Cocoatech: Weblog

How to get a list of SMB shares

sgehrman — 2008-09-21T18:47:28-08:00

Getting the list of SMB shares on a network isn't as easy as it should be. I spent weeks trying to hunt down a solution online and after asking the Samba mailing list, the Samba IRC channel, Apple DTS and emailing a bunch of people, I finally got the answer. You would think this would be very simple to do, but there is one trick you need to know to discovering all the available shares.

First step is to get a list of master browsers:

nmblookup -M -- -

Output looks like this:

querying __MSBROWSE__ on 172.26.44.255
172.26.44.202 __MSBROWSE__<01>
172.26.44.168 __MSBROWSE__<01>

Parse out the IP addresses and pass them to smbclient:

smbclient -g -p 139 -NL (ip address)

Output looks like this:

Parse out the "Workgroup" lines and save the names in an array.

Now comes the trick. For some reason, on some networks, the list of master servers returned with nmblookup -M -- - is incomplete. I'm sure there is a reason why this happens, but I have no idea why.

To get the complete list of master browsers, take your array of workgroups and ask each one for it's master browser like this:

nmblookup -M (workgroup)

Output looks like this:

172.26.44.94 WORKGROUP<1d>

Parse out the ip address. This is another master browser!

Now take the list of master browser returned from nmblookup -M -- - and combine it with any master browsers received querying the workgroup names and run this again for each ip:

smbclient -g -p 139 -NL (ip address)

This time parse out the "Server" lines from the output you will have a complete list of SMB shares.

iPhone 3G - first day

sgehrman — 2008-08-05T22:57:05-08:00

UPDATE: 2.1 Update fixed all my problems. Works great now and battery life seems better too.

UPDATE: Looks like I'm not the only one having problems getting a reliable 3G connection. You would think that San Francisco would be well covered. If I could do it over again, I would probably just buy a used original iPhone and use that until the 3G kinks have been worked out. I'm still considering returning my 3G. $30 extra a month for a 3G network with bugs is a rip-off.

---------------------

My office is just a few blocks from the downtown San Francisco Apple store, but I kept putting off buying a 3G because I didn't want to wake up early and stand in line. But last Sunday I was working late and it was already 3am, so I decided to just keep working until 8am and I picked up a white 16GB phone Monday morning on my way home. The line was very short, just 3-4 people. I only waited for 2 minutes before being helped.

When I was buying the phone at the Apple store, I asked the sales guy how I could wipe my old iPhone clean so I could give it to my wife. I explained to him that it's a developer phone with the beta of 2.1 installed and that I didn't know how to downgrade it back to 2.0. I knew it wasn't something that wouldn't be possible unless I knew some trick to get iTunes to download and install a clean copy of 2.0. The sales guy was totally clueless and just lied to me saying just to plug it in to iTunes and it would do the right thing. I knew that was wrong and just said forget it then, if you don't know how to do it I don't want the phone. He then went upstairs, asked the Genius bar and they were also clueless. He assured me that iTunes would revert it back automatically. Well, when I got home he was wrong. iTunes refused to downgrade it. It's amazing that after all this time, the geniuses at one of the most high profile Apple stores on the planet can't answer a simple question. I called the store back and they said to call Applecare and ask them. I called Applecare, waited on hold for 20 minutes and they guy told me the procedure. Turn off the phone, unplug it from USB, hold down the home button and plug it in. iTunes then goes into forced recovery mode downloading the latest 2.0 OS and installing it. Very simple. I have know idea why the Apple store employees didn't know about this simple procedure.

I've been using the phone and have been disappointed with the 3G coverage. I live in San Francisco and I can't get a very strong signal in my house. It seems that most of the time I have 1 bar showing unless I'm in downtown. I've been cut off many times, and I've only made a few calls so far. Downtown coverage seems much better. My old iPhone didn't have problems with signal. I tried turning off 3G. It seemed to help, but can't be sure. I didn't do much testing.

Here's an interesting story. I was iChatting with one of my friends in Japan, and he bought an iPhone but couldn't get a signal in his house. So he calls up Softbank and they send a guy over to install an indoor antenna so he could get a signal. They didn't charge him anything, but my friend says you have to remain a customer for 2 years after the installation otherwise they will charge him. Do they offer a service like that in the US?

Another big disappointment with the iPhone 3G is the price of the service plans. I didn't read the agreement, but the guy at the Apple Store said it was $30 extra a month and NO text messages included? He said the old iPhone gave 200 messages, but the 3G costs extra. I think I heard it was $15 extra a month for text messages. Is this true? Seems insane to increase the price by $30 for a 3G network that's still in "beta" and no text messages? I wonder if I heard wrong. That doesn't make any sense, unless AT&T is evil. :)

Klaus Nomi - The Nomi Song

sgehrman — 2008-07-22T17:17:43-08:00

I saw a great movie recently about an 80s new wave artist named Klaus Nomi called "The Nomi Song"

I had never heard of him before watching the movie, but he's a very fascinating character. There's lots of videos and other information online, so rather than summarizing his story here, just do some searches on Google.

Here's two of my favorite videos by Nomi. When I first watched the movies I thought this guy was just weird, but after watching the documentary and his videos, I've started to really appreciate his talents. He was also one of the first celebrities to die of AIDS.

The first video starts off slow, but gets really good. I especially like the segment starting at 1:45.

Here's another video that's cool.

Japan trip report

sgehrman — 2008-05-08T23:04:16-08:00

I just got back from Japan recently and finally have some time to blog about it. I went for 17 days and had a great time.

