Michelle has been “commenting” on the condition of my iPad cover for a couple of months now. I *like* older, warn things. They just feel right. But when the face of the cover started to tear I couldn’t avoid it any more.
I’m still amazed that I can find things on eBay and they actually show up early and as promised.
I first began using Airfoil back in late 2012 with my Windows system in order to take advantage of some existing Airplay speakers that I was using with iTunes only. Airfoil allowed me to redirect the sound from my browser-based Pandora player throughout the house.
Later on, when I switched to using an OS X platform (Mac Mini) I encountered the numerous issues that seem to plague Airplay users, random dropouts and disconnects being among the most annoying. On impulse I purchased the Mac license for Airfoil and found my issues were 90% improved.
I’m not sure why but playing iTunes content through native Airplay is still just an awful experience. Airplay devices seem to come and go as they please. While the issue is most notable with third party speakers (I have a couple of Philips Fidelio Wireless Speakers
What a difference! I won’t say it’s perfect, anything depending upon home wireless connectivity seldom is, but the improvement in reliability is dramatic!
If that isn’t enough I can also install free add-on software on my Windows and Macbook machines and broadcast music from my primary Mac to wherever those other devices are. If your goal is to have your music available subtly throughout your home rather than blasting it from a single stereo or computer then this is your solution.
So I’m much happier with my setup now. When I am puttering in the house or when I have a party I have my music coming from every room so you can just enjoy it without straining. And very few dropouts compared to before!
I just picked this up and was surprised that I couldn’t find a PDF of the instruction manual. All the SevilleClassics website has is the QuickStart card.
Click Here for the PDF Manual
This was not obvious to me at all so I thought I would share it.
If you are finding your iAqualink unit is showing a temperature that is within 4 degrees higher or lower than your pool water actually is, you can go to Menu > System Setup > Temp Calibrate and get to a screen that looks like this one below.
I do not have a Spa so only the Pool is showing a valid temperature. The issue here is there is no obvious way to actually adjust the temperature and APPLY the change.
What you want to do is, with the pump running so the temperature is registering:
In about 15-20 seconds you should see the “Pool Temp” reading on the home screen adjust to the newly calibrated temperature.
This is completely counterintuitive since, to me, the “Back” button is equivalent to a “Cancel” key. “Take me out of here without changing anything”. It took over two months of going back and forth with Zodiac before I finally got a helpful person on their customer service line who could say something other than “You need to contact an authorized service company before we can do anything”.
Last year before I upgraded to OS X Yosemite I did a fair amount of research and figured out which programs would need to be upgraded and which would work just fine. I missed the fact that my wife uses a Chromebook and was depending upon my running Google Chrome on my Mac in order to print via Cloud Print.
This functionality, of course, broke in Yosemite and nobody can seem to be bothered to fix it. I assume that either powerhouse Apple or powerhouse Google could resolve the issue in an afternoon were they so inclined so I don’t know why they are being obstinate. But this is the world we live in so we need to adapt.
As a recent Mac convert there are still some Windows programs that I have not found replacements for. Despite Macs incredible popularity these days Windows software ported over to Mac seems feature deprived or non-existent. Case in point my financial software Quicken. I’m astonished that the offerings out there for Mac owners are so meager in this arena.
I use the excellent VMWare Fusion product to run Windows in a virtual machine on my Mac. This is practical because the Mac is relatively beefy and has the resources to support the VM with no compromise to any other Mac functionality.
My printer is shared with the VM (you know where this is going) so it’s just a matter of leaving Chrome running in the VM and, lo and behold, my wife can print all she wants to our Classic HP Laser printer.
I know it’s a bit of a cheat and I don’t expect you’ll want to set up a vm just to allow Google Cloud Print from OS X but for those of you already running some kind of non OS X vm who may not have already thought of doing this…
