Streaming videos
 

Having spent a fortune on one of Samsung's new smart TVs, I'm having trouble trying to stream videos/movies from my Macbook pro. I've tried Air Parrot which is supposed to mirror image your screen. It doesn't. It's so slow and jerky that it's impossible to watch a movie. I've tried TVMOBiLi which is similar along with Serviio which won't even open. As I have some mkv movies which produce proper 1080 HD quality I would love to find a DLNA source that will stream these files without problems.

My wifi runs at 7mbps on o2 broadband which isn't too bad. The only reliable way to do it is via itunes and apple tv, but they don't run mkv files.

Any help would be much appreciated.

You can install the ATVFlash software at Firecore.com - easy to install, works great, allows you to watch MKV, AVi, MP4, etc through your apple TV. it's $29.95 and currently for the Apple TV 2nd Gen (3rd gen in the works).

The other option is to Jailbreak your Apple TV (only available for 1st and 2nd Gen at the moment - 3rd in the pipeline) and install XBMC.

Hope this helps

Thanks, Mixture, nice helpful reply. I'll wait a bit and then look at the 200 reasons!

Thanks DrRedHead. To use ATVFlash you need to jailbreak the box. I guess I'll give that a try first.

itunes migration/consolidation?
 

Sorry if this is an oft repeated question in here, I havent had much joy on apples help section, or in store with a definitive answer that filled me with positivity.

current set up: Iphone synced to creaky laptop, three kids ipods synced to my work laptop all with separate itunes accounts, keeps the kids stuff separate, but annoying when they all want to buy the same app, and you end up paying three times, and also if all of us want the same CD having to upload it four times.

just treated myself to a MAC to replace creaky laptop. I now as a minimum, want to copy my itunes for my phone from the laptop to the Mac, my research so far seems to suggest this is relatively easy via a hard drive. the more taxing question which i cant get an answer to, is do I copy over the three kids accounts and keep them separate, or is this the perfect opportunity to consolidate all our accounts, music and apps etc and have them live in one place, does this become a major issue when different people run different devices. if for example I buy a game on a universal itunes account, can you play it at the same time on two devices, so many questions, advice and help appreciated on here :ok:

Do these help from?

Sharing iTunes & iCloud Accounts in a Family

Consolidating apps to a single iTunes Store account

Using Multiple iTunes Libraries on One Computer

No 4G for the iPhone 5 in UK except for T-Mobile and Orange; and that includes after the auctions next year and for the freseeable future.....

The iPhone 5′s limited UK 4G LTE support set to freeze out Vodafone and O2

That won't stop the iPhone 5 selling like proverbial hotcakes though. Besides the same problem exists for all LTE equipped phones.

The iPhone 5 will still work on the 3G networks as far as I know, and to be honest, for 95% of what you use the iPhone for, 3G will be just fine.

One has Little Snitch running in the background and of late it has flagged loads of connection attempts from the good people at Apple in the form of 3-courier.push.apple.com, whereas before never... They are of course a myriad of other numbers before the 'courier' part and they seem to want Port 5223 mostly. As far as I can ascertain they might be software related, but am curious to know what ? Any clever clogs care to enlighten me ?


SHJ

It's to do with push notifications. Have you recently started to use them? FaceTime, too. There's a list of commonly-used ports by Apple here.

Thanks for that link Mr Macster :ok: Apart from FaceTime, which I added a month ago, but rarely use and is almost never on I'm a simple soul and don't have any of the others. Might it have been added unknowingly in an update or security patch recently ?

Just had a think and the FaceTime was added in May, so that wouldn't account for the many push notices in the last month.


SHJ

Yesterday I helped my landlady upgrade her Macbook Pro from OS X 10.4 (Tiger) to 10.6 (Snow Leopard). Yes, I know, but that's the latest her hardware can support ... and kudos to Apple for making the process mostly painless. Install from DVD (£14 from Apple UK) to 10.6.3, then another GB download for 10.6.8. Most of the process required no intervention from me.

The only hiccup was in upgrading Microsoft Office 2008, which (for some unknown reason) was sitting at the root (/) and not under Applications. Finder wouldn't let me move it, just copy it, so I ended up using a UNIX "sudo mv" command in Terminal just to get it done quickly. After that, no problems applying the latest updates, and it's all working fine.

I could live with a Mac ... but I'd spend so much time in the Terminal that I may as well stick to Linux ... :8

Security questions...?
 

Hey folks,

I just searched for this and nowt came up, so here goes:

I just tried to install Google Chrome on my iPad and it came up with the old 'increase your level of security and select 3 questions and their answers' thing. Previousy, I have completely ignored it because I have a password that no-one is likely to figure out and I'm never going to forget it.