If you've never visited Japan, I recommend it. There's lots of cool things about the city and culture that are worth experiencing. I remember the first time I went in 1991, not knowing what to expect, and my whole perspective on the United States changed forever. I always assumed we were the most advanced country on earth (I was young and naive back in those days). That's not to say Japan is perfect, but there are many great things there that I wish would make it's way to the USA.

One of the best things about Japan is the food. I'm not talking about fugu or high priced sushi or anything fancy. I'm talking about Japanese fast food, donut shops, pastry shops and even food from 7-11. Just about anything you try there will be good and the service will be good. Plus there's no tipping!

Here's a pict of one of my favorite places. "Mister Donut". Cheap, good coffee and a cute japanese girl comes by every few minutes to refill your coffee. What more could you want?

The infamous "Cocoa Float" at a great fast food place called "First Kitchen". If you're ever in Japan, you MUST try this. It's awesome.

Starbucks has a green tea frappuccino that is delicious:

During the trip I met up with some fellow mac developers living in Japan. One day we went to Kamakura to visit a Zen temple and sat in for a session of zazen. It was one of the most famous Zen temples. I can't remember the name at the moment.

I'm interested in Zen, but I'm too lazy to practice it. Maybe some day. One thing interesting happened during zazen. There were about 40-50 people there and we were all sitting down and the priest walks around carrying a big stick. If a person gestures to the priest, the priest will whack the guy on the back. But the problem is every other person requested getting whacked on the back so it was really hard to meditate with so much noise. I couldn't focus!

Here's a pict of me and one of my developer friends waiting to eat awesome Japanese beef stew in Kamakura.

I also stopped by my friends office to see what's its like to be a developer working in Japan. The office was very tiny, but it was cozy and enough room for a desk and monitor and stuff. (not the best pict, but the office was so tiny it was hard to get anything in frame)

Like a good geek I had to take a trip to Akihabara which is the mecca of the infamous "Otaku". Akihabara is home to the "maid cafe" phenomenon. Here's a maid on the street begging me to taste her treats. I found out later that the best looking maids are inside, but they are extremely strict about taking photographs. I was forced to erase a picture I took inside by an angry maid.

We visited a few Maid cafes and they were fun. It's wasn't what I expected. It's really quite normal except for the fact that the waitresses wear costumes. All the customers where normal people men and women. I expected there would be tons of geeks drooling over the maids, but it's wasn't like that at all. Good food and service.

I'm kind of perplexed how so many shops there are in Akiba selling dolls and figures. There are tons of them and all packed to the roof. Who buys this stuff? It's all very cute and fun, but in order for these places to all stay in business there must be tons of Otaku buying lots of figurines. They sell everything thing at these stores. Doll clothes, hair, doll paint. Once again it was hard to take a picture since the spaces where so cramped and tight with stuff. Here's some bare dolls you can buy and you can design your own anime character.

Here's another pict of one display case. The store is packed wall to wall with cases of figures. I just noticed the "no camera" sign on the left side.

Another shot of display cases stuffed with stuff.

We had lunch at the famous Otaku food stand. Star Kebab.

Me and the gang hanging out inside the Star Kebab.

We walked by this business which offers a high tech face massage given by a maid. I regret not trying it!

There were also lots of shops selling vintage game systems from the 80s and 90s.

Here's a classic. I wonder why it never took off?

Some vintage hand held game systems:

We also visited this vintage arcade. Every machine there was filled with almost every known game ROM imaginable. All the classics in one place.

Before the Otaku took over Akiba, it was home (and still is) to vendors selling every conceivable electronic part or device. You can find any type of resistor, switch, capacitor etc. There are rows and rows of these little one man shops no bigger than 6x6 stuffed to max with electronics with a little old man sitting behind it all selling day after day.

I only bought one thing in Akiba. This killer mask for my son Kai. It was only $2.

Here's a pict that really illustrates why Japan is awesome. This is a toilet on the public train. No graffiti, no trash, clean and safe. It wouldn't last 1 day in San Francisco. In SF they locked all the public toilets in the train stations for "Security Reasons" Where do they expect the bums to shoot heroin?

Here's the family in front of some Cherry blossoms. There were blooming why we were there.

Bought my kid another mask. His hero is Ultraman!

The toilet on the Bullet train for Gaijin like me.

My brother in-law is also a Mac user. He does page layout for game magazines and has a hardcore setup.

Here he is wearing the Steve Jobs uniform

My sister in-law is an awesome cook. Here's your typical Japanese high rise Kitchen.

Another thing great about Japan is the CD and DVD shops. Everything you could ever want and you can rent them. Most people rent them, copy them and return them the next day. It's super cheap.

My sister has this great place in Tokyo near Shinagawa station. They're on the top floor and have a great view of Tokyo.

Well, that's it. There was lots I didn't mention, but those were some highlights. Just like anything, you have to experience it. There's lots to see and do.

We need beta testers!

neilio — 2008-03-09T19:58:37-08:00

One of the more difficult things about being an independent software developer is making sure your software is as bug-free as possible. Note that I didn’t just say “bug-free” - if you believe the mythical completely bug-free application actually exists, I have some bridges, magic beans, and unicorns I’d like to sell you.

We ♥ you

Seriously, though, we couldn’t do what we do without the kindness of you, our customers. We rely on your feature requests to tell us what to work on, your license fees to help us feed our families and keep us in business, and your bug reports to help us fix Path Finder when it does something it’s not supposed to.

We already have an awesome group of folks helping us test Path Finder behind the scenes before we roll out a new release to the public, but we need help. With the release of Mac OS X 10.5 we are now in that strange and wonderful place where Path Finder supports two operating systems, and with that comes an even more complex testing environment.

