Did you visit System Preferences, Sound, Input tab, and make sure that the
audio is set for use as Line In? Obviously, the audio output from the mic will
need to be good enough for you to hear it if you’re going to use VO during this
process. But once it’s done, now you should have (line-level
If restarting the phone normally and leaving it overnight doesn’t work, just
force reset it (Home+Power for 10 seconds). That should kick Spotlight into
obedience. Sometimes it happens that the mds process gets seriously stuck and
consumes 100% CPU. Give it a shot.
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I’m surprised that Time Machine wasn’t more vocal about the fact that it
couldn’t connect to the resource. Is it a notebook? It’s usually quite
persistent when things go wrong, but perhaps it was just hoping you’d reconnect
to the relevant network so it could resume at some point.
--
The fol
You could use iTunes Match to try and match your existing music library. Then
you’d end up with the tagged files that Apple normally sells. I know there are
other services that will look up tag information and add it to your songs based
on the musical signatures, but I’m afraid I can’t remembe
You’ll only see networked remotes that you’ve explicitly paired in iTunes. You
don’t see Home Sharing; that’s just implicit, so if you’re signed in both on
iOS and in iTunes, you can use the Remote app, without the pairing and without
it indicating in iTunes Preferences.
Curiously, Apple Watch
I think it depends on your requirements and your existing experience whether or
not you’ll find OS X Server to your liking, but I’m not going to deny that
having a cool head and some familiarity with Unix and networking definitely
helps. In this respect it’s actually not optimally placed for it
The remotes in the iTunes Preferences under Devices are iOS Remote app
installations paired using the manual process (and not Home Sharing).
You’ll find the control for handling infra-red remotes (on Macs that have an IR
receiver) in System Preferences under Security and Privacy, Advanced button
Of all of Google’s offerings, it’s actually ChromeOS I’m most enthusiastic
about. It is getting better, albeit that it’s going through a bad patch at the
moment as Google moves to the ChromeVox Next native screen reader, which is
currently not in the stable branch (and therefore frustrating for
Essentially, server just installs on top of your client, entirely unlike Snow
Leopard or prior where you had a server edition of the software. That’s kinda
the beauty of it. Just install and use. It’s mostly a UI for built-in stuff,
but there are also servers included inside the app; check ou
Caching service is definitely worth it for me because my bandwidth is metered
(in a good way) and I’m annoyed by how long and how bandwidth-wasting the
multiple-device update cycle and voice pack reinstallations are. Nowadays it
also helps with iCloud documents and photos too, and that’s quite
I use OS X Server for the Caching service. I wish they’d split it off and dump
it in the client OS so I could update it with the rest of the system like you
could with 10.6 server, but alas. The best option seems to be to allow
automatic updates to handle it, except that the Server app needs t
Well, you could certainly keep AIFF or Wav files, and they’d be a lot easier to
edit, but no, I was thinking of compressed lossless encoders like FLAC and
ALAC. ALAC is Apple’s codec and is used by AirPlay and supported by iTunes.
FLAC is an open format supported by most everybody else.
--
T
Cloud storage is a lot less magical and wondrous without synchronisation. Just
like Dropbox, iCloud Drive invisibly maintains the transfer of data to and from
the magic bucket in the sky [1], so that you can, at least in theory [2],
always be able to work offline, or survive disconnections from
On 20 Jan 2016, at 18:02, Bill Holton wrote:
> When I set up an activity and associate it with an app, it takes forever to
> command tab out of that app. Is this still a known issue?
Yes, with Nuance voices. If you avoid those, then it works—kinda. Sometimes,
in that case, activities do n
Don’t use iOS, or install Outlook for iOS. iOS Mail keeps displaying that
message for perfectly valid messages (“This message has no content”). Of
course, fewer senders of HTML mail would probably help.
