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nunz

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#165617 15-Feb-2015 13:16
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This week I have learnt a few new things. All of them were a bit of an eye opener or even worse, a right royal pain in the neck causing lots and lots of painful listening to horrendous music on hold.

Fact 1 - Apples iTunes server doesn't connect to any of their products. You don't use it to server content for iPhones, iPads or Apple TV. In fact as far as I can see it has no use at all.

Fact 2 - If you need / want to sign up to iTunes, and you have an icloud email address, you cant sign up unless you get a third party email address. That's correct. Apple will not let you use an Apple email account (like iCloud) as your primary email address when you register with iTunes. They want you to leave their cloud system and use another provider like Google, Microsoft or your local ISP.

Fact 3 - Hmm - sounds like I'm Apple bashing but they really did raise my eyebrows a few times this week. If you have an iPhone 5 / 6, and it has that 'find my phone using icloud' feature turned on, and the icloud account you used has been deleted - then your phone is effectively bricked as you cannot reset it, format it or make it respond to anyone else but your (non-existent) iCloud account. How do I know this? A client has a new phone, set it up with an icloud account, realised it should be on the same iCloud account as previous phone, deleted iCloud account and now has a bricked iPhone 5S. Two weeks on, after providing evidence of ownership and proof of purchase to Apple the phone is still bricked.

Fact 4 - A non Apple fact to show I'm not too partisan. Microsoft and Facebook are in tight collusion with each other. Why? MSN (Microsoft, the anti-Apples home page for new PCs) forces you to log into Facebook or with a Facebook account to place comments on stories. There are no other choices. Go straight to Facebook, do not pass go, do not collect $200 dollars. 

Fact 5 - The Education Dept in its rush to implement the New Learning Environment, is being ably assisted by Apple to get  iPads into the hands of the children for them to do their homework. Unfortunately it seems that many schools are using Sum dog and a range of similar sites which require Flash. Pity the iPads don't do flash.

Fact 6 - If you rebuild a PC with Windows XP, (yes there are good reasons to do so sometimes), you cannot get it onto the internet to download updates, the latest version of internet explorer or to download firefox, chrome, flash and a raft of other items needed to get it updated and working on the internet. All those sites now use https, of a type not supported by WinXP, SP1 or possibly SP2.  Thank goodness for MajorGeeks.com, you can still download using non-flash, http based, straight forward links from there.


Like I said, an interesting week of learning. Well interesting for me but along the way maybe some snippets of info that might help someone else stuck with one of the scenarios shown above.


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loceff13
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  #1239381 15-Feb-2015 14:12
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Garbage



sir1963
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  #1239430 15-Feb-2015 16:41
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I must be doing something wrong then because I have my Mac Mini acting as an iTunes server for about 4 or more years.
I serve my media files to iPads, iPhones, Apple TVs and an Xbox


The rest of your post is equally accurate.

blakamin
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  #1239465 15-Feb-2015 17:20
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Not sure about apple stuff as I haven't used it since I sold my iPod classic many years ago but...
You can't download chrome with a fresh install of Vista either.  IE spits an error every time. Gets to the download page, loads it, then says "This page cannot be loaded".



nunz

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  #1240532 17-Feb-2015 08:34
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sir1963: I must be doing something wrong then because I have my Mac Mini acting as an iTunes server for about 4 or more years.
I serve my media files to iPads, iPhones, Apple TVs and an Xbox


The rest of your post is equally accurate.


Are you talking about using iTunes as a home server or   the iTunes Media Server software? There is a difference.  Apple themselves have no listed products it connects to.

So if the rest is inaccurate then why do Apple Support say I have to submit my Purchase documents for the new iPhone 5s to them to unlock it because the icloud address is gone and it is totally locked and unable to be reformatted etc?

Have you tried signing up to iTunes with an iCloud account?




nunz

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  #1240536 17-Feb-2015 08:41
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blakamin: Not sure about apple stuff as I haven't used it since I sold my iPod classic many years ago but...
You can't download chrome with a fresh install of Vista either.  IE spits an error every time. Gets to the download page, loads it, then says "This page cannot be loaded".


Also finding IE is faulting on a lot of websites.

The web seems to be getting less and less open standards / multi device functional and is heading down a nasty track where you need specific browsers and technologies to access it.



freitasm
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  #1240544 17-Feb-2015 08:43
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You folks discuss the tech part without any personal name calling or this thread goes the way of the dodo.

I will edit previous posts to remove the name calling.




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nunz

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  #1240545 17-Feb-2015 08:46
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Okay. Sorry.

I just get ticked at the negativeness of the way Nz posting is going. Two Typical examples above.