We need you

We need your help kicking the tires whenever Steve adds a new feature, improves a new one, or rolls out a bug fix or workaround. Almost 60% of you have upgraded to Mac OS X 10.5, but that leaves 40% of you that are still using Mac OS X 10.4 and we need to make sure both operating systems (and both CPU types) are represented in our beta testing group.

Interested?

Here are the specifics:

Beta testing is, for the moment, purely voluntary. We’ve talked about finding fun ways of thanking our beta testers but at the moment if you decide to help us, it’s for the love of playing with the most recent, cutting edge builds of Path Finder.
Beta testing is inherently risky. You must follow the tao of backing up your system frequently. We try not to provide beta builds that could cause your computer to implode, but stuff happens.
We require you to be involved. Obviously everyone is busy and the amount of involvement that any single person can commit to is variable, but we still expect that you’ll let us know if you find a bug and try to get us feedback when we need it.
It’s all confidential. We don’t generally release beta builds to the public for a reason: they’re not ready for public consumption. We hope and expect that you’ll honour this by not sharing download URLs, builds, or any other pre-release information with people not on the list.
Beta testing is open to licensed Path Finder 4 customers only. For now, at least.

We thank you

Update: Thank you! We got lots of applications and we’re digging through them now. We will get in touch with you if you were selected. Thanks a lot for your willingness to help us!

Macworld Blast Party

sgehrman — 2008-03-03T20:33:56-08:00

It's a little late to be blogging about Macworld, but I've been busy coding like mad on Path Finder 5 and haven't had much time to devote to the blog.

So after Macworld, I went to the MacSB dinner and it was cool. Met a bunch of interesting Cocoa devs and had a nice dinner. I went back to my office to get my things and was skating to the Muni station to head home when I ran into it to my old friend Nobi. It was a total coincidence. Nobi said he's going to the Macworld Blast party and said he could get me a ticket. So I'm like "Sure, why not." Little did I know at the time how cool it was going to be.

So, first stop was at a little bar on the corner of Yerba Buena Gardens to get some free drinks and to get our tickets. There was this wacky drunk out of her mind old lady hitting on me telling me how cute I was (she must have been drunk). It was pretty hilarious. She was asking me if I liked Elvis Presley and she could barely stand. I guess she was looking to score :) It was very weird. I kept looking at Nobi hoping he would save me from this awkward situation. Luckily the bus to the Warfield had arrived and I politely ran out as fast as I could.

So we get on the bus heading to Warfield. I've never been there before, but it's a famous place for bands to play in downtown San Francisco. We get off the bus and wait in line and eventually get in.

So before the show started, Microsoft had their Office for Mac 2008 launch party which was really cool. They gave away tons of free stuff. They were throwing stuff out into the crowd and I happened to catch a leather iPhone case. They also gave away an iMac and a bunch of other cool things.

Everyone got two tickets for free drinks, so I got my drinks and waited for the main event. DEVO!!

The show starts off with this amazingly trippy video. I loved it and took a short clip. The video got cut short since a security guy tapped me on the shoulder and said "No filming". I've seen a few other videos on YouTube with the complete video, but here's the footage I got...

Here's the sign out front of the Warfield

Here's the ticket

Here's another sign out front

Microsoft launch party pict

DEVO!

After the show Nobi and I met up with some of his Japanese friends. A young Japanese girl in the group had no idea who DEVO was which was kind of funny. I guess I'm old. After the show I met up with my friend and fellow mac developer Steve Dekorte at the Cafe Royale. DEVO was awesome. I had no idea they still could rock the house. The sound was great and an all around amazing show.

HD DVD Dead: Who Cares?

sgehrman — 2008-02-19T13:07:15-08:00

I have no interest in the HD DVD / Blu-ray war. I would never consider buying a new format when I have had such a horrible experience with the original DVD format.

Wouldn't it be great if after inserting a DVD it just immediately played the movie? That's what I want, but the content producers force you to wait for FBI warnings, previews, disclaimers, fancy animations, and a bunch of other annoying graphics and menus before the movie starts.

The worst offender is Disney. I can't remember the exact disk, but even after hitting the play button in the DVDs menus, no less than 6 additional annoying graphics played before the movie starts. Disney digital, THX audio, etc. I don't remember the exactly what was played, I just remember being shocked. Just to watch the movie I had to hit the next button 6 or 7 times.

I own a few japanese DVDs that do immediately play the movie on insertion, but they are rare.

I bought the DVD to watch the movie, not this additional crap.

I was at the bus stop this morning in San Francisco and Disney had a billboard saying "101 Dalmatians, now for the first time on 2 disks". Why would anyone want 2 disks? 2 disks of crap that takes forever to navigate. I just want the movie and nothing more.

This is why I'm through buying DVDs.

Our new Xserves

grotsasha — 2008-01-14T15:44:25-08:00

Our new shiny Xserves just arrived! I think we were probably among the first who bought them, literally as soon as the Apple Store re-opened after the announcement we went online to place the order.

Using Apple’s Xserve is so easy - even if you understand nothing about servers, you don’t need to. It is the server for the rest of us. You just basically deal with a familiar Mac interface over Remote Desktop. Everything is the same as on your Mac, you log in as usual, manipulate your files as usual (what do you think, we have Path Finder installed there too :) ). Of course if you’re of the geeky type, you can still administrate it the “normal” way, as you would any other server - via ssh in Terminal.

We were waiting for this update to renew our G5 Xserves that are faithfully handling our internal purchase system, bug tracker and source code repository. Since the current Xserves are in Los Angeles, and we wanted to migrate our servers to San Francisco, we figured it would be easier to buy new ones and sell old ones (by the way, if you’re interested - drop us an email).

