Category: Mac

The first mention of the new products is the .Mac page on iLife ’06. The Apple Store is updated too, with the tag line: What’s an Intel chip doing in a Mac? A whole lot more than it ever did in a PC. And finally, the MacBook Pro and iMac product pages (you’ll probably need to refresh the latter). Interesting that the MacBookPro still features only a single FireWire 400 port. At least it has one. Also interesting: no modem. The Apple USB Modem is offered as a $49 option. Now that you mention it, I haven’t actually had a dialup service in 3 years, so maybe I won’t worry about the lack of modem.

Then there’s the third interpretation of the silent upgrades to Mac Minis: that there will be no refresh of the current hardware for a while. iMacs in Intel but no Mac Minis yet. All of a sudden the price point of the Mini–now 2-3x slower than a base iMac at half to 3/4s the price–doesn’t make sense.

However, the new Macbook Pro sure as hell makes sense. “Fastest notebook ever”–4-5 x faster than existing PowerBooks using the Intel duo Core processors — two processors in a single chip. Thinner than the current 17″, 15.4 LCD, built in iSight. I’ll miss the PowerBook moniker, but after all it’s lasted for 15 years now. And, as Steve points out, Apple is kind of done with the whole Power name, having given the PowerPC the big heave-ho. It also comes with an Apple Remote–meaning that Front Row is spreading…

Magnetically attached power adapter–I guess they’ve learned something from all the broken adapters on PowerBooks over the last three-four years.

$1999 price point. 512 MB RAM and 80 GB hard drive–you’ll still probably need to add more RAM unless univeral Mac OS X is more efficient there, which I doubt. Shipping in February, taking orders today. I’m personally having difficulty not pulling out my credit card.

Okay, Mac OS X 10.4.4 is coming out today, as are some new widgets, including a new Address Book widget (good, cause the last one blew). New iLife: “music, movies, photos, blogs.” iPhoto update improves speed (good), raises limit on max photos in library to 250,000. Improved quality in both hardcover and softcover iPhoto books. Hopefully they’re improving the order expediting as well–there’s a story in that. Photocasting! Someone called it–sharing photos over the Internet like Podcasting. Sounds a little like the model for the late lamented PhotoPeer. Hope it allows proper RSS this time.

Aside: it will be good to have Wynton Marsalis as the poster child for the iPod instead of Eminem.

Via MacRumors keynote updates, a $49 add-on that combines a remote control for the iPod with an FM radio tuner. Works with current models.

Question: does anyone still care about FM radio? A: Yes, if they are in listening range of KEXP, WRIR, or (name your favorite locally run indie station here).

Currently watching for updates:

• Engadget liveblog–though it’s currently hammered to its knees
  
• MacRumors IRC channel (server:irc.macrumors.com, channel #macrumors; avoid the #macrumorschat channel unless you have a very high threshold for hearing the same jokes over and over again)
• UneasySilence
• MacNN
• ArsTechnica — also currently broken

I see that .Mac is now down for maintenance, heralding the start of whatever joys are due to be rolled out on Apple’s web based services. I sure hope it’s not going to be down until the keynote is over at 1:30 PM.

I must have hit the server just at the right time; at 10:10 am, none of the navigational graphics were populated (see large version of the image for details).

The odds makers have already spoken about the likely products to be announced during today’s keynote. I’m going to speak up with some slightly contrarian predictions.

First, what the consensus has right: the FrontRow “media center” concept, with its 10-foot UI and remote, will be extended beyond its current home on the iMac to the Mac Mini. It’s almost certain that we’re due for another revision of iLife. And the evidence seems pretty good that we’ll see something called iWeb, though I doubt a web page editor is going to knock anyone’s socks off in 2006. I also think that Kevin Rose’s prediction of a point increment for Mac OS X, to 10.4.4, is pretty likely. I also agree with ZDNet that an announcement of 10.5 aka Leopard is extremely unlikely today. Macworld is simply the wrong audience for new OS previews—that’s the one thing Apple could talk about at WWDC to drive a mid-year bump in demand for its products.

