Kategoria: IT-ala (20 viimeisintä)

I've been trying to create test user accounts for the In-App Store stuff. I've never been successful in that. I've sent three support requests for Apple and never gotten any response. I really don't understand why is it so hard to tell me what I'm doing wrong, since clearly it can't be that Apple's whole test user creation thingy would be broken. That would get lots of developers angry. But no, they don't care, even though they'd get more money if I could get the purchasing working.

Second thing is that they rejected my application a couple of times. They said it didn't work. I told them I've tested it with a couple of devices and with the emulator. All work. Surprise surprise! The problem was at their end and suddenly they accepted the application with no changes!

Third problem, and this is a major one, is that they can't get their emails through to me. You know, I submit an app, they reject it, I never get any information about why. When I email them about this, all they can say is "we'll resend the email." They've tried that several times but the emails don't come through.

Now, I could suspect something wrong with my email severs, but here's the thing: they claim to send to two email addresses. They are on different servers. They are on different email server software. And neither show any emails even trying to come from Apple. But still their support emails come through. Strange. Oh, and I've asked them to copy the error information into the support emails, since they come through. Nope, they don't seem to be able to do that.

I've also tried to suggest to them that they could add a section to iTunes Connect where you could check the error information via the web. That way if the emails don't arrive, you can always check it there. But no. That would be too helpful. They can't do that.

And the most idiotic thing at the moment, and the reason I'm writing this: you can't test applications on devices with newer firmware than the SDK supports! Meaning that every time Apple updates iPhone OS, even a minor update, all developers MUST download the 3+GB SDK package, once again. No matter what you're targeting. You can't use the device unless you update.

I have 3.1.2 on my device. My XCode supports up to 3.1.1. My project is set to produce 3.0 binaries. You'd think I could test the application on my device, since 3.1.2 supports 3.0 binaries. But no, that won't do, since XCode doesn't support the firmware. Two choices: downgrade or install a new SDK. So I'm waiting for the download to finish. Nice. And naturally they can't just put up a diff/upgrade package. All 3+GB every time. Great job, Apple.

But then again, this is the case with Apple's updates too. Huge packages that replace the whole thing. A 160MB update just to fix a couple of security flaws in OS X? Is there something they're not telling us or are they just idiots and can't update the actual files that were changed? Also updating Java in Tiger was fun. Update, reboot. Another update, reboot. Another update, reboot. Why the hell couldn't I just install the latest update and be done with it?

I know, I've been quiet, the certificate is old and the source isn't available. I do apologize. I currently don't even have a machine that would have a working system for compiling mIRGGI, since Carbide sucks, the SDKs suck and Nokia doesn't care about compatibility. You know, the Symbian SDK emulators crash on most people on Win7. It's not like Nokia'd have had time to test them and fix the problems (since they knew they crash on Vista and they barely work on XP). And I'm saying Nokia, because they own Symbian. I'm not letting them use any more of this "it's not our fault, it's Symbian's" stuff.

So I'll try to get the certificate thingy fixed by compiling new versions and the source up somewhere so the interested parties can take a look. Beware: no comments. But that's normal, right?

I'm horribly busy with my studies and stressed out. If you want to cheer me up, send me a plain old postcard. That would be so nice. The address is:

Sami Kuhmonen
Suovatie 18A
FI-01660 Vantaa
Finland

But please, no pipe bombs or anything like that. Thanks!

Nokia released Ovi Maps Racing. So, they're actually supporting the use of motor vehicles on the block to race and endanger everyone? Cool! That's what I like to hear!

They also released Climate Mission - a fun way to learn more about climate change. Nice, you can also help the climate to change even more by using more energy with their games and stuff. Whoa! That's cool - err, ei mean HOT!

They're also asking about where's most scope for innovation (someone probably thought scope was a better word than some stupid room for improvement). Wow. Now, if they only even once had a choice about things that people actually care about (like, you know, a working phone, a battery that doesn't die in a day, a lens cap that doesn't scratch the lens or maybe even a user interface that is actually usable?) But hey, at least they'll showing they care! And then they'll show they don't care by not using the results for anything.