Here are the specs of our new babies - btw, any ideas of good server names?

Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (8-core)
8GB (4 x 2GB) RAM
2x 1TB drives
Dual 750W Power Supplies

Here are some pictures of them in their boxes - they are pretty heavy! We will be busy putting those beautiful beasts in their racks over the next couple of days. We will add some unpacking picts by then too.

Update: here are the beasts as installed in their racks. We chose 365 main datacenter as our new colo, this is one of the most known and professional datacenters in San Francisco, where Craigslist, Technorati, Six Apart and some other big web companies happen to host their servers too.

Nokia N810 Review

sgehrman — 2008-01-08T17:48:59-08:00

Slow, buggy, unpolished and frustrating. Yes, Nokia’s N810 sucks big time. I hoped I could have told you the story of how I fell in love with my little Nokia, but she’s a real bitch and we’re through! Back in the box she goes. Off to a landfill where she’ll leak heavy metals and probably cause birth defects in future generations. It’s a sad pathetic little device.

There are tons of problems with this device, but all that really matters is this: Does the device’s function outweigh the effort to operate it? In this case, it doesn’t. The N810 is just a pain in the ass to use. It’s frustrating at every corner. Every action is incredibly slow and painful. If the processor were 20x faster it might be usable, but even then there are still lots of bugs and bad UI to deal with.

General usability

When using a tiny computer like the N810, it becomes obvious very quickly that scrolling is the most important UI action. You’re constantly scrolling content around its tiny screen. Apple obviously understands this well with its perfect implementation of finger scrolling on the iPhone. Nokia is absolutely clueless. Scrolling on the N810 is abysmal. It does have finger scrolling, but it rarely works the way you would hope, and half the time it thinks you want to select text or select an item in the list. Using the tiny scroll bars requires that you use the stylus. Using the stylus isn’t that bad, but then you run into the other problems with scrolling - for example one click in the scroll bar often gets sent as two clicks. Dragging the thumb is hit or miss. Most of the time miss. Even when you do it just right, the OS frequently just hangs so you’re not sure if the click or scroll actually registered, so you try again, and again and eventually it will click or scroll 10 times and take you somewhere you didn’t mean to go.

Scrolling also flickers like crazy which is really disconcerting. It’s always erasing the screen and redrawing and your eye can’t follow where you are going. Trying to scroll slowly by dragging the thumb results in a back and forth wiggle effect. Scrolling quickly leads to blurred drawing and massive flicker problems. It’s hard to write down every bit of detail on why the Nokia is a poor scroller, but I can tell you it makes it extremely frustrating to use.

Zooming is equally important and the Nokia also fails horribly. There is a zoom button on the top of the device. Hit it and it erases the screen white, then delays, then it decides it will slowly redraw. Flickery, ugly, slow and confusing sums it up nicely.

Main features

WiFi access is why I bought the device. The plan was to use it primarily as a VoIP phone and a web surfing device. The N810 actually works well as a VoIP phone. I am using Gizmo Project and the client is well designed (relative to the rest of the OS). There is also a Skype client that I assume works well, but I haven’t used it much. The problem with WiFi on the Nokia N810 is that it just takes way too long to find and connect to a public WiFi spot. The UI is terrible and it rarely remembers your previous choices for WiFi network. Everyday when I come to the office it doesn’t want to automatically connect to my WiFi here. I have no idea why not, it does work fine at home. I am forced to manually select the network everyday. Scrolling once again makes the UI horrible when choosing an open WiFi network. As it is refreshing it’s server list (which is often), it scrolls to the top every time, therefore it’s very hard to scroll down the list. It also just takes too long to connect. And takes to long to tell you when there was an error connecting (which is 90% of the time). Pulling out the Nokia at a random coffee shop to try to surf a bit can turn into a nightmare of trying, failing and retrying the different networks until you find one that works. It really ruins the moment and is not something that is quick or convenient. I would be better off to leave the Nokia at home and enjoyed my coffee and pick up a newspaper.

The GPS system is completely useless. I got it to find satellites once when driving. I was half way to my destination and it finally got a signal, but every other time it failed. I purposely went to Golden Gate park on a clear sunny day. Got in the middle of a large field with no buildings or trees around and waited for the GPS to connect (I was hoping to locate where I was so I could find my way out). After 30 minutes I gave up. It never connected. Nokia, WTF!?!

Oh, and another big reason I purchased this device was the promise of doing video conferencing. It has a video camera, but unfortunately there are no apps that currently support it. So it just doesn’t work. Scratch that feature off the list.

Operating system

The operating system is this thing called “Maemo”. It has probably the dumbest name in the history of computing. I still have no idea how to pronounce it. It’s unpolished slow and seems very influenced by Windows with it’s annoying ugly dialogs and “wizards”. It’s based on Linux, and it’s unpolished like Linux. If you’re currently a Maemo developer I’ve got some advice: Switch to Android or iPhone SDK. Maemo is a dead end and will end up in the trash heap of forgotten technology. It’s pathetic and there’s no hope.

The N810 requires a Windows machine to upgrade the OS. There is an undocumented way of upgrading using a Mac, but it fails to properly update. This is unacceptable. It also works for Linux with some command line tool. I don’t have Windows or Linux, so I had to go to a neighbors’ house to upgrade mine. Nokia, it’s not that difficult to wrap a command line tool in a simple Cocoa app. Send me some $$ and I’ll do it for you.

