How does this all fit in with Apple’s new release of IOS 5 and their new iCloud structure? The quick answer is that Apple never planned for it…. as a matter of fact, they never even planned for Windows XP to be around to support it… so for those of you who hoped you could interconnect all three together (as it’s so well advertised) – you can “almost” forget it.

The reason I say almost is because, although Apple is on record as not supporting Windows XP with the iCloud, I managed to actually find a “bit” of a work around for it. And that is what I am going to share with you today.

The workaround information is courtesy of a You-Tube video out there if you are interested…which I’ve embedded below. It can be found at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bwc-fioJB7o

The only thing that connected with the iCloud on my system was Outlook Express ( I usually use Thunderbird, but Apple only syncs with Outlook. ) make sure that it us installed and configured to work with your mobile.me email before proceeding. Otherwise the solution will hang looking for something to sync with. You may or may not have other Windows applications that might work with iCloud, but I did not and so I can’t confirm if they will work or not.

Some Important Pre-Requisites

You will need a RAR unarchiver like WinRAR. WinRAR IZARC, which is free to use/evaluate for 30 days and can be downloaded here: www.izarc.org

You will also need a special editor, called the ORCA MSI editor. It’s free, but hard to find. You can find a copy here: www.technipages.com/download-orca-msi-editor.html

Once the prerequisites are installed you are ready to proceed…

How to configure XP to work with the iCloud

Download iCloud for Windows from the Apple site me.com/move and ignore their cautions about needing Visa or Windows7

Right click on the package you downloaded in the previous step and extract all files using WinRar. You should have 6 or so files.

Depending upon your version of Windows (32 or 64 bit) right click on the appropriate version of iCloud.msi and select “Edit with Orca”

A Window will open. Left Click on the “Launch Condition” in the left hand column

Then in the Right column click on the second line that says “VersionNT>=600 [ProductNameLoc” requires that your computer is running Windows Vista or newer”

Then click on “Cut Row” and then hit save ( looks like a little floppy ) and exit the program.

Now you are ready to install iCloud on your XP machine. To install it, just open the iCloud msi file that you just edited.

And that’s it – everything “should” work… at least in my case my email did – LOL. Good luck – let me know how things turn out!

Everyone who has looked at the history of Apple – in particular the Mac have learned about how Steve Jobs went to the  Xerox Parc laboratory in Palo Alto California and learned about a piece of hardware called a “mouse” and a user interface that used graphical windows that could be moved, closed, opened, re-sized, etc. Essentially not using a Command Line as everyone was back then with the Apple II and the IBM PC. The result was the Mac….

Here’s a great dramatization showing that event. www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u70CgBr-OI from a movie I really love… “Pirates of Silicon Valley.”

Here’s an actual news expose, which shows almost the same thing…. www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYkZUu9MUxs&feature=related

Steve Jobs loves to quote Picaso, who said: “Good artists copy, Great artists steal….”

Both of the above sort of infers that Apple might have stolen the idea, but in reality, according to Marc Bernstein (currently in charge of Xerox Parc) Apple shares were exchanged in return for the visit and demonstration…. and the rest, as they say, is legend and history.

Well I was reading one of my ZDNET news feeds today, about how the newspapers or news in “Print” is being slowly transitioned over to tablets and in doing so, may still live on. One of the amazing things, that I had not seen before (that I can recall – some of the people in the video look eerily familiar ) was an effort by the Knight-Ridder News organization to try and visualize what and where the future of newspapers were going.

In 1994, note the year, they put together a video simulating how people could use a piece of technology that they called The Tablet and showed what it might look and work like…. The similarities are beyond stunning!

I had a tablet computer some time around that time. It actually was a combination book/tablet in that the keyboard could be removed and just the tablet part could be used with a pen. I think it was called the Concerto.

It was no where near as thin or light and weighed a ton! It also wasn’t color! Nor was it any where near as capable as what is shown in the concept video (ie this technology didn’t exist back then, the functionality that you see is completely simulated).

There is no doubt in my mind that this was in fact the birth of the Apple iPad…. some 16 years earlier. Watch the video, it’s 13 minutes long (worth every second) and be amazed…..

