Issue or symptom
If a FireWire audio device is connected to a Power Mac G5 (Late 2005) or an iMac G5 (Ambient Light Sensor) while the computer is restarting, the FireWire bus will stop responding and no FireWire devices will be detected on the bus. The device may stop responding or stop charging, depending on the specifics of the device.
Soltuion
You can restore the Firewire bus by resetting the SMU (System Management Unit).
I did not have “Apple Music Classical is announced as an App Store pre-order” on my bingo card for 2023. Not to mention that the app won’t launch on the iPad on day one.
David Smith, writing on Mastodon:
Widgetsmith just reached a truly remarkable milestone, its 100,000,000th download. I am genuinely staggered by this and incredibly grateful.
He continues on his blog:
A number that I can’t really wrap my mind around. A number larger than the population of all but 14 countries.
I was very conflicted about whether I should share and observe this milestone publicly. I am by nature a very shy, quiet person and not one to seek the spotlight.
Also, in the many years I’ve been working at this career I have very often been someone struggling to find traction and stability for my apps, and while I could be genuinely happy for the success of others, it also still stung painfully when I saw it.
My hope is that my 12+ years of consistent podcasting and blogging can speak witness to my motives here in communicating encouragement, not boasting.
Ultimately I decided to share this milestone for two reasons Gratitude & Community.
I know I am not alone in this feeling, but I’m going to add my voice to the chorus — none of this could happen to a nicer, more caring guy that David. I’m proud to be his friend, and proud of his achievement today.
Whoever was assigned to task to write a support article explaining the differences between the PowerBook G3 models drew the short straw that week at Kbase HQ:
This article describes the differences between the PowerBook G3 Series (Bronze keyboard) introduced in May, 1999, and earlier PowerBook G3 Series computers.
There are a number of visual cues for distinguishing the new PowerBook G3 Series.
They are:
- The keyboard and trackpad button have a bronze or mocha color.
- The inside display bezel has a white Apple logo at the top.
- The rear ports are all enclosed by the I/O door and the modem port is now in the rear of the unit.
- There are two USB ports.
- It has a single, manual eject PC card slot which supports Type I and II PC cards.
- The display clamshell latch mechanism release is on the base of the PowerBook instead of the clamshell.
Filipe Espósito, writing last week at 9to5Mac:
9to5Mac last month revealed a first look at the design of the entire iPhone 15 lineup based on CAD files used to build the phones and also compatible accessories. But one thing that remained unclear was the layout of the volume buttons, which reportedly will be capacitive rather than physical. 9to5Mac has heard from a source that iPhone 15 Pro will have new unified volume buttons, plus a “pressing type” mute button.
According to our source, who’s familiar with making certified accessories for Apple products, the iPhone 15 Pro models will ditch the separate volume up and volume down buttons for a new single button that works both ways depending on where the user presses it.
I didn’t link to this when it came out because I couldn’t work out why I felt so weird about the idea of the iPhone’s ringer switch going away.
It hit me today: the ringer switch is one (of the ever-shrinking number) of the hardware feature of the original iPhone that is still with us today.
Since the beginning, we’ve been able to flip a switch, without looking, and know that our iPhones wouldn’t make noise. Some of us flip that switch on a new phone and never switch it back to allow sounds at all. I am thrilled to read that the functionality will continue, even if I am a little sad1 about losing part of the original iPhone design.
I’m still not really over Apple taking a similar switch away from the iPad. In that case, Apple let you choose between the switch working as it does on the iPhone and use it as a rotation lock. It was awesome. ↩︎
There’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the First Amendment in this country. It does not protect you from being banned from Twitter or moderated on Facebook or even in a Discord. It’s all about the relationship between the individual and the government when it comes to terms of speech. No matter how loud your conspiracy-slinging uncle cries foul, it’s just not the issue he claims it is.
Jon Brodkin over at Ars has a story that much more to the point where the First Amendment lives:
A proposed law in Florida would force bloggers who write about Gov. Ron DeSantis and other elected officials to register with a state office and file monthly reports or face fines of $25 per day. The bill was filed in the Florida Senate Tuesday by Senator Jason Brodeur, a Republican.