I don’t understand why a large rich corporation builds a device that’s basically unusable. Anyone who uses this device for more than a few days could fill a small notebook with suggestions and tweaks. I wrote such a document, unfortunately the N810 ate my file when I updated the OS. How’s that for “engineering”! Updating the OS erases your memory card. Is that the best you could do, Nokia? Is it that hard to write an installer that preserves the Documents folder?

The rest

Here’s a huge list of things I found annoying. Not in any order, just notes of things I wrote down when using it:

Web browsing is super slow. Scrolling webpages impossibly slow when there are many images.
Some videos play, but most do not. You get about one frame per second and the audio is choppy most of the time. It’s worthless if you like watching youtube vids.
Windows always stealing focus at the wrong times. Say you’re doing IM. Someone sends you a link. You click the link, start reading the page and then your friend IMs you again. Now you’re forced back in to the IM client. In order to read the web page, you either have to tell your friend to STFU, or you have to quit the IM client. Unacceptable.
Bluetooth connection fails I wrote some notes on the Nokia and thought it would be simple to bluetooth it to my desktop. It failed. It sees the machine, it tries to send to the machine but I just get a failure with no further information. It works with my MacBook, so I know I’m not doing something wrong.
USB is completely unusable and totally broken Maybe this is just a problem on the Mac, but Nokia should have resolved this before shipping. I couldn’t get bluetooth working, but I remembered that it has a USB port so I hooked it up and it mounted a drive on my mac. But it only seems to work. It actually fails to open folders and show the contents. But for some folders it works. It also fails to unmount cleanly. And while we’re at it, USB mini cable is impossible to tell which is the top or bottom. This is true with all USB types. Who’s the genius who decided this? 50% of the time you’re going to attempt to plug it in upside down.
Screen brightness at max is not bright enough. It needs to be 3x brighter.
Volume too soft at maximum volume I was in a coffee shop. VOIP rang, I answer it with headphones, turn up volume to the max and can’t hear a damn thing. Way too soft. Completely useless.
Lots of “modes” Sometimes I’m in one app and I get stuck in a mode and can’t switch apps. App switching should always work regardless of mode in one particular app. For example I wanted to check the GPS to see why it hasn’t found a signal, but that signal checking modal dialog prevented me from switching apps.
Headphones self-destructed within a week It’s got these little rubber rings for comfort, but I didn’t realize this until one was missing. No free replacements in the box. The wire used for the headphones is coated in sticky rubber which guarantees it to get tanged and stuck in knots with ease. The headphones button to answer calls is horrible. It doesn’t feel like a button so it’s impossible to find when feeling for it in your bag or in your pocket. Click action on this button is weak.
Location of the power and headphone jacks makes it difficult to hold and type It’s right where your right hand holds the device.
Control key on keyboard is only on the right side Makes doing a “ctrl-o” for example difficult
Saving a simple text document takes multiple seconds to complete We’re talking about a few pages of plain text. Horribly slow and annoying. It’s also modal so you’re stuck staring at the screen.
You must manually set the time and date Haven’t these guys heard of time servers? Not even an option.
Full screen mode for an app always resets when app quits I’m constantly turning full screen mode back on every time I launch an app. There’s no pref for this as you would expect.
Arrow pad thing on keyboard is useless Too flat and impossible to feel your way to finding it and using it.
Memory card is difficult to click into position When I first got a memory card. I slipped it in the slot and thought it was in. It worked for a while and finally I was getting errors when saving files to the card. I realized that it was not fully clicked in. To properly click the card in you need long fingernails or you have to use the stylus to push it in far enough to click in to place.
Closing windows is horribly slow When you click the close box, you get this closing window wire animation, but there is a huge lag before the window goes off screen. So you click to close again thinking it failed.
Dragging Desktop widgets is near impossible It works after many tries and you learn to not try it again.
Scrolling in desktop RSS reader is horribly slow and draws ugly
There’s no “Search in Google” right-click option in the browser I use this multiple times per day on my desktop.
Mapping software is incredibly slow and hogs RAM If I have it running, it will prevent me from launching other apps in some cases. It’s incredibly slow (even for this device) to scroll around the maps.
Camera is completely useless unless you’re in direct sunlight Images way too dark and pixelated. I actually did a side by side comparison with the iPhone. iPhone took a great picture, the Nokia took a pixelated blob.
Doesn’t remember scrolled position in text documents using built-in Notes program.
Most of the downloadable apps either fail to install, or are useless I found a few games that were OK, but nothing very exciting.
Save as dialog doesn’t remember last place visited If you want to save to an external card, you have to constantly navigate to it when saving.
“Swap” button frequently fails It will pop up a menu and quickly go away. I find that I frequently have to click it multiple times until it sticks.
Keyboard backlighting always turns off when you need it most Also lighting is too dim and uneven. It’s hard to read all the keys.
Navigating menus is painful If an item has a submenu it requires you to click the right arrow to disclose the submenu. That’s an unnecessary step.
Built in RSS reader app constantly flickers and is hard to read Why do you erase in white, then pause, then refresh. Just refresh!! I don’t need to see it flicker in white first.
Outside screen visibility is horrible It becomes this gray-hard-to-read-mess in direct sunlight.
Viewing PDFs is super slow Each page takes seconds to render.
Battery rattles in the case
Frequently locks up requiring you to force shut down and restart.
I frequently find myself staring at the screen with no idea what to do next It really does not feel right even after weeks of use.

Nokia N810 reminds me of my old Newton - another terrible device. Lots of promise, cool animations, but just too slow and cumbersome to be useful.

