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It’s fun to speculate about the future. There’s no way anyone can truly know what’s coming. Apple has their plans on the drawing board for the next several years, yet beyond that it’s anyone’s guess what’s coming. We can speculate based on the trends of current technology and certainly there is a big bunch of Apple-watchers creating rumors around the clock.
At the moment there is a lot of buzz about the Apple Netbook, or lack of it. The rumors seem to be strobing between a big iPod Touch kind of device and a small, lightweight laptop. In the case of the iPod Touch ‘netbook’, we’re talking about a touchscreen device that’s big enough to comfortably read type for long periods, can display movies and uses the iPhone OS. Apple could repurpose the iPhone OS for this purpose and get into the game as the future of publishing seems to be going towards the electronic model. There will always be physical books but the growth market is in the electronic model with no physical product to be built, shipped or stored.
The Amazon Kindle is selling like hotcakes, so if Apple wants to get into this market, it’s way past time.
I haven’t purchased an iPhone or iPod Touch and I don’t know if I will. I am leary of devices where the corporate minds are telling me what I can and cannot use it for and Apple clearly has their big corporate thumb on the application space on the iPhone.
So, let’s stipulate: I want a general purpose computing device in a handheld or slightly larger interface. At the biggest perhaps the size of a hard-bound book. I don’t want to use chiclet keys, so touch-screen typing is good, but a USB port for a foldable keyboard or mouse addition is extra special.
Internet access is absolutely necessary plus 3G or 4G connection means I can get online basically anywhere there is a cell signal using those protocols.
I’d be happy with the iPhone OS if it let me use general applications at will, so in my perfect world, there is the sweetly designed user interface like the iPhone OS plus the ability to run anything I choose. I’d prefer to run OS X and/or Open Source code, so the OS has to be a full version of OS X, not one that only runs iPhone code.
Bluetooth gives me the ability to wear a headset and communicate without wires. Hey, add some speech functions and I can voice command my box to answer Skype calls and play my music library.
So, what’s my perfect netbook?
- iPhone interface, full OS X under the hood
- Ability to run OS X applications and install at will
- Small footprint, no bigger than a hardbound book
- USB port for external keyboards/mouse
- Touchscreen typing
- Wireless Internet plus 3G/4G
- iTunes store access, perhaps Amazon electronic publishing
- Video playback
- Bluetooth
- Under $500
Guess that about sums it up. Good luck Apple. We’re all waiting for the next killer hardware to pop up on the horizon.

Yes, it’s frustrating when the Internet isn’t working. The entire world grinds to a halt, the wheels of commerce come to a screeching stop and we all stand around in wonder scratching our heads…what did we do before there was an Internet?

Let’s hazard a guess…something on your system is preventing you from accessing an Internet service and to you that looks like the Internet isn’t working.

Commonly, that’s email or web browsing. Most of the computer using population just aren’t interested in the gears in the machine, just those two main functions, so when they do not work, the Internet is not working.

Here’s today’s trouble shooting exercise from a post on a forum:

My dual processor iMac is running OS 10.4.10. I just changed from a
dialup Net connection (a 2 Wire DSL and wireless modem with built-in
router) to DSL. My G4 and G3 go online through this unit no problem,
but the iMac won’t connect. I have been over the settings with two
Bell Sympatico reps and two Mac wizards, and the settings seem good,
but I can’t connect. The network panel in System Prefs shows the IP
address, and I am apparently online, but can’t get anywhere with
Safari or FireFox or Eudora. Switching everything off for an hour
doesn’t help.

What could be going on?

Below is my answer. Please note I didn’t read the post too accurately and assumed that his machine was alone and not able to get online. The problematical iMac is actually on a network where two other systems are able to get online and his cannot, which changes things a bit. Nevertheless, my response is a decent troubleshooting blueprint for these types of problems.

My response:

Number one: you didn’t mention what your IP address is. I’ll make the assumption it’s a 192.168 type number.

That’s important to know. If it’s a 169.xxx.xxx.xxx, it’s an IP address but not one that actually will work on the Internet. It’s more of a placeholder address that tells you the connection isn’t really hooked up, meaning your iMac isn’t successfully negotiating a connection with the 2Wire on the network layer.

So, you’ve got a 192.xxx.xxx.xxx or a 10.1.xxx.xxx type address. These are network numbers that routers give out inside a network so you don’t have to use a precious static address.

Here’s the diagnostic procedure as I do it. You’re hooked up and you’ve got an address given by the router to your machine. It’s probably a private number, not a public/static IP #. You may well have access to the configuration of the router/gateway device. If so, go into the router configuration page using a browser. The address is usually something like 192.168.1.1. If you don’t know what the 2Wire address is, look in the network panel of system preferences, go to advanced, and click on the tcp/ip tab. if you are hooked up wirelessly, you will have to access the wireless configuration, if by ethernet, then the ethernet configuration.

Once in there, you find out what that device’s gateway is. Your iMac’s gateway is the 2Wire’s IP #. The 2Wire’s network configuration defines the IP address your machine has.
Your 2Wire has a gateway as well. That machine’s configuration defines what the address of your 2Wire is insofar as its connection the Internet is concerned.

Okay, so now you’ve got the IP # of the 2Wire’s gateway router, the next device upstream from it, two hops from your iMac.

Go into the iMac’s utilities folder and look for an application called NetTools. I’m not on my Mac at the moment, so I can’t recall the exact name, but it starts with Net. It might be Network Utility.

In Network Utility is a tab called ‘Ping’. Go in there. Ping the address of the 2Wire’s gateway device. You should be able to ping it successfully. You can also ping the WAN/Internet address of the 2Wire. That’s the static IP this device shows to the world.