Next, where I part with the rumormongers: I think it’s extremely unlikely that any pro class machines, either G5s or PowerBooks, will move to the Intel platform. I think that the odds are in fact rather long that Apple will move up its Intel migration timeline from its original mid-year delivery timeline, but the Mac Mini is the most likely first delivery vehicle. But here’s the rub: why is Apple silently bumping the specs on existing Mac Mini orders if a new version is to be announced today? My bet: yes, an Intel Mac Mini, and maybe even Intel based iBooks, will be announced—but availability will be a good eight weeks from today.

Boy, all this tea leaf reading is fun. It’ll also be interesting to see exactly how wrong I am in a little over four hours when the “one more thing” is unveiled.

Finally, one last wildcard to hedge my bets: one possible reason that 1.5GHz G4 chips are showing up in Mac Minis is that the platform that they normally would power is about to move to a different architecture. The only machine in Apple’s lineup currently using 1.5 GHz G4s is the lowest-end PowerBook. Is it possible that Apple might be hedging their bets and announcing one pro and one consumer machine on the Intel platform simultaneously? Or is Apple just moving proactively to work through its chip inventory or meet final contractual goals with IBM?

I described, several months ago now, my ongoing problems with the spinning beachball of doom under Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). This weekend I finally popped the Tiger DVD into my drive and performed an Archive and Install, which shuffles the System folder (and odds and ends of other system-owned folders, including surprisingly the development tools folder) into a Previous System Folders directory and creates a clean new system installation. I decided this time around to migrate all the user profiles into the new installation, so that I would still have a usable machine and would understand better what was causing the slowdown.

At this writing, I have to say that the archive and install wasn’t helpful. I was still getting SBODs after the first reboot with the new install. This, to me, suggests that the problem is either caused by something in my user profile (maybe Spotlight indexes, or startup items, or something) or else something that is endemic to the machine (like too little RAM).

As this machine continues to live up to its dubious fame as one of the least reliable PowerBooks—in addition to the slowdowns, I’ve got a bad stuck hinge that is damaging the frame of the display on the lower left side—I will be listening for news of new ’books at this week’s MacWorld keynote with more than the usual interest.

Currently being Slashdotted: the Macintouch iBook and PowerBook reliability survey. Usual statistical cautions apply: while the overall sample size of 4,614 repairs out of 10,627 respondents should yield reliable answers at the top level (when did your ‘book need to be repaired? did you buy AppleCare? have you ever dropped your machine?), it’s unlikely to do so at the machine level.

And yet. For the two machines I’ve owned (the Powerbook G3 Firewire and the 1GHz G4 TiBook), the stats are dead on. To wit: the three things that gave me problems on the G3 were the power adapter, the RAM, and the optical drive, and I’ve experienced serious case problems on the G4 TiBook.

Fortunately for Apple, it looks like recent AlBook models have been much more reliable. Which probably means that Apple really is due to introduce some new designs to shake things up at next week’s MacWorld Expo.

My second iPod has reached the point of battery senescence. I hadn’t noticed the problem before, primarily because I normally keep the iPod plugged into a charger while I am driving. However, as I tried to update the iPod with some Christmas music, I realized that the thing no longer holds enough charge to complete a sync.

The problem is worsened because of my temporary setup during the Project. I have the single FireWire port on my TiBook tied up by the external 300GB drive that holds my music (and must, therefore, remain attached during the sync). That means I have to connect the iPod to the FireWire port on the back of the external drive, which is, unfortunately, an unpowered port (something I missed when I selected the Venus enclosure). So the iPod has to rely on its flickering battery during the sync and ultimately it fails.

I figured out a workaround this morning—sort of. I ejected and powered down the drive, then reconnected it using the USB connection. I then plugged the iPod into the FireWire port on the back of the TiBook, where it happily charged away. And a good thing, too, because the TiBook only has USB 1.1, which is slow. I think I got about 150 songs onto the device in 45 minutes. But it will do, for now.

The ultimate solution? Well, for one thing, once the Project is done I will be accessing the music files over the network, so there won’t be that problem any more. In the meantime, I think I need to look into battery replacement for the iPod, which means I’ll be updating the iPod Autopsy page with pics from the innards of my 3rd G device. I have some other ideas as well, but will try the battery replacement first to see how it goes.