Oh well, maybe they're just too busy putting up huge billboards? It's kinda funny: they're showing this video about weekly on their blogs and stuff. Why? Who cares?

But at least they asked about what would be cool for Ovi Maps. And 40% said local guides, 23% wanted news and information etc. But the fun part is in the comments: people would actually like, for example, to navigate to a contact's address. This was naturally not on the list, since Nokia doesn't care about the actually usable things. They just want to bloat the stuff, not see what's missing. So, I'll make a bet: we won't see navigating to a contact's address for a long time. Because it wasn't on the poll they did.

And no, I won't even start talking about Ovi Suite, which has gotten people angry when it suddenly syncs your phones without asking, searches your drive for all pictures and trying to stuff them in your phones and whatnot. How about, you know, a little research about a typical user? I, for one, don't know any typical users (and certainly not power users) that would like to have all their pictures on their phone. Or all their music. They want to select what to sync. Hello?

Nor will I talk about Ovi Maps, which currently uses at least three different UI paradigms and is a total mess. And still doesn't know the actual routes around the capital area in Finland. Naturally so doesn't Google, but they're not selling their crap as a navigator. Err, sorry. Giving away their crap for free as a navigator. Forgot. People refused to pay for the Ovi Maps, so they had to give it for free.

And especially I'm NOT going to mention that Mail for Exchange STILL can't sync any other folder than Inbox. So it's still unusable. Dunno how it is with Maemo.

And finally, not going to mention the fact that there is a huge number of S60 3rd ed users pissed off because Nokia (and some others) only release their stuff for the 5th ed. Also the same applies for Maemo users. But hey, that's life. If you didn't know that Nokia does this, that's your fault. Buy a new phone. That's the response for everything.

And yes, I'm back. At least for a moment ;)

Oh well, you really don't like me enough :( But as promised, I'll give you something. mIRGGI goes shared source. Which means that I'll open the source, you can add to it and send in the patches and whatnot, but it's not GPL or other crap. One big reason is that I don't want 843975984 forks of mIRGGI just because of "I want this dot to be there and not here" folks. And you're not allowed to use parts of mIRGGI in your own projects. Just because I'm evil.

So stay tuned. It'll happen soon. I just have a physics exam tomorrow, for which I haven't studied, and other stuff. But soon. You'll get to wonder the horrors of my coding and make mIRGGI even better.

Good? Bad? Don't care? At least the development shouldn't be just on my shoulders.

Exchange 2010 has increased the security levels once again. If you try to use ActiveSync with a user that is or ever has been part of any restricted groups (like domain admins), the account cannot be used via ActiveSync.

Naturally nobody uses email with an account that is a domain admin, right? ;) So it's not a problem.

If you want to use the account with ActiveSync, you must remove it from any restricted groups and then edit the account's security settings with ADSIedit. You need to enable the propagation of parent settings to the account.

And no, it's not enough that you just enable the propagation and not remove the user from the groups. If you don't, the permissions are removed after a while.

Exchange 2010 won't contain the option to upgrade your installation from 2007. Microsoft says that there are too many changes in database schemas and stuff, so it is not feasible. But one thing people might not understand is that you can't even remove Exchange 2007 and then install 2010. It won't work. So you have to install a clean OS for 2010 to get it running.

The good news is that moving the mailboxes is very simple. Just add a mailbox server with 2010, fire up PowerShell and use New-MoveRequest <mailboxname> for all boxes (and naturally you can do this in a loop). Exchange will put all the boxes in the move queue and handle everything. It is asynchronous and transparent so your users can continue to use the service even while the boxes are being transferred.

After you've transferred the boxes, just remove the previous mailbox server and you're done.

Naturally it's not always that simple, but if it's time to get new hardware, it would be quite feasible. And you can use the previous server for other things.

Naturally if you have clustered the mailbox, you could break the cluster, upgrade one server, move the boxes and then upgrade the others. This is not always an option, though, since some people won't take the chance that something breaks while the cluster is down.