If you can ping the 2Wire static IP and not the upstream gateway, there’s your breakdown. It may be that your 2Wire is acting as a bridge rather than a router, but that’s uncommon.

If you can ping the upstream gateway, then all is golden as far as IP traffic is concerned. Here’s another IP # to ping: 206.13.28.12.

That’s the IP # of SBC’s DNS server. I used to ping it all the time when I was setting up people’s routers. I’m inside a public wireless system and they are blocking pings so I can’t confirm it works, but I’m certain it should work.

DNS is a phone book computers refer to in order to match names to IP #’s. When you type in an address, the computer checks with a DNS server and gets that machine’s IP #. A common breakdown is that DNS doesn’t work. IP traffic is working great, your machine IS on the Internet, it’s just that when you type in a domain name the computer gets a big null signal and can’t resolve the name to an IP# it can start talking to.

It’s as if you picked up a phone and wanted to call Joe and didn’t know the phone number and the directory service wasn’t answering. The phone line is working perfectly well but you can’t place the call without the number.

That may well be what’s happening to you.

I like to use OpenDNS name servers for a variety of reasons. Your ISP probably has assigned their name servers in the 2Wire’s configuration and it’s automagically given to your iMac to do DNS lookups. You can change this in the Network panel of the System Preferences. Just type it in under the name server box. I would send you a screen shot but I’m not on my Mac. Open Network prefs, go to advanced, go to the tcp/ip tab and it’s down at the bottom under name servers or DNS servers. Blank box.

Type in
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

Yes, one on each line. Click apply button. You are now using OpenDNS for your name service. If you get nervous, just delete the numbers and the system goes back to using the 2Wire’s settings.

You should be able to ping these two numbers (OpenDNS servers) successfully. If you cannot, then DNS will not work, the problem lies elsewhere. You can also try pinging your ISP’s DNS servers. You should be able to see them in the 2Wire’s configuration setup or your ISP can tell you what they are.

If you can’t ping a DNS, you will be having problems. If you are pinging systems out on the Internet, and pinging the DNS, but still not getting web pages, you can go into Network Utilities and do a lookup. That’s where the system does a DNS resolution. Type in www.yahoo.com and hit the lookup button. If you don’t get a reply with the IP of that server, yet you can ping DNS and ping Internet machines, then something is really awry. At least you will have some clue what’s going on but the above scenario is really really rare. If you can ping DNS servers, you should be able to do a successful lookup. Use the OpenDNS numbers to ensure your ISP’s DNS isn’t screwed up somehow.

That’s pretty much it. You break down the issue into parts and solve each one separately. First is connectivity, second is DNS.

End of post.

Hopefully that’s a good explanation of basic network troubleshooting insofar as Internet connections are concerned. There’s a lot more under the hood, but 95% of the resolutions to these types of problems start with the above working steps.

And if things are still not working, call a Mac-Tech!

It’s all very well to have a new laptop at the wireless cafe. but what do you do if you have files at home on another computer that you want to acccess? Drag them around on a USB drive maybe, or email them to yourself and then download your email with the files onto your other computer? This lacks elegance and true utility. There’s another way to have your files available that is a great way to work. Use online storage services that give you a virtual hard drive for storage. Here’s a great solution for Macintosh. It’s called Dropbox and is an exceedingly easy to have a folder get synchronized to a server and then synchronized with  a folder on other computers. Available in OS X, Windows and Linux flavors. If you are working on a document in a wireless cafe, just save it to your Dropbox folder. The contents are automatically synced with the server version. Then when you get home, your Dropbox folder on that machine syncs with the server version and all is grand. Same versions all around. The server storage makes it relatively easy to keep track of your documents that you are working on from various platforms. You can even access the same data via a web browser and download it locally. Great idea. Free for up to 2 gigs of storage. Todd says, check it out.

Today is going to be a short post. I’m having too much fun on my Linux laptop to do much on my Mac. It’s not like the Linux laptop is a total replacement. It’s still Linux and a little clunky under the hood in terms of usability. If I had a choice between a Linux box or an Apple box on an island, I’d take the Apple hands down. In the meantime, it’s always fun to explore new things. Today’s lesson is connecting across a network to my Mac and doing printing.

Both Vista and Linux have picked up the shared printer on the Mac and printed to it immediately, a welcome development from previous incarnations of the Mac OS where print sharing was often difficult, undependable and prone to breaking.

One attribute of Macs that goes unremarked in the general media: Macs can now run virtual machines of any caliber, Vista, XP, Linux and possibly others. These systems run concurrently with OS X and their performance is excellent, especially when compared to the emulators of the PPC days.

The difference is that Intel-based Macs run the same hardware on the chipset as PC’s running Vista and Linux. For all intents and purposes, the computer is a PC. Apple provides a free environment called Boot Camp which allows the user to boot up just like a typical PC in Windows or Linux. The virtual machine packages allow the alternative OS to run at the same time as OS X inside of its own window or in a manner that lets the other OS place windows in and among OS X windows. It’s quite the trick.

Practically speaking, virtual machine technology means any fervent Apple user can run Windows applications in their native environment so that they run perfectly. The speed of virtual environments is great. One can hardly tell the application is in a virtual environment as things just move along like they would on a native PC. If you have that Windows software you have to run for a business application, you can do it easily. The virtual machines have complete access to the hardware and see USB devices, printers, and other external hardware and services the same as if the OS were on its own box.

The older emulation packages ran an emulation of an Intel chipset on a Power PC microchip. Because the instruction sets had to go through the interpreter, they were greatly slowed down. Emulation software never really made a big dent in the market due to the slowness of the programs running on it on even the fastest Macs.

Another excellent development is the free virtual machine application created by Sun. Instead of having to fork over dollars for Parallels, you can download Virtual Box from Sun, install Windows and be up and running in no time.