FaceTime calls via URL

This is another one with a very narrow audience (welcome Googlers!) -- To do FaceTime calls using your iPhone from the command line or from a script (on the Mac), use this URL: tel:%28<number> e.g. tel:%285555555555 At the command line, you can do it with: open 'tel:%285555555555' From AppleScript, you can actually tell FaceTime to initiate the call:

  open location "tel:%285555555555"
  delay 2
  tell application "System Events" to click button "Call" of window 1 of application process "FaceTime"

For everyone else, if you have calling from your Mac set up, just for fun, go to the Safari address bar and type "tel:%28" (no quotes) (UPDATE:  I was missing the ":") and then a phone number. It should bring up FaceTime and offer to call the number. Enjoy!

State of the nation

Reasonably good description of the state of the nation from Harper's Weekly:

It is a gloomy moment in the history of our country. Not in the lifetime of most men has there been so much grave and deep apprehension. Never has the future seemed so uncalculable as at this time. The domestic situation is in chaos. Our dollar is weak throughout the world. Prices are so high as to be utterly impossible. The political caldron seethes and bubbles with uncertainty. Russia hangs as usual like a cloud, dark and silent, upon the horizon. It is a solemn moment. Of our troubles, no man can see the end.

Harper's Weekly, October 1857

via Hugh Pinnock at BYU Speeches

Heartbleed

In case you've been living in a hole for the last couple days, there's been a massive bug found in the open-source (free) server software that handles secure connections. For the lay-person, the software behind the padlock you see in your browser:

... had a bug that would happily offer up chunks of computer memory if someone sent it the right type of message over the network, with no record of having done it.

Here's XKCD's attempt at an explanation.

Some Q&A:

What does that mean to me?

We're not sure that anyone knew about this before it was found. Maybe NSA, maybe Chinese or Eastern Europeans, or internet crooks, or maybe nobody...

But if someone did know, in the best (most likely) case, they got very little if any of your info. In the worst case, they got your username and password and any other personal information from the websites (and other servers) you've logged into in the past 2 years.

How does this compare to past security bugs?

Catastrophic: 11 out of 10.

How will I know if they got my info?

This is the best question, nobody knows. Your best bet is to check your bank accounts to make sure there aren't any strange charges, check other accounts you log into to make sure there isn't any strange activity, then do the steps below.

Note, not all sites are affected, only the ones using the open-source version of the software (hurray for free and open source).

Is it fixed? What do I need to do?

Check the list of sites here, and reset passwords on any sites that are affected. My short list of sites using the affected software: Facebook-YES, Pinterest-YES, Apple-NO (yay), Amazon-NO (yay), Google-YES, Microsoft-NO, Yahoo-YES, Gmail-YES, Paypal/Target/Walmart-NO, Intuit/TurboTax-YES (doh!), most banks-NO, USAA-YES (doh!).

Then check your financial accounts to make sure there's nothing fishy going on. But you should be doing this regularly anyway (given that some e-commerce websites are zero-margin stores selling you cheap stuff just so they can get your credit card number to sell to crooks).

Oh, and be sure to use different passwords on different websites, and don't make them easily guessed. Apple's iCloud Keychain is a decent/free option for managing passwords for Mac users (though oddly it doesn't work with all websites, incl. Google). 1Password is a better option, but expensive (and I hate having to pay upgrade fees every year, feels like a subscription!).

So is the internet broken now? Should I stop trusting computers completely? Seems like we're always finding bugs like this...

No, the internet's not broken. But are people happy about this? Definitely not. We all hate changing passwords and not knowing who has what information about us.

What this means is that software isn't perfect, and memory bugs are pretty hard to recognize and track down. It may also mean that NSA is really sneaky about this kind of stuff, but the story sounds a little more innocent than that. On the plus side, anyone who knew about this is probably either chasing bank accounts much bigger than yours, or not interested in money...

But the same way armies learn where soldiers need more armor, the software-development communities learn how to better protect against not only this exploit, but this type of exploit, so I wouldn't expect us to have problems with these kinds of bugs for long. Coders are now looking for them, and stand to make a name for themselves finding them.