Now, to your question. You can’t multiplex Wi-Fi, so you’ll have to use PAN,
which genera
Red Book CDs (i.e., the kind you play in your CD player) are lossless PCM (i.e.
mostly like Wav or AIFF) with a 16-bit sample, 44100 samples per second, two
channels. That means it takes about 10.1 MB per minute of audio. And yes, an
hour of CD audio is about 640 MB. no problem for today’s ha
I seem to be very lucky in not being among those frequently beset by AirPlay
dropouts, but in any case it and Kleer are worthwhile investments for me. I
need lossless quality. Maybe not higher definition, but certainly lossless.
Encoders are the problem. Really. If we could just get decent
Ironically one of the things you can’t do from the command-line on OS X is to
update OS X Server, because that’s now delivered from the Mac App Store. There
are also some things which are possible from the command-line, only by editing
plist files, which means that for all practical purposes yo
By building a NAS, I meant either getting or building a computer and running
Linux on it, or turning a Mac Mini into a NAS using external drives, or
whatever. It would be home-grown and not a NAS product.
If it is acceptable that your data be on one disk, then by all means grab the
Extreme or
Hi Janina,
On 18 Jan 2016, at 22:06, 'Janina Sajka' via MacVisionaries
wrote:
> Well, if you mean the integration of all the tools in an out of the box
> installed product, it's certainly there on Linux for many users. The
> a11y use case has also been demonstrated by small distro knockoffs like
Hi Grant,
Briefly there are two ways to do ad-blocking in Safari: event-based and
list-based. The event-based method is exclusive to OS X and has been around
for quite a bit; the list-based method is new to iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan.
The market on the Mac has been served by event-based ad blo
Hi Donna,
I regret that the answer you are looking for is, “You can’t.”
See this:
http://osxdaily.com/2016/01/04/stop-ios-software-update-notification/
Read all the comments too; fun stuff.
The best options you have are to either go to cellular full-time, leave the
downloaded updates on the de
I am inclined to think of this as a bug though. If you move the cursor and VO
is tracking the cursor, then VO should interact as necessary to follow the
cursor. Yes? Merely putting up with it, or becoming mechanically inclined to
work around it, is a bit silly.
Tell Apple, as usual. That is
On 19 Jan 2016, at 17:00, E.T. wrote:
> Really? Is this some sort of method that keeps the iBooks sector and
> Audible in business? (tongue in cheek)
Doubtful, although it was revealed by reverse-engineering of the Audible
Enhanced format that it is, in fact, an encrypted M4B file (basically
For various reasons, I leave my CD audiobooks in my Music library. I don’t
mind too terribly.
The biggest reason that putting CD rips into the Audiobooks folder doesn’t work
is that iTunes is not so great at supporting any book bigger than one track.
In particular, iTunes plays alphabetically
Well of course, if the router is right next to the TV anyway, then an Apple TV
actually isn’t a bad fit at all. But your speakers need to be up to the task
if you are going to get much enjoyment out of them.
AirPort Express is a network audio receiver that can also be a router. Apple
TV is a
Hi Janina
My point was really more that the integration was non-existent. Of course we
know how it’s done because we have the knowledge to suss it all out, but Mac
and Windows users don’t even have the worry of learning. I think VMWare made
an important decision to allow distributors to bundl
Hi Chris,
No, you could continue to use Lightning. Europe simply standardised the
universal charger to be Micro USB. In other words, your phone had to support
it, somehow, in order to be compliant. This was intended to reduce electrical
waste, a laudable goal in itself, by reducing the numbe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
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Standards are good. I love standards.
Europe standardised on Micro USB so iPhone users could charge from many points.
Apple’s response was to make us an adaptor, at cost, which is not available
outside the EEA. This rather negated its purpose, of course; now you had to
remember to bring the
I don’t suppose Activision will mind too terribly if you buy the Lost Treasures
app, then unpack it and extract the game data files, which you can then play in
Frotz. It would be the honest thing to do if you’ve paid for them.
