Category: Apple

Apple announced today that its newest public beta of iChat AV adds interoperability with video chat in AOL Instant Messenger 5.5 for Windows. That addresses a few concerns I had about iChat’s lack of compelling network externalities… and should help iSight sales too.

I won’t be liveblogging MacWorld this time, but it looks like AppleMatters is all over it already. So far, XServe G5s and a bunch of software updates.

A reader, Hartley Odwak, found my iPod Surgery photo album and reported that he found the same problem with his unit. He wrote:

My ipod charges, but neither of my macs will recognize it. I am certain that it is the port; hence why i dismantled mine!

What I see where my Firewire port attached to the logic board are (1) four larger connections at each corner of the port, all of which are loose (are these supposed to be soldered to the board?) and (2) Six very thin pins running parallel, and down from the port, conecting the port to the circuit board. Some of these are loose.

Should I make sure all 10 connections are soldered tight to the board? The thin ones may be too hard for me to solder, as I have never worked on such tiny connections, and as such may take it to a shop to have them do it.

His solution, which I would recommend to anyone over my experience, was to take the unit to a local independent Mac shop to get the soldering repairs done. It cost about $40 and the unit works again (unlike mine), so well worth the $.

Some notes on my new 10GB iPod to round out the story:

• The backlight is very cool.
• The solid state, no moving parts controls took virtually no time to get used to. I like the solid state wheel a lot better than the original moving one.
• I did have to get used to the new button placement; having everything around the wheel was a little easier, I think.
• One gripe: the new unit doesn’t work with the old remote control, so I’ll have to buy a new one.

Overall a slick little unit.

Everyone’s favorite local independent software development house, Ranchero Software (otherwise known as Brent and Sheila Simmons), won a MacWorld Editor’s Choice Award for their NetNewsWire product. NetNewsWire is my favorite RSS aggregator on any platform, and I can write blog posts in it too!

Congrats to Brent and Sheila, who are truly living the dream.

I go through periods of being addicted to computer games. My shame (if that’s the right word) is that instead of being addicted to the “cool” games like EverQuest or Final Fantasy, I find these random games that no one else is playing to get hooked on.

The latest is Solace, from Freeverse, a small developer who specializes in entertaining, clever versions of card and board games (and who also became infamous for their Jared, the Butcher of Song). Solace starts out a lot like Risk or Axis and Allies, with six powers facing off across several continents and a lot of territory to conquer. Then it adds some quirks like sea battles, amphibious assaults, artillery defense, and cavalry shock troops. You have to be able to master sea combat if you want to win; there are no other ways to grow your territory, and it’s a lot easier to defend your country from sea attack if you head them off in the open ocean.

Criticisms? The game crashed once when I left it running unattended for a while, and the computer turns are quite slow. But overall I’m hooked. And at least it means I’m not playing Burning Monkey Solitaire.

(Incidentally, I categorized this under Mac, but both Solace and BMS are cross platform. As is Jared.)

Hysterical article in the Wesleyan Argus, pointed to by Wired, about how sharing one’s iTunes playlists sometimes reveals more about oneself than one intends—and can either lead others to idolize or ostracize you. It’s called playlistism. And it’s almost certainly for real.

At work, I had to change the default name on my iTunes shared music (the name defaults to your computer name, which defaults to my email address) because I was getting too much grief about even using iTunes—this on the first day it was out, when one could be forgiven for experimenting. So I changed the name to “The Boney King of Nowhere.” Now I find I have random people tuned in from time to time. Have I become a recipient of reverse playlistism? Am I now some kind of pirate radio station?

There appear to be three ways to do deep links on the iTMS without rolling your own URLs: one is to drag any hyperlink (not individual music tracks, but underlined artist or album names) to an application that supports drag and drop. You can also right click on a hyperlink or an individual track and choose the Copy Music Store URL option. That’t how I constructed the links last night. Doing either one results in a hyperlink using HTTP that goes to phobos.apple.com.

The third is the iTMS Link Maker, a web app on phobos.apple.com that walks you through a wizard to build links and gives you a JavaScript-based URL to go to the link. It also incorporates an IE plug-in control called the iTunes Detector that is loaded as part of the JavaScript solution that makes clicked hyperlinks behave “intelligently”—that is, when clicked, the links either open the selection in the iTunes Music Store, or take the user to a download page where they can get iTunes if they don’t already have it installed.

I’m less enthralled with this for a number of reasons. Number one, it requires embedding the script detector in the head of each page that bears the links—not a big deal when all pages on your blog are generated dynamically, but still something of a hassle. Number two, the iTunes Detector may be a lightweight piece of code, but it is not a lightweight user experience. I think I would rather have a link fail than pop an installer dialog over my blog pages.

That said, I’m not sure the direct link methods are any better of a user experience. The page on phobos.apple.com that is opened by these methods calls iTunes and then sends the user back to the calling page on Internet Explorer for Windows; on Safari, it appears to automatically close the calling page or tab. (Verification welcomed; I’ve only tested on my own machine.)

(Updates: See the comment from Greg about pulling a direct link from the deep link tool, and see the expanded version of this post with context at Blogcritics.)

As the old joke goes, my operation on my iPod was a success but the patient died. That is: I got the case open, found the broken connections, re-soldered them, closed the case, went to start up the iPod, and couldn’t get it past the Apple logo on the splash screen, even to do a system test. Reopening the iPod found no obvious damage, but I still couldn’t get anything working. So either I messed up the machine with some cack-handed soldering, I somehow damaged the hard drive, or there were bigger problems that surfaced only when I disassembled the unit. So take some caution when voiding your warranty.

