Google Does Great on the iPhone

Google is apparently the #25 and # 26 most downloaded application from
the app store. Incredible!

Work Computer

My work computer and not handle having both and iPhone and a Blackberry plugged in to it. It was kind of funny to here the computer go through some kind of identity crisis connecting and disconnecting the blackberry over and over.

The Saga of the Mac Wouldn't Sleep Part 6

Alright, let me first say this, BACK UP YOUR COMPUTER REGULARLY.

I picked up the computer on Thursday morning. I got in and hand to wait a couple of minutes to get the computer. I opened it up and tested it to make sure that it worked. The final count was 3 new fans, 2 logic boards, and a new track pad. I don't know why the track pad was replaced, but it was. I got home later that afternoon and had to re-setup the computer. I haven't decided yet whether I will load everything back onto this computer or not. I kind of like have a computer with not much on it and using the desktop as a storage place for all my music and photos.

I am looking forward to being able to take my computer down to Starbucks or some other coffee shop to hang out in the evening and not be confined to the house for computer use.

Also, a great program that Mark suggested to me allows me to listen to music from my desktop from anywhere using my computer or iPod Touch, as long as there is a network connection. It is called simplify. I bet this is pretty cool on the iPhone when you always have a connection.

The Saga of the Mac that Wouldn't Sleep Part 4

I called last Thursday to find out the status of my computer. The status???

It will be finished by Tuesday next week. Please call us then and we will let you know for sure.

Today I called what is the status today???

The status today is that they replaced the logic board over the weekend and everything worked perfectly. Man I was glad to hear that. I was half way out the door running to get in the elevator when the guy added "but" to the end of the sentence.

The new logic board had failed too. The fan was running continuously and they need to work on both problems before it was done. This is great. I was hoping to go another 2 weeks without my laptop. Thank you Apple for providing me not one, but two, logic boards that were faulty.

They are hoping to have it done by this time next week. I am hoping there isn't a third logic board problem.

The Saga of the Mac that Wouldn't Sleep Part 3

Just got an update from the service center. They are still testing to see what the problem actually is.

The Saga of the Mac that Wouldn't Sleep Part 2

Part one of the story is here.

I have taken my Macbook Pro into the service center. In part one of the story I went through all of the solutions that I have already taken. There are many things that I had already done, and I explained all of these solutions to the support people at the store. They then offered me a couple of other problems that could be causing the computer not to sleep properly and also take 5 or more minutes to boot up now. Out of that list they suspect a few things, all of which are hardware related. If it is an easy hardware solution, for example the hard drive, they can have it done in 3 or 4 days. If it is a more complicated issue, for example the logic board, it could take them a month to get it done because they have to wait for parts.

The story so far has upset me as I have never had a problem with any Apple product before, short of an iPod that I creased in a car door.

In the meantime look forward to some other Apple product reviews coming soon as well as part 3 and possibly 4 of the story as I get more information. For now I am Macbook Pro-less.

The Ongoing Saga of the Mac that Wouldn't Sleep (properly)

Steps I have taken to correct the issue:
1. Re-set power management
2. Re-set sleep image
3. Deleted power management setting (reinstalled after restart)
4. Deleted widget with known issue
5. Removed programs that I thought could be causing the problem (programs I had borrowed)
6. Swapped out RAM (Upgraded in the process)
7. Changed screen saver setting

I have looked into this quite a bit and tried anything I can to correct the issue. Changing the screen saver setting actually seems to have worked, but as with the other fixes, they all seem to work and then it goes back to failing. Since I changed the screen saver setting 2 days ago (to not come on ever), I haven't had a recurrence of the issue. I think my next step might be to re-install OSX from scratch. I would prefer to not have to do this, but I am running out of ideas.

Things I Hate . . .

. . . About the new iPhone and the US mobile phone market in general.

