Running iPhone/iPad Apps on Macs with Apple Silicon

This is a nifty feature of Macs with Apple Silicon processors (i.e., M1 or M2 CPUs) that I wasn't aware of. You can run some iPhone and iPad apps on these Macs.

See: https://support.apple.com/guide/app-store/iphone-ipad-apps-mac-apple-silicon-fird2c7092da/mac

The screenshot is of the Storm Radar app that I normally use on my iPhone, but running on my M1 MacBook Air.

Vinpok Bolt "MagSafe" Power Cord for MacBook Pro

If there's one thing I hate about the most recent MacBook Pros, it's that Apple replaced the MagSafe power connector with USB-C AKA Thunderbolt 3 ports.

My MBP sits on my coffee table when not in use, and I've been worried that eventually someone would trip over the power cord. It happened with my previous machine but because of the MagSafe connector, it wasn't damaged.

About a week ago I went looking for a MagSafe-analogue that supports the 87W power supply of the 15" MBPs and found a couple. I ordered a Vinpok Bolt USB-C Magnetic Cable on July 15th and it arrived yesterday the 27th, from China.

The magnetic adapter that plugs into one of the USB-C ports:

It adds virtually no bulk. The matching cord that replaces the factory USB-C cable from the Apple power brick:

My first impressions are generally positive. However, it should be noted that the magnets in the Vinpok Bolt are much weaker than those found on the Apple MagSafe connectors. Moving the laptop is frequently enough to dislodge the Vinpok Bolt. The overall size of the Bolt is smaller than the MagSafe connector, so that's to be expected.

That said, as long as it continues to work as advertised, it's worth it IMO to regain the safety feature of the Apple MagSafe connector.

New Personal MacBook Pro

Last weekend I broke down and finally did my income taxes. I used Turbo Tax on my old mid-2009 MacBook Pro. When I installed the software, it warned that unless I upgrade to macOS High Sierra, I won't be able to use it again next year. That Mac is too old to be upgraded beyond Sierra. I've been thinking of getting a new personal laptop and this pushed me to finally do so.

Therefore, on the way home from work last night I stopped in the Apple Store in King of Prussia and bought a 2017-model 15" MBP (MacBookPro14,3). The specs are impressive:

• CPU: 2.9 GHz Intel Core i7 with 4 cores
• RAM: 16 GB
• SSD: 512 GB (I was running low on space on the old machine's 256 GB SSD.)
• Graphics: Onboard Intel HD Graphics 630 1536 MB AND a 4G AMD Radeon Pro 560 GPU.

It has the Touch Bar (yawn) and 4 Thunderbolt 3 / USB-C 3.1 ports and a headphone jack.

I got it in silver to clearly differentiate it from the work-provided Space Grey 15" MBP.

Since I use Google Drive and Dropbox for documents, migrating them over was as simple as installing the clients and letting them sync. To move over my videos, pictures, and music, I went old school and sneaker-netted them using a 64 GB SanDisk USB stick with both USB-A and USB-C connectors.

This machine is very similar to my company-provided work laptop so I knew what I was getting. To partially reiterate from my post last Spring after I got that one:

• Replacing the MagSafe 2 power connector with USB-C sucks.
• On the other hand, with the right cable I should be able to charge the battery from something like a cell phone power bank or my Harbor Freight jump pack/12V power source.
• I am underwhelmed with the Touch Bar. At work I rarely use it because 90% of the time the lid is closed while the machine is connected to an external keyboard, mouse, and dual displays. Since I use the machine at home as a laptop, I expect the Touch Bar will see more use.
• It's fast as hell.
• The screen is great.
• Battery life is good.
• The keyboard is OK.
• For me, macOS 10.13 High Sierra has been very stable. I expect the new machine to be even more so, because it won't have corporate IT management crap like the Eracent agent installed.