But, honestly, these games have been so thoroughly treasured and loo
I think the issue with Apple “Moving on” is that the consumer is never ready
for it. In a sense, that’s a testament to Apple’s forward-thinking approach,
but it also means that they are the first to draw the fire for having the
audacity to bring something to market without standardising it by c
On 18 Jan 2016, at 15:44, George Cassell wrote:
> I came in a little late on this thread. Will somebody please tell me who is
> the Democrat and who is the Republican in this debate?
Never mind that—where’s the link to Nazi Germany on this thread?
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AirPort Express is still N, and is fit only for AirPlay and fast Ethernet-only
routing, or in some cases, for use as an Ethernet extender. Given that, with
the right setup, a third-generation AppleTV now costs less to do a whole bunch
of things including audio and video AirPlay, even this role
Yeah, sometimes it happens that, if you are not careful, you can move the caret
without also moving the VO cursor. Interact with the text and make sure you
can read using VO-up/VO-down before you take your hands off the VO keys. In
this way, you ensure that the VO cursor moves with your caret.
I’m afraid I just can’t quite bring myself to be sufficiently moved. I don’t
like planned obsolescence or proprietary standards either, but I’m also in the
market for a new pair of travel headphones, and I actually would love a digital
path between my iPhone and my headset. I was not among tho
Hi Sharon,
In answer to your question of whether you can use a new-generation Victor
Reader Stream using OS X, I do this all the time. Either in USB mass storage
mode or using an internal or external Mac card reader, you manage the storage
just as you would on Windows, as described in the manu
Hi Janina,
How did you set up your keyboard shortcuts to start with. System Preferences?
Have you tried looking in there again?
I actually can’t imagine any situation in which a remote support tool would
reset the keyboard shortcuts you manually set, but I’m curious to know how you
think the
You want—no, need—Apple AirPort because Apple makes it and Apple products are
divine.
No, seriously, as usual with Apple you get what you pay for. The throughput
has indeed been surpassed by competitors, as has the feature set. But, AirPort
Extreme or Time Capsule will do exactly what you wan
Usually when a complication just says “Unknown” it means that the data hasn’t
reached the Watch yet. Give it a bit while connected to your phone, lock and
unlock the screen a couple of times, and you should eventually have the
information.
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This one:
https://sevenbits.github.io/Mac-Linux-USB-Loader/
Basically just a wrapper for an EFI loader that will boot your ISO file placed
on the stick.
If your Mac actually knows how to boot the UEFI loader of the Linux
distribution (GRUB, normally), then it typically suffices to format the st
Ta for that, Chris. Not sure why it never occurred to me to go through the
Watch app looking for my solution, especially since I know I’ve seen this
option (to mute when you palm the watch) before. Only now do I realise its
significance, especially with the text that explains what it does righ
Dictation worked starting in Mountain Lion (10.8), but it required an Internet
connection. Starting in Mavericks (10.9), you could choose to download the
dictation language and perform the same task offline. I actually found things
more reliable in Mountain Lion, for some reason, but it works
If you don’t use your AirPort Express for AirPlay, then tell it not to
advertise AirPlay speakers using AirPort Utility for iOS or OS X. Open it,
choose your base station, type the password if necessary, then find and disable
the AirPlay setting. Not having one currently on my network, I’m afr
You don’t need to extract the files from a Linux ISO image to boot from the
ISO. Tell VMWare Fusion to simply install from disk or disk image during the
setup of the VM. It should then detect the OS, or something close to it, and
allow you to proceed.
I don’t use Sonar so I can’t help you wit
I reckon it’s personal. Read this:
https://www.marcozehe.de/2015/08/25/the-switch-back-to-windows-has-been-reverted-quite-some-time-ago-actually/
Poor creature. Let that be a lesson to all potential Windows-using turncoats.
