Category: Apple

Well, I’ve narrowed down the likely causes of my PowerBook battery charging problems:

• It could, as it has been a few times in the past, be a power adapter problem. (This would make the third power adapter replacement I’ve had to do on this machine, which tends to lend credence to the claims on this website.)
• Rob McNair-Huff, of MacNetJournal and The Equinox Project fame, emailed me to say his similar problem turned out to be a dead battery.
• The local Apple reseller, The Computer Store, suggested that there might actually be damage to the sound board, which is where the power plug on the Pismo is mounted. There is at least a non-finite chance that the problem is inside the PowerBook.

So I’ll be trekking up to the University District this afternoon. Hopefully it will be a quick fix.

When I plugged in my PowerBook this morning, the icon in the menu bar that indicates battery status didn’t change to show it was plugged in. Uh oh, I thought. The last two times that happened I had to replace the AC adapter. But this time the adapter doesn’t look damaged? Is it the famous “power management reset” problem? No, apparently not, if the instructions I got for resetting the power management unit are any good.

Boy I wish the Apple store in Bellevue had opened already.

As promised during the 2003 MacWorld SF keynote, the at online address book in .Mac can now synchronize with your Address Book in OS X. In fact, if you’ve already been syncing your address book to .Mac with iSync, you don’t have to do anything but go into the address book preferences and turn on the synchronization. The online Address Book will then use the synced copy of your address book already sitting in your .Mac account and bring itself up to date.

How useful is this? Pretty useful, I think. There have been plenty of times that I, as a newly PDA-less person, wanted to have an address and was unhappy that it was only in my home address book. Now I just have to go to addressbook.mac.com and bang, it’s there. The main drawback to usefulness that I see is that the online version of the address book doesn’t preserve categories, so there’s no way for me to easily see just my family, for instance. But search works quickly and well, and the UI in general seems pretty clean and functional. There are even pretty instructions.

Here’s a screenshot (with names hidden to protect the innocent):

Brent’s done it again. The new beta release of the pro version of NetNewsWire not only supports categories, it now reliably downloads recent posts for editing on Manila (as confirmed by the release notes). Also some very nice minor “fit and finish” enhancements, such as the anchor tag window now putting the cursor directly into the input field.

There’s now no reason for my Manila Envelope software to continue to exist, at least in its current form.

Maybe. One thing that I do notice posting to my weblog through NNW is that it seems to take much more time than using Manila Envelope. This may be because NNW uses the MetaWeblog API, which is kind of a second-level API that probably turns around and calls the native Manila API. Manila Envelope, on the other hand, calls the Manila API directly, as its name implies. And there’s a ton of stuff in the Manila API that isn’t in any other blogging API, such as controlling templates and taglines. Maybe it’s time to think about repurposing the app to be the ultimate Manila client.

Heh. I’ve said before that we’re in trouble when I cover politics and Greg covers Mac software. Well, today it’s happening again, with the ongoing Republican astroturf saga here and Greg discussing Jefferson, the new Mac OS X front end to the Thomas legislative database. I had a chance to play with it last night, and it’s pretty cool. The first thing I did was to plug in my senator’s name, which led me to the long list of amendments to the appropriations bill currently under way (linkage once I figure out how to work Thomas’s web interface). Jefferson is definitely a useful tool to keep yourself informed as a citizen; I would never have spent the time to figure out Thomas, but Jefferson makes it quick and easy.

One of the advantages of working at a Large Technology Company is that the people who work there are tech pack rats. And occasionally you score some good stuff. At my old job in 1998, I managed to pick up a Mac IIcx and IIfx for free—both were missing hard drives and memory, of course, but just to hold something that ran a Motorola 68030 chip at 33 MHz and could complete an infinite loop in 30 seconds was cool. (The machines both disappeared when my parents moved from Newport News—my dad probably rightly decided to clear out all non-functioning junk in the process.)

