SInce Sanofi does not have a customer forum that I can see, I hope users of the iBGStar blood glucose meter for iPhone will see this update to my original post abut the meter.

The app does have a bug in iOS 6. You can upload readings form the meter still to an iPhone 4S or previous model running the software. But the app crashes if you try assign time of day and notes. So you can save the reading and enter insulin info, but you cannot tag it anymore, which severely limits the value of the reports the app generates for your doctor.

Today, October 17, 2012, I received my 30-pin to Lightening connector adapter for iPhone 5. I was able to sync the meter to the iPhone 5 using the adapter. But again the app still crashes if you try and tag an entry. To my knowledge, the app has NOT been updated in the app store.

I’ve had my Beacon Phoenix about a week now and it’s a great purchase. If your like me - not a gamer, don’t want huge speakers connected to my Macbook, don’t want some obnoxious iPhone/iPad dock - then you should look at the Phoenix.

It’s approximately a 3x3x3 cube, with L/R speakers on two sides, USB charger and analog audio ports in the rear, Beacon logo on the front, sturdy small profile pedestal on the bottom and controls on the top (charge indicator for LI internal battery, BT sync status, volume +/-, track </>, play, pause, on/off).

The sound is amazing for its size. I hate having to don headphones for Netflix or even iTunes moves/TV, but the volume of the average streaming video is horribly low. The Phoenix boosts Netflix volume by 50% or more in my tests, with no distortion. It has a decent balance between treble and base too. 

But the great thing is it’s wireless. You can pick it up and walk around with it and leave your computer, phone, iPad behind, as long as you don’t stray too far. And if you’re an Apple user, it works great with Airplay.

It comes in a nice, hardened close-fitting travel case, which makes you feel fine about throwing it in a suitcase. It comes with a USB charging cable and analog patch cable for non-Bluetooth use. They even threw in a cool Beacon Audio mini back sling bag and a couple of company wrist bands. Three colors are available: black, light blue and red.

Thanks to Kurt Marko for the article link. 5 will get you 20 that within one year of iCloud support in OS X apps, developers will release apps that link iCloud to a file sharing service of your choice (Box, Dropbox), perhaps a poor man’s API link like through IfThisThenThat. The file system metaphor, however flawed, resonates with end users and they’ve made it clear they prefer it to a content management system metaphor as well, like SharePoint. Users want iCloud to be like iDisks and they’ll find a way to use it that way.

I recently switched around blood sugar medications again and had to start monitoring blood sugar levels very closely again, as with any new diabetic treatment. So my 5 year old Aviva meter is looking pretty tired. The Infrared data transfer connection to a PC or Mac kind of gives away its age. It’s been a good meter and the Clix lancing system is really excellent. 

But…my iPhone has become my personal data center and data access device. I want medical stuff there too.

So I bought the iBGStar system last week. It’s a very small meter that can operate fully independent of an iPhone and the iBGStar iPhone app. Very small test strips too. But the beauty is plugging it into the bottom of your iPhone, launching the app, and seeing the test readings automatically download. You can specify when the readings were taken relative to meals, record carbs consumed at that time as a result of your reading and record insulin injections taken at that time as well. (You can also enter any of these three manually, with or without the other two.) Then you get a summary log, an expanded log, a nice scatter plot in mg/dl (US units on my device) and also pull up a statistical summary with averages as well as STDDEV. And to top it off, it will compose a nicely formatted rich email summary, with attached CSV file, that can you can send yourself or your physician. The CSV file is a nice touch, because my Northwestern Memorial Physicians Group system will not allow emailing doctors, but only messaging them through the private patient portal, with support for attachments though.

And the whole zippered kit is only 3x3 inches.

Drawback? It uses the 7 year old proprietary iPhone/Pod/Pad connector. Is Apple really going to ditch that with iPhone 5 and future Pods/Pads, and adopt some sort of miniUSB? That’s a risk, but I’m sure there will be plenty of adapter dongles. Who knows, Apple may keep the old connector and add miniUSB at the same time (I doubt it though). But the unit does operate independently of the iPhone and stores a couple hundred readings in local memory, so you don’t have to be embarrassed by letting your dongle hang out in public when you sync the device.

Walgreens sells the system for $75. Test strips are expensive, but if your insurance won’t cover them, there is a McKesson-backed loyalty card that limits your cost to $20 per bottle of 50 strips. You have to register the device to get the discount card.

Analysis: this really not new features. Application developers have always been able to write to Box’s API. While Box is ahead of Dropbox on enterprise support, both in IT admin features as well as integration with enterprise systems like, Salesforce.com and content management systems like SharePoint, Dropbox has been ahead in integration with productivity apps in the personal cloud, apps that are being used on the side by employees, especially on iOS devices. So this is really nothing more than a concerted effort by Box to formally build a partner ecosystem among personal cloud application developers, to try and cut into the lead that DropBox has there. A necessary and smart move, but not really about new features, except they have updated their tools for developers to write to their API. Also, while being described in the media as an iCloud for the enterprise, it really isn’t. iCloud completely shields the user from the file system. Your files are just there when use an iCloud-compatible application any supported device. Box, and Dropbox, maintain the metaphor of a file system, which is probably a better way to win over experienced enterprise knowledge workers, anyway, than Apple’s obfuscation of the file system.

Bad MacBook battery? One potential problem after fresh install of Lion on the 2009 MacBook Pro was a battery service warning I’d never seen before. I found it strange since the battery performance is still good. So I downloaded the Coconut battery app. After 34 months, the battery capacity is still 82 % of factory specs. It needs serviced? I don’t think so. Never before have any of the dozen or so Windows laptops I’ve owned still had a battery capacity of 82%, 34 months after I bought it. 

The old (2009) MacBook is recalled to life, after a week of panics. I finally was able to reinstall Lion after doing a PRAM reset. Running much smoother too. It had not seen a clean install since Leopard, two OS X versions ago. DropBox, EverNote, iCloud, iTunes Match and the Mac App Store sure made restoration much easier than the old days, especially since I stopped Time Machine backups when this became a backup machine, not primary for work anymore.

My smart cover works fine on iPad 3. But I bought it in Fall 2011.
Magnets: How do they work? Differently on the new iPad than on the iPad 2, it has emerged — and that’s bad news for anyone with an old or third-party smart cover. A number of users who bought new iPads over the weekend (this reporter included) were dismayed to discover that the smart cove…

Mophie charging brick is recognized by iPad 3. No idea how long it will take to recharge the 45 Whr battery though.

Why should anyone be surprised by this? These are not just geeks like me, these are average consumers. I’ve been a PC geek since the TRS-80 in the late 70s. After 30 years, it’s still easy to get frustrated with friends and relatives who still don’t get PCs. “Why can’t they learn this? It’s been 30 years. What’s wrong with these people?” I’ll be the first one to admit that the tech companies have been too stupid to understand consumers, not vice versa. We spent 30 years and still could not come up with a hardware/software combo that the average person could “get” and just use it. Put aside all your Apple biases, both pro and con, and we have to realize Apple is the first company to produce computing devices that people don’t need a PhD to operate and that in their opinion, just works. This is 30 years of pent up demand finally surfacing. I’ll never recommend another computer for any family member, only an iPad or comparable clone.

Apple announced on Monday that it has sold 3 million new iPads since the device launch on March 16. The company, which had cited “record” sales earlier in the day, has now backed up that boast. “The new iPad is a blockbuster with three million sold―the strongest iPad launch yet,” Philip …