Update: There’s also an Apple support note on five things to try with an iPod before sending it in for battery replacement. We’ll see.

I brought home an HP OfficeJet 7310 xi last night. Slick little device: 1200 DPI output, high res scanning, copy & fax capability, plus a built in Ethernet port that would have easily cost me an extra $100 to add to an all-in-one laser (aside: why is Ethernet built in on HP’s all-in-one inkjets but not on their all-in-one monochrome lasers?). Assembly time (putting on the output trays, installing the ink, connecting the printer to a wireless adapter, verifying it got an address via DHCP) was about an hour. Unfortunately, I then spent the rest of the evening and part of the morning trying to get two of our three laptops to see the printer.

Rant: why is installing a networked printer on a modern OS so complicated? On our four to six year old LaserJet 2100M, installation was as simple as creating a TCP/IP printer pointing at the printer’s address, and maybe picking a PPD. With this OfficeJet, which includes ZeroConf (aka Bonjour, fka Rendezvous), I didn’t have to specify the IP address on Mac OS X, but I couldn’t get a job to print. Nor could I make it work manually connecting as an IP printer. On my wife’s Windows XP laptop, the installation program wanted us to shut down all firewalls so it could let ZeroConf do its thing. Problem is, on her corporate laptop there are multiple programs that are detected as firewalls by the installer, each of which is configured in a different place, and even after we shut them all off the installer still couldn’t detect the printer. At that point, I had to give up and go to the office.

I don’t really want to return the printer, but honestly, if two IT professionals can’t get the damned thing installed, there is something seriously wrong. Maybe I’ll have better luck later.

As we set up house again after recovering from the disruption of two bathroom remodels in quick succession, we have identified a casualty. Our old LaserJet 2100M, faithful servant for over four years, is no longer addressable from the network. Self tests don’t indicate any problems, but my guess is that something is awry with the JetDirect card on which the Ethernet port resides. And that’s an expensive booger to replace—I eBayed this one back in 2001 for somewhere north of $100, and HP doesn’t even list it any more, preferring to list the wireless JetDirect card which sells for more than $300. Sigh.

So I think it might be time to go back to the market. Color printing would be nice, as would a scanner and a fax. Yes, we’re thinking multifunction. I’m a little concerned about consumables cost with a multifunction inkjet, though, and Lisa is concerned about smearing. But we have two candidates identified so far: the HP OfficeJet 7310 and the PhotoSmart 3210. The latter has no fax capability but is a good $100 cheaper; if it comes down to a choice between these models it will be about whether we really need fax. Both models are steeply discounted at Costco, which is another advantage.

So, my question: anyone out there have any experience with either model, or want to recommend another printer or brand? How much printer can I buy for $350 or less in 2005?

Nice hint at MacOSXHints about using the certificate that encrypts iChat sessions in Tiger to authenticate and encrypt mail as well. Timely for me; I haven’t gotten around to renewing my existing certificate that I set up with Thawte, and I think it expires soon (if it hasn’t already).

See my earlier post about issues with signed mail and a link to the process for getting a personal certificate for digital signature use from Thawte.

One feature that Windows portables have long had that I’ve wished for in Macs is a suspend-to-disk (aka hibernate) mode, where instead of a normal sleep session the current contents of memory are written to the hard disk and re-read on startup. This allows a user’s session to be preserved even if the battery drains completely. This appears to have been added as a fully supported feature on new PowerBooks; now Matt Johnson has published an Open Firmware hack that enables the feature on other machines that came to market in the last two years or so. Thanks to Daring Fireball for the pointer.

As noted on Monday I’ve been trying to rebuild my iTunes library after inadvertently deleting the central library index file. To date I’ve managed to recover detailed information on about 4700 tracks, or about a third of the library—and as about a third of the tracks are newly ripped and never played, I can reimport those from disk without worrying about losing playcount. That leaves another 4000 or so.

At this point I’m thinking that I’ll cut my losses and just reimport the music files and start rebuilding the playlists by hand. I’ve probably passed the point of diminshing returns by working with scraps of recovered Library XML files. But getting playcounts and ratings back for 4000 songs is better than nothing, for sure.