Vlad Hrybok's Tech Notes

Update: This issue may have been fixed as of April 2008: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1426.

I spent approximately a week researching iPhone and everything related to it. Not a single time did I see anything that would suggest that iPhone does not sync with 64 bit version of Windows - not even on the back of the iPhone box, where system requirements are spelled out. So all the anticipation of playing with iPhone came down crashing when I put it in the cradle and got "Please connect iPhone to a computer running a 32-bit version of Windows XP (SP2) or Windows Vista." message:


This was the first Apple product I ever bought, and what a wonderful F-U I got. Apple is indeed not an engineering company, but a designer shop making cool-looking accessories - a Luis Vuitton of IT. The only thing remaining for Apple is to figure out that technology thing.

Quick Internet search established without a doubt that iPhone won't sync with x64 Windows systems and tech support rep confirmed that there is absolutely nothing they can do other that suggesting to install 32 bit operating system.

Anyway, the iPhone is going back. To be fair, Apple customer support was fast and helpful, and the rep who processed my return request waived restocking fee on the unit (I bought it from Apple online) and they promised to send prepaid FedEx shipping label.

Today we had an electricity outage cause by thunderstorm. While UPSes were still alive on both network segments connected via ZyXel PL-100 power line adapter, I tried connecting them into UPS and see what happens. Unfortunately it didn't work. When both adapters were connected to UPSes, Link led on both adapters was off. After power came back up, it changed nothing - no connection through UPSes. When I connected one adapter directly to the wall, and one through an APC-made UPS, Link leds came on, but computers still didn't see each other. As soon as I connected both adapters to the wall, connection was re-established.

The bottom-line: If you need network connection in your house to stay on during power interruptions, use wireless networking instead of power-line adapters.

Just read the review of the BMW 335i hard-top convertible in the New York Times. The review was warm - quite typical for the car this good. One thing that the author could not do without, is conforming to the common understanding that BMW's iDrive - the integrated computer control console and navigation system - is horrible. As someone who had Honda Accord with a touch-screen navigation for a few years, I can attest that knob/joystick-based iDrive is completely usable. More so with the string of programmable shortcut buttons, which according to a dealer were added to the dashboard of 3-series in March of 2007. With all the most-frequently-used functionality already accessible through the specialized buttons and knobs on the BMW dashboard, iDrive is a totally adequate user interface conduit. Maybe back in 2002 when the first version of the iDrive was introduced in the 7-series, it was bad - I don't know. I hear it was the only way to control the car and even most basic functions required lots of knob action. If that was the case - it was a really bone-headed design. As someone who designed quite a few user interfaces, including a CAD UI, I have this rule of thumb: put most critical functions at user's fingertips, and organize the rest of commands in a well-structured, easy to navigate menu. Today's iDrive accomplishes that. I got iDrive with my 335i coupe simply because I couldn't imagine living without navigation system, and after reading all the bad reviews I was bracing for supposedly abysmal UI and control abilities of the iDrive. To my surprised I don't really have anything to complain about. It's not touch-screen, but from my point of view touch-screen is a toss compared to joystick: touchscreen is easier to operate when car is not moving, but it is very inconvenient on the go. I am not trying to say that iDrive is perfect - I hear praises to Lexus control console, but these days iDrive is not bad at all as far as functionality and convenience goes. Now, to those who claim that iDrive is hard to figure out, I don't really know what to say. If you were able to figure out how to make enough money to buy a BMW with iDrive, you should have no trouble figuring out iDrive. Otherwise let me know what you are doing for living - I may want to get into it.

I switched to Cingular from Verizon about a year ago because Cingular has GSM phones, and I want to use my phone when travelling to Europe. I got Cingular 3125 (a.k.a. HTC Star Trek, a.k.a. QTEK 8500), based on Windows SmartPhone WM5. The phone, of course, was locked by Cingular. Now the time came for me to take the phone abroad, and knowing that there are two ways of unlocking the phone: through the provider, or using 3rd party tools/services, I started with less risky - called Cingular.

I called Cingular (the new AT&T) help line and told the tech support lady that I was travelling to Europe and would like to have my phone unlocked. Without even asking me what country I am travelling to, she said that they will not unlock my phone and instead I would have to pay for their international roaming package.

Then I tried cellunlocks.com - one of the many services that claim to unlock the phone remotely. I paid $6.99, followed the instructions - only to receive the email stating that unlocking my phone was not possible, with no details about why, and that the full refund will be posted within 10 days. Eight days later there is still no refund, so you may want to stay away from this "service". UPDATE: Refund was finally posted two weeks after they stated they can't unlock the phone.

