Tag: mac

F’n Webkinz

So, my kids got Webkinz for Christmas, and there’s a little snag.

Using a Mac, OS 10.5.1, with a fully patched version of Safari 3.0.4 and a fresh install of Flash Player 9, I cannot see the confirmation code when trying to register a new account.

Cannot get confirmation for Webkinz login

I tried using a system with Ubuntu 7.10, Firefox 2.0.0.11, and Flash 9 as well, but could not see the login.

The minimum requirements are:

Windows Requirements

  • PIII 1.2 MHz or higher
  • Windows OS 2000/XP
  • RAM: 512MB recommended
  • Browsers: Internet Explorer 6, Netscape 7.2, Firefox 1.0, AOL Explorer 1.5
  • Monitor Resolution: 1024×768
  • High Speed Internet Required
  • Adobe Flash 9

Mac Requirements

  • 1.2 MHz or higher
  • Mac OS X 10.3
  • RAM: 512MB recommended
  • Browsers: Safari 1.2.3 or higher, Firefox 1.5
  • Resolution: 1024×768
  • High Speed Recommended
  • Adobe Flash 9

I clearly meet the Mac requirements, yet when I try to register – Bupkis.
To make matters better, you can’t even request help from Webkinz without having created an account (I deleted my email and the Webkinz code before taking the screenshot):
Send Help request to Webkinz
While I’m thrilled to see that Webkinz is trying to work with Macs – decent low end specs as their minimum requirements, I will not purchase any more Webkinz until they actually are compatible, or can tell me what’s wrong with my machines.
And I do have to give them Kudos – on my Ubuntu machine (Firefox and Flash 9), everything was working flawlessly until the same breakpoint I got on my Mac. So it does look like Webkinz is making an effort to be cross platform.
Postscript: I tried to do this with Parallels and an XP virtual machine, but that was running IE 7, so it didn’t work. Finally, our computer for running Quicken, a Windows 2000 machine, was able to get us logged in. Not quite sure what the trouble was.

Gripe with iApps

So, I’ve got my first major bone of contention with Apple’s iApps, iPhoto in particular.

I’ve been trying to burn a CD with some pictures from the Church’s Christmas Pageant to share with the Christian Ed director and another woman at the church. Which should be as simple as selecting the album, clicking “Burn CD”, and getting asked how, exactly, I want to burn the CD. In my case, I shot in RAW with my DSLR, and wanted to burn to JPG to share with folks who just want the snaps.

Instead, I had to:

  1. “Export” the pictures as JPG to a folder on my hard drive (This should have been the only step, IMO – I should have been able to use this dialog to burn the CD)
  2. Create a burn folder in Finder
  3. Drag the exported folder to the burn folder
  4. Burn the disk

I wouldn’t use this to suggest that the bloom is off the Mac rose, but merely to suggest an improvement.