This time, though, it wouldn't let me install the app And it is insisting that I do this questions thing. So I thought OK, the usuall rubbish - mother's maiden name etc. But no. They want really personal stuff, like my first film in the cinema, my dog's name, best friend at primary school.... What the hell??

Is it normal for them to ask for such personal information?? Sounds more like a phishing scam - or at least, if THEIR security gets compromised, phishing scams could be directed to me more easily (and the rest of the population).

I have to say, I haven't completed the procedure, and won't - at least until I learn more about it.

Does anyone else have experience with this?

Cheers

Roastie

rather sounds to me like you are confusing simply installing the browser, with actually creating / logging into a Google online account.

Of course Google are going to ask such questions: with their desire to know as much profiling information about you as they can obtain, their questions can only become more and more intrusive.

My advice? Ditch Chrome. The only reason it exists is to give Google a better data collection platform.

Thanks for your reply, but you have completely misunderstood.

It is the appstore that is asking for this, not chrome - i can't even install that..

I understand about Google wanting more profiling information.
Now I'm saying that Apple want it too.

I googled the subject and found the following...

https://discussions.apple.com/thread...art=0&tstart=0

Cheers

Roastie

This history behind this goes back a few months I think. I can't recall that exact details, but someone somewhere managed to get a hold of a number of Apple ID account details, through some rather nasty code that managed to get through the Apple App Store censors. Apple decided to implement some further security measures, akin to those for online banking, whereby in addition to account ID and password (like Account number and PIN), you provide some answers to a series of questions that only you are likely to know all the answers to. So in the event your Apple account is compromised, it will be easier for you as the real account holder to get control back. Bearing in mind that the Apple ID account usually has access to your credit card details, and therefore carries a similar financial risk to handing someone your bank card and PIN details.

R04stb33f

(a) You do realise you do not have to give the true answers to these questions, do you not ? As long as you recall the correct answers, that is all that matters. Because it is highly likely that as a private individual, your sole interaction with Apple will be electronic, all you need to do is to be able to feed the machine the right answers in order to get the output you want.

(b) It is NOT profiling. MacBoero has the answer. A while back, there were regrettably a whole series of fraudulent transactions undertaken by unscrupulous individuals on the Apple iTunes store service. Apple swiftly took action to put in place mechanisms to prevent future occurrences.

Any comments on IOs6?


Mutt

ITV & BBC both reporting glitches with the maps eg Luton in South Devon, Stratford Upon Avon as a hospital. No shops in the Bull Ring Birmingham.

BBC News - Apple promises maps app will 'improve'

Not sure about the rest of the world!

I've noticed an increase in speed on my new iPad and iPhone 4. Plus I like being able to use Siri to send pointless iMessages to my wife in the other room.

Haven't really tested out the new features too much yet, but I'm sure I will at some point

Indeed, Mixture.

That is what I have now done.

Just whinging cos it's a bit of a PITA.

Thanks for your reply :)

iOS6.!!!!e.

Gosh - misfire or what?

Best they get 6.1 out rapid.

Maps - awful; Passbook - useless. Feels very slow and clunky, like the phone is wading through molasses to get itself to work. At least it doesn't stink of stale wee.

Apple maps in iO6 is seriously bad. In Australia it has some towns over 100km out of position. It wanted to locate my house in a different country and I just tried to get directions to my local airfield and it shows a route about twice as long as it should be. Seems it doesn't know about some major roads.

If you use Google maps at all DO NOT UPGRADE. I did the iPhone, but there is no way I'm upgrading the iPad.

You can get a version of a google maps app by putting a link on your home screen.

Open google maps in safari and tap the share icon http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a2...ps7b70ad8f.jpg then add to home screen.

I've done that but it isn't as fast or smooth as when it was as built in app - I have no idea why being an IT dimwit.

I'm slowly tweaking 6 by switching stuff off that I don't need &c but honestly - putting out software that is not ready for release is very very shabby especially as it is Apple that has done it.

iPhone
 

I think that a valve has blown in my old mobile phone. I am a complete luddite with these things. I am under pressure to buy an iPhone.

With the old phone I have chips for Greece and Botswana. I then load it prepaid from a card. Can I do this with an iPhone or will I need some sort of contract with a provider? Will this work in both Greece and Bots or will I have to pay for roaming?

These days, the iPhones can be purchased in a legally unlocked form. Therefore you can avoid the need for operator tie-in if you are willing to pay the upfront cost of the phone (rather than being tied to an operator and benefiting from amortised phone cost).

So all you then need to worry about is getting hold of a nano-sim from the Greek and Bulgarian operators. Hopefully they should be happy to oblige once they get some into stock.

I would caution agains the DIY approach advocated by some of chopping up your bigger SIM card to fit. Much better (and safer) to get hold of a correctly sized SIM in the first place.