Hang in there, we'll get through this.

Gnuplot, Mountain Lion, and Malloc errors

A quick tip for google searchers:

If your Mac crashes when exiting gnuplot, or you can't interact with your X11/XQuartz plots, make sure you have Xcode updated, then try installing from sources with this command:

  sudo ./configure --with-readline=builtin

... instead of the usual "sudo ./configure".

Getting a new iOS device?

Just a quick tip for anyone getting a new iOS device (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch) for Christmas:

Everyone in a single family should use the same iTunes Store account (Settings -> iTunes and App Stores), but each individual should have their own iCloud account (Settings -> iCloud).

That ensures that you all get to share the same media (videos, songs and apps), but the separated iCloud accounts lets you each have your own contacts lists, calendars, reminders, etc.

Many people make the mistake of all signing into the same iCloud account and quickly find out that their contacts and calendars, etc., all sync up and make a mess.

The harder problem is if the device is for a child, since the minimum age for iCloud accounts is 13. I can't find any recommendations for this on the net, so my best guess is to lock down the phone with restrictions, limit Safari, iTunes, iBookstore, installing apps, and explicit language -- all with a passcode that only you know. And don't install YouTube, Google Search, Vimeo, and any other video- or web-searching apps. If you want them to be able to watch videos, consider Netflix' "Just for kids", or WeetWoo (an app that's basically a directory of clean YouTube videos). You'll want to monitor your kids carefully too, remember my post about allowing a crippled mind to poison itself? Lots of mental and emotional poison on the internet, and people can be pretty awful about discerning it, especially kids.

Merry Christmas!

Random thoughts

My life is officially full — my inbox-of-life has not stopped growing since my son was born. The stack of unanswered emails, unfinished projects, and unread magazines are all simultaneously growing despite my best efforts.

What does one do in this situation? Prioritize! Be sure to do the most important stuff first. As one would expect, blogging is a ways down on that list...

But I've had a bunch of things on my mind lately and I'd like to get them out:

• The iPhone 5 - Taller, lighter, faster — a miracle of modern engineering. Everything I loved about my old phone, and a bit better.
• Apple - One of Steve Jobs' earliest mantras was that a brand is about trust. Apple under him never traded that trust for money, and the current management looks to carry on that legacy. There's an example for other companies (and individuals whose name is their brand) to follow.
• Age - Anybody else notice that they're getting older?
• Brain - Turns out I got one of the heaviest doses of anyone affected by the CT overdose problem. What are the odds that I get a migraine that looks like a stroke, and my first and only CT scan is an overdose? I've learned that getting an X-ray is like trying to see what's inside your car by putting it in front of a large white sheet, and shooting it full of holes with a machine gun, then looking at where the bullets made it through to hit the sheet. X-rays can burn or kill cells — I had really weird effects for weeks afterward, the effect of burning all that tissue. Cancer can happen when an X-ray happens to hit a piece of DNA just right to mess it up without killing it. Fortunately, I just had an MRI and it came back clean — no signs of brain cancer yet. Good news, though most cells in your brain grow very slowly, so I may have cancer, but might not know it for 10 or more years. By that time, we may have cancer figured out.
• Obama - Well, I think I was right. Really complicated healthcare reform was passed, but my healthcare costs continue to climb rapidly. Jobs, overall economy, deficits, foreign relations — I mostly hear blame of Bush and other excuses for the current state of affairs. He got Osama, but lost a few planes we didn't know existed. Other than that, most of the news I see about him relate to him hanging out with celebrities.
• Romney seems troubled. If I were him, I'd feel the same way. As Scott Adams says, "the electorate is full of idiots", and in order to win he has to tailor his remarks to whatever group he's talking to, which when taken as a whole looks almost like a different person talking. That's got to be stressful for a very principled person. But I get the feeling that most people don't want a principled person in office because they've come to distrust all principle. I hope he wins, he's obviously a man who knows how to accomplish his goals, and has the determination to do so, and has an amazing track record. But I also don't expect the election to even be close.