Then I called Cingular again, and this time I told the rep that I am travelling to Ukraine, that I will be using SIM card provided to me there, and that I would like to have my phone unlocked. This rep seemed more attentive. First, he made sure that my phone will work on Ukrainian networks. Then he said that they will unlock the phone. He made me pull IMEI ID and placed an unlock request with Cingular. Within hours I received the call from Cingular with the unlock code and unlock instructions - all I needed now is a SIM card from a foreign GSM service provider, because phone prompts for unlock code only when "non-naive" SIM card is inserted. Luckily, my relative visiting us here, had her SIM card with her. I popped it in, entered unlocked code and that was it.

I suspect that I was successful in my second attempt to unlock the phone through Cingular because they probably don't have roaming agreement with Ukrainian providers.

The bottom line is: If you want to have your provider unlock your GSM phone, tell them you are travelling to a country that does not have roaming agreement with your provider.

CodePlex.com - a relatively new open-source collaboration platform from Microsoft that came to replace old and cranky GotDotNet - has impressed me quite a lot. Of course it closely resembles SourceForge.net, with the main difference of CodePlex being underpinned by Team Foundation Server (TFS) for source control and issue tracking functionality.

People often don't realize that TFS client that integrates into Visual Studio 2005 can be downloaded and is completely free.

I currently host a couple of projects on Codeplex:

• MS AJAX 1.0 Setup Project Prerequisite for Visual Studio 2005.
  It makes MS AJAX redistributable by including it into the Setup.exe bootstrapper prerequisite manifest. The prerequisite integrates nicely with Visual Studio 2005.
  
  
• Simple ASP.NET 2.0/C# MP3 Player.
  This application demonstrates a possibility of building a web application for home users. It includes redistributable UltiDev Cassini Web Server for ASP.NET 2.0 to not make the application dependent on the presence of IIS on users machines. The app is AJAXed to minimize music interruptions and uses Flash player to playback MP3 to avoid dependency on any particular media player. 

After releasing build 1.7 of my open-source redistributable ASP.NET-based MP3 player application, I used it for a while and I am pretty happy with its stability and functionality. The design goal for the project was to demo a concept of an easily-redistributable web application for SOHO market. With unquestionable popularity of web-based applications in the business world, removing complexity of the web hosting infrastructure to make home web applications possible as a category is poised to be the next big thing.

MS AJAX is great, but if you wanted to make an installable application with it, there was no way of including AJAX into your MSI-based setup project. I made a Visual Studio manifest that makes MS AJAX Extensions a Visual Studio Setup Project prerequisite:

To AJAX-enable your existing ASP.NET 2.0 application follow this video. It takes only a few minutes and essentially makes you create a dummy new Ajax-enabled ASP.NET application and then copy & paste relevant pieces of its web.config file into your application's web.config.

If you are planning to use Ajax Control Toolkit, then instead of creating dummy project from the "ASP.NET AJAX-Enabled Web Site" Visual Studio project template, create the dummy project using "AJAX Control Toolkit Web Site" template. Its web.config has additional entry in the <controls> section of the web.config that will be necessary for your application.

Microsoft is showing off its new Acropolis framework for .NET. It seems to be a little more than good old CCmdTarget of late MFC. 

Back in 2001 when I was making a transition from C++/MFC to C#/.NET two things I missed the most were C++ templates and CCmdTarget/Doc/View architecture of MFC-based Windows UI. I could not believe Microsoft didn't port CCmdTarget at the time and naturally wrote my own. But pretty soon it was obvious that with C# and Visual Studio .NET writing ASP.NET web applications was easier than making Windows UI apps, and people wanted web UI more than windows UI.

Combine dwindling demand for Windows UI with inferior development tools and you end up in the situation where software architects don't even debate whether their next enterprise application should have Windows UI or web UI. It's assumed and understood that it will be a web-based application. If you think an application needs to have Windows UI - you will face an uphill battle convincing other project stakeholders it's the right way to go.

Simply put, Windows UI is so out, and web UI is so in that incremental improvements in Windows UI world like WPF and Acropolis is too little and way too late to save the day. We've got AJAX, thank you very much. In my arrogant opinion enterprise apps will not go back into Windows UI world. The last bastion of Windows UI applications is SOHO market, but that is about to change with HttpVPN making it possible to make easily redistributable web applications for consumers and small businesses. Once that happens, Windows UI will become just gaming and other graphics-heavy applications platform.