to-your-laptop-for-free

While the newer versions of OS X have been great and the dock has matured, I hated one thing. Sometimes I just want to put a directory on the dock without it doing it’s crazy effect stuff to it like Fan, Grid, List, etc. Many times all I want is a dock icon that will just open a directory in finder. Fortunately, I figured out how to do this!!! Create a link to the directory of your choice on the desktop. For instance, I created a link (By holding down the “option”, “apple/command” keys down) of my home directory on my desktop. Now, drag that link to the dock. Bingo! I have a dock icon that will just open a finder window of my home directory.

For OS X Leopard this worked for me. Cut and paste this command into terminal: /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.f*/Frameworks/LaunchS*/Support/lsregister \ -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

I just found cool automater actions at http://junecloud.com The action I’m especially please with is the “Create Clean Archive” action. This will create a archive zip file that does not have the usualy .DS_Store files and crap. Excellent stuff!

The command ‘man’ in terminal has an annoying feature: it clears the screen on exit. So if you find a command line switch you want to try, when you exit man the detail all disappears. To correct this, change the following line in /private/etc/man.conf: PAGER /usr/bin/less -is to PAGER /usr/bin/less -isX

After buying both the iPhone and iPhone 3g, I became frustrated with the typical iPhone problems - spotty 3g network access, no cut-n-paste, etc. As a result, I was excited about the Bold and got one right when it came out. Having used a crackberry in the past was I confident that it would be the device for me. I used the Bold for a number of days and learned an important lesson - Appreciate what you have. The Bold did not have all the answers, and after using the email and web interface on the Bold, I quickly realized that the iPhone was still the device to have. Now I have a new appreciation for the iPhone. It has issues, no doubt. But the core functionality has yet to be challenged by any competitor. After compiling a list of features and rating them, I posted the results at: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pLRnDwRBVmrELW9i6ug_-fw

Recently I discovered a program called proxifier, a OS X Leopard program that will send all network traffic through a defined socks proxy server. So instead of defining the proxy settings in each individual program, simply turn on proxifier and redirect all the network traffic. proxifier is the same thing as WideCap or FreeCap in the Windows side. tsocks for OS X may work as well. So why is this important? Well, I’m on the road a lot and with a iPhone 3g that’s jailbroken you can install a socks server called 3proxy through the cydia installer and with proxifier you can route all your network traffic on your Mac through your new socks server at 3g speeds. This means I can get email, surf the web, use skype, etc. all through the iPhone Here’s the steps for a mac. It’s not that hard… Create a ad-hoc network on the mac?by using the “Create Network…” option.?I called mine “sweet” Set a static IP for your mac on the ah-hoc?network you created. I like to use?10.10.10.5 You need to have your iPhone jailbroken?and have 3proxy installed. Search the web?for details on how to make this happen.?I like quickpwn. On your iphone, select the network you created on your mac, “sweet” for me, and set iPhone’s static IP address. 10.10.10.10 will do nicely. Now, run /usr/bin/socks on your iphone. I like to set mine up in Boss Prefs so I can turn it on and off easily. On the mac, run proxifier, and point it to the socks proxy IP address of 10.10.10.10 port 1080. Your done! This looks like a pain, but if you create a network location with the IP settings, and use Boss Prefs with the iPhone, this process can be done within 20 seconds. And with FW 2.1 on the iPhone 3G the speeds are very impressive, and I even found I can answer a call while I’m surfing through the socks proxy. Make sure to turn off the socks proxy when your not using it otherwise you’ll find that your iPhone battery will run dry quickly. I also did some research on using pppd and slirp to create a complete network tunnel to the 3g network on the iphone. It appears that FW 2.x has broken slirp and it may be related to a kernel update the may have nuetered ipfw. Bummer. The following command will start a pppd session and will provide a ppp0 network interface. The problem I found is I couldn’t get the iPhone to bridge the networks. pppd is already on both OS X and the iPhone, but you need ssh on the iphone to play. ...

Here’s a few screen shots of my D-Link DIR-655 router and it’s settings to allow Back to My Mac (BTMM) to work on my home mini:

Today I experienced a firewire drive failure on my mini. To determine which drive was bad was a bit difficult since the apple profiler does not show serial number information about the drives and the firewire id can change depending on which drive was ready first, etc. After the experience I now have the following steps to take to make this easier in the future. The follow was done after I replaced the bad drive – There also appears to be a Disk Utility issue with disk replacements do I went the terminal window instead. mini:~ sean$ sudo su - Password: mini:~ root# diskutil list /dev/disk0 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme *74.5 Gi disk0 1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk0s1 2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 74.2 Gi disk0s2 /dev/disk1 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: FDisk_partition_scheme *465.8 Gi disk1 1: DOS_FAT_32 SPAREY 465.6 Gi disk1s1 /dev/disk2 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme *279.5 Gi disk2 1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk2s1 2: Apple_HFS Timie 279.2 Gi disk2s2 /dev/disk3 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme *931.5 Gi disk3 1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk3s1 2: Apple_RAID 931.2 Gi disk3s2 3: Apple_Boot Boot OSX 128.0 Mi disk3s3 /dev/disk4 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme *931.5 Gi disk4 1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk4s1 2: Apple_HFS Untitled 1 931.2 Gi disk4s2 /dev/disk5 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: Apple_HFS Hugie *931.2 Gi disk5 mini:~ root# diskutil checkraid RAID SETS ================================================================= Name: Hugie Disk Unique ID: EAA0BF40-5431-4DBF-B280-5D96983C4C18 Type: Mirror Status: Degraded Size: 999860862976 B Rebuild: automatic Device Node: disk5 Apple RAID Version: 2 Device Node UUID Status 0 disk3s2 BCE5791A-9FBC-471F-BCCB-AB0B9DB0A81E Online 0 -none- FC7931AC-A4F3-468F-AC75-F48C60EABFEF Missing/Damaged mini:~ root# diskutil repairmirror /Volume/Hugie disk4 Could not find the RAID set device node mini:~ root# diskutil repairmirror /Volumes/Hugie disk4 Note: Syncing data between mirror partitions can take a very long time. Note: The mirror should now be repairing itself. You can check its status using ‘diskutil listRAID’. mini:~ root# diskutil checkraid RAID SETS ================================================================== Name: Hugie Disk Unique ID: EAA0BF40-5431-4DBF-B280-5D96983C4C18 Type: Mirror Status: Degraded Size: 999860862976 B Rebuild: automatic Device Node: disk5 Apple RAID Version: 2 Device Node UUID Status 0 disk3s2 BCE5791A-9FBC-471F-BCCB-AB0B9DB0A81E Online 1 disk4s2 21FA4F0B-7637-40CD-B396-A2C7D64589DA 0% (Rebuilding) mini:~ root#