AT&T Unlock

Posted on April 13, 2012 by Rick Lobrecht

Like many others with a 2+ year old AT&T iPhone (a 3Gs in my case) I was pretty excited by the news that AT&T would be allowing off-contract iPhones to be SIM-unlocked.  No, I don’t plan on jumping ship to T-Mobile, and no, I don’t plan on using pre-paid SIM cards while I’m traveling.  Realistically, I just thought that it would add extra flexibility to my phone when I decide to replace it.

The process was fairly painless.  On Monday, I connected to AT&T’s Business Support web chat system (my phone is on a company contract.)  It was clearly the first time the support analyst had done it, but quickly enough I was given a case # and told that I would be emailed with instructions in a few days.

Today, Friday, rolled around, and I got an email from AT&T with instructions.

Basically, the instructions said to back up my phone, and then restore it to factory conditions.  It did have to redownload the iOS image for 5.1, but after about 20 minutes my phone was rebooting and restoring.  A few minutes later, and voila

The next step was to restore from the backup just taken. After restoring from backup, I had to add a new passcode (required by my employer.)  It is now reinstalling all my apps.  On 11 of 122, I wonder how long this will take.

 

 
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Merry Christmas

Posted on December 24, 2011 by Rick Lobrecht

 

To Yours and You, Christmas Merry.

 

 
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Twitter

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Rick Lobrecht

I’m not a big Twitter guy.  I only follow 75 accounts.  Between 6:44pm last night, and now, I’ve received 63 tweets.  43 of them are about Steve – a whopping 68%. Including a tribute from Pearland local Mexican restaurant Gringos.

 

 
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Where were you?

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Rick Lobrecht

I’m not the biggest Obama fan on the planet, but I felt his statement about Steve was very nice.  One bit of it really spoke to me:

The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented.

I was sitting at my desk in my home office, working on my MacBook, watching an episode of Haven on my iPad, when I heard the familiar Tri-tone of a text message.

You can’t help but wonder if this is going to be one of those moments that people ask you about years from now.

Where were you, when you heard Steve Jobs had passed?

 
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Mr. Jobs, you will be missed.

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Rick Lobrecht

The internet has exploded with the news that Apple founder Steve Jobs is dead.  As I said weeks ago when he resigned, this is not unexpected, but still a bit of a shock.

Can you imagine the mood in Apple land yesterday?  Surely the management team knew how close it was, and yet they still delivered their usual magical show.  Can you imagine how it would have been had this happened Monday?

Your legacy is in good hands, but you will still be missed.

I wonder how many black turtlenecks will be worn tomorrow in his honor?

 

 
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Why, Microsoft? Why?

Posted on September 18, 2011 by Rick Lobrecht

Tonight, my Mac prompted me to update Office 2011.  I knew it was coming,  so I told it to go ahead and download the update.  Finally the package started running, and went through its normal thing.  After a minute or so, I get the following pop-up:

WTF?  Seriously?  Is this a Windows box?  Is there really some shared resource between Firefox and Office?

 
Posted in Apple, Mac, Microsoft, Office | Comments Off

Buy Apple

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Rick Lobrecht

image from Apple.com

Yesterday, Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple Inc.  Apple posted his very thoughtful resignation letter to their media site.

To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

Steve

Although not unexpected, it was still a bit of a shock.  As Steve recommended, Apple immediately announced Tim Cook as the new CEO.  Tim has been acting as CEO since Steve took his most recent medical leave of absence.  Many of our recent conversations have been around how they have been able to build these fantastic devices which no longer cost more than the competition.  Tim Cook is behind all that supply chain optimization.

My first reaction was that it was too early. I thought for sure we would see an iPhone 4Gs/5 (depending on the rumor you believe) before this came official. But now that I’ve had twelve hours to think about it, and I’ve been able to see what Apple has done in after hours trading, this makes sense.

Apple isn’t a single man. The next iPhone is in the bag.  Their next two to three years of development is detailed out.  Their next five years of strategy is set.  Tim can drive Apple to execute. Jony and team will continue to design fantastic stuff.   Phil and team will continue to understand who their customers are, way better than the pundits do. Scott and team will continue to deliver fantastic mobile hardware and software.

Cringely makes a good point.  We don’t know who the next visionary is.  But at this point, we don’t need to.  The visionary will be revealed, and Apple will continue to success.

If you believe in Apple, like I do, today might be a good day to buy Apple stock.  It’s currently trading down 2% from yesterday (at $368 a share), and seems to be in a freefall.  It’s still way up from a small dip it took two months ago ($315 on June 20th), and has done nothing but grow since the recession hit in late 2008 (looks like a low of $85 in early March 2009.)

data from Google.com

I think I’m buying, its just a matter of waiting until the bottom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
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Google+

Posted on August 21, 2011 by Rick Lobrecht

I’ve been experimenting with Google+.  You can find me here.  Its interesting.  I like the Circles idea, although I’m one of those types with a bunch of FaceBook lists.  The rest of it feels more like Twitter, with more than 140 characters.  Maybe that’s because few people I know are actually on it, and I’m just seeing public content in my streams.

If you need an invite, you can get one here.

 

 
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Scrolling Direction?

Posted on August 21, 2011 by Rick Lobrecht

I’ve been trying to get used to “Natural” scrolling, as introduced with Lion.  It makes perfect sense to scroll “naturally” on a touch device.  And as Apple seems to want everyone to use touch devices (Magic Trackpad, Magic Mouse, trackpad) the change makes perfect sense.  Unless, of course, you use a Windows PC all day at work, like I do.

On both my Mac, and my PC, I use a mouse with a scroll wheel.  I do often use the two finger scroll on the trackpad, but just as often, I will scroll with the scroll wheel.  I’ve finally gotten used to scrolling in the natural direction, and am now finding myself scrolling in the wrong direction at work.

I thought to myself, why don’t I just change the scrolling direction for the mouse, but not the trackpad.  Assuming that works for my brain, I’ll use the same scrolling direction on the Mac and the PC (with the wheel) and natural scrolling on the trackpad.

I head into System Preferences to make the switch, and all looks good.

The Trackpad preference says “When using gestures to scroll or navigate, move content in the direction of finger movement”.  Ok, let’s leave that checked.

The Mouse preference says “Move content in the direction of finger movement when scrolling or navigating”.  Let’s leave that unchecked.  Double checking the Trackpad preference, and it stayed checked.

Unfortunately, when quitting System Preferences, they align.  It seems that despite the difference in wording, these are in fact a single preference, and you can only have one.

Back to square one.  If only I could use a Mac at work, all would be solved.

 

 

 
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Scanner Woes under Lion – Fixed!

Posted on August 20, 2011 by Rick Lobrecht

I upgraded my MacBook to Lion when it came out (ok, I waited a week.)  For the first time last night, I tried to use our scanner, a Canon CanoScan LIDE 500F.  I restarted.  I Repaired Permissions.  I tried with different applications.  I tried as an Admin user. I finally happened upon a post indicating that what I considered a last resort worked for a user, a full Lion reinstall.  I wasn’t ready to go there, but I did try something similar.  I removed the drivers, and reinstalled.  Canon says they are for Snow Leopard, but they worked.  The drivers are here.  You can’t pick 10.6 as the Mac OSX version, you just have to pick Mac OSX and then its the latest (weird.)

Interestingly enough, I still don’t see the Scan tab in System Preferences.

 

 
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