They actually made an iPhone App, but it is pretty boring, it looks like it was designed for the original iPhone. It is just a list of news articles that one can click on to read, how sad that somewhere along the road, that after all that effort and research their vision and dream was lost. What an advantage they might have had…. similar to Xerox actually. Funny that….

Still I have to thank them for coming up with the idea, and I am sure Steve is too…..

Enjoy!

Unfortunately, due to the fact that I am not as active on the site as I would like to be AND that there is a LOT of garbage out there, I have to crank the security on this site way up.

As a result many of your comments, as innocent as they appear to me, don’t get through to my ok-ing them. I’ve pulled what I thought were the most valid of the bunch out of the cesspool and it is possible that there are a few other’s that I have missed. If I did, I again apologize.

This all has to do with the garbage out on the web these days, the spam robots out there are ferocious! When I first set up this site, it was literally buried by them. I would get hundreds of garbage replies a day and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep up with manually deleting the stuff out there. My only recourse was to tighten things up as much as possible.

Unfortunately, this usually causes any quick one liners to get put in the spam filter, but why the others about Gipp Forster or the CherryPal fell into it boggles my mind, it could be the ip address or it could be something else. I really don’t know.

I will try to take a much closer look in the spam sewer in future – in hopes of rescuing other valid comments, but until then, let me again apologize for missing your comments. They really REALLY are appreciated. Even if the computer doesn’t like them….

Rick

Don’t get me wrong, iTunes does a great job of keeping track of music, pictures and any app’s that you may have installed from their store…. but it’s the little things that it ignores.

You know, like configuration files!

Here is the set up…

I have an iPad and an iPhone and my machine runs Ubuntu Linux.

It was just recently upgraded to Ubuntu Natty Narwhal.

To “sync” my iDevices with iTunes i run a Windows XP environment inside of Virtualbox ( an emulator program that lets you run a different computer inside your regular computer. )

Here is a long and very painful story made a lot shorter… and if it sounds confusing, it’s because it is…. I’m still scratching my head over much of it.

After quite a few “issues” with the upgrade to Natty ( many things no longer worked as they should have – and this is yet another rant/reason as to why Linux isn’t ready for “regular users”! ) I finally got, or so I thought, everything working together. Or so I thought.

My iPad was due for a backup after putting a lot of new apps and information on it and so I flashed up my iTunes within Windows within Virtualbox within Ubuntu and after a very Very long time. A backup – I use that word lightly now…. was created. Note that the iPad connects to the computer via a USB port, this is important for later….

After which I was notified that a minor update for my iPad was available. So I said “sure”…. such a short word to lead to such a long and painful process….

iTunes does an odd thing when it does an update, it appears to first wipe out what is on the iPad ( the Operating System )before installing the update ( instead of overwriting )…. at least that is what it looks like from my end. Anyways all went well until the time came to install the new and improved “minor” fix.

Virtualbox, although it saw that the iPad was connected, refused to mount it ( make it available ) so that it could be actually used by iTunes…. matter of fact it refused to mount anything via USB at all except for my USB connected printers!

This took hours to track down and fix. From what I was able to discern, Ubuntu in it’s “non-commerical”  wisdom decided to replace the usual Virtualbox with Virtualbox-OSE. I’m still not sure what the difference is, nor do I care, but I stumbled across several other articles about how the OSE version won’t let you use USB connections…..  umm… but….. sigh…

I finally gave up and purged everything Virtualbox from the system ( sudo apt-get remove –purge virtualb* ) after which I went directly to Oracle’s ( used to be Sun for those in the know ) Virtualbox website and downloaded their latest non-OSE version of Virtualbox.

It too complained about not being able to support USB devices unless I added myself to the virtualbox group ( which I had previously done, but it may have been deleted by either the upgrade or the purge… sorry not sure about that one ) AND that I install something called an Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack. Which is a completely new thing for me…. but I did and it worked!

Unfortunately…..

Remember that bit I mentioned about wiping the software before installing the minor upgrade? Well, once I got iTunes back up and running and looking at the iPad it said… and I paraphrase with sarcasm added …. “So sorry, but your iPad has to have it’s original software reinstalled in order to work with iTunes….. sigh.