Since last night I've installed the following software:

• MS Office 2016.
• TextWrangler (in which I'm writing this.)
• Truecrypt 7.1a, which requires some tweaking to install.
• ZOC 7 for telnet and SSH. I don't use it much at home but at work for managing Linux servers or network devices, it's awesome.
• LibreOffice for some old OpenOffice files I have. Even on this machine, LibreOffice is a bloated, slow POS. Amazing.
• 1Password.
• Mozilla Thunderbird.
• Google Chrome.

I still need to install a few ham radio apps, including Fldigi, CHIRP, and WSJT. Using them with my radios will require a Thunderbolt 3 to USB-A adapter, and maybe an external sound card.

One thing I need to pick up is a 1 TB Thunderbolt 3-compatible hard disk, to use for Time Machine backups. MicroCenter appears to have several suitable models in stock.

My employer has a purchase plan negotiated with Apple which saved me a couple hundred bucks on the laptop and AppleCare. It still came out to about $3,100 after tax. That's a ton of money but it's worth it to me to have a top-quality machine that I fully expect to be able to use for nearly a decade.

Not dead yet, and an update on my newest Mac

Tonight I pulled ye olde blog and realized that I haven't posted anything here since February. Yikes. I have posted over on Survival and Emergency Preparedness, which if you don't read you should check it out. (I might be a bit biased in that regard.)

Anyhoo, in my last post I mentioned that I had a new 15" MacBook Pro on the way. I've been living with it now for several months so I thought I'd offer some subjective impressions:

• It's fast as hell, even with several large applications open, e.g., Excel, Outlook, Chrome, Slack, and Skype for Business.
• The screen is beautiful.
• The keyboard is different from earlier Macs but I got used to it quickly.
• I love the huge trackpad when I'm not connected to an external keyboard and mouse.
• With 16 GB of RAM I am able to allocate 8 GB to a Windows 10 VM running in Parallels, and have decent performance in the VM. I most commonly use Windows to run the vSphere Client (still a better UI than VMware's web client) or Visio 2013.
• Having only USB-C AKA Thunderbolt 3 ports is a pain in the ass. I have to use an adapter to connect to my 27" Thunderbolt display, or connect most common USB drives, or to Ethernet if I'm not using the Thunderbolt display with its integrated Gig-E port.
• I got one of these Anker USB C to USB 3.0 and Gig-E hubs. It has worked well for me although I haven't tried pounding on an external USB drive with it, just flash drives and Ethernet.
• The Anker hub worked with my FTDI chipset USB to Cisco console cable. (And of course the point of buying the latter was to minimize the number of dongles attached to my laptop. Grr.)
• The Touch Bar is a gimmick. Most of the time I don't even see it because I run an external monitor, mouse, and keyboard, so the machine's lid is closed anyway.
• Battery life is very good.
• It's super thin and not too heavy.
• Apple no longer includes the power cord extension with the machine. Just the wall wart and a single USB C cable. The older power cord extensions are compatible with the new power supply, however.
• I fucking hate that it doesn't have a MagSafe power connection. The MagSafe connection on my other Mac laptops, and my daughters' MacBook Airs, has prevented damage more times than I can count. This is a massive step back.

Overall I am happy with it but would have preferred the retention of at least one USB 3.0 port and I want my damn MagSafe connector back. (Griffin sells a USB C to MagSafe adapter but it's rated for only up to about 60W. The 15" MBP uses an 87W power supply.)

Camping Trip AAR

This weekend a couple friends and I went on a camping trip to Tioga County, PA. The main activity this time was ham radio. We went up on Friday and came home today.

I had to work on Friday but was able to cut out a little early. By the time I got on the road it was rush hour, so it took me a full four hours to get to my friend's land. By the time I arrived it was 9:30 PM. Before I got there, he'd put up an 80M dipole antenna made from aluminum welding wire, electric fence insulators, and some electric fence posts from Tractor Supply. The feed line was the welding wire, formed into an open ladder line held apart with pink duct tape.

This dipole worked well and pulling in signals on 20M, 40M, and 80M. A number of the calls we logged were from within Pennsylvania, demonstrating the viability of NVIS communications.