Why do we have to subsidize the damn phone?
I think that a 4 or 5 hundred dollar price point is an acceptable price for a phone if we could use it on any network we like (of course limited to GSM vs TDMA/CDMA). I would prefer to get a phone I like for a more expensive price and be able to use it where ever I like. That was one of the decent things about the first generation iPhone. You had to buy it from Apple or AT&T, but you could take it home from there and do with it as you pleased.

One could take to the house, connect it to the computer and sign up for, or upgrade, an account with AT&T without the obnoxiousness of sitting in a cellular phone store for it to get done.

One could take it to the house, connect it to the computer and jailbreak it so that it could be used on any GSM network.

Hell, you could take it home and jailbreak it and not activate service on it at all.

It was up to the user what he wanted to do with it. You spent the money, you choose. But on the second generation, they have lowered the price, an obvious subsidy from either Apple or AT&T, and dropped the price almost in half from the original price point. Thats great, except as far as I hear that means that you will have to activate your service in the store. You don't have the option to do with it what you like, unless you sign up for service and then cancel the service within 30 days. I am sure that they will tack on the rest of the price of the phone when you do that.

One thing that I think is amazing about the cell phone market here is that the buyer goes to cell phone stores and picks out a phone that he likes and then goes to whichever carrier he wants. The phone is a bit more expensive, but you don't have to deal with the stupidity of being tied to a contract or the rediculous interactions you have with employees of cellular providers.

The Problem with RSS Readers

The whole weekend passed without reading a single feed. I intentionally didn't look at any of them on Thursday night, Friday, or Saturday so that I would have something to look forward to on Sunday morning at work.

The problem is that there were only enough interesting posts to keep me interested for 45 minutes. That is sad.

I think Thursday and Friday must be the time websites use to throw the garbage out. They collect crappy stories that no one cares about until then, knowing that people have better ways to spend their Thursday and Friday, and put them up then.

Sometimes Technology is Great

As a follow up to my technology sucks sometimes post, this is my sometimes technology is great post. I did some prep work backing everything up prior to receiving my new hard drive so that in the case of catastrophic pailure, I would have all my data. As it turned out, it was totally not needed. I put my new hard drive in the case and transfered the data using Super Duper. It took a little over an hour to do.

After that it was just a matter of pulling the old hard drive out and putting the new hard drive in. Everything booted perfect. There are no problems, but I am keeping the old hard drive with all the data on it for now and I think I will regularly back up to my old external hard drive.

In addition to more space on my hard drive, I have gained three other things. The first is that I have noticed is that the hard drive is more quiet than the apple hard drive. It is not significantly more quiet, nor was the old hard drive loud. But I have notice ethat there is less noise when I boot or even wake it up.

The second is that it deficately doesn't run as hot. Again this is a slight change, but noticeable none the less.

Finally, My batter life has gone up by about 30 minutes on normal usage.

The downside I see to running the hard drive within the computer vs using the external is that the use of itunes uses more battery now. When I would play movies in itunes now, the battery drains a lot quicker than it used to.

Hopefully every time I write technology sucks sometimes, I can follow it up with something this positive.

Technology Sucks Sometimes

I have figured out that the only way I can fix the issues I have with iTunes is to upgrade the hard drive in my computer. I have been having some serious issues with my library being on an external hard drive for quite some time.

It was pretty bad when I had to connect the damn thing to my computer any time that I wanted to listen to music. So when the Airport Extreme was released and had the option of connecting a Hard Drive to it and being able to use it in a wireless fashion was a great sounding solution. It was a perfect idea in theory and worked ok for a while. But as of late I am having intermittent problems with it, culminating in complete lack of being able to access my music over the network today.

To remove these issues, I am going to find the largest hard drive I can that I can put inside my computer to have my library anytime I want from my computer, using the external hard drive for back ups and large documents that I want to store, but don't necessarily want on my computer.


I think I will use this tag semi-regularly with the same title for every post in which I tell my readers why technology sucks sometimes.