I’m returning mine as I write this. The current state is not even what I would consider “beta”. It’s surprising that an “industry leader” can release something so sloppy. I’ll never trust Nokia again. Apple, you’ve got absolutely nothing to worry about. Nokia is not a viable competitor.

Don’t be fooled by the specs or cool screenshots. The N810 does look great on paper and the case design isn’t so bad, it just fails miserably because of badly written software, poor UI, and a slow processor.

Nokia hates Mac users

sgehrman — 2007-12-18T17:34:23-08:00

I recently purchased a brand new Nokia N810. There's a new OS update available for it, but Nokia requires you to install the update using either Windows or Linux.

There is no support for Mac OS X! I called the Nokia store in Chicago and they said Nokia builds its products for Windows users, not Mac users!

I'm going to review the device soon, but just wanted to warn other Mac users to avoid Nokia products unless you have access to a Windows machine.

It's annoying to think that some pointy haired corporate bozo at Nokia thinks it's OK to ignore Mac users. I say "fuck Nokia". This is the last Nokia product I will ever buy.

How one word of code for Leopard can break something on Tiger

grotsasha — 2007-11-15T14:52:07-08:00

The bug

Update: the issue that I was talking about here is now fixed in the freshly released Path Finder 4.8.3. Thanks for bearing with us!

When you empty the Trash via Path Finder 4.8.2 under Tiger, its helper application ctask crashes. You get several crash report windows popping up right away if your bug reporter is enabled and “Quit Path Finder” menu gets disabled as a side effect. You must force quit Path Finder when you want it to be quit. If you usually quit PF only upon system shutdown, you will get a “Path Finder cancelled shutdown” dialog because of the disabled “quit” menu. It doesn’t have any effect on the empty trash operation itself - it is done correctly every time.

The workaround

There’s no feasible workaround as such, except to stop emptying the Trash via Path Finder under Tiger. Disabling the bug reporter (Preferences -> General -> uncheck “Enable bug reporter”) will stop the crash reporter windows appearing right away after emptying the Trash, but you will still have them popping up at next PF startup and the “quit” menu will get grayed out. The bug is already fixed internally and we’re working at getting out this fix as soon as possible.

The story of the bug

It has been only two weeks since the moment that Leopard was released and we already started to feel the double-workload that is coming upon us, because testing and writing code for two different OS versions can be very difficult and error prone.

Internally we all switched to Leopard for our everyday use - I even made it a couple of months before the Leopard GM was out. So for Tiger testing, I should basically switch to my Tiger partition, look through the changelog and figure out which areas I should test. However switching to another partition and spending some time for testing is not the same thing as using the application 24/7 on your main user account. We still have a bunch of beta testers that use Path Finder on Tiger, maybe even the half of them, but it was unfortunately still not enough to uncover the problem described below.

At some point during Path Finder 4.8.2 development, Steve noticed a console message on Leopard that was pointing to a small internal problem in our helper application - ctask - it appeared to quit before the main application finished communicating with it. That was not correct, so Steve proceeded with fixing it and changed this:

- (oneway void)unsubscribeClient:(in bycopy NSNumber*)identifier;

into this:

- (void)unsubscribeClient:(in bycopy NSNumber*)identifier;

You see the difference is just in one word “oneway” which was removed (for technically inclined this works using Distributed Objects). The console message on Leopard disappeared and all was well. “Hopefully I didn’t break anything on Tiger” said Steve. Several beta builds went out to beta testing, I switched to Tiger several times, tested copy, move, delete - those are the operations that the helper tool is responsible for - also some other things, and it appeared to be ok. Hopefully.

Hours after the release of 4.8.2 a flood of ctask crashes on Tiger started to pour into our mailboxes. Unfortunately this one word change that fixed a tiny problem on Leopard introduced a crash under Tiger!

Thoughts

What did it teach us? We should try to test more on Tiger from now on. True. That means that every fix must be now tested twice - on Tiger and Leopard. And it already revealed itself as a difficult situation. We would prefer to be rock solid on one OS than slightly buggy on both. Just thinking aloud.

If you’re a developer, how do you organize the testing of your application on the previous OS version? Please share your experience in comments.

Taming the Leopard

grotsasha — 2007-11-10T07:58:19-08:00

It’s unfortunate timing that right at the moment of a major OS release when Mac developers need Apple engineers the most there’s no WWDC. This would make asking questions, talking with Apple, and demoing Mac OS X 10.5 issues much easier.

That said, it looks like the folks from Apple’s Developer Technical Support (aka DTS) are swamped at the moment by hungry third-party developers pummeling them with all sorts of Leopard-related questions. We’ve also contributed to that pile over the course of Leopard’s development and we’re not quite done with them for quite some time it seems :)

With the release of 4.8.2 we’ve fixed the most annoying Leopard compatibility issues. I mentioned some of them in my recent blog post and you can find the rest of the fixes in our changelog. However there are still some mildly annoying issues on Leopard that we were unable to fix and we’re waiting for Apple’s help.