We're fans of the digital modes. He has an Icom 718 with which he uses a Donner Digital Interface at home. Since he's not going to schlepp a desktop PC with him, he used PSKdroid running on an LG Android tablet, using audio coupling. I also setup my Apple iPad Mini 2 running PSKer to try and pull some signals from the aether.

We were able to copy quite a few transmissions even without a digital interface between the tablets and the rig. We probably would've copied some more, but for the bourbon. ;)

On Saturday I setup my portable vertical antenna, Yaesu FT-817ND, and iPad.

As you can see, we setup inside his 16' x 24' pavilion, which was a godsend this weekend due to the weather. It rained on and off all weekend. There was little to no wind, so the open ends weren't a problem. We even setup my tent underneath the roof so it stayed mostly dry.

As you can see, I have my antenna feedline connected via the FT-817ND's front, BNC connector. As I understand it, using this instead of the SO-239 on the back reduces power consumption.  Also note that the feedline is connected straight to the rig, with no tuner. The vertical is resonant on 20M. Using a resonant antenna instead of one connected through a tuner increases your effective radiated power, and when operating QRP, every little bit helps.

The iPad is connected to the rig with one of KF5INZ's Easy Digi interfaces.

Pic of my vertical antenna:

The objects to the right of the antenna are steel gong targets set out at about 25 yards.

I mostly operated PSK31 and using the antenna above was able to reach the west coast.

I grabbed the above from pskreporter.info using my iPhone. Later, my signal was also reported in Washington state, but I forgot to get a screen shot.

After doing PSK31 for awhile I changed over to WSPR, using iWSPR. This was my first time trying this digital mode and it's amazing. The signal reports below are after transmitting for awhile on 5 watts.

Numerous hits in Great Britain, Western Europe, and Germany. WSPR basically acts like a beacon, transmitting your callsign so that other hams with Internet-connected rigs can upload signal reports. With some creativity I think it could have other applications.

We took time off from the radio to have a nice lunch of venison sausage and onions, sauteed in a red wine reduction. Yeah, we eat good when we go camping.

Saturday night's dinner was venison chili washed down with Yuengling Lager or Guiness Stout.

I also took a break from radio in the afternoon to do a little shooting. I first shot my Cowboy Pimp Gun, AKA a Ruger Single Six in .32 H&R Magnum which has a color case hardened frame and faux ivory grips. It's a fun little blaster but needs a trigger job. I put a bunch of Prvi Partizan .32 S&W Longs through it, which made a nice little tink when they hit our steel gongs.

I also put 70 rounds of .44-40 through my Cimarron 1873 Sporting Rifle.

Fifty of those were black powder loads with 35 grains of Goex 3Fg under a bullet cast in my Accurate Molds 43-215C bullet mold, and they really smacked the gongs around. If you click on the picture to view the full sized version, you can see some smoke coming out of the rifle's ejection port. I was doing an 1870s-style mag dump. Off to the left, you can also see the gong that I just shot swinging from the impact.

After I finished shooting my other friend put up about 500 feet of aluminum welding wire in a loop, all around our campsite. We got back to radio after nightfall and the loop turned out to work well for receiving 80M and 160M, and they both wound up getting 160M phone QSOs. Because the antenna height ranged from only a couple feet to a max of 5 feet, they were NVIS to other hams in northern PA and southern NY.

Finally, I took this picture of my iPad which looked like it was detecting Space Invaders on the waterfall.

Even though the weather this weekend was crappy we had a great trip. We got some good field radio practice in, plus a bit of fun shooting.

Apple Discontinuing Support for QuickTime for Windows

Windows users should be aware of is the fact that Apple is discontinuing development of QuickTime for Windows, so it's time to uninstall it. There are known vulnerabilities that will not be patched. 

QuickTime .MOV files can be played in iTunes or VLC.

Link.

Teaching An Old Dog New Tricks

One of the challenges of a career in IT is keeping up to date and learning new skills. For the past 14 months or so, I've managed the primary lab/data center at my employer's corporate HQ, but have relied upon a couple other guys to handle the network. I'd like to take over the network, which mostly runs on Cisco equipment. So, I decided it's time to get my CCNA certification as a way to get my feet wet.

