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Rob Griffiths

Troubleshooting a Mac CD tray that won’t stay closed

Recently, I placed my Mac Pro up for sale, both on the net in general and on eBay. The eBay auction closed with a successful bidder, so yesterday, I went to prep the machine for shipping. After wiping the drives and reinstalling OS X, I had but one thing to do: solve a small but annoying problem with one of the two installed disc burning SuperDrives (name used for simplification; one was an actual SuperDrive from Apple; the other a multi-format burning drive from Sony).

The stock drive, which I had mounted in the lower slot, worked fine. So did the after-market upper drive, as long as there was a disc in the slot. If I ejected the disc and then closed the tray, the drive would grind for a few seconds, then eject. It would then stay ejected for a few minutes, until (I believe) OS X noticed it was open. It would then close, and the grind-eject cycle would repeat.

I'm posting the sordid details of my experience in case anyone else is looking for help with a CD/DVD tray that won't stay closed on their own OS X machine; perhaps it'll show up in a Google Mac-specific search at some point in the future. Read on for the details…
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Thanks and goodbye, Tatters!

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I was never a cat person growing up; my family always had dogs. Once I got through college, I lived in shared housing arrangements for the first five years of my work life (the joys of living in Silicon Valley)—so that meant no pets of my own. My jobs were also such that having a pet would be difficult, as I traveled a fair bit. So I remained petless for many years.

In January of 1994, though, I purchased my first home (shortly after moving to Oregon). In all ways but one, it was a very typical starter home: 1970s three-bedroom two-bathroom ranch with too much dark wood, not enough light, horrendously outdated kitchen, and and orange-and-white marble-look-but-plastic guest bath.

The one way in which it differed is that the home came with a guilt trip, which led directly to my first-ever experience as a cat owner…
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How to not upgrade to iOS5

If you follow me on Twitter, you're probably familiar with my iOS5 installation difficulties. Two days into the process, and I've still not been able to update either my iPad (first generation) or iPhone 4. This is—by far—the most frustrated I've been with any Apple upgrade, ever…and that covers a lot of history!

Simply as a means of venting, and perhaps to save someone else from going through what I've gone through (though note that I haven't yet solved the problem), here's what I've gone through to try to upgrade my iPhone and iPad.

Update: On my 48th attempt, my iPhone 4 successfully updated to iOS5. Now, on to the iPad…

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11.6″ MacBook Air: Who needs a netbook?

As I'm really enjoying my new 11.6" MacBook Air, I thought it might be interesting to compare it with some other portables I currently own. Specifically, I wanted to compare the Air to my previous fave ultra-portable Mac (the 12" PowerBook G4), a Dell Mini 10 running Mac OS X, and my current fave Mac laptop, the high-res anti-glare 15" MacBook Pro.

What follows isn't a comprehensive set of benchmarks done under controlled conditions. It's more of a quick look at performance (and measurements and specifications) across a series of machines, three of which can be considered "ultra portables."

Read on for the table...

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Macworld: 2010 writings

Macworld logoAll (or as many as could be found online) of my 2010 writings for Macworld.

January
Jan 5LaunchCodes brings back 10.5-style document opening
Jan 13Does auto-expiring security software make sense?
Jan 21What key features will a tablet need before you buy one?
Jan 26What might a tablet's home screen look like?
Jan 26Fusion 3.0.1
Jan 26Parallels 5 (build 9308)
Jan 26VirtualBox 3.1.2
Jan 27Virtualization: Performance testing
Jan 27Virtualization: Which one to use?
Jan 27The iPad's five worst surprises
Jan 29Virtualization: Behind the scenes
February
Feb 25First Look: Quicken Essentials for Mac
March
Mar 8Why I don't use Google Docs
Mar 23Magic Launch brings creator-code support to Snow Leopard
April
Apr 3In the line for an iPad: A first-person account
Apr 9Why pay for Final Cut Express when iMovie is free?
Apr 29Numbers 1.0 for iPad
May
May 6Essential Mac utilities: text expanders
May 6Spell Catcher X 10.3.4
May 6Typinator 4.0
July
Jul 7Ten ways to customize Chrome
Jul 8First Look: Firefox 4 beta
August
Aug 2Office 2011 pricing penalizes owners of multiple Macs
September
Sep 13What OS X has meant to me
Sep 28Microsoft Excel for Mac 2011
October
Oct 12Office 2011: the macro is back
Oct 19OS X 10.7: The rumors and the reality
Oct 27Boost your Mac's speed with a hybrid drive
Oct 27Office 2011: Excel FAQ
November
Nov 5IT conference attendees react to Xserve's demise
Nov 9Recapping the MacTech conference
Nov 12Expert printing tips for Excel 2011
Nov 15Mac Pro: Tower of power


