Apple readies another crack at ending Yosemite's Wi-Fi ills

Quickening tempo of 10.10.2 beta releases hints at impending release

Apple is putting the final touches on the next update to OS X Yosemite as it again tries to stamp out Wi-Fi problems customers have experienced -- and reported -- since the operating system launched three months ago.

In a seven-day span, Apple released two iterations of the beta of OS X 10.10.2, the first on Jan. 14, the second on Jan. 21, hinting that the final release is imminent.

Apple, like most developers, typically shortens the interval between builds the closer it comes to a final release.

As they have before, the cryptic release notes for what was pegged as build "14C106a" called out "Wi-Fi" as one of the few areas for testers to focus on, according to numerous online reports and confirmation from registered Apple developers.

On Monday, 9to5Mac.com, citing Apple employee sources, said that an even-newer beta, tagged "14C109," is circulating within the company and comes with a claim of, "Resolves an issue that may cause Wi-Fi to disconnect."

Mac owners who have had trouble connecting to -- and staying connected to -- wireless networks are hoping that 10.10.2 will finally give them relief.

"I suspect Yosemite 10.10.2 [14C106a] is nearly there as to Wi-Fi," wrote an optimistic "hexdiy" in a message last Wednesday on Apple's support forum.

A handful of comments that referenced earlier beta builds said things looked promising. "I installed [Jan. 14's 14C99d] and after several days, the problem seems to have gone away," said kbastian.

Those messages were just two of nearly 2,200 on a massive support thread opened Oct. 17, the day after Apple released Yosemite. The thread has been viewed more than 683,000 times, an extraordinary number for the Cupertino, Calif. company's support discussion forums.

Messages from frustrated, even furious, Mac owners continue to accumulate.

"Yosemite on my machine today is almost unusable," reported ausappleuser last week. "Will it be fixed though? I have ceased to care and will be moving on."

"If I was Apple, I would be totally ashamed and embarrassed," chimed in Gianvito Fanelli. "This is the third month that I CANNOT use the Internet properly. Continuous drops with a few moments of peace."

Apple's first crack at cleaning up the Wi-Fi disconnect mess, Yosemite 10.10.1, which was released Nov. 17, did not cure users' Internet ills, according to reports on the same thread last year.

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5 minutes a week to advance your career

Maintain contacts that can keep your career moving by reaching out to people from your past

The New Year is always a good time to reflect on your career: where you’ve been, where you’re heading, and where you’d like to go. It’s also the traditional time for people like me — industry analysts, pundits and consultants — to tell you what hot skills you’ll need to develop to advance your career in the next year. Of course, if developing your career were really that simple, every reader would be the CEO of a company by now.

In reality, simple advice like this is not as universally helpful as we would like to think. Focusing on hot skills may be useful for some, but for many it’s a complete diversion because the paths that people follow through IT careers are remarkably varied. Some pass easily from technical roles to management and back. Some oscillate between employment and contracting. Some even follow the traditional path of staying with one organization and climbing the corporate ladder.

But there is one thing that everyone can benefit from, regardless of what path you choose to follow, and that you can realistically accomplish given the day-to-day demands of work and life. Just take five minutes each week to reach out to someone from your past. Everyone can find five minutes a week — five minutes that would otherwise go to looking at your smartphone, waiting for people to arrive at a meeting, drinking your morning coffee or eating lunch at your desk.

What you do with those five minutes each week is to reconnect. It might be with someone with whom you worked, went to school or set up play dates for your children. All you have to do is think of someone and then call, leave a voice mail, drop an email or even send a physical postcard.

Don’t worry. It won’t be a big commitment, and it won’t take over your life. The people you reach out to are just as busy as you are and don’t have hours to talk on the phone. But those five minutes a week could do more for your career than you can possibly imagine.

Why? Because opportunities are the fundamental building blocks of careers — opportunities for new jobs, contracts or even volunteer work. You can talk in the abstract about building your career all you want, but if no one wants to hire you to do whatever you decide your next step should be, then you’re not translating your intentions into reality.

And where do opportunities come from? Mostly from people who know you. It may have been 15 years since you have spoken to each other, but if the other person remembers you fondly and your work respectfully, she will likely be happy to tell you about opportunities that she’s aware of.

Don’t expect her to do so right away. Don’t call and ask for referrals.

Just check in, person to person. For example, this past week I’ve been upgrading my home audio equipment. It made me think of a guy I worked with 20 years ago who was obsessed with stereo gear. I’ll probably just write a note saying that I was thinking of him and wondering how he is doing. That’s it.