Carriers discourage iPhone

More evidence that the carriers discourage people from buying iPhones. Not surprising, their margins on Android and Windows phones are much higher.

Incidentally, the news keeps reporting that Apple has been losing ground to Android in the past couple months. Don't they know that Apple announces their new phones every year in the fall?

Apple vs. Amazon

Can Gruber be right?

Could Apple possibly make more profit in 2 hours than Amazon makes in an entire quarter??

Mountain Lion: First Impressions

Let me start by saying that Lion was pretty awful. Felt like buying a wrecked Malibu that somebody spent a lot of time making look like a new BMW – looks nice, but things just didn't fit together or work right. Slow, buggy, annoying.

Enter Mountain Lion, America's big cat. In summary, it's been a breath of fresh air. It feels much snappier, and everything so far has been smooth and responsive and better.

If you want a detailed review, John Siracusa at ArsTechnica once again comes through.

First the bad:

• Still RAM hungry. Big cats eat a lot, I guess, and just running 5 apps wipes out my 4 GB of RAM (wow). When I switch between apps, it often spins the SBBOD while it swaps RAM to disk. Curious, those 5 apps use about 1.5 GB, and there's another 1.5 GB "Inactive", which with the 1 GB of "wired" leaves 35 MB (effectively 0) free. If you want to run more than a few apps and switch between them, you should consider going to 8 GB of RAM. Fortunately, you can probably get 8 GB of RAM for about $50 these days.
• It acted funny when I first logged in, BBEdit had the wrong font and wouldn't let me change it. Seemed like it was trying to get set up (font caches?) but didn't tell me it was doing anything. All those problems soon went away.
• Gatekeeper. Computers have been pretty lax about what apps you can run -- download stuff and run it. This new Mac OS by default only lets you run things you got from the Mac app store, and the Mac app store apps have to be "sandboxed", meaning roughly that every thing they do internally must have already gotten a "mother may I" from Apple at one level, and the OS at another. This is meant to crush malware – your computer will just refuse to run it. But you can't buy MS Office, Photoshop, or most other big apps because getting mother may I's for everything they do at this point is expensive, hard, or in some cases impossible. The good news is that you can order this new big burly gatekeeper however you like ("go home", "let this guy through", etc.) -- it's just another step you need to be aware of.
• Still no Rosetta (Lion dropped that ball), so if you have apps that you bought years ago on a PowerPC and need them to work, stick with Snow Leopard.

Now the good:

• Mission control fixed. You can turn off the window groupings in Exposé (hooray!).
• Responsive. Almost everything feels more snappy -- reminds me of how I felt when I got Snow Leopard.
• New apps. iMessages, Notes, Reminders, Calendar, Contacts -- all sync with iCloud so I see the same things on my computer that I see on my iPhone. This is where we really wanted to be for all the years we've been using computers. I have one contacts list on iCloud, and can edit it from any computer or from my phone, and it all stays up to date. Nice!
• AirPlay. Super easy to mirror what's on your computer to your AppleTV. Even Netflix video worked surprisingly well, though my computer got pretty hot while doing it. I don't recommend using your computer to play DVDs onto your TV with it, though -- my understanding is that it would be reading compressed video off the DVD, decompressing it to your screen, then taking what's on the screen, compressing it back into a compressed stream, streaming that over wi-fi to the AppleTV, which then decompresses it again to show on the TV. Both devices working very hard. I think it's more for showing PowerPoints, browsing the web, looking at pictures, etc., so everyone can see it. Still very cool.
• Built-in dictation. Not word by word as you probably hope, but still pretty cool. Double-tap the "fn" key, say some stuff, hit "fn" again, and the text appears. Anywhere you have a cursor. Seems to do pretty well.
• In-line dictionary. If you have a laptop, three-finger tap on a word and it will pop up a definition for it inline. Neat!
• Lion document model opt-out. Lion tried to help people who don't understand the classic file/folder hierarchy by storing incremental versions of your document for you (without you hitting "Save"), and trying to save "state" when you quit apps, etc. I never understood it, and it didn't work with Office or other big apps anyway, so Mtn. Lion letting you partially opt-out (see the "General" pane of Sys. Preferences) is a good thing.