My 90-day health improvement plan

A few days ago, I Tweeted a message about how I've lost weight, dropped my blood pressure, and reduced my resting pulse rate over the last few months:

Sep 8 vs Dec 8: Blood pressure, 140/95 -> 115/75; resting pulse, 73 -> 48; Weight, 218 -> 185. Amazing what's possible in three months.

I had a few people ask (on Twitter) me how I made these changes. My response required more than 140 characters, so I thought I'd expand on it in a blog posting here.

Warning, this is a long blog entry, mainly because I've not written this down anywhere before, and I wanted to get it all in text. The executive summary version is simply that cutting sodium, watching calories, and running every single day possible are the three main factors behind the changes in my weight and blood pressure.

Read on for the highly-detailed version of the above...

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Photos from our summer tour

After posting about my favorite roads from our summer tour around the west, a few people asked to see some pictures. Here's an album showing some of the interesting sites and landscapes:

Summer Tour 2010

It really was an amazing journey—4,000 miles in about 18 driving days, plus another 700 miles during a one-week stay in Colorado to visit friends and relatives. More about the trip, in particular spending that much time in a car with two young children, in a future post.



These are a few of my favorite roads…

Last summer, we took our two girls on a 30-day, 4,000-mile trek around the western United States (here's the full route). The trip was made possible by my wife's employer, where everyone is given a multi-week sabattical after 10 years of service.

Our kids are relatively young for such a journey--just four and seven at the time of the trip. To make it bearable for them (and us!), we drove relatively short distances each day, and spent a mostly-driving-free week in Colorado in the middle of the trip. (More on the lessons we learned traveling for 30 days straight with two young kids in a future blog post...)

What was great about the trip, for the adults in the car at least, was that relatively little time was spent on interstate highways--only 1,200 of the 4,000 miles, and of those 1,200 miles, 900 of them were on the first three days and the last day of the trip. So most of the time, we were on state highways or even smaller backroads. These are the roads where you can really see the country, and get away from the crowds--many times we had the road completely to ourselves.

Given how much we enjoyed these roads, I thought I'd take a few minutes and share some of my favorites from the journey. (Click the small map image for the full Google Maps view (in a new window) of each road.)
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My new favorite (for now) laptop Mac

A while back, I tweeted that my new MacBook Pro was my fave-ever portable Mac—this despite having only used the machine for under two weeks at that point. A few people asked me "why your fave-ever?," so I thought I'd use those queries as an excuse to post here on my near-silent blog.

The specific machine in question is a 2010 15" MacBook Pro with the 2.66GHz Core i7 processor, 4GB of RAM, and (when new) a 5400rpm 500GB hard drive...and, oh yes, the single most important spec: the anti-glare 1680x1050 high resolution screen.

This machine replaced a 2008 MacBook Pro (last of the non-unibody laptops) with a 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, and a 7200rpm 200GB hard drive (and the only screen at the time, the standard 1440x900).

Comparing the two, the only area where I gave up anything at all was in the hard drive's speed. I took care of that problem by installing a new Seagate Momentus hybrid hard drive, the 500GB version, to be exact. (A hybrid drive is one that combines a small solid state drive—4GB in this case—with a traditional drive, and then uses its firmware to optimize performance on the fly. For more on the Seagate hybrid drive, see this excellent article at Anandtech.)
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Macworld: 2009 writings

Macworld logoAll (or as many as could be found online) of my 2009 writings for Macworld.

