Look TUAW. I do like your blog. I subscribe to you in my Google Reader and read (almost) every article. It’s one of the few places where I can get great news on Apple hardware, software and basically anything that’s pertaining to the fruit company.
However, when you post articles like this, it just reeks too much of ignorance.
Let me go through the steps Steven Sande has done and try to provide him with some advice.
1) Screw antenna into base of webcam at 6:55PM. This is going to be fun!
2) Plug in power supply. Camera moves for a bit, then settles down.
Off to a good start! Sounds cool!
3) Fire up Windows, then realize that I can’t use the camera software install CD since it’s one of those mini ones that were so popular in 1998. They don’t work in slot-type SuperDrives. Need to download the software from vendor’s website.
This irks me some too, but can be easily remedied by a simple external USB DVD drive. Cheap and useful to have around. I’m sure he knows someone who has one that he can borrow for a day. I don’t have one myself, but my SATA/IDE-to-USB converter cable with power cord saved me a million times already.
4) Start up IE7 in Windows.
Uh oh. He has lost geek cred by an infinite amount.
5) Can’t get to downloads page from IE7 so download and install Firefox.
Phew…
6) Go to vendor site, get to the downloads page. Can’t download the software until I download and install the Flash plug-in.
7) Install Flash Player.
Yeah, I hate it too when this happens. But that’s what you get when one buys a product from a company with dubious reputation, for its cheapness rather than quality.
Download the software, finally. It’s an .rar archive.
9) Windows has no idea what an rar file is. I have it “use the Web service to find the correct program.” I find out that WinZip or StuffIt Expander will work.
First off, a simple Google search for “rar” will net him the software he needs. Even more awesome, it’s the first on the search page. In fact, 5 out of the first 6 results are links to WinRaR! I have no idea how he came up with WinZip or the wierdly named “StuffIt Expander”. Using WinZip is like using IE7. Geek cred now stands at negative double infinity.
10) Realize that WinZip is a program that, with all the add-INS, will cost me almost US$37. Didn’t it used to be free?
11) Go to StuffIt site and download free StuffIt Expander. Wait while McAfee scans for viruses.
12) Install StuffIt Expander. “This may take several minutes” it says.
13) Installation continues for an incredibly long time, most of which is marked by a status message that doesn’t change. Considering taking up smoking. Read War and Peace cover to cover while waiting for installation to complete, then build a 1:1 scale model of La Sagreda Familia out of toothpicks. About to perform a self-appendectomy when the installation finally finishes. Put away the X-acto knife and vodka.
14) Trying to reinstall StuffIt when Windows tells me in needs to activate. That’s perplexing since I installed and activated this legal copy of Windows Vista Ultimate weeks ago. Decide to at least try reinstalling StuffIt before going through activation again.
15) StuffIt Expander installer won’t run since it says that there’s already another installation in progress. System monitor shows no other application is running.
16) Restart Windows. Or at least try to. It takes forever to shut down. Finally Force Quit VMWare and hope for the best.
17) Re-launch VMWare, which unfortunately comes up in Windows shutdown mode. Finally find the Shut Down command in VMWare, then restart Windows Vista. It’s now 7:55 PM. Windows Vista plays its 4-tone startup tune, which I salute with two raised middle fingers.
18) Start up the StuffIt Expander installer again. Get an error message. Re-download the installer and try again, this time sacrificing a chicken while starting the installer. The installer takes its good time, but finally shows a completed installation. I feel sorry for the chicken, but happy that StuffIt Expander is installed.
19) What was I doing before all of this? Oh, yeah – I was trying to unzip the webcam installer. This goes well until the unzip crashes. I see the installer on my desktop, so I double-click to install. This installer runs quickly, but I need to reboot the Windows virtual machine.
20) Weeping uncontrollably, I wait as the virtual machine lies to me about shutting down. It’s now 8:09 PM. I wait, and wait. Did I mention the waiting?
21) I’m so bloody tired of waiting for the shutdown that I invoke the Shutdown menu item again. Windows reboots again.
All avoidable if he just used WinRaR. If one has knowledge of good software to use, all this is moot. He just seems to be making his own hell. Notice that he can skip TWELVE steps, and not to mention a whole lot of heartache, if he just bothered to Google “rar”. Sigh.
22) Double-click the webcam software. After I nearly have a heart attack when it temporarily can’t find the .exe file, it launches. This program is supposed to find a camera on the network and allow me to change settings. It’s doing nothing, so I decide to start pinging addresses on my network from Safari. I find my printer’s built-in web server, but not the webcam.
23) While I’m playing on the Mac, Windows mysteriously reboots itself. WTF?
24) I figure out that Windows thinks it is on another subnet. I look at some of the glowing reviews on Amazon and see the key phrase “connect to the camera over Ethernet the first time.” Nice of the vendor to put that in the docs. I’m tired. It’s now 8:58 PM. I decide to try this tomorrow on my old iMac since I have work to do. I’ll set up a small Ethernet network using a router I have, and hope that I can get this to work.*Time passes*
25) It’s now the next afternoon. I set up the old Linksys router, grab a few Ethernet cables, and fire up the camera app on the old iMac under VMWare and Win XP. Not surprisingly, Win XP works much better than Vista and within about 5 minutes I’m seeing the camera “anonymous” in the camera app.
