d00dism

Maybe I’m just behind the times or didn’t read the news stories about the dual core G5s intently enough. Apple is using combination Airport Express/Bluetooth 2.0 cards in G5s now instead of the Airport Express cards used in all other Macs.

From the Apple KB:

Power Mac G5 (Late 2005) computers are designed to work with a combination AirPort Extreme with Bluetooth 2.0+EDR card, which combines AirPort and Bluetooth wireless technologies on one card. Please note that other versions of AirPort cards cannot be used with Power Mac G5 (Late 2005) computers. Although the connector on the computer’s logic board will fit an AirPort Extreme card, it is meant for the AirPort Extreme with Bluetooth 2.0+EDR card only. Power Mac G5 (Late 2005) computers will not recognize an AirPort Extreme card if you attempt to install one.

The antennas in the Power Mac G5 (Late 2005) also differ from previous Power Mac G5 models, which had an external antenna that attached to the back of the computer. All Power Mac G5 (Late 2005) computers have internal wireless antennas that come preinstalled, regardless of whether or not the computer has an AirPort Extreme with Bluetooth 2.0+EDR card installed.

The AirPort Extreme with Bluetooth 2.0+EDR card is available either as a factory-installed option at the time you purchase your Power Mac G5 (Late 2005), or you can add wireless capability post purchase(1) by having an Apple Authorized Service Provider or a retail Apple Store install the AirPort Extreme with Bluetooth 2.0+EDR card for you. The AirPort Extreme with Bluetooth 2.0+EDR card is not a DIY (do-it-yourself) part.

1. The AirPort Extreme with Bluetooth 2.0+EDR card is now available from service providers for installation.

While this is a good idea, especially considering Bluetooth post sale was a band-aid USB solution, it’s made things more complicated for the consumer, which isn’t positive in the short term.

I’ve been trying to get keychain syncing to work between my two Macs. You’d think that the login keychains would sync (especially since .Mac syncing is supposedly enabled), but they don’t. I decided to make a new keychain and try to get it to work.

I start using the Reset function to try to force synchronization. And for those interested, no, I still haven’t had any success getting keychain syncing to work. It’s way too hard to get working.

I digress. Suddenly, clocking the Reset Sync Data… button did nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. It did output something to the console log every time I clicked it.

2005-12-04 16:44:54.451 System Preferences[501] *** Assertion failure in -[NSMenuItem initWithTitle:action:keyEquivalent:], Menus.subproj/NSMenuItem.m:140

2005-12-04 16:44:54.455 System Preferences[501] Invalid parameter not satisfying: aString != nil

Awesome. System Preferences swallows up this error, leaving the user sitting there endlessly, futilely clicking the button, wondering why they aren’t being asked what to reset. Obviously, some preference or cache was all screwed up. Which one though?

Well, caches are easy. Just nuke them all. Naturally, that didn’t help. Next on the chopping block were Sync Services and System Preference preferences. No dice. I had to delete “com.apple.DotMacSync.plist” in Home/Library/Preferences and Home/Library/Safe Preferences. I’m fairly certain I’d already deleted the former, making me conclude that “Safe Preferences” is worthless. It’s just another place to delete preferences from. In this case, the problem seemed to be the fact that Transmit Bookmarks were in that p-list, but they weren’t in the syncing list anymore. I have no idea why, but there it is.