Tag: mac Posts

One of the hardest parts of working remotely and traveling is the need to find reliable internet from time to time. In some countries free internet is almost as ubiquitous as beer, and often advertised as prominently. But in some countries (I’m looking directly at you Australia and New Zealand) almost all the internet you will find in the wild is either time limited or bandwidth limited. It’s not unusual to be in a coffee shop on only be given 10MB or so, which is hardly enough to check your email or Facebook feed. The Solution If you’re using a Mac computer (and I’m sure the procedure is fairly similar on Linux) and have root access, you can easily work around these types of internet connections by changing your network adapter’s MAC address. Since these services usually tie the time or bandwidth consumption to your computer’s MAC address (which is […]

I pulled my laptop out of my case tonight and fired it up. I was immediately greeted with this: $1000 worth of fail As you can see, my LCD has a wicked crack in it. I did a quick scan in the forums, and replacing an LCD via the Apple store runs about $1000, which is rather insane. Thankfully I found a few companies on eBay that are selling the raw LCD screens for around $200, so I put in an order for a replacement. Hopefully I’ll be able to install it myself when it comes in the mail. So as of right now, I’m without a laptop. Thankfully I have an iMac at home as well, so I’m not really in any trouble. But I do use my laptop quite a bit, so would like to get it up and running as soon as possible.

The first order of business with my new iPhone is picking up a decent case to keep it from being scratched. I called around town, but unfortunately nobody has any stock for the 3G iPhone cases yet. So basically the only place left to buy one from was on Apple’s store. I originally went over with the intent to buy one case. However, it appears that one case wasn’t enough to qualify me for free shipping. Since I like free stuff, I decided to buy a few more things. Since I wasn’t sure if I’d like the first case, I bought a second one with a different style. Worst case, I’m sure somebody will probably take it off my hands in the near future. In addition, I tacked on a new iPhone 3G dock for my stereo so I can listen to music. The case I plan to use is […]

This morning I had the pleasure of swinging by MacStation in Yaletown on my way to work and picking up a brand new MacPro computer for work. I could sit here and quote technical specs until the cows came home, but I’ll just say that this sucker completely rocks. It basically has two of everything: Two CPUs, each of which has four 2.8 GHz cores A dual-head video card capable of doing 1080p video on each port Two network cards, so in theory you could put one on a private network and one on a public one I’ve spent the last year sort of bouncing between multiple machines. In fact, looking back over the last year I’d say I did about 50% of my time developing on mobile platforms, 25% on Windows, and maybe 25% on Mac. To that end, I basically had three full development machines on or near […]

For all of you who have been waiting patiently for the new 10.5.2 update, the wait is over. 10.5.2 is now available on software update. I’m installing all 350 MB of it right now. For all of you about to update, I salute you. Oh, and for all you people on shitty broadband, you should know I just downloaded 352 MB in 4 minutes here.

Tomorrow I should be getting a brand new 8-core MacPro for my desk at work. In honor of that, I did up a little Mac desktop last night for anyone who likes to laugh from time to time. Enjoy.

This guy just did a huge Apple comparison with the new Air notebook computer, both with and without the solid state add-on drive. The verdict? The Air in general is slower than both the Macbook Pro and the Macbook, and the battery life is only average. Photo by John Biehler The writer was optimistic that the solid state drive would be a good investment. Unfortunately though, it provided rather lackluster performance, and hardly increased battery life at all. I’ve had my own Macbook Pro for a long time, and most of my friends have Macbook’s. I’m purposefully holding off the Air because it looks totally overpriced for what it is. Plus, Leopard has been a pretty big burden for me on my Macbook Pro and iMac since upgrading. I’m anxiously awaiting the 10.5.2 update that will hopefully fix a lot of my problems. Photo by John Biehler For friend John […]

I’ve been using Leopard now for around 3 months, and to be honest, I’m really not impressed at all. It’s an extremely buggy OS with a bunch of mediocre improvements, many of which I haven’t really found a use for. Spaces? I actually thought these would be cool, but I just haven’t been able to find a good use for them. In fact, I find myself accidentally switching between spaces from time to time thanks to how heavily I rely on the control and option keys for other things. Stacks is another completely useless feature, mainly because you can’t really see enough icons. Plus, it’s generally a stupid idea to present multiple conflicting UI designs (the box in stacks and the curvy expandy thing) for the same feature, especially if you switch between them from time to time. I am currently on the 10.5.1 update of Leopard, which is basically […]

Apple just announced an ultra-think notebook computer called the Air. Photo by Gnackgnackgranck on Flickr Looks pretty cool, but it doesn’t have a DVD drive, and is sealed shut like a big iPod. Based on my experiences with my Macbook Pro and Leopard, I think I’m definitely pulling myself out of the “early-adopter” crowd with Apple and waiting a while this round to see what happens.

I know everyone is absolutely dying to know the current state of my laptop, so here’s an update. I called down this afternoon and they said the LCD is toast on it which is why I’ve probably been having a pile of problems with sleep and things of that nature. A new one has been ordered and hopefully I can pick it up in a few days. It will be weird having a laptop again as I’ve gotten fairly used to using my desktop machine at home now. Also, I’m going to do a blog entry tonight on the end of Heroes season two. Should be awesomely nerdy.