For $20, this appears to be a good move for almost everyone.

The iPhone turns 5

Gruber nails it.

He makes the point that one reason the iPhone has done so well wiping the other phone makers off the map is that they, including the media and other pundits, all think it's a phone.

It's not, though it does make phone calls.

To all those (including my dad) who say, "Yeah, but what would I do with it?", I don't know, but here are the top 50 things I do with mine:

1. Check the time or date.
2. Check weather forecasts when I need them. (We went for a bike ride with all the kids a month or so back, and it started pouring rain on us. We raced forward and took shelter under a bridge. How long was it going to rain like this, we wondered. I pulled out my phone, pulled up the weather radar animations, zoomed in on our position using the GPS fix, and saw that it was going to pass in a few minutes. So we waited it out, and rode back dry.)
3. Use it as a remote control for our AppleTV. (Where's the remote? Oh yeah, it's in my pocket.)
4. Take pictures or videos of my kids being cute. (Who has a camera handy when the kids are being cute?? I do, now.)
5. Take pictures of fliers or other useful pieces of info I want to remember.
6. Show people pictures of my kids (including onto the AppleTV via Airplay).
7. Read scriptures, and keep track of our reading with the kids.
8. As a lesson manual at church.
9. Have instant access to our church membership directory, including addresses (tied to maps), phone numbers, and kids names (which I'm all too quick to forget).
10. Use it as a church hymnbook.
11. Read books or PDFs on it.
12. Keep all my contact information up to date and synced easily.
13. Set multiple alarms with different tones (the perfect alarm clock!!)
14. Set countdown timers so I don't lose track of time, e.g. when I'm working in the garage.
15. Use it as a flashlight whenever I'm out in the dark.
16. Battle boredom with it. (Note, my 22-month old baby knows all 26 letters, upper and lower case, because of an iPhone game. He can't even talk yet! Oh, and I've gotten pretty good at Scrabble/Words with Friends too...)
17. Listen to music, whatever I want, whenever I want.
18. Listen to podcasts (General Conference, church talks, NPR Fresh Air interviews, etc.)
19. Keep lists of things to buy at stores the next time I go (using the built-in Reminders app).
20. Manage my calendar.
21. Read news and my other Google Reader items (Reeder is awesome!)
22. Poke around in Pinterest and Facebook whenever I feel like it.
23. Read emails.
24. Navigate (Maps and TomTom) when driving or walking in new places.
25. Look up stuff on wikipedia when a question comes up -- instant knowledge!
26. Check bank balance, deposit checks (by taking a picture of the check), and transfer money between bank accounts.
27. Lookup movie times and nearby theaters, check ratings and parental guides.
28. Find the nearest Redbox with whatever movie I'm wanting to see.
29. Watch Psych (and other fun shows/movies) on Netflix and Hulu.
30. Use the WebMD app to figure out whether a particular "bug" is serious enough to warrant seeing a doctor.
31. Buy stuff from Amazon.
32. Lookup something I'm considering buying on Amazon to see how it was rated, e.g. a thermometer at Wal-Mart. The Amazon app has a cool feature where it will use the phone camera to scan a barcode and use it to look up items in their store.
33. Remote control the computers in the house (via VNC free app).
34. Maintain and have immediate access to all my online usernames and passwords via 1Password.
35. Keep lists of important info, e.g. A/C filter sizes, house paint colors, clothing sizes, etc. 1Password is great for this because it's so efficient about storing important info for me already.
36. Do quick calculations (for woodworking or whatever), or crazy hard ones with the Wolfram Alpha app.
37. Find my wife (via Find Friends free app by Apple), and help her find her phone with the "Find My Phone" free app.
38. Watch movies on the plane.
39. Make sure I'm on pitch when singing in choir with the nice "Piano Free" app.
40. Flip coins when I don't have a coin handy (using the free "Coin Flip" app).
41. Convert units, e.g. teaspoons to tablespoons.
42. Whitenoise generator for when it'a a little too noisy for the baby to go to sleep.
43. Figure out what species a tree is using Audubon's "Trees" app.
44. Check the status of my flight (FlightTrack app).
45. See the value of homes I'm driving by (Zillow free app)
46. Take voice memos or record talks, speeches, or other impromptu audio that's worth keeping.
47. Download coupons when we're at the store.
48. Use as a microphone where there's a sound system using the "Megaphone" free app.
49. To check the meaning of the ODB II codes I read off our vehicles when the check-engine lights come on, using the "FUZZYCodes" free app.
50. To check the value of a car on Kelly Blue Book when I'm away from home using the KBB.com free app.

