Eehpulicious

This page provides a fun insight to discovering Apple and Apple-associated products owned by the Tan family. Instead of spelling it as Apple, it is spelt "Eehpu" because Chloe was pronouncing the word "Apple" as "Eehpu" when she was learning how to pronounce it.

Throughout the post, I will be referring to myself as The Naked Geek or TNG for short. In real life, I stay in Singapore and its associated hot and humid weather. Therefore, I'm almost always shirt-less at home.

(Apple + Delicious = Applelicious) and (Eehpu + Delicious = Eehpulicious)

Applelicious = Eehpulicious. Get the drift?

Before we start, here is an inventory of the various Apple stuffs we have:

We have:
1. Mid-2010 27" iMac | 3.2GHz Intel Core i3 | 4GB RAM | 1TB HDD | ATI Radeon HD 5670
2. Powerbook G4 | 867 MHz PowerPC G4 | 256MB RAM | 40GB HDD | NVIDIA GeForce4 Go 420
3. 2 x iPhone 3GS
4. iPod Mini 4GB
5. iPod Photo 10GB

Here's the inaugural post:

TNG is going to be back in business soon with the newly acquired 27" iMac. The first major hurdle he had to overcome was Apple doing away with FireWire 400 ports on the iMacs. The Sony camcorders have FireWire 400 on it so downloading the videos to the new iMac will be impossible. Every other devices in the house that comes with FireWire capability also uses FireWire 400.

As usual, Apple did not bother to develop a solution for this and leave it to 3rd-party manufacturers to provide a solution. After a long research, TNG have the following solutions to choose from:
1. Buy new FireWire 400 to 800 cables.
2. Buy a FireWire 800 to 400 connecter/adapter.

With option 1, TNG would have to buy at least 2 cables. Some of the devices uses the 4-pin FireWire 400 heads while the other devices would use the 6-pin FireWire 400 heads. TNG would need 1 cable for 4-pin to the FireWire 800's 9-pin and another cable for the 6-pin to 9-pin just to connect it to the new iMac. Each cable would have cost at least SGD35 to SGD38.

With option 2, an adapter is used. The adapter is probably a 9-pin FireWire 800 head that connects to the FireWire 800 port on the new iMac. On its other end, it is probably a FireWire 400 6-pin that would have allowed TNG to reuse every FireWire 400 cables in the house. TNG also found the Sonnet Universal FireWire Adapter and the Macmosphere Firewire 400 to 800 adapter from EpiCentre.

The Sonnet goes for USD$14.95 while the Macmosphere is sold for $19.90.

Looking at both option 1 and 2, it seems clear that option 2 is highly desirable because it is somewhat cheaper and the best part is that it does not require new cables or render the current ones obsolete.

During TNG's recent shopping trip to get the converters, TNG bought himself a hard disk drive he had desired ever since he bought the 27" iMac. An iomega eGo 500GB Silver Portable Hard Drive, Mac Edition. It is probably named Mac Edition because it offers not just the usual USB2.0 ports but also FireWire 400 and FireWire 800 ports and it is sold for SGD139 with 3 cables provided. Compared to standard 500GB portable drives with just USB2.0 interfaces, this hard drive would cost around SGD40 more.

Now why is the TNG talking about hard drives all of a sudden? You will understand in due course.

This hard drive is very much under-rated by iomega. On its product website, the features were:

Versatile - Multiple connections with one FireWire 800 port, one FireWire 400 port, and one USB 2.0 port
Stylish colors - Available in Ruby Red, Midnight Blue and Silver
Rugged - Perfect for travel environments, the Drop Guard feature protects the drive when dropped up to 51 inches
Secure - Receive backup software solutions ... blah blah blah...
3 Year Limited Warranty

If my English serves me well, multiple connections could simply mean that I can connect via either either FireWire 800, FireWire 400 or USB 2.0.

When I unwrapped the hard disk from its box, I flipped through its instruction manuals and found an interesting surprise. When using the harddisk with FireWire, the other FireWire port can be used as a pass-through port.

This is a very wonderful feature for owners of new iMacs who do not have FireWire 800 cables or adapters/converters. Now I only need to connect the eGo portable hard drive via its supplied FireWire 800 cables to the iMac at blazingly fast transfer speed. My Sony camcorder can be connected to the FireWire 400 port on the eGo via existing FireWire 400 cables. The eGo has solved my FireWire 400 to 800 obstacle. By paying the additional SGD40 for a USB2.0 portable disk drive, I have a faster transfer speed and a FireWire 400 to 800 adapter/converter.

My only problem now is that I have to quickly send in the Macmosphere converter back to the shop for store credits. I have no use for that anymore.


02 September 2010
"Charging is not supported with this accessory"
It was a bad start to my day this morning. I have a list of important tasks to perform after arriving at work. However, the list were in my iPhone, which had ran out of juice when I woke up this morning. I knew it's battery was flat but I also knew that I could always charge it with my Belkin Retractable USB charger which I had bought while travelling at the IT specialty store at Changi Airport Terminal 3 because I thought I had misplaced my usb adapters for my iPod Mini a couple of years ago.

It took my iPhone at least an hour and forty minutes later to kick to life with 8% of battery power and it was still charging. I decided to turn off the phone so that it may reserve all the power for its battery recharge but it did not seem to happen. Instead, when I turned on the iPhone again, the message "Charging is not supported with this accessory" flashed on the iPhone screen. After repeated failed attempts, I realise that this may have been a bug with the OS upgrade. A quick check online revealed tons of related messages on the error message. The first option would be to perform a "Reset All Settings" on the iPhone. Reseting did not remove any data from the phone but it changed my battery indicator, wallpaper and brightness settings back to their defaults.

After the phone rebooted, it prompted for my passcode. When I entered my usual passcode, a message actually appears at the bottom, telling me that "This passcode has been used too recently". I do appreciate the reminder but I would have appreciated it much further had it stayed as much as it sounded like one, just a reminder. It was not and the phone refuses to bulge unless I change my passcode to something else.

After the password change, I was able to reconfigure my phone settings and the usb charger worked like a charm again.

Magic Trackpad rocks!