:)
OS X is just the least worst. You’ll just have to use Windows to g
The reason is that Open-VM-Tools is now using a FUSE driver that one installs
as part of the “open-vm-tools-desktop” package, whereas the proprietary tools
are using a dedicated vmhgfs kernel module that is now deprecated. I no longer
use sharing because the dependency requirements are too heav
Use this article to check which versions of Windows will run on which Mac
models, and, where available, the download links to the software:
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204048
As a rule, BootCamp Assistant always does the right thing, fetching the latest
drivers and giving you the choice of
BootCamp Assistant shows different checkboxes depending on whether or not your
Mac has a built-in (or formerly had a built-in) optical drive. If you have,
you don’t get the chance to use an ISO. Typically USB boot (from MBR) is not
supported on these models, so you will need the optical drive,
Use the package manager to install open-vm-tools on Linux, and skip VMware’s
tools entirely. This is supported by VMWare, who don’t mind getting work done
by their volunteers for free, and also don’t mind the sweet integration that is
best provided by your distribution. It’s a great solution,
You have? The latest stable Firefox release is now accessible on OS X, is it?
I’m reluctant to try it again and be disappointed again …
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It’s not entirely Mozilla’s fault that Firefox isn’t accessible on OS X,
though. The way that Apple makes accessibility APIs heavily dependent on cocoa
and Objective-C is a big part of it.
Which is a shame, because I’d love to be able to use Thunderbird on OS X, too.
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If you can’t figure it out for now, just go to Settings, General, Storage and
iCloud Usage. Each app will have a usage category, and if you select it, you
can delete the app from there.
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If you have any que
It’s just throttling. The EFF ran some tests:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/01/eff-confirms-t-mobiles-bingeon-optimization-just-throttling-applies
It works by essentially tricking devices into requesting lower-bitrate streams.
This is not a sure thing to work; any video that is not streame
mmm, Chrome. Google “Chrome privacy whitepaper” for a way to turn off all the
spying. Chrome is the least Googly of the Google products.
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“Personal Hotspot” (or “Tethering”) is Apple’s silly name for using your iPhone
to share a limited Internet connection to other devices, with the primary
connectivity being provided to the phone by your carrier. With the “Personal
Hotspot” feature, your iPhone broadcasts a wireless signal that
This should be the default, but in the Get Info window for the volume you’re
looking at, make sure that “Ignore ownership on this volume” is set. This will
cause all accesses to appear to be done from your current user account, so you
can then change permissions if necessary to gain read/write
For my amusement, I downloaded all the Nuance Vocaliser voices from Freedom
Scientific that I normally use with VoiceOver on OS X. For added fun, I
downloaded all versions of the voices (standard from RealSpeak Solo and premium
and premium-high for Vocaliser and Vocaliser Expressive). From thi
You can do a surprising amount of key remapping just using Fusion itself, but
sadly, it appears assigning a single hold-down key to be substituted by some
other is not one of them. Hence, support from the guest OS with utilities like
SharpKeys, which I’ve always relied on.
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Found my problem. The watch will be globally muted if you palm the screen
while an alarm sounds. Don’t do that and you’ll be fine.
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I haven’t tested actually restoring from a backup, but it’s just a USB drive
when plugged in, so simply make a copy of the contents. You could use the
“Duplicate” command (Command-D) from your desktop to get a folder on your
desktop with the contents of the drive, for instance.
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What about DSL? If it’s the principle and the caps are all that’s in the way
of going totally mobile, you won’t mind the reduced speeds of DSL. You could
then also go with a business package that gave you better contention, and not
be treated like dirt on cable with many of the throttles that
I can’t offer any opinion on the performance of the networks you’re on,
although it certainly sounds like the US has a pretty rough time of it when it
comes to fixed-line broadband competition. However, I can definitely say that
using mobile broadband as your primary Internet connectivity, whil
You can get BootCamp drivers either while running BootCamp Utility or from the
Apple Support site. Some earlier drivers (for XP and Vista, for instance) are
only on the DVDs that came with the Macs that supported those operating
systems. With an ISO and BootCamp Utility you should be directed
I’m fairly sure I always took my hand off as soon as I heard the locking click.
I’ll try harder to remove my hand sooner. Thanks for the suggestion.
And no, for the record, I did not physically assault my watch. Just clapped it
lightly with my palm. There’s no risk to the screen.