If you're thinking about testing Exchange 2010 RC in your Exchange 2007 environment, go ahead. They do work together. However, there are a couple of things you need to know:

• Your Exchange 2007 servers must have SP2 installed. SP2 was released just a few days ago and without it 2010 won't work with 2007.
• You won't be able to see 2007 servers in 2010's management console. This is as designed and you really shouldn't manage 2007 servers with 2010's tools anyway.
• When you install 2010 (I first tried the client access server) and try to use Get-OwaVirtualDirectories to get information about the servers, you'll probably get an error saying Access Denied. You must add Exchange Trusted Subsystem to the local Administrators group on every 2007 server. After that it'll work just fine.

Oh, and one very nice thing: you can upgrade 2010 RC to RTM! So you can start testing and implementing and when the RTM comes out, just upgrade to it. Very nice!

So, it seems that Nokia is dumping Avkon in favor of Qt. The timeline seems to be around Symbian^4 (who was the idiot that figured out that notation?). So, currently application developers are at a strange situation: Qt is not working at the moment (although Nokia has constantly stated that it would be available right now) and Avkon is going to be dumped. Nice.

So, what should we do if we want to create applications for S60? Create the applications with Avkon and rewrite them for Qt next year? Try to use Qt as it is and force users to install it separately and suffer the bugs? Wait a couple of years (decades?) to see when Nokia will get their act straight? That's for each to decide for themselves.

Me? I've gotten fed up with Nokia's stuff a long time ago. I would like to create some business applications for S60, but currently it's still too difficult. XML parsing takes huge amounts of memory, which is not available so I'd have to use some SAX+own code stuff, which is not nice. User interface controls have lots of annoying panics if you don't make sure everything is exactly as they want it (and this changes intermittently - older versions allow you to call method1 before method2, newer crashes if it's not method2 and then method1 etc).

What would it take to get me interested in developing for S60? Qt would probably be a good start. I haven't had much experience with it, but it can't be worse than Avkon and other Symbian APIs. And then I'd like to have a real IDE for S60 development. Carbide is still slow, bloated and buggy. Hell, Carbide.c++ has been available for 3.5 years soon and STILL it's nowhere near commercial grade environment. No wonder Nokia had to put it up for free.

Also one of the most horrible things in S60 development is the "emulator." I say "emulator" because it's just a crappy compilation of S60 on x86 architecture which allows you to code stuff that won't work on actual devices and also make code that works on devices but not on the "emulator." And the startup time... I have fast machines and still just to get the application to start in debug mode takes 1-2 minutes. Each time. Tak about efficiency. How about taking note about Microsoft's actual emulator for WinCE? It actually runs the same binary as the devices and you don't need to boot it every time you want to run an application. That's how it should be done.

What I'd like to see is a working emulator, working SDK (the current has lots of warnings and errors in their headers, for one and it can't even be compiled with current ARM compilers!) and preferrably a plugin for Visual Studio 2010 (and why not 2008, since it looks like the same plugins work in both). Then you could really do some development.

And a hint to Nokia: if you can't be bothered to update Carbide.vs to Visual Studio 2008+, just give me access to the source code and I'll work on it for almost nothing, maybe even for free. I know there are lots of people that would like to use Visual Studio for development since it's a lot better than Eclipse+CDT. CDT's code indexing is slow and many times doesn't even work. Intellisense works every time.

So it's very simple: provide me with the source for the previous release (under NDA) and you'll get a newer version. It doesn't take anything away from you and it only gives the developers the possibility to use the IDE they want to. Deal?

I submitted a version of my Telkussa Xtra application to Apple for review. After more than a week I notived that it had been rejected but I hadn't received any information why. So I sent an email to them asking if they could resend the information. I also suggested that the reasons could be added to the web site so that you could always get them there if the email doesn't arrive.

A moment ago I got a reply. It said that they've sent me an email at this date to these addresses and if it's not correct, update the contact information. No mention about the reason why it was rejected.

So, it's nice to know that they reply, but I'm none the wiser about what I must do to the application to get it through.

Before that I sent a new version of Telkussa to them. They rejected it twice claiming it doesn't work. Nothing is loaded from the network. I tested and tested and it always worked both on the device and on the simulator. So I emailed them about this inability to reproduce the problem. They actually answered quite quickly and asked me to resend the application and they'll review it again.