So I did that, and then it automatically went into a Sync mode  and started reinstalling everything that was missing from my last backup and after several hours….. I had my iPad back….

Well….. sort of. As it would seem that all of the configuration files – like those for connecting to my WiFi. My email logins, all my news feeds that fed all my different programs etc etc etc. Were all MISSING! I have to redo all of that, and remember all my news sites from memory…..

Oh and before I forget, it took ALL of my apps and placed them one by one on the iPad…. All the folders that I had them organized in were gone as well….. It took me three hours just to recreate and shrink down stuff back into folders! All my news feeds….. well I may never get all of them back!

So, I don’t know why I was able to connect with my USB cables “for a while” using something that supposedly wouldn’t let me connect at all. And why Apple in it’s wisdom does updates the way it does boggles my mind.

But I can guaranty that there are a LOT of people out there who will be as “ticked” and as shocked as I am when they one day discover that the SYNC that iTunes does only Syncs what Apple thinks is important – the apps and doesn’t do a thing to protect your system from loss of configuration data! They really gotta fix that!

I’ve also done a fair bit of searching trying to find an app or any other utility that will let one backup EVERYTHING on the iPad/iPhone/etc. And so far, I haven’t found one that I would dare to try – kinda sad isn’t it

I’ll let you know if ever I do, and if you find or are using something that works for you – let me know – PLEASE!

I did a quick drop in to the store today, to check out a piece of technology that they “used” to be good at. Door/proximity alarm systems…. they used to have oodles of stuff like that. Of course they used to have oodles of things “technical” and geeky…. but not any more and it’s getting worse.

A bit of background, my wife’s office is moving, and they can’t see the front door  ( which is a little odd, but there you have it ) so she asked me to find a mat or some time of system that would ring and alert them as to when someone had entered the premises. To me this is a n0-brainer, there are TONS of things out there that will do that for her. Heck Radio Sha…. errr the Source used to have one in every store and tons of them in the back…. I told her I’d check them out and get back to her.

So I dropped into my local y0u-know-what-by-now, and went to the back where all the cool things used to be…. it’s a LOT and I mean LOT smaller than it used to be… every time I go in there it seems to shrink….

As an aside, every time I do go into that section of  “you-know-what” it seems all the sales clerks instantly go on break! It happened again today, there were 3 uniformed people in the store and as soon as I went into the “technical” area, they all went in the back and I could hear them arguing about how….. no no I’m on break right now…. I mean come on, I’m not in there THAT often for them to recognize me…. In reality though, it’s because NONE of them ( all in their early 20′s or earlier I think ) know nothing about that sort of  “stuff”. All they know is how to sell cell phones and maybe TV’s…. but I digress.

Eventually, one poor soul comes out of the back and walks right past me ( I’m the only one in the store by the way. )  I finally grab his attention after the third try and tell him I’m looking for their proximity or door alarm systems. He looks at me, curls his lip ( I kid you not… ) and says, “Nahhh don’ sell that”…. Suffice to say I voiced my incredulity and told them that they used to sell tons of them, and they were well stocked in that area…

I small glimmer ( but only in one eye ) comes on and he says “Oh… ma’be here…” and points to a discount bin ( 1 ft by 1 ft ) hidden under a larger discount bin, in it held the remains of their once mighty line of products.  Thankfully there was one proximity alarm left hidden amongst the dozen or so spare alarm parts.

I mentioned how unbelievable it was that this was all that was left of what they used to carry, he kinda shrugged his shoulders and said ” They don’ sell” and walked away!! I snapped back that the reason was that they were only interested in selling cell phones any more! Man I was ticked on several levels.

I suspect within a couple years “The Source” will be renamed “The Cell Phone Source” because they will certainly soon not be worth going into for anything else! What a pity …

On the other hand, it looks like “Radio Shack” in the states has learned it’s lesson ( hopefully ) and is asking its’ clientèle and people in general, what products they think they should be carrying to “re-become” the DIY ( Do It Yourself ) store….. one can only hope they will succeed AND once again come back to Canada.

Time will tell I guess…