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Yep. I often slap the watch to shut it up, and it works. However I’m fairly
sure that is only intended to silence the watch, not enable the muting of
sounds permanently. I hope I’m not wrong about that.
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That’s the second time now that I’ve looked in the Settings glance on my Apple
Watch and found that, by some means or other, the Mute switch is on, without my
doing anything to set it.
Anybody have the reasons?
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I’ve definitely seen this audio fluctuation effect, but it hasn’t ever been
with me for long because I almost immediately disable audio ducking, which I
generally find more annoying than helpful. Perhaps try just disabling audio
ducking, if you haven’t yet.
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I’m in a hurry just now, but see my last post on this thread (the very last
post):
http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=236838#p236838
Both of those threads (that one, and the one linked in the post) are worthwhile
reading. Available are download links to the images you need, and if yo
Hi Scott,
Yeah, I’m afraid Apple pull a lot of crap when it comes to supporting carriers
and GSM. You’ve got to pay to get Apple to recognise you as a carrier and
provision the carrier settings, which Apple signs. These include the logos,
roaming partners, voicemail, and all that stuff. Thos
Not all iBooks are DRM; the publisher may choose. Of course, only the
DRM-free books may be processed by other tools. Find out which you have in the
Get Info dialog in iTunes, or by unpacking the book file and looking for a file
called “encryption.xml”.
FairPlay has not yet been properly bro
Hi Scott.
Thanks for the info, and the compliment. It does sound like my info on the US
is outdated, which makes me wonder why on earth Apple continue to foist carrier
restrictions on customers and insist on deals for sales. If Apple wants all
the control, they can easily go all-out retail, a
Hi Ricardo,
Interesting thoughts.
To be honest, I get the impression that the US has yet to get the full benefits
of competition enjoyed by most of the rest of the world, who have had GSM all
this time, and are now starting to realise what we now take for granted: that
buying an unlocked phone
Is it just a matter of activating the FM chip, though? I thought I remember
reading somewhere that part of the problem was getting an antenna that could be
shared among all the radio frequencies. Some phones were using the headphone
socket to provide the radio with an aerial, and that of cours
Hi John,
I’ll answer a few of your questions I have experience with, and leave the rest
to others.
The OS X Terminal is not the best experience. At times it has been better, and
at others it has been worse, but it always seems to be perpetually broken.
It’s better than nothing, but nothing l
Whoops! You really did mean iOS; I missed the subject line. OK, in that case
I’m afraid I don’t have an answer.
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I assume you mean the Mac. There’s a menu command, Edit then Speech then Start
Speaking. Can you not simply assign a command to that in System Preferences
under Keyboard?
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FYI, /dev/null is bit heaven. Sending data there simply results in its
immediate destruction. :)
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Problem of acceptance, basically. Technology is only technology until it’s
widespread and taken for granted; then it’s whatever, and everybody is in love
with it and can’t imagine life without it, even when the replacement is clearly
and self-evidently superior.
Except DAB radio, of course. T
If you do in Terminal:
ls /dev/cu*
What is returned, apart from your Bluetooth ports?
Hopefully the port is just serial-USB so you can simply send embossable text to
it in standard ASCII form. Test it out with a braille file, as short as you
can of course so as not to waste the paper.
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I don’t suppose you’ll get much use out of OS X’s printer subsystem for
handling the braille embosser.
On the other hand, surely it is only a matter of identifying the parallel or
serial device that appears on OS X, assuming that the chipset is one supported
by a USB driver. In which case, I i
Hi Andrew,
The Draytek v130 is very simple. With its feet down and back panel and ports
away from you, you have a power socket, a simple spring-lock power button, the
Ethernet RJ45 port, then the phone line RJ11 socket.
Grab the latest firmware from the Draytek UK site, just in case you will w
The description just says it’s a flash drive with a copy of El Capitan on it.