I sent the exact same binaries as previously and suddenly it worked just fine and was accepted. Nice to know that they have problems on their end and claim that it's my fault...

My Macbook had the topcase problem where the plastic part that holds the keyboard cracks. My machine was almost two years old and the warranty had expired after one year. Called them up, they said that since it's a material problem they'll fix it. Nice, I got a brand spanking new keyboard / touchpad / topcase in a day.

The battery on my Macbook also died. It didn't wither away like batteries usually do. No, it just went dead. Apple tells me I haven't used it enough (only 38 cycles in two years) and the warranty is only for one year. New battery costs 139€. Not nice. Crap batteries.

Those of you that get crashes with CTCP Pings, please send a comment with the device you're using, the version of mIRGGI, name and version of the client you use to ping and if it always crashes.

I haven't gotten the crash to happen so this would help me find the exact cause.

It seems that Ficora (Finnish Communications Regulatory Agency) isn't that happy with their (allegedly inside) deal with Accenture. The deal they made some years bag about the FI TLD domain system was a bit dodgy since they had previously ordered investigations from Accenture and they were part of the bidding process. And naturally the winner was Accenture, even though they were almost the priciest.

But now Ficora has sent another request for bids. And it states that they are going to rewrite the whole system. Did they forget to put some "oh, we need the sources and rights for the system, y'know?" clause in the contract or is the current system so crap that it's better to start all over again?

They estimate that it'll take 2-6 million euros to get the system done and it'll be up and running 1.1.2011. We'll see what happens.

I just can't get my head around this. What happened? Who messed things up? Since no-one is accountable for errors in contracts etc, no-one cares. And the taxpayers will be the ones paying for this.

It would be nice to get some info from Ficora, but I bet this information is not publicly available. At least not the truth.

Oh, and you who are thinking about bidding: you have to have a reference about a "similar system" and your 3-year turnover has to be at least 10M€. So there goes the competition...

Ok, it's out. Sorry it took so long, but now the settings work again.

BTW, you can always get the previous version of mirggi using one of these URLs (just change the version number to what you want):

• http://mirggi.net/mIRGGI_060.sisx
• http://mirggi.net/mIRGGI_5th_060.sisx
• http://mirggi.net/mIRGGI_2nd_060.sis
• http://mirggi.net/mIRGGI_2nd2_060.sis

I finally have time to address the problem with 0.62 not working if it is installed on a clean phone without settings. Hopefully I'll have a working version out within the hour at the latest.

Update: Problem found, compiling new version and uploading...

Version 0.62 should now fix the problems with 5th edition. I had to change the volume keys to function as channel changing buttons since 5800 XpressMusic has no other usable buttons. Settings for servers work (they worked before if you changed them, clicked left and then back) and I changed the default colors to white background and black text.

Otherwise it's the same as 0.61 and 0.60, so only 5th edition users have to update.

To type in, you have to click the input line (I know it's a bit small, I'll make it larger), write with the virtual keyboard and press enter on the virtual kb to send it.

Apple has messed up their developer certificate stuff. The actual certificates work ok, but the provisioning profiles (which are used when testing applications on devices and when sending the application to the AppStore) won't work. Seems that Apple has forgotten to put the certificate information into the provisioning files. And many people are pissed. Fortunately I didn't need my provisioning profiles right now even though I ran into this problem.

Nice work, Apple. Keep it up. It's not ok to mess up stuff for everyone just because you're releasing iPhone OS 3.0 today...

More info about the identity matching provisioning profile mess.

Ok, I finally got my head messed up enough to figure out why the settings weren't working on the 5th edition devices. It's now fixed in 0.61. You can get the versions from the normal locations, 5th edition is at http://5th.mirggi.net/ from now on.

There are no major changes in this version, mainly the 5th edition compatibility and update to the Estonian translation (thanks Henrik!)

Oh, and naturally the certificate thingy is fixed. No need to change dates on your phones to install. Sorry for the delay :(

Text input on 5th edition seems "a bit" shaky, I'll try to fix it now!