I bring this up because I did it again. I now have a Fat Mac (original Mac with 512K of memory instead of the original 128), a Mac Plus motherboard, an extra 400K disk drive, and something else in an original Apple box (external floppy?) sitting in the trunk of my car. Free. The Fat Mac needs some video work, but otherwise represented to be OK. Of course, the question is what can I possibly do with a Fat Mac? I don’t know, but this is the cue to get that soldering iron for the workshop that I wanted…

Update: Low End Mac has a slew of articles about fixing a Fat Mac. Apparently I’m not alone in keeping a fond place in my heart for these older machines.

When I read that Steve Jobs announced Apple’s support of 802.11g (WiFi on steroids), I was thrilled. Thrill gave way to dismay pretty quickly as I remembered I had already bought a new 802.11b access point. My dismay may be both short-lived and prolonged, however.

First, short-lived: the new AirPort Extreme card does not fit existing devices’ AirPort slots. In fact, according to some observers, the bus speeds needed for 802.11g are too high to be supported by the existing AirPort slot. Second, prolonged: the WiFi News blog (formerly 802.11b News) points to a slew of PC cards and access points from other makers that support the new standard. So I might still have options for my old Pismo…but I can’t upgrade for a while anyway.

A while back I mentioned that I was getting the iPod Remote Control. This little device is essential if you have an iPod and you either (a) work out or (b) listen to it in your car. It is a small module less than an inch square with a clip on the back. The control layout is volume up/down on the top (rocker switch), previous and next track switches in the middle, and play/pause on the bottom. A small slider on the side allows locking out the remote so you don’t press buttons accidentally. The top of the device accepts a standard miniplug for headphones or another device (like a cassette adapter).

In the car, I clip the remote to my shirt (what do you call the strip of fabric into which the buttons go? there must be a word for that [Update: Esta says it’s called a placket. Thanks, Vocabulary Fairy!]). If I need to change a tune it’s a one hand, no eyes required operation, much safer than trying to do it on the iPod. In the gym, as long as there’s a flat surface nearby, I don’t even need a belt clip for the iPod; the remote clips to my t-shirt and away I go.

Some bonuses: if you have the original iPod with the ear-stretching earbuds, the remote comes with the new, less painful earbuds. And pressing play while the iPod is off immediately turns it on and starts it playing. Using the iPod, two button pushes are required, one to wake it up and one to start it playing, and there is a perceptible amount of lag time, which seems absent when using the remote.

In a related note, I missed the announcement of the Burton Amp, which holds an iPod and integrates a remote control into the sleeve. Good for snowboarding, I suppose…

Looks like Macintouch printed my letter about my size comparison between the different PowerBook models in their reader report on the new models. Other reports on the page include the experience of someone who had a 15.2″ TiBook in the pipe from the Apple Store (they’re offering him the new lower price point and honoring the “double RAM” deal since he placed his order before 12/31) and some details about FireWire 800, the new double-speed implementation of FireWire.

On a more personal note, thank God for the fine hosting services of Weblogger.com. If I had gotten as many hits while my site was on editthispage.com, the site would have fallen over (and did, quite a few times). Right now I’m up to somewhere north of 650 hits and climbing…

Call it “How to bury an important announcement, Part II.” Without any fanfare, Apple released a public beta of an X11 environment for Mac OS X. Unlike third party efforts, the X11 for Mac OS X public beta provides true Aqua window management and graphics acceleration courtesy of Quartz.

(A curious thing: the pointer to Quartz Extreme on the page points to this UK page (note the URL). A hint as to the origin of the new X11 environment?)

This is cool. I was never happy with XDarwin; I couldn’t figure out how to get it running again after upgrading to 10.2, it put crap all over my filesystem in directories that weren’t visible through the Finder, and it offered whatever window manager you wanted, as long as it was an ugly old-school non-Aqua window manager. The new release also lives happily as a little package file: X11.app.