January
Jan 2Spotlight enhancer HoudahSpot gets enhancements of its own
Jan 6The amazing vanishing Mac desktop machine
Jan 7First Look: Numbers ’09
Jan 7The history of the Mac, told by those who were there
Jan 8Expo Notes: Memeo puts you in a sharing mood
Jan 9Expo’s Ask the Editors session
Jan 9Expo Notes: Jing, a year later
Jan 10Expo Notes: The search for TechTool Pro 5
Jan 10Expo Notes: Araxis Merge adds to its file-comparison bag of tricks
Jan 10Expo Notes: Digitize your paper trail with NeatReceipts
Jan 12Expo Notes: Restoring the matte screen
Jan 19The video industry just doesn’t get it
Jan 22Pirated iWork '09 installer may contain trojan horse
Jan 22Review: iDive 300 iPod/iPhone underwater case
Jan 23Review: Third-party browsers for the iPhone
Jan 27Review: Numbers ’09
February
Feb 3Hands-on: TechRestore’s matte-screen MacBook Pro service
Feb 4Look before leaping... and formatting hard drives
Feb 6Review: Power Support MacBook Pro Anti-Glare Film
Feb 9Six years with an Apple Cinema Display
Feb 11No more getting started with iLife ’09
Feb 12Review: Days of Thunder for iPhone
Feb 12Review: Spreadsheet editing apps for the iPhone
Feb 16Growl 1.1.4
Feb 18Review: Keynote controllers for the iPhone
Feb 23Review: MobileFiles Pro for iPhone
Feb 24Review: Air traffic control games for the iPhone
Feb 24First Look: Safari 4 Beta
March
Mar 3FireWire 400 reaches the end of the line
Mar 13VirtualBox 2.1.4
Mar 16Mariner Calc for iPhone
Mar 1615 iPhone 3.0 features we'd like to see
Mar 24Eight years and counting
Mar 30What you need to know about the Conficker worm
April
Apr 15VMware Fusion bug breaches the guest-host OS wall
May
May 5Why Firefox is my preferred browser
May 11TechTool Pro 5
May 14FireWire saves an iMac from a failed 10.5.7 upgrade
May 15Pointer Remote for iPhone
May 15First Look: Chromium browser for OS X
May 19Application Wizard makes program switching easy
May 20Close the Java security hole in many browsers
May 21Add an OS 9-like app menu to OS X with ASM or multiXFinder
May 21Hands on with the WolframAlpha computational knowledge engine
May 22Click Archive: An easier way to work with disk images
May 25DeskCover makes icons easier to see
May 26Digital Sentry watches your computer's activities
May 27iCab Mobile for iPhone
June
Jun 1Quickoffice Files for iPhone
Jun 2BdContacts: An alternative to Address Book
Jun 3Hands on with the Opera 10 Web browser beta
Jun 4Port Map: Simple port mapping for your router
Jun 5WWDC Preview: What we know, what we expect with Snow Leopard
Jun 8Snow Leopard more feature-laden than expected
Jun 9DailyFinance and eTrade Mobile Pro for iPhone
Jun 12Mariner Calc 1.2 for iPhone
Jun 17How I use iPhone 3.0's Spotlight search
July
Jul 1First Look: Firefox 3.5
Jul 6SpamSieve 2.7
Jul 7Personal Antispam X5
Jul 9Chrome OS's impact? It's too early to tell
Jul 13The no-worry backup plan
Jul 16Purify 2.1
Jul 20SpamX 4.0
Jul 22Living on the EDGE
Jul 23The Intel-only future draws closer
Jul 28The case of the cracked iPhone
Jul 31New NetNewsWire sync option isn't for everyone
August
Aug 4SpamSweep 1.6.1
Aug 5The end of the road for a favored text editor
Aug 6Frankenbook! Another look at hacked Mac netbooks
Aug 27Services step out in Snow Leopard
Aug 28Snow Leopard's old and new annoyances
Aug 29Snow Leopard: What's gone where
September
Sep 3How to create a Service in Snow Leopard
Sep 15Camtasia for Mac
Sep 23Snow Leopard changes the rules about opening files
Sep 24The real genius of the Genius Bar
October
Oct 13Inside Snow Leopard's Guest account data loss bug
Oct 15Apple allows in-app purchasing for free App Store apps
Oct 26First Look: VMware Fusion 3
Oct 26ScreenFlow 2.0 adds powerful new editing features
Oct 27ScreenFlow 2
November
Nov 4Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac arrives
Nov 20Mad Skills Motocross
Nov 21Why go Pro when iMac goes faster?
December
Dec 4PDFpen 4.5
Dec 8First Look: Chrome for Mac
Dec 21Run Stats for iPhone
Dec 20Batch conversion saves slow QuickTime clips
Dec 29Add an ExpressCard solid state drive to some MacBook Pros