Your greatest career advancement resource is not your résumé. It’s the people who know you. And they will bring opportunities to you if they feel good about you and you are top of mind for them when opportunities cross their path.

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9 Linux distros to watch in 2015

A list of the most interesting Linux distros to keep up with in 2015.

Looking ahead
Predictions are fun. We all enjoy tech predictions at the beginning of each year. This isn't that. This is a list of the nine Linux Distributions that I feel will be the most interesting to watch during 2015. We're talking both desktop and mobile here because, let's face it, Linux is everywhere. (Note: I say these will be the most "interesting to watch," not necessarily the best or the highest quality. Just the most interesting and entertaining to keep tabs on.)

Ubuntu Touch
It was first announced that phones powered by Ubuntu Touch were set to ship way back in 2013. Then again in 2014. It is now 2015 and it looks as though the wait may finally be over, with actual devices set to ship this February (in limited markets outside of North America). My very soul wants this to succeed like gangbusters...but my gut tells me this isn't going to go well. Will 2015 end with Ubuntu Touch being anything other than a weird, orange blip on the radar? Who knows? But it promises to be rather exciting to watch.

Ubuntu
With the recent release of Ubuntu MATE (a community-built version of Ubuntu using MATE, a fork of the old GNOME 2, as the desktop environment) there is now a version of Ubuntu out there that looks and feels a lot like the pre-Unity days of Ubuntu (aka "what Ubuntu was like back when it catapulted to stardom and grabbed huge market share in the Linux world"). I'm not sure how this will actually impact Ubuntu proper (the Unity-powered version), but with yet another re-written version of Unity set to be released (along with a brand-new display server with Mir), having Ubuntu MATE around will serve to remind Ubuntu users where they came from. Which could prove very interesting.

elementary OS
elementary OS currently sits at the No. 9 spot on the Distrowatch list (up from No. 19 in 2013). While Distrowatch is not the best way to track actual numbers of users of any given Distro – heck, it's not even the second best – this certainly shows the upward momentum of this little system with a focus on design. They've also been putting a heavy focus on developers and designers getting paid to work on elementary OS-related projects via Bountysource.com (an approach I find highly interesting).

SteamOS
SteamOS was set to shake up the console gaming world in 2014. New boxes ("Steam Machines") were set to ship from multiple vendors. We were talking high-end PCs running a version of Linux that hooked up to your TV and were filled with games from Valve (and other companies). It was going to be glorious. But, as with the Linux-powered Ubuntu Phones, it just never shipped. The failure to launch in 2014 (as planned) isn't the end of the world, though – Valve (the company behind SteamOS) has a long and glorious track record of taking its sweet time in order to get its products just right. The current ETA is sometime in 2015.

ChromeOS
Chromebooks absolutely dominated laptop sales on Amazon for the second straight holiday season in a row. If there was any doubt that the Gentoo-based ChromeOS was here to stay, that doubt should now be completely erased. Add to that the growing list of Android applications that run on ChromeOS and the imagination can't help but run a bit wild about what the future has in store for this system. Just speculating here, but imagine if Google made all Android apps available on ChromeOS via a full version of the Google Play App store. This system would be an even bigger force to be reckoned with.

Android
Speaking of Android... did you realize that you can currently get Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office (in Beta) that run natively on Android? I've got an Android-powered laptop here running both, which means I'm running Photoshop and MS Office natively on my Linux-powered computer. Ever heard anyone say something like "I would use Linux... but I need Microsoft Office"? Well, it's here. On Linux. Look out your window. Go ahead. Stand up, walk over to your window, and take a look out. Those pink things in the sky? Yeah. Those are pigs. And, boy howdy, are they flying.

Fedora
I'll be honest – usually, I'm not terribly interested in Fedora. For years I've struggled to find reasons to convince myself to install the latest versions (because it always ended up either being rather dull or half-broken). But the Fedora Project shook things up this past year with the Fedora Next initiative. The first result of which being that Fedora is now broken into three distinct versions: Workstation, Server, and Cloud. And you know what? The first iteration of "Fedora Workstation" is actually quite nice. What will be truly interesting is where the Fedora team will go from here. 2015 could be rather interesting for these chaps.

Sailfish and Firefox
Ubuntu Touch may have a hard time shipping, but there are two Linux-based systems that have been shipping on actual hardware all throughout 2014 – Sailfish OS and Firefox OS, two (very different) systems that are moving mobile Linux forward. What will be fascinating is how these two systems strive to gain market share in 2015, with the possibly soon-to-be-released, Ubuntu-powered phones along with the continuing dominance of Android in the market.