Oh yeah: for those who don’t know already, X11 is a standard GUI toolkit for Unix. A lot of graphical Unix apps, including the Gimp (a Photoshop competitor) and the original Mosaic browser, require X11 to run. With this release, Mac OS X has an even firmer claim on being able to run almost every desirable piece of Unix software.

All the links for the new products announced during the keynote are now live. I started wondering about the claim that the 12″ PowerBook is the “smallest PowerBook ever.” Surely it’s not smaller than an iBook? or a Duo?

Here are the dimensions as they stack up. Steve wasn’t idly boasting, but it depends on how you cut the figures:

Dimension	PowerBook Duo 210	iBook	PowerBook G4 12″
Width (inches)	10.9	11.2	10.9
Depth (inches)	8.5	9.06	8.6
Thickness (inches)	1.4	1.35	1.18
Volume (cubic inches)	129.7	136.99	110.6
Weight (pounds)	4.2	4.9	4.6
Image

So the new 12″ PowerBook is a little deeper and heavier than the old Duo 210, but still smaller in terms of overall volume. Quibbling aside, this is pretty cool—I never thought we’d see a machine close to the Duo’s form factor from Apple ever again.

Continuing with the live blog of the live bloggers: Eric says Steve is talking hardware, including laptops: 17 inch Powerbooks, only 1 inch thick:

1440×900 resolution, 16:10 ratio. Fiber-optic backlit keyboard. 6.8 pounds. Aircraft-grade aluminum. 1 GHz G4 and FireWire 800.

Will all bloggers lust after the new AlBook like they did the TiBook? Have to wait to see the photos. If Apple succeeds in improving AirPort performance over the TiBook they might have a winner.

Dammit I posted too fast. Looks like it will incorporate AirPort Extreme: 802.11g (54 MB/sec, baby) as well as BlueTooth (Eric and Matthew).

Double dammit. New Airport Extreme base stations for $199, 802.11g, with USB print server. Oh well. The SMC works fine. <sob>

“One more thing” — Matthew: “…New 12″ Powerbook. Smallest powerbook ever. Full sized keyboard. 867 MHZ G$. Bluetooth built in. Airport Extreme ready. Cost: 1799$.”

Other coverage: Daniel Berlinger of Archipelago.

Dave points to Matthew Langham, who is blogging the keynote real time. First big announcement: “FinalCut Express. Looks really neat (from the demo). How much will it cost? 299$ Wow!” Matthew also notes that watching Steve demo iMovie 3 (announced along with iPhoto 2) is “boring.” Sounds familiar.

Additional announcements: iLife, an integrated suite of iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes. Free; $49 with iDVD. Safari, a new Mac OS X browser, supposedly “fastest Mac browser ever,” including Google on the toolbar. Unclear whether this is the true Google toolbar or just a search box. Also unclear whether this is the long rumored Apple version of Chimera, a Cocoa browser based on the Mozilla code base. Also unclear whether Microsoft will still want to play in the Mac sandbox after this… A note: if I have to choose between speed and standards support, I’ll just use Chimera instead, which is plenty fast for me…

Other real-time bloggers: Eric, who notes the QuickTime stream isn’t great even if you can access it, and Frank.

Hmm, Matthew says Steve says they used KHTML, from the KDE library, and will donate back all the additions they make. Also to send them the URL for any page that doesn’t render correctly. Heh. Hope: that they are using this as the basis of a new Cocoa class for HTML rendering; the current one suxx0r. Glad to read in the KHTML notes that it “mostly” implements CSS and DOM.

Hmm… Keynote, a new presentation app, according to Frank. Eric: import/export PowerPoint, export QuickTime, PDF, and XML. $99.

Just a quick foolish note: here I am blogging in real time a bunch of folks blogging in real time. Dave: looks like Weblogs.com is standing up to all the blogging traffic quite well, despite having hit a high water mark.

I still may not be able to get through to the keynote stream, but some smart readers on MacSlash noted that .Mac has been updated to provide an online address book that iSyncs with your offline one; Mac to Mac synchronizations; checking outside POP mail with webmail.mac.com; and other mail features.