bingshui.org

the Life of Zim

9th March
2010
written by dzimney

About a week ago I got the Nexus One from Google. Today I decided to delve into the SDK and see if I could get a “Hello, World!” script running on the phone. Following the Android Developers website, I downloaded the SDK and installed the Eclipse plugin for Android. I was able to get the Hello, World! script running fine in the virtual Android machine, but when I started trying to connect my phone for debugging I started running into issues. I’m using the Nexus One which is currently on Android 2.1 and I’m on OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). It seemed that whenever I ran the command adb devicesin the terminal, I got an empty list of devices. Frustrating.

Well after scouring the internets with no results, I remembered that when I installed the SDKs with Eclipse, there seemed to be a lack of overlap between the two. When installing the Eclipse Plugin, it creates a folder in the workspace called com.google.android.sdk, except this SDK doesn’t line up with the SDK from the Android Developers site. When I had initially put things together I simply copied over some of the files created by Eclipse to avoid breaking the plugin. But when running adb devices, it was running from the Eclipse provided SDK. Upon trying again with the adb command from the Android Developer’s SDK, the phone shows up on the list of devices. So now I’m copying arranging files to use the good SDK.

Not sure if this will have an effect on the Eclipse plugin. I’m assuming not. My guess is that the Eclipse plugin was simply packaged with an older version of the SDK. We’ll see though. So happy to see the Android SDK is in Java though. Way better than the iPhone SDK.

UPDATE:
Looks like you don’t want to overwrite any files. Simply leave the com.google.android.sdk directory as is and point to the downloaded SDK in the Android preferences pane in Eclipse (SDK Location). I had to delete and recreate my helloworld project in Eclipse to repair the errors due to the missing core library (android.jar).

21st January
2010
written by dzimney

For those who don’t like to read: the fix.

I upgraded to Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) from Leopard (OS X 10.5) last week and everything seemed to go off without a hitch, until…

I have a bluetooth, wireless, keyboard that I use for work. At some point in the past week, not initially, my keyboard started acting up. At first I didn’t think anything of it because the lady’s computer is also paired with the same keyboard and when the problem first occurred it was because the keyboard was connected to her computer, also on Snow Leopard, rather than mine. I ended up removing the keyboard from her bluetooth setup and re-pairing (no pun intended) the keyboard to my computer. Everything worked fine and I went through my day.

The next day, I found that my keyboard would not pair up again. WTF!? So I go through the process again, thinking maybe Laura and I did a keyboard swap or something and that was the problem. Re-paired, everything’s cool. Whatever. If it happens again, I’ll deal with it.

Finally, today, day 3, I start up my computer and the keyboard won’t connect. Immediately I try to re-pair the keyboard and suddenly the computer tells me there must be some compatibility issue. Thanks Apple. I have an Apple keyboard I’m using with an Apple Macbook Pro and I have a f***ing compatibility issue. You’d think they would make sure that bluetooth continued to work between upgrading from Leopard to Snow Leopard. Oh well.

So I resort to Google. And basically what I find is that I have to reset my System Management Controller (SMC). Do I know what an SMC is? No. Do I care? Not really… okay, so I do a little. Apparently the SMC handles a lot of the lower level operations performed by the computer like “the power button”. Sweet Apple. Okay, so what to do. You have to reset the SMC. To do this follow the steps specified here. Be sure to read through the process and select the procedure that matches your computer. Different laptops, desktops, etc. will have a different method for resetting the SMC.

All in all, it’s disappointing that Apple overlooked this issue. Seems too often that companies can be aware of an issue be keep it quiet for the majority of users that don’t use (in this case) bluetooth, while those that due have to spend have their day in frustration.

Dear Apple,
Don’t pull Quit pulling a Microsoft.
Your Friend,
Mr. Customer