Debian and Devuan
Debian has been around for 21 years now. But the controversy over systemd has caused a group of Debian users to fork and create a systemd-free version that they now call "Devuan." Disagreements and controversy around systemd don't show any signs of ending soon, making Debian and Devuan an interesting set of projects to watch, even if just for the reality TV-style entertainment of it all.

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IT 2015 predictions

If I am right, this will be a tough year for tech and everyone else.

With the year coming to a close, a lot of people are making their predictions for 2015. So naturally I had to join the party. A whole lot of issues seem to be coming to a head and will need to be addressed in the next year, and I think it will happen all at once. So heed the words of Patridamus.

1) Wearables continue to tank
This is yet another case of the industry looking for new growth opportunities and a chance to expand by driving something the public doesn't really want. People don't want another device to carry or remember to wear, they are often inaccurate, and the newness wears off quickly and they get tossed in the drawer.

2) IoT proves a hard sell
Take what I said above and multiply it by 10. I don't know anyone screaming for an Internet-connected refrigerator. Then again, Steve Jobs did famously say “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” But with concerns about privacy by government and corporate snooping, security from all the hacks and general public tech illiteracy (the Silicon Valley is so myopic about this), IoT will be a hard sell.

3) BYOD chickens come home to roost
Many firms established BYOD rules when the trend first began, and they never revisited them. Eventually, there will be a reckoning where companies have to set down rules concerning data security and loss prevention, not to mention who pays the bills. It's only a matter of time before we get stories of employees giving up on BYOD and telling their boss to just provide a device.

4) Stock market crash and burn
The stock market has been going gangbusters, but it won't last. Every seven years, the stock market melts down like Chernobyl. We all remember 2008, and the recent "Cromnibus" budget deal in Washington has set us up for a repeat. In 2001, it hit the skids due to the Dot Bomb crash and 9/11. In 1994, the bond market went into the toilet. And in 1987 we had Black Monday with the massive sell-off. And if you don't believe me, maybe this guy's words will carry weight.

5) AMD finally bottoms out, Qualcomm acquires it for IP protection
AMD is in a real tough spot. Its CEO change caused a collapse in confidence and stock, neither of which has bounced back. Nvidia is gaining market share and is now over 70%, according to Jon Peddie Research. There are hints of big things to come but nothing concrete, and the company has been through endless rounds of layoffs.

Nvidia wouldn't be allowed to buy the company, unless it was torn in half and it got the x86 business (and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has repeatedly said he doesn't want an x86 business), with the GPU side going to Intel. A more likely outcome is Qualcomm grabbing the company primarily for IP protection against Intel.

6) IT continues to dump its own data centers in favor of the cloud
The trend of shutting down an on-premises data center in favor of a cloud solution has been going on for some time, but it will take off in 2015 for one very good reason – Windows Server 2003 is reaching its end of life and there are 10 million 2003 server installations out there that need upgrading. Many companies may decide it's easier to move to the cloud than buy new servers and go through a rip-and-replace routine.

7) Windows 10 is a hit, mostly
Windows 10 seems to have a lot of warm and fuzzy feelings around it, and it will likely revive PC sales, especially in the enterprise. The only thing that will mute Windows 10 at this point is declining interest in PCs. If the trend toward tablets as PC replacements continues, well, there's nothing Microsoft can do about that except get the tablet experience right, which it seems to have done with Surface 3.

8) Big Data's growth will be hampered by talent shortages
Big Data is an important new trend in tech, but it's also a significant change in how computer science is done. It requires people with specialized, advanced degrees, and there are not a lot of them on the market. In fact, there have been repeated predictions of talent shortages of data scientists and other people to make Big Data work. The people who have that kind of experience, however, will make some serious money.

9) Tablets will crash and burn
Tablet sales are already slowing down and the trend likely won't reverse in 2015. Some experiments have failed, like the Los Angeles Unified School District's $1.3 billion tablet boondoggle. I expect as the batteries start to die on these things and they are not replaceable, that will also hurt. The main problem, though, is that tablets don't have an advocate. Steve Jobs was the big champion of the tablet and no one has stepped forward to take up the mantle.

10) MMOs start dying off
My one consumer prediction. For some time now, every game company and a whole bunch of startups had massively multiplayer online games in the works. Then they all started failing. "Star Wars: The Old Republic," "Final Fantasy XIV," and "Elder Scrolls Online" all bombed recently, and when an "Elder Scrolls" game bombs, that's a big warning. Many other MMOs have faded into nothing. And Blizzard killed its MMO codenamed "Titan" after seven years of R&D. The reality is these games demand too much time and people who play them frequently suffer from health problems for their addictions.

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