It will likely be a few months before I can replace the iPod. In the meantime I’m enjoying more CDs in my car (and enjoying airplane rides much less).

MacSlash has a thread on the new PowerBooks announced this morning in Paris. It looks like the long awaited aluminum revision of the 15″ PowerBook model has arrived, with a new top end speed of 1.25GHz, ports on the side including an 800 MHz FireWire port, built in BlueTooth, AirPort Extreme (802.11g) ready, 80GB hard disk available, and of course the backlit keyboard. No news on whether the 15″ aluminum model is less of a Faraday cage (wrecking AirPort reception) than the titanium model; the 12″ and 17″ AlBooks appear to have licked the problem of the . Oh well. I can take consolation in the fact that the new aluminum model is a tenth of an inch thicker and 2/10ths of a pound heavier than my svelte 1″, 5.4 lb TiBook.

Update: Thanks to Greg for pointing out that an 80 GHz hard drive would be an oddity.

I opened the case on my iPod tonight to see if I could fix the FireWire problem I’ve been having. This photo essay walks through the process of actually opening the iPod and revealing the problem.

When you finally get everything out of the iPod, and move the LCD away to reveal the front of the board, you can see the FireWire connector is soldered to the integrated circuit board in nine places. Four, at the corners of the metal box that forms the frame of the FireWire port, appear to be mostly structural connections that may also ground the frame to the circuit board. The remaining five are thin leads that come off the bottom of the port.

I got out my silver solder and my grounded soldering iron and connected the larger connections on the side, then with the residual solder on the tip of the iron reconnected the thin leads. Just like Operation, it takes a very steady hand. Then I reassembled the iPod, grabbed the charger, plugged it in… and waited.

And I’m still waiting. When plugged into the wall, the iPod stayed stuck at the Apple logo, and while I could get it to restart (Menu and Play buttons held down simultaneously) I couldn’t get the diagnostic menu to come up (Previous, Next, and Select buttons). I reset it and briefly got a main menu, and even a song title, but nothing else. I also can’t get it to mount on the computer, though it’s definitely charging. I think the thing is just rattled; I’m going to leave it charging overnight and see how it goes. I may need to try soldering the thin leads again—I think those are the data leads, and if I screwed them up it would explain why the iPod isn’t being recognized.

I spoke to the good folks at the Apple Store yesterday about my iPod predicament. The Mac Genius there confirmed my fears, saying I basically have three choices:

1. Open the back of the iPod with a thin blade (best done by pressing down on the center of the back plate first; apparently this causes just enough flex to open the seams on the sides slightly) and attempt to use a soldering iron (or duct tape, I suppose) to repair the broken FireWire connector, OR
2. Spend $250 for an even exchange—a working 5 GB original iPod, OR
3. Spend $299 and get a new base model iPod. As of yesterday this was a 10 GB model.

I hoped that the iPod updates today would provide additional incentive for option 3; alas, the base $299 model is unchanged, though the 20GB model for $399 is suddenly a very attractive option. But I can’t resist the chance to do a little soldering. As soon as I exhaust my current charge, I’ll be out on my workbench, taking pictures and warming up the old iron…

After reading my tale of iPod woe, MacArtisan sent in a link (via TrackBack) about opening up the iPod. Unfortunately, it’s about opening second generation iPods, but a little Googling found me this illustrated guide to opening the iPod case on a battery replacement manufacturer’s site, which looks more directly applicable to my first generation model.

I think before I undertake any surgery, or especially soldering, I might stop by Bellevue Square first. You never know…

I noticed this afternoon that my original 5GB iPod wasn’t charging in my car (I have a cigarette lighter to FireWire adapter, one of those insane gadgets that you think you’ll never need—until the right moment comes along and then it’s indispensable). I tried the adapter in another outlet: nothing. I finally jiggled the cord a little and the charging bars started moving. Huh, I thought. Time to plug it in overnight.

I brought it home and connected it to my PowerBook. As it started to sync with iTunes, I remembered I hadn’t set it up with iSync yet on this machine. I started iSync, scanned and found the iPod, double-clicked—and then iSync froze. And iTunes was frozen. I noticed the iPod looked like it was back to its menu screen, so I unplugged it. Bam. Kernel panic.

I rebooted the PowerBook and tried to get the iPod to connect. No joy. I can’t even force it into FireWire drive mode, though it passes all the diagnostics. I think the problem is the physical FireWire connector on the iPod. Anyone know how to open one up?

MacNN: Apple to open Richmond, VA store on Sept 4. This is really good news for my favorite sister, not least of which because she now has my old Pismo. The 500 MHz G3 PowerBook with 512 MB RAM and a 30 GB hard drive survived two years of business school, and is now poised for four years of hard work banging out sermons and theological papers as Esta works through her grad school program at Union. I think that’s a good retirement for the machine—serving the cause of good, instead of business as usual.

MacOSXHints points to a new firmware hack that claims to enable some hidden features of the Apple standard SuperDrive that ships in PowerBooks, including my 15″ 1 GHz model. Promised benefits: CD burning at 16x, DVD-R at 2x, and DVD-RW capability. It’s not really a “hack,” more a way to apply the OEM’s firmware upgrade to allow the drive to operate at its promised capacities.

I’m not sure I’m going to try it out. I kind of like my machine the way it is now and don’t have a burning need to double my media burning bandwidth. But I downloaded the upgrade (and the downgrade, just in case) anyway.