Month: January 2015

Revert to old version of Google Chrome (OS X)

The latest version of Chrome (39) introduced some annoying behavior when revealing and hiding the top bar, so annoying that I wrote up a bug report, and decided to keep using the previous version (37). But I kept getting this warning when starting the application:

Your profile can not be used because it is from a newer version of Google Chrome. Some features may be unavailable. Please specify a different profile directory or use a newer version of Chrome.

And my search settings (for which I have a lot of nifty shortcuts) were vaporized every time.

Here’s how I solved that problem:

cd ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default
mv Web\ Data Web\ Data.old

The warning is gone, and upon signing in to Chrome, my search settings were restored.

by stephen

Apple EarPods pin-out

Today I soldered a new jack onto my Apple EarPods. I have the EarPods with remote and mic. They’d been stretched and yanked too many times and were randomly pausing or advancing my podcasts. I bought a 50 peso knock-off pair (which worked but sounded like 50 peso earphones), and I cut off the jack. There are tear-downs online but they don’t mention the pin-out, so I had to work it out for myself. For future reference, here it is:

Pinout for the Apple EarPods with Remote and Mic
Tip – Left – Green
Ring1 – Right – Red
Ring2 – Ground – Green/Gold & Red/Gold & Red/Green*
Ring3 – Mic – Gold*

  • There’s a wire that has red and green strands wrapped around gold strands. Separate them. The red/green is ground. The gold is for the microphone.

(By gold, I mean the color of the insulation, not the metal.)

by stephen