If enacted, the proposed law would likely be challenged in court on grounds that it violates First Amendment protections of freedom of speech and the press. Defending his bill, Brodeur said, “Paid bloggers are lobbyists who write instead of talk. They both are professional electioneers. If lobbyists have to register and report, why shouldn’t paid bloggers?” according to the Florida Politics news website.
Bloggers-as-lobbyists is just a wild argument. No one tell Brodeur that blogging is dead and all the real action is on social media.
That aside, this clearly seems to be an attempt to limit the speech of influential writers in Florida politics, as well as random folks writing on Medium.
This week on Mac Power Users, we sort through some follow-up before sharing their origin stories and reacting to a surprise or two.
If you have Apple Watch Ultra and want to check that its depth gauge and seals are working properly, you can get a Depth and Water Seal Test from Apple. You might want to send your Apple Watch Ultra for a Depth and Water Seal Test if:
- You’d like to check the functionality of the depth gauge in your Apple Watch Ultra.
- You might have caused unseen damage to your Apple Watch Ultra — for example, by crashing while bicycling, or hitting your watch on a rock during a hike.
Having broken an Apple Watch in a bike crash and another one cliff jumping at a lake, I have to say that being personally attacked by a support article is new to me.
For the past several months, I’ve been working on a secret project with my friends over at Rogue Amoeba:
20 years ago today, on March 3, 2003, Rogue Amoeba released Audio Hijack Pro 1.0. This was a crucial event in the company’s history, as sales grew a much higher level, taking Rogue Amoeba from a hobby to a viable business.
On this anniversary, it seems fitting for us to unveil something else special: the Rogue Amoeba Historic Screenshot Archive. It’s an in-depth collection of images and information about key versions from our 20+ years in business, and we think it’s well worth a look.
Over on his blog, Paul Kafasis wrote a bit more about the project:
It’s quite gratifying to be able to look back on our work, which now spans more than two decades.
It can also be humbling and amusing, and thus worth writing about on this mildly-popular humor site.
It was a ton of fun to spend time with twenty years worth of indie Mac development history. I think you’re going to love scrolling through the archive on Rogue Amoeba’s website.
Earlier this week, Underscore David Smith launched version 5.0 of his excellent step-tracking app, Pedometer++, which I have used (and loved!) since its debut back in 2013.
Here’s David on his blog, writing about about the new features:
There is a delightful freedom in building an app tailored for your own personal preferences. This app is perfect for how I hike. During its development I have enjoyed countless long hikes into nature and find that it is a worthy companion of those adventures.
When Twitter shut down third-party clients in January, it not only left out in the cold the users of those apps, but the developers too. Many of those apps were significant sources of revenue for the teams behind them, and that income was cut off capriciously, without any warning.
One additional complication is that some clients had shifted to a subscription-based system in recent years, with users paying by the month or the year. Since those subscriptions were generally prepaid, users ended up in a situation where they essentially no longer had access to the app they’d paid for.
Twitter’s kneecapping of third-party clients didn’t just mean that their future revenue was gone — it meant revenue they’d already collected from App Store subscriptions would need to go back to customers in the form of prorated refunds for the remaining months on each and every user’s annual subscriptions. Consider the gut punch of losing your job — you stop earning income. It’s brutal. Now imagine that the way it worked when you get fired or laid off is that you’re also suddenly on the hook to pay back the last, say, 6 months of your income. That’s where Tapbots and The Iconfactory are.
I can’t recall a situation like this, with an ecosystem of third-party clients collecting subscriptions and then having the first-party service yank the carpet out from under them — and their customers — with zero warning or sunset period. A proper sunset period would have allowed such third-party partners — and developers like Tapbots and The Iconfactory were indeed partners of Twitter— to stop accepting new subscriptions and renewals, and allow existing subscribers to run out the clock with service for the period they already paid for.
Federico has launched Apple Frames 3.1, Myke is worried about a secret plan set in motion by Stephen and Bing has thoughts on Apple’s Books app.
On Connected Pro, two very embarrassing stories from my life.