App store language setting
 

My wife has a shiny new ipad 3 and we have come across a problem with the App store.

It seems that the language that is displayed is linked to the country that the users credit card is registered, in our case France. Although we are fairly conversant in French, we would prefer to have this displayed in English. I have trawled a number of sites for help but none are any use.

Any clues?

Sitigeltfel,

You should be able to do it by modifying your AppleID preferences here:

https://appleid.apple.com

Hmmm...tried that, but when I log on to the App store it still goes to the French version. A number of Apple forums say that it always defaults to the language of the country your account credit card is registered, in my case France.
I no longer have accounts in English speaking countries, so I may be stuck with it..........unless anyone else knows a way round it?

sitigeltfel,

I suspect its not Apple that's applying these restrictions, but it may rather be a byproduct of their content licensing deals with their suppliers that they have to make a reasonable attempt at establishing the correct jurisdiction of a purchaser.

Haven't tried this, but have you considered dissociating your credit card from your iTunes account and then subsequently trying to change the country of your account ?

Assuming this works, you will need to work around the payment issue by buying gift vouchers on your french card and applying these against your transaction (try with a nominal value first before undertaking any large orders !).

G4 power mac angle poise model
 

This is a long shot but there's a lot of expertise here so you never know . . .
I have a G4 angle-poise that has finally died. However, it seems that it is most likely that the problem is with the back-up battery, I learned on a weblog, which I didn't even know existed. Several people reported, like me, that they found that they needed to keep their machine on standby permanently, otherwise is took days to reboot. It does look as though the standby battery had died (no surprise after seven plus years). The machine was working perfectly in all other respects and I was leaving it permanently on standby, but we had a three hour power cut and it wouldn't start up after that. Anybody come across this and know where I could get a new battery?

Thanks in advance.

from Google
3.6V (half AA type) Lithium PRAM/Clock Battery for Mac - Upgrade Your Mac

or


I don't know them

this may help How Do I Check a Mac G4 Backup Battery? | eHow.com

It's even worse here in Switzerland where apple thinks there are three national languages (there are four). You can get the store in French, but things like movies are mostly in German (and rarely in multiple languages, unlike DVDs).

However - you can always browse the US or UK store to see what the product is and once decided go to the French store to do the purchase.

Or, you can open a second Apple ID and a second iTunes account. If you have a credit card in another jurisdiction you can use that to validate your 'country'. If you don't you can open an iTunes account with an Apple Gift card. i.e. if you have a UK£ gift card you can open an iTunes account and use the UK Apple Store. Same with US$. Downside to this is you need to pay in advance, and keep topping it up with cards. Gift cards are available on ebay (you only need the number printed on it, not the card itself)

Milo Mindbender - thanks for your help and expertise. Looks like the real problem might be the PSU and unfortunately I am not now in a position to do much about it (living in Spain with poor Spanish). It's bye bye to my Mac Anglepoise. Sad day!

i-phone smtp problems
 

edited to say I've resolved this now. I had to set up the user name and password on the outgoing server as well as the incoming one. Only took 3.5 hrs to work that out!!

Hi all,

I've just moved onto an i-phone 4s. I run two email accounts, one googlemail for personal stuff and one via my business domain which is hosted at fasthosts.

Set up the gmail no problems ( because it uses exchange and activesync)

I have tried everything to get the fasthosts account working via imap (it is an advanced mailbox, not exchange, but absolutely should work with IMAP, I've had it on blackberry for years). I have got to the stage where I can receive mail but I can't send it.

The settings I'm using are:

Incoming

mail.livemail.co.uk
port 143
authentication user name and password

Outgoing

smtp.livemail.co.uk
port 25 although I've also tried 225 and 587
no authentication

No ssl in both cases.

The outgoing server verifies instantly on either port 25 or 587 but when I send messages they get dumped in the outbox with an error saying the server rejected the recipient

I'm just upgrading to IOS 6.

Any help would be appreciated, it shouldn't be this hard to get an IMAP mailbx set uop

Thanks, all.

Edited to say I've sone a search of this thread but couldn't find anything related.

I've got a fasthosts domain for business email - outgoing mail does require authentication - same as incoming.

SD

Milo,

It'll be one of those G4 iMac Flatpanels with the domed CPU base.

Well, it's a bit of a vintage piece of kit (dates from Apple's pre-Intel days).

The reason for the price is evident if you look at the CPU, its a non-standard PSU, it had to be to fit into that shape.

I suspect eBay might be a good source.

To be honest though, there's not much point to hang onto pre-Intel Macs these days.... and the current versions of OS X are light years ahead of what the first non-Intel releases were.

The original poster might be better off investing in a newer Intel based mac, even if it's a second hand one.