Oh, and I sometimes use it to make phone calls. =)

It's not just a phone, it's a Swiss Army Knife of information you can carry in your pocket.

Android phones come with spyware preinstalled?

Not exactly sure what all this Carrier IQ stuff (via DF, of course) on Android and Blackberry is about yet, but the smartphone landscape right now reminds me of the middle ages when marauding bands would roam over the countrysides -- "pillage and burn". Castles were principally built for safety during this period, and I imagine they were enviable places to live.

When you choose Android, you're choosing life out in the countryside, free from rules and limitations, but at risk of having 30 guys show up and dragging you out, stealing all your stuff and burning the house down (spy- and malware).

When you choose Apple, you choose life within castle walls. Doors are closely guarded, and the vast grounds are kept neat and friendly. Come and go (i.e. surf the internet) as you please, but home (your phone OS and apps) are by all measures safe. Pretty easy to be happy as long as you trust the lords of the castle.

The question a smartphone buyer has to answer is this: do I feel safe inside castle walls, or imprisoned?

Apple vs. Samsung

Wow, check out all those phones.

I wonder how many of them run the latest Android OS?

iPhone 4S announced

I'm pretty sure this will be my next phone, so I was excited to read about the new features.

A quick summary:

• faster (2x)
• longer battery life
• new antenna design
• fancy 8 megapixel camera
• voice integration (speak your texts instead of typing them, ask it random questions, etc.)
• location-based reminders ("remind me to feed the dog when I get home")
• iCloud
• availability on Sprint

No near-field communication (use your phone as a credit card), no 4G (which is still an ambiguous term), no new form factor, still no data connectivity during phone calls on Verizon, and not waterproof.

So not everything everyone wanted, but overall a very solid upgrade. I can't wait (till I can afford it =).

Cleaning Apple products

There's a very good chance that someday you'll need Apple's recommendations on how to clean their products.

Via DF, of course.

Steve Jobs resigns as Apple CEO

What better time to resign than after leading a company from the verge of extinction to being the most valuable company in the world (for a few days anyway).

Sounds like sad news, but he actually hopes to remain on as Chairman of the Board, director, and "Apple employee". Which means he spends less time on CEO stuff and more time squeezing miracles out of turnips.

I'd bet on Apple's best days being yet to come.

Lion's out

I can't believe I beat John Gruber to the news, but Apple's new OS called "Lion" has been out for about half an hour now.

John Siracusa does an excellent job of reviewing the OS for the highly technical folks -- his review came out 3 minutes ago. For the rest, see what's new at Apple.com.

I highly recommend John Gruber's advice on installing.

Be aware that Rosetta's not supported anymore with Lion, so if you're using old PowerPC apps your time is up.

What's new with the iPhone 3G S?