Moving items across partitions copies instead of moves - Normally when you copy a file across two partitions with the command key held down, it’s moved and the original is deleted. Unfortunately this is broken under OS X 10.5 and instead of moving the file, OS X copies it. This appears to be an OS Bug in system frameworks and we filled a bug with Apple. Hopefully it will be fixed soon in an upcoming OS update. This is annoying but since it fails in a ‘data safe’ manner, this is less critical. The workaround is to manually delete the source file upon the successful completion of the “move” operation.
Path Finder’s desktop disappears when Expose is triggered - As I mentioned in my previous post, there’s no public API to “stick” Path Finder’s Desktop in place when hitting F11 and we still need to find a hack. My suggested workaround would be to make a Path Finder alias (File -> Make Alias -> Make Path Finder Alias) of the Desktop folder in the Dock, so that the Desktop folder is revealed in PF by clicking on the docked folder.
When copying/deleting in List View it collapses subfolders - this seems to be an OS Bug in NSTreeController and we’re working with Apple to find a workaround or a fix. This is now fixed in Path Finder 4.8.3
Network shares are missing from the Path Finder sidebar - On Tiger the system was finding the shares for us - there was a hidden /Network folder where all local shares were listed. On Leopard that is no longer the case. When we started to look for our own solutions, it turned out that public frameworks on Leopard allow third-party developers to find only Bonjour-based devices e.g. essentially Macs. Windows and Linux shares use another technology (NetBIOS) to broadcast their presence on the local network and we’re currently talking with Apple (yet again, thanks DTS folks :) ) to find a solution. In the meanwhile the workaround is to use the Connect to Server dialog.

If you notice any additional issues, please, report them to us so that we’re able to fix them in a future update. And while we’re working our asses off to fix the aforementioned issues, please enjoy new Leopard features: you can now QuickLook your documents from PF (just hit the Spacebar) and Reveal documents in Path Finder instead of Finder from your favorite third-party applications (check out the Preferences -> Reveal -> Set PF as the default file viewer).

Path Finder 4.8: known issues on Leopard

grotsasha — 2007-10-23T10:51:05-08:00

Now you probably got surprised when you’ve read this topic name, because we repeatedly told that Path Finder 4.8 is compatible with Leopard. For the most part it certainly is, but unfortunately the last Leopard seed reserved a couple of surprises for us that I thought you would like to know when planning your Leopard upgrade.

As I ~~eluded~~ alluded in my previous blog post on this topic, testing on an unfinished OS is a tricky business. I saw Path Finder bugs appear in one OS seed, disappear in the next couple of seeds, reappear in the fourth one and then disappear again. Generally if we saw a bug that persisted through more than two seeds, we proceeded with fixing it. Therefore you can understand why Mac developers are getting annoyed by the fact that Apple didn’t give us access to the Leopard Gold Master seed before the general release date - we have no idea if some of the issues below will still persist on the Leopard GM which is to be released on Friday. Here’s the current list of the known Path Finder 4.8 bugs on the pre-release Leopard build:

A folder popping up in the Dock while copying/moving/deleting files. Path Finder uses a helper tool called “ctask” to do its copy/move/delete operations - it launches and quits when the operation is complete. Somehow this background tool materialized in a form of a folder which behaves like an application popping up in the Dock when it launches. It doesn’t affect the quality of the copy at all - it is just kind of funny to watch. The history of this bug looks as following: fixed itself in build 9A343, reappeared in 9A466, fixed again in 9A527 and reappeared on the last seed. Now Steve’s bet that it disappears in the GM, and I’m still kind of nervous that it won’t.

Operations as root fail - this is a biggie that suddenly appeared on the last Leopard seed. The bug manifests itself as following: one operation as root is usually possible the first time upon installation of Path Finder, all further operations as root fail, also as a side effect - the “Quit” menu gets disabled when such operation was unsuccessful. After discovering the issue we immediately contacted Apple to ask what’s going on. It turned out that they implemented some additional restrictions for helper tools running as root to make the OS more secure. It is now considered unsafe to use any relative load paths in setuid helper programs. So the fix number one suggested by Apple -

-is to use absolute paths. Usually @executable_path is just used by apps that want to be drag installable. Apple typically ships an installer for software that requires setuid helpers, but we can understand the desire to maintain Path Finder as a drag-installable app.

Yes, we don’t really want to ship as an installer, because it seems that people generally don’t like them. Most of users prefer just to drag their app to the /Applications folder, because it seems more transparent and intuitive.

Another possibility to fix suggested by Apple would be

to replace your setuid helper tool with a daemon started by launchd. This is the direction we would like to see developers go and it’s a more secure approach.

Now this is also a bit problematic - the cool part of our helper tool is that it is not hanging around all the time. It quits and launches when needed. A daemon would always work in the background which is probably less desirable. However if we don’t have any other choice we will prefer this option. This requires some considerable work in restructuring our code and we still hope that there’s an easier solution. We’re still discussing this issue with Apple and will hopefully decide soon which road to take. This bug is highly unlikely to disappear by itself and we’re really sorry for the inconvenience that this issue might cause you.

When you reveal the PF Desktop in Expose - the Finder Desktop is shown instead. This is because we used an undocumented hack to make Path Finder desktop “stick” when hitting Expose, and it’s not surprising that this method got broken on Leopard. We hope we will find another hack soon :)

Issues with tooltips in Column View - when you hover over long file names in Column View, it should normally show you the full name in a tooltip, but it shows some weird numbers instead. This issue would be completely harmless if the Size Browser wouldn’t take it so badly - unfortunately it crashes because of this for some reason. Steve thinks that this issue will fix itself on the Leopard GM build, but I again remain skeptical. We placed bets yesterday - if he’s right I will have to send him a T-Shirt with “München” written on it :)

We hope to address those issues as soon as possible. We’re especially upset about the operations as root issue, since it has taken us by surprise and so late - we were testing Path Finder on Leopard since more than one year and if those OS restrictions were implemented earlier, we would have had more time to find a solution.

Update : looks like all issues mentioned above are still present on the GM build. The final build also brought some new bugs - issues with Connect to Server dialog, cosmetic issue with Desktop selection and a bug where “move to” contextual menu item copies files instead of moving them. We’re now intensively working on fixing all those issues as soon as possible in the next maintenance update. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.