 
 
 

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michaelmurfy
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  #1240574 17-Feb-2015 09:40
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There is no reason to use Windows XP unless if it is a computer not connected to the internet.

Windows XP is going on 1 year without support from Microsoft, they don't have to continue supporting it. Most computers that were running Windows XP can be upgraded to Windows 7, the rest should be running Windows XP Embedded if it is used for a special purpose where Windows 7 can't be run. Those large companies still running XP have more than likely purchased an extended support agreement and are on their way to updating to 7.

Otherwise, Linux.




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Andib
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  #1240582 17-Feb-2015 09:48
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michaelmurfy: There is no reason to use Windows XP unless if it is a computer not connected to the internet.

Windows XP is going on 1 year without support from Microsoft, they don't have to continue supporting it. Most computers that were running Windows XP can be upgraded to Windows 7, the rest should be running Windows XP Embedded if it is used for a special purpose where Windows 7 can't be run. Those large companies still running XP have more than likely purchased an extended support agreement and are on their way to updating to 7.

Otherwise, Linux.



+1, Unless an extended support agreement has been purchased and you're still getting Windows Updates you should not be connecting a Windows XP PC to the internet. 




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Geektastic
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  #1240618 17-Feb-2015 10:20
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I'd agree iTunes is not the best app Apple have ever made for sure - in fact I think it is pretty dire and Airplay made it even more unreliable - but not sure about the rest.





ubergeeknz
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  #1240633 17-Feb-2015 10:29
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nunz: The web seems to be getting less and less open standards / multi device functional and is heading down a nasty track where you need specific browsers and technologies to access it.


Umm, no.  The web is becoming more secure.  To do so, services must exclude old, insecure standards.  Old browsers only support these old, insecure standards.  Therefore they can no longer operate on these services.  It is not about being less about open standards, it is about being more conscious of security as a basic requirement.  And if you consider IE6 to be about "open standards" then sir, you are sorely mistaken.  It's the worst kind of "defacto" standard there is and I am heartened that people are finally being forced off it.

wasabi2k
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  #1240674 17-Feb-2015 10:55
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Yeah base XP with IE6 doesn't support the SSL ciphers used by the majority of the internet.

SP3 does though - it comes with IE8 IIRC. I have been able to download IE8 with a base XP install IIRC.

From the other side of the coin - trying to configure appropriate SSL ciphers to get a high security rating REQUIRES you to disable the old ciphers - it's all TLS1.0 - 1.2 is better.

When you use Qualys SSL Scanner to analyse you can get a good rating with PFS - but it breaks Windows XP Pre IE8. So you have to make a decision as to go for good security or be compatible. (Qualys SSL Scanner has a really good client compatibility section to their scanner)

As to why people us XP - there are a LOT of XP Desktops out there with OEM licenses - and 7/8 are harder to pirate. Ahh, memories of FCKGW-RHQQ2.



nunz

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  #1241009 17-Feb-2015 17:59
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loceff13: Garbage


I think you mean rubbish - we aren't United Statsians yet.

BTW a single word answer achieves nothing - how about enlightening the rest of us with your wit, humour and brilliance?




freitasm
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  #1241014 17-Feb-2015 18:02
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nunz:
loceff13: Garbage


I think you mean rubbish - we aren't United Statsians yet.

BTW a single word answer achieves nothing - how about enlightening the rest of us with your wit, humour and brilliance?



I agree. Single word replies are very off topic and add nothing to the topic.





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nunz

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  #1241016 17-Feb-2015 18:04
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michaelmurfy: There is no reason to use Windows XP unless if it is a computer not connected to the internet.

Windows XP is going on 1 year without support from Microsoft, they don't have to continue supporting it. Most computers that were running Windows XP can be upgraded to Windows 7, the rest should be running Windows XP Embedded if it is used for a special purpose where Windows 7 can't be run. Those large companies still running XP have more than likely purchased an extended support agreement and are on their way to updating to 7.

Otherwise, Linux.


Here are two reasons to use XP.

1 - Industrial machinery reqiring serial ports running software that was designed to work on 16 / 32 bit Winxp machines. lots nad lots of those out there. ditto the parrellel port requirements.
2 - Mitsubishi, as an example, were still shipping million dollar laser cutting machines with winXP built in as their OS as late as early last year.   Those machines need to sit on a network to get documents / data. that network normally connects to a Pc with an internet connection. We set as manyof thme up as possible for sneaker net but at some point need to connect something to the internet.

The rebuild being done was for one of those machines and we needed to connect it to the interweb to activate licensing.

There are also a huge number of juke boxes in pubs, multimedia boxes, menumate type tills etc all still out there and working.



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