I got the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic a while back. I used it for 5 minutes and was horrified. I expected Nokia's first mass marketed touch screen phone to be not that good but I didn't expect this.

The user interface has not been changed in any way to really support the touch screen. There are also lots of nuisances and inconsistencies all around. I can't understand why they let the device go to market like this.

Oh, and the problems are still in the current version on my phone (21.0.026.C02.01)

1. In some places (like the application grid) you can use single click to start an application. But when using settings screens etc you have to click twice. The first click only selects the item, the second activates it.
2. You have to use lots of clicks to change text settings. For example, change your password on the MfE client. Click on Password to select it. Click again to activate. You'll get an empty text box on the screen. Click it to open the keyboard. Click Ok to accept the text. Click Ok again to accept the text. This is how it should be?
3. Many binary (yes/no) settings need lots of clicks. First to select, second to activate, third to select the other option, fourth to activate it. In iPhone, WMobile etc you only need to click the check box/slider. That's it!
4. On-screen keyboard is horrible. The small is too small to use without the stylus. The large one always rotates the screen, so it's quite impossible to use one-handed. Also all accented letters need four clicks to get (first open the accent menu, then select the accent section, then the character and then change back to normal letters). Horrible.

And that's just some of the most irritating ones. I would tell Nokia to do as Microsoft and Apple did, but it won't help since they already did that. They just thought it wrong. Apple and Microsoft took an existing mouse-operated UI, tweaked it and put it into a touch screen device. Touch is like a mouse, so it works. Nokia took an existing D-pad-operated UI and used it as such without thinking. Way to go!

And yes, I do know that Symbian itself has supported touch screen/mouse for a looong time, so actually, Nokia did nothing. They just added the touch screen.

But no worries, I'm sure Qt4 will fix this. Too bad we'll have to wait for it for some time still...

Nokia opened Ovi Store, finally. And I was not disappointed at all. It was as bad a mess as I thought it would be. And I'm not talking about the capacity problems and stuff.

The logical comparison is between Apple's AppStore and Nokia's Ovi Store. Both sell applications for the users of their devices. So let's do some basic comparisons:

So, I want to make a freeware application (actually I've already done one for the iPhone). With Apple I'll pay $99 for the first year. That's it. With Nokia I'll pay at least $220 for getting the application in. More than double. So, it's not a reasonable route to get freeware applications to users. Oh, and when I need to update the application, add features etc, I'll have to pay at least $20 every time. With Apple, it's free.

Ok, forget the freeware. I'd like to get some revenue from the application. Let's say I'll charge $1 for it since it's a small application and people are willing to pay that amount for it. With Apple I'll have to get 142 new purchases per year to break even. With Nokia I need 314 purchases for the first year if I don't do any updates and I only use credit card billing. If the customers are via operator billing, then I'll need at least 550 purchases to break even.

But since all applications will be updated, this is not the case. With Nokia, every time you update the application you need to sell 29 more applications. So you really have to think if the update will get you more customers or not. With Apple it's free.

Also, if you're not part of the Launchpad program, you'll have to pay $50/application to get them into the store (is this still valid?). So the purchases needed goes higher and higher.

Someone tell me why I should use Ovi Store? To get the application into millions of devices? Oh wait, the actual store application isn't available in more than a couple of countries. And only for two devices. So that's not going to be a reason for me until it's available everywhere and on every S60 3rd edition+ device.

So in my book, Nokia messed things once again. Even though they did ask a couple of Finnish companies how things should be done and the main answer was "like Apple's store." But no such luck.

First of all, I do apologize for being so quiet for so long. I haven't been well and haven't been able to update mIRGGI for some time now. I hope I'll be able to continue developing it soon.

Some things I know you're wondering:

• The self-signed certificate has expired, so you need to change the date on your phone if you want to install it. I'll try to get a new package up soon
• The 3rd edition version "works" on the 5th edition, but as we all know: Nokia's/Symbian's promises about compatibility are always overrated. For some reason the settings don't show up at all even though the code is exactly as Nokia's own examples show. Also it's not nice to use mIRGGI when the soft key labels are not visible. I'll try to fix this soon.

Hope you'll understand my situation and mIRGGI is definitely NOT dead!