Betas and testing

grotsasha — 2007-10-11T08:45:11-08:00

An interesting post by Steven Frank of Panic Software has recently started a discussion about difficulties of doing efficient software testing for Mac shareware programs. I found many similarities with our own testing workflow experience as we’re also “old school”, e.g. we’re doing our beta testing in a closed private group and almost never release something called “beta” to the public. Steven writes:

Having a couple hundred beta testers sign up, and only getting any feedback at all from maybe 10% of them is still a bit depressing and sometimes worrisome. It’s hard to know whether to interpret it as “people aren’t using the beta” or “there’s nothing wrong with the beta” or “I just signed up in the hope that I’d get a free copy” or “I had some weird stuff happen but didn’t think it was worth writing about”.

This is true to some extent concerning our own beta testing experience. However I discovered that a very important factor in receiving more feedback is to foster a sense of community among your beta testers. There are tons of posts written on “how to get more comments on your blog” or “how to make a successful forum”, and I think that this kind of tips apply to beta testing as well, since you basically get a small community of people united for the same task. So it all comes to the way you’re moderating this community. While Joel on Software already has some excellent tips on the topic, let me mention a few strategies that worked for us to improve beta testing feedback:

Mailing list - my experience on our support forum shows that people like to communicate with each other about software issues. When one person reports something, the other one will add some details, etc. On our beta list we sometimes get very heated discussions about usability issues or feedback about UI changes, which are indeed very valuable and can’t happen if people don’t interact with each other. I think a mailing list is essential in building a passionate beta tester community.
Listen and respond - be as present as possible. I try to respond to each filled bug and tell what happens next with this report, so that people know that we’re actively working on it. If not beta testers don’t know wether they should interpret the silence as “does it mean that the devs agree” , “does it mean they already knew about it”, etc. We don’t open our bug tracker to the testers, so our responses are the only mean for them to know about our progress.
Fix what they tell ya - sounds obvious, but if people reported tons of stuff and the next build doesn’t contain those fixes, don’t be surprised by the silence. If for some reason it was impossible to fix, consider including it in the “known issues” seed note section.
Regular builds - I think beta builds are still mini-releases, so same rules apply on a smaller scale - reasonably frequent builds show that we’re working on it and thus generate interest. Too much seeds make people tired and they stop downloading them. A way to know if seeds schedule is correct is to have some kind of a statistic following the number of beta downloads. This way you will be able to know if everyone downloaded a particular build or if you make builds too fast, and people started to skip them, etc. I think that a build per week is a reasonable timeframe, but your milage may vary.
Comprehensive seed note - I think it should at least include following sections: a detailed changelog mentioning which bug of which tester got fixed in this build, a “known issues” section mentioning reported bugs that didn’t get fixed, focus areas - containing things that you think might be broken and you would like your testers to try out.
Ask questions - People like being asked about their opinion. Also very few beta testers will write to the list just to say that this or that part of the software works. Asking them to confirm something will often “wake up” those who generally don’t write much. Asking a question is also a good way to initiate a discussion, which can uncover usability issues and opinions that people always hesitated to tell you about.

And if everything else fails, make a call for new people and refresh the list.

Of course the intensity of the feedback greatly depends on the way people use the software. Some programs are made to be used every day - and we fall in this category. Of course a program that is supposed to be used not often and only for specific tasks will probably have more trouble to get tested throughly in a short period of time.

I use the opportunity to thank all our beta testers for their continuos support. Our last beta cycles were very intense and beta feedback helped us a lot to have a stable and smooth release.

Did you participate in any beta testing? What makes you want to write feedback to the developer? Tell us about your experience.

Path Finder 4.8: making you more productive

grotsasha — 2007-09-24T06:43:54-08:00

We’re happy to announce that one of the most requested Path Finder features will at last make its appearance in the upcoming Path Finder 4.8: per-folder settings. The number of requests we received for this feature has been incredible. For an example, take a look at this thread from the Cocoatech forums — it dates back to 2003 and that’s only because the forum has been online since then!

Core Data

The implementation of per folder settings took over two months of work. To accomplish this we used a Cocoa technology introduced in Tiger called Core Data. Unlike the Finder (with its notorious .DS_Store files) we use no hidden files, we do not require files scattered around in every directory, and no helper files will ever silently appear on your network shares or external hard drives.

Path Finder 4.8 will store its visual per-folder settings in a centralized SQLite database located in ~/Library/Application Support/Path Finder/CoreData. Its size is very small - mine currently weighs just about 150 KB.

Core Data turned out to be really great for our needs, although Steve had to spend some time hacking away at it due to the fact that it only handles basic data types like numbers, strings and data. We had to add our own custom code to handle the unsupported objects like NSColor.

Cool, but what does it all mean for me?

Imagine the following: you can now have your Pictures folder in Icon View, with a special background and the info pane below the icon preview showing you image dimensions and sorted by date created. You can have your Home directory in List View with Documents and Desktop folder triangles always expanded. And you can browse the rest of your hard drive in Column View. Sounds great, isn’t it?

And the best part

This upgrade contains everything — it has an important UI overhaul, a major feature, and a ton of bug fixes and other improvements that would perfectly qualifies it as a major release. But we decided not to go down that road. We’re making it a free upgrade for all existing Path Finder 4 users!

Over the past 18 months Path Finder 4 customers have enjoyed some great updates for free, including:

The transition to Intel / Universal Binary
Undo support
Operations as root
Reload button
Tabs enhancements
Subversion plugin, and now -
Per folder settings

We’re at the last stages of internal beta testing phase now, and if everything goes as planned, the update should be ready very soon. Stay tuned!