apple

One Way Google’s Android is More Closed to Consumers than Apple’s iOS

Posted on by Forrest Corbett — Posted in Techknow

Developing for smartphones has shown some interesting differences between Android and iOS – beyond the obvious. Android is touted as being “open”, but in reality while the source code is “open”, consumer access system updates is vastly more closed than iOS.

Let’s take the tweakers, modders… and other enthusiasts out of the picture for the moment, as they aren’t the majority of consumers. When Apple releases a new version of iOS, it’s available to all, regardless of carrier. For example, iOS 6 was announced on September 12 and then released to the public on September 19, 2012. iPhone owners did not have to wait for their carrier to remove features, block functionality or install junkware. The OS update was available to all with supporting hardware.

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How to setup IMAP with Comcast (Xfinity) email on Windows or Mac OS X

Posted on by Forrest Corbett — Posted in Techknow

IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) has been around since the 1980’s, but Comcast has never supported it with their comcast.net email accounts. IMAP has many benefits over POP, but I won’t go over those here.

Windows 8’s native email client doesn’t support POP, and this has finally been enough for Comcast to venture into supporting IMAP. Currently support is only in beta, and you only have the option of POP or IMAP – not both like most email providers have offered since the 80’s and 90’s.

How do you get IMAP? You sign up for the IMAP Trial from XFINITY® and cross your fingers that all goes well. The page does say “This page is for those subscribers that use Windows 8” but if you read the terms, it’s not platform specific so Windows 7 and prior as well as Mac users can take advantage of IMAP as well.

Display scrollbars in Webkit browsers (Chrome, Safari…) on Mac OS X

Posted on by Forrest Corbett — Posted in Techknow

Starting with Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion” (and continuing with 10.8 “Mountain Lion”), browsers based on Webkit often do not display scrollbars on elements such as divs that are overflowing. This is a “feature”, and there is a way to disable it.

The quick answer:
Use the psudo element -webkit-scrollbar  and set -webkit-appearance: none;

Sample:

<div class="example">
 Content<br />
 Goes<br />
 Here
 </div>
.example::-webkit-scrollbar {
 -webkit-appearance: none;
 }

Background:
I’ll try to walk the fine line between theorizing what Apple is thinking and what they have done. On Macs that don’t have a normal mouse (eg one with a scroll wheel), you won’t see scrollbars by default. Plug a mouse in, and instantly you’ll see your windows adapt and show scrollbars. Unplug it, and they go away.

Scroll bars will display when you scroll using, for example, the trackpad on a laptop. Essentially devices that “scroll” get scroll bars. And devices that provide more of a “swipe” don’t get scroll bars.

Fixing TeamViewer “Access to the TeamViewer server has been denied” on Mac OS X

Posted on by Forrest Corbett — Posted in Techknow

I’ve used TeamViewer in the past, and wanted to use it again. I launched it and was prompted to update, so I did. After installing version 7.0.11515 I used TeamViewer successfully and then the next day it wouldn’t work anymore.

“Access to the TeamViewer server has been denied!”

A dialog with that message would pop up over and over again. No amount of clicking “okay” would help. I kept thinking my password was being rejected, but it wasn’t.

What’s the problem? TeamViewer looks at your system’s serial number and tries to determine if it’s valid or not. If the app thinks it’s an invalid serial number, it will prompt that dialog, forever.

This can occur several different ways. For example, if you have been tweaking your Mac, you might have accidentally changed your serial number or erased it. It also happens if you’re running your own custom install of OS X, perhaps on PC hardware (aka a “hackintosh”.) Apps such as MultiBeast help one configure a hackintosh, but don’t provide a valid serial number. And to be clear, the number doesn’t have to come from Apple, it just has to follow a specific pattern.

What’s the solution? Get a valid serial number. How? You can use an app such as Lizard to generate a valid serial number. However, if you run this and apply it, it just might overwrite some other changes that it shouldn’t. So be prepared to fix your install if you go this route. For example, you might:

  1. Make a backup of  the /Extra/smbios.plist file
  2. Run Lizard
  3. Copy the generated serial number into your backup of the smbios.plist file
  4. Then replace the newly created smbios.plist file with your backup

There’s also another option. Others have also run into this issue and there’s a thread on InsanelyMac where a user has posted a copy of a smbios.plist file. You could grab the serial number out of it and use it, rather than using Lizard.