Why on earth wouldn’t you just buy the flash drive yourself and create your
own? Seems like a much safer and cheaper route …
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Bill, if one core is working for you and not giving you any trouble, go for it.
My experience is definitely that a single-core Windows VM is a lot more
sluggish than I’d like. It works, but it’s not at all pleasant once you start
using the machine full-time, even with all the background servic
Hi Andrew,
You needn’t reset your AirPort Extreme if you don’t want to, although it’s
certainly a very quick way to get going. Instead, just make sure the WAN port
is connected to your v130 (that’s the port nearest the USB socket on AirPort)
and that your modem is connected to phone line and p
Hi Anders,
IGMP snooping is a technique for reducing multicast traffic to switch ports.
You don’t need it unless you subscribe to Internet multicast groups, which most
of us can’t yet. It’s safe to leave it off unless you know you need it.
“Default Host” is AirPort terminology for what most o
Hi Andrew,
Let’s start from the beginning.
You can think of processor cores as processors in their own right. Each core
computes at its clock speed, sharing some resources with the other cores but
essentially operating independently. Operating systems of today try to exploit
multicore (and,
iTunes is a pig, isn’t it? It now does many things, a lot of them at startup.
Turn off Wi-Fi sync for each device to stop that happening at startup. This
will of course mean you need to cable up to sync. Or you could try to avoid
syncing by going to the cloud. The option is in each device’s
What about the opposite, generating MKV files that are lossless from DVD discs?
Is MakeMKV accessible, and will VLC play the resulting discs accessibly on OS
X?
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Awfully sorry. My last post was intended for another thread. Please
disregard. I will repost it on the correct thread, and answer this one soon.
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What about the opposite, generating MKV files that are lossless from DVD discs?
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X?
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Hi Scott,
Nearly. The watch and phone will use Bluetooth if available. If Bluetooth is
off or unavailable, the watch uses any existing association to reach the phone
over Wi-Fi. Finally, if the phone itself is off and can’t be reached by any
method, then the watch will do some things indepen
If you’re talking about the iPhone user guide, you can view it online at
http://help.apple.com/iphone . (Incidentally, replace “iphone” in that URL
with the names of other products, for instance “appletv”, to get their
respective manuals.)
The manuals are always published by Apple in the iBook
Hi Craig,
Indeed. Very frustrating. As always, please tell accessibil...@apple.com and
show them the page, if you can. This sort of thing needs to be addressed more
urgently than other feature enhancements and would be considered a showstopper
without other platforms to fall back on.
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Hi Bill.
I should have been clearer that the 2012 Mac Mini did offer a quad-core option.
And yes, giving just one core to an OS will work, but will not be quite as
fluid as at least a dual-core virtual machine. So yes, if you’re planning on
virtualisation-heavy workloads, look at the portable
Hi Anders,
Long message ahead. I have replied inline for clarity.
On 28 Dec 2015, at 20:46, Anders Holmberg wrote:
> Now when answering your message its a dsl modem with router built-in.
> I have that as a nat and use the airport extreme as a bridge.
> Maybe i should try to reverse the setting
I really believe that multicore performance is a good thing to have when doing
virtualisation. No two ways around it: the latest Mac Mini is a downgrade from
its predecessor, because of the dual-core processors. Sure, they’re newer
family chips, but they are still slower. Worse yet, RAM is no
Anything is possible, of course. It may indeed be the case that your
particular router or combination or radio environment is not supporting the
speeds you require.
But before you go blaming a particular piece of equipment, test it. Start from
your broadband connection. Plug your computer in
Windows (and Linux) is for games. An XP VM will do. It runs audio games and
screen readers, now unchanging forever, that will handle such basic functions
as console output correctly. If only OS X’s terminal support worked, MUDing
and Interactive Fiction would at least be alternative gaming po
You can completely erase the phone without losing anything from the cloud by
going to Settings, General, Reset, and choosing Erase Content and Settings. If
you have Find My iPhone on, you’ll be prompted to type the password to turn it
off. Then your phone will be wiped and you can give it to y
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