Wait a sec. If the camera is controlled over the network, why would he need to install software for it? It’s just installing software for my router or NAS. Useful, but usually not needed. Just fire up the browser and point to it’s IP. One can just look it up on the router.
Hmm. But the software probably is needed for configuration purposes. My NAS comes with software too, to enable it’s built-in bittorrent client, and to automate certain tasks, but I could have easily done those had the software not do it. The great thing is that the software for my NAS does not require installation, and is a one-file executable. Simple and intuitive. It’s generally what you get when you spend a bit more and buy a product from a reputable company.
27) Reading the tiny print in the poorly-translated user manual for the webcam, I see that the vendor recommends using IE to bring up the built-in administrative web page and set up Wi-Fi. I double-click the name of the camera, and I’m immediately rewarded with a login screen for the admin web page. I log in using the default user ID and password, and then watch as IE7 proceeds to block the various controls that are trying to load.
Buy from funky Chinese company, get funkily translated manual. When IE blocks something, it can be “allowed”. Even if Google blocks a website because of suspected malware on the site, you can still access it if you want. It’s not permanent. Such controls are blocked for a reason. If one is resourceful with using search engines, it’s not difficult to find out why they’re blocked.
PS: where did step 26 go to anyway? Never use “ol” tags? Even more geek cred lost. Sigh.
28) At this point I’m discouraged and shouting four and more-letter expletives at IE7. I decide that it’s time to grab my spouse and go out to eat (and drink) away my frustration. A few beers later we’re back home and I download Firefox onto the virtual Win machine.
29) I launch Firefox, go to the IP address of the camera, and become very happy when the camera controller loads properly and responds to my commands.
30) With the webcam finally up and running, I tell Windows XP to quit. Soon I’m greeted with a happy message that says something like “Windows is installing update 1 of 37. Do not shut down this machine.” I wander off.
31) Two hours later, the message says “Windows is installing update 31 of 37.” I may never get to shut down Windows.
32) Another hour passes. The message hasn’t changed. I decide that Windows XP has locked up, and I invoke the magic VMWare virtual power switch. Who knows if the flippin’ thing was updated or not?
Why does he need to run a browser on the virtualized OS to see it? If it’s browser-based, why not just try it from a browser on the native OS?
Windows informs you beforehand that it will install updates before shutting down if you have them. From this, it seems evident that he doesn’t really read what’s on the screen, preferring to quickly click Next or OK buttons to continue on. It’s the very reason why Windows users get infected with unwanted software that hogs resources, toolbars covering valuable browser space, malware and viruses. Lucky for him, he’s an OSX user, which has better installation procedures than Windows. I use both, but my Windows machine, which I have yet to install an antivirus software for months now, is still clean, running fine and stable. Generally, I consider such problems PEBKAC.
By the way, there are various settings of Windows Update that one can set it too. From fully automated (default) to extremely manual, or something in between (my preferred one).
But the point of this entire exercise was that if Apple had ever stooped to selling Wi-Fi webcams, the installation process would probably be like this:
1) Plug your Apple iCam into a wall socket.
2) Launch the iCam utility software on your Mac or Windows PC. It’s included on the CD that came with your device.
3) Your iCam appears in the “cameras on this network” list. Highlight the camera you wish to update.
4) Give the camera a name, and click save. Note the web address that is now listed on the page — this address is where you can point any web browser in the world to view your camera and listen to what’s going on in streaming stereo audio.
I would expect it too, because Apple is a reputable company that makes good products! Comparing Apple’s imaginary camera product to an unnamed Chinese brand, it’s really a no-brainer to choose Apple’s, if it has the product in the first place. This whole time, I had thought he was frustrated with using Windows. But that’s because heinadvertently bought a cheap webcam, but expect stellar product quality. Don’t companies that specialize in webcam or networking products, like Logitech, Creative, D-Link, Netgear or Linksys make a network-controlled cameras as well? I’m sure there is, and the installation process would be as painless as Apple’s imaginary Wi-Fi webcam product.
I’m sure I’ll have some comments along the lines of “Well, if you had some familiarity with Windows, you’d realize that…” I am familiar with Windows. Way too familiar, as at one point in my career I was a project manager on a 12,000-seat Windows deployment for a large enterprise. Since that time, I’ve had my share of Windows experiences with my Mac consulting clients who have one Windows device on their network that ends up taking more support hours to keep up and running than the dozen or so Macs in the office.
“Much to learn, you still have.”
And I’m certain that someone will say “A real PC wouldn’t have done that; you’re running a virtual machine on a slow Mac.” Wrong, this type of thing has happened to me many times on real PCs as well. This isn’t a slow Mac; it’s a quad-core i7 iMac running 64-bit Windows Vista Ultimate.
Generally, it’s not the CPU, it’s the RAM one gives to the virtual machine. And no matter how fast the CPU is, it’s still limited by how good your hypervisor is at translating the instructions from the virtual machine to the host machine. One thing that’s always irksome about using virtual machines is networking. And since he’s trying to configure a network-based hardware, either he needs to properly configure the network settings of the virtual machine (NAT is too troublesome for my liking) or simply reboot to a bootcamp’ed Windows.
But the big lesson here isn’t about using Windows or OSX, it’s that you get what you pay for. If one wants a quality product, it’s a good idea to buy from companies that have good reputations of releasing such quality products.