People keep asking me this... Well, here's the answer, from MacWorld. This is a list of all the hardware improvements in the latest version, coming out next Friday (bracketed comments are mine):

• The faster processor, more RAM, and new video circuitry
• Improved battery life
• The improved camera hardware [autofocus, tap to focus, 3 MP instead of 2]
• Video recording, trimming, and sharing
• The digital compass [also maps will rotate based on which way you're facing]
• Voice Control [dial and/or control the iPod-part with your voice]
• Accessibility improvements
• Built-in Nike + iPod support [no dongle required, just the sensor in your shoe -- why doesn't it just use GPS?? maybe for people who run on treadmills or inside...]
• HSPA7.2 compatibility
• Open GL ES 2.0
• Hardware encryption
• Environmental improvements

The new iPhone OS 3.0 supports a bunch of new stuff too, including whatever was keeping the TomTom folks from releasing their software. The TomTom offering looks awesome -- though I wonder how hard it is to answer the phone when it rings... Or if you're on the phone if you'll miss a turn??

See the MacWorld article for more info on the new OS.

"... and why don't you have an iPhone yet?"

The lack of TomTom software was one thing keeping me from buying one. The other two are (1) having to switch to AT&T, and (2) the cost.

All my family (and my wife's family) is on Verizon, so a switch would mean going back to counting minutes (yuck).

As for #2, a pair of $200 phones plus $89 (1400 minutes on 2 lines (or $199 for unlimited)) + $30 data plan (required) + $30 unlimited messaging = $149 per month still feels a little pricey -- that's about twice what we're paying now for cellphones. It would save me from having to cart around a TomTom and an iPod, but I could buy new iPods and TomToms pretty often with an $80/mo. savings.

I figure our time's coming, just not yet.

Steve Jobs on "leave of absence"

Today Steve Jobs announced that his medical problems are "more complex" than he originally thought, and is going on a medical leave of absence until the end of June.

It's a sad day. Truly he's not looking very good, and I can't help but feel my heart go out to him and his family.

Nobody questions that an Apple without Steve Jobs at the epicenter will be different -- in 1997, he was basically tossed (back) onto a bloated, sinking barge*, and somehow managed to rebuild the whole thing into a sleek, giant luxury cruiseliner without sinking it. Amazing.

I've been listening to The Tao of Warren Buffet, a neat little collection of his lessons learned on investing -- which just happen to apply broadly to lots of other stuff in life.**

It's a great book, and has me thinking now: How is this change going to affect Apple as a company? How much does Steve Jobs actually do there? From what I can tell, he generally has a pretty tight grip on the wheel and rudder of the ship, and doesn't hesitate to turn hard sometimes. He's often been found turning against the "winds", and has mostly been right, and that instinct and vision is hard to replace.

You could say that pretty much anything he touches either turns to gold, or gets treated as gold, even long after the shine rubs off. His temporary replacement, Tim Cook, may well have the former, but it'll be a long time before he's earned the latter.

In fact, if you went back 2 years and inserted a Steve-Jobs-to-Tim-Cook transition in 2007 but left all the product announcements and direction from those 2 years intact, I bet half a dozen times since you'd have seen big op-ed pieces declaring Apple's glory days to be over and Tim Cook to be the failed steward of a once great empire. It's human nature to overemphasize imperfections, and when you have a big change like that it's easy to point to that as the cause, regardless of what the upside looks like.

I think it's also important to note that Steve Jobs didn't design the iMac, the iPod or the iPhone -- that was Jonathan Ive. Steve also doesn't build anything, nor does he write software. The guys doing all the design and writing the software and building the hardware are still there, doing it.

In some ways Steve just acts as a giant filter on all the garbage that inevitably gets dreamt up by engineers and designers with caffeine addictions living in Silicon Valley. Probably even from his bedroom he can still do a lot of that.

Me? The stock's down 6%, so I'm thinking of buying some.

---

* ... that used to be his own cute little yacht, but had a bunch of big ugly shipping containers welded onto the sides by "professional business-people" ...

** I love the one about you getting a car, then being told that it's the only car you'll ever own and it has to last the rest of your life. Any rational person hearing that would realize if it's going to last, they'd better take really good care of it. Well guess what -- that's exactly what we've got with our bodies and minds. Only one of each, and it's got to last.

Oh, and the hood's welded shut so if any of the parts go bad, we'll have to cut through the sheet metal to get to them. =)