For texts, I went with Wendell Odom's CCNA Routing and Switching 200-120 Official Certification Library. Additionally, the Free CCNA Workbook site has a variety of lab exercises to do.

Although I'll be able to work on real equipment I felt it would be prudent to learn on gear completely separate from my lab network. My first step was to download and install the GNS3 router emulator on my laptop. I was able to find some usable Cisco images by exercising my Google-fu.

But I also wanted physical hardware to bang on. eBay is full of used Cisco gear. This post on Reddit was helpful in deciding what to buy (and what to avoid). Using that, I ordered a kit off eBay containing three Catalyst 2950 switches and three 1841 routers, plus various cables and T1 WICs, and a desktop rack.

One thing you need when working on initial device configuration and sometimes for troubleshooting is a console cable. Most laptops no longer have a serial port, so I and my coworkers have been relying on USB-to-RS232 adapters, mostly the Keyspan USA-19HS. However, I recently found FTDI chipset based USB-to console cables and got one of them. So far, it's been working fine in OS X Yosemite and El Capitan.

iPad 2

At work my department will soon be receiving about 20 iPad 2s for development use. Since I'll be managing them, my boss felt I should have one for my own use. So, on Monday I came home with a shiny new white 64 GB iPad 2 with both WiFi and Verizon 3G capability. (If I want to use the 3G I'll have to pay for it myself.)

So far, I've been using the heck out of it. The screen is very nice and clear, displaying both text and graphics nicely. Speed seems good for the apps I've used. On my home network I'm getting about 12 to 14 megs down, about 10 mega slower than what I see with my MacBook Pro. The iPad has a slower processor, so that makes sense.

When typing I find that it's much easier if I put the iPad in landscape orientation, providing that the app I'm using supports it.  The onscreen keys are larger in this mode.

My use has primarily been for browsing, reading a couple forums using Tapatalk, and using the Amazon Kindle app. Compared with a Kindle, the iPad is more versatile since it allows you to do more than read books, but as an e-book reader, the hardware Kindle is superior. The grayscale Kindle screen, which isn't backlit, is superior for reading in bright light; there is more glare on the glossy color screen of the iPad. However, the iPad is superior for viewing PDF files, which don't display well on the Kindle.  The Kindle's e-ink display uses a lot less juice than the iPad's backlit LED. A Kindle can go weeks between being charged, while an iPad will go about 8 hours of active use.

Compared with the Samsung Galaxy tablet I got to play with a few weeks ago, the iPad is better. The iPad's larger screen versus the Galaxy's 7" display is more usable. (Obviously a 10" Galaxy would fare better in this regard.) The OS feels smoother, and Safari is overall a better browser than the stock Android 2.2 browser, with at least one caveat, see below.

So far I've bought a couple applications through iTunes: iSSH and GoodReader. I've also installed Noterize, Evernote, an RDP client, and Dropbox. ISSH allows me to access my servers at work over a WiFi bridge onto my lab network. GoodReader allows me to view many file types, including .doc, .xls, and PDFs, and manage files. It also integrates well with Dropbox.

I mostly typed this post in Evernote on the iPad with some final touches on my Mac.  Evenrote is an extremely neat notes and clipping program which can sync your files across multiple platforms and the cloud. (I used Evernote for this post because Safari on the iPad doesn't work with Blogger for some reason.)

Taking notes is something I see as becoming one of my main uses for the iPad, so I need to settle on a good solution for it.

Since this is a company owned device, I was able to get approval to have ActiveSync enabled on my Exchange account, which means I can now get my work email and calendar on it. I'm going to like not schlepping my laptop to meetings.

When I first handled an iPad last year I was a bit underwhelmed. I didn't like how it felt. The iPade 2 is noticeably slimmer and lighter and feels a lot better in the hand.  I can see why Apple has had a he'll of a time keeping up with demand.

For heavy content creation a laptop or desktop remains superior to the best tablet. But for note taking, email, checking my calendar, or light web surfing, the iPad works extremely well.