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Black Mac is back!

After just under a month on the road (Portland to Austin to Memphis to Austin to Portland), my black MacBook is now back in my possession! The good news: so far, the power adapter isn't overheating. The bad news: it still makes more noise than I would consider "normal," though it's not audible from as great a distance as before.

What's truly strange is what they replaced:

  • APP-646-302 DSPL 13.3 GLOSSY AUO: I'm assuming that's the 13.3" glossy screen...
  • APP-603-9181 ASSY, BEZEL, BEST: I think this is the bezel that goes around the screen.
  • APP-616-0268 BATTLITH LITH, 55WHR, ATL, BLK: A new battery.

I guess I understand the battery replacement...but why the screen and bezel? Perhaps the connection between the screen and the machine itself was somehow causing an issue? Or maybe a tech's screwdriver slipped and gouged the original screen :).

In any event, it's back, and based on the first hour or so of usage (downloading 2.52GB (well, it feels like that much!) of system updates), the overheating problem seems to be resolved. Hooray!

Update: After letting the machine run for a good two hours, I felt the power brick, and it seemed notably cooler than before the fixes. To confirm, I hooked up the USB temperature probe, and found that the temperature now maxes out around 94F. That's a good 30+ degrees cooler than before. So while it's still warm to the touch, I no longer fear a meltdown if I leave it too close to something made of plastic.



Widgets calling

Macworld logoThe recently-released OS X 10.4.7 update included a not-announced Dashboard widget update feature which silently checks to make sure that your widgets are valid. I agreed with the need for such a feature, but wrote about how I think Apple could have implemented things a bit better.



How hot is too hot?

If anyone out there is using a MacBook (or a MacBook Pro, for that matter), and has access to a temperature probe, I'd be interested in knowing the temperature of your power adapter brick. (Just stick the probe between the adapter and work surface, or hold it on top with a book or somesuch.) Apple just sent me a replacement for my first one, as it was making a scary sounding noise (sort of a grating static-like sound), and was getting to be *very* warm--at least, what I consider to be very warm.

Within an hour or so of powering up the machine, the adapter brick will go over 123F, which strikes me as too hot to be normal. It's basically too hot to hold comfortably for any length of time, and the brick will warp plastic if I set it on such for a period of time. My PowerBook, for instance, never got anywhere near 123F; its adapter stayed cool to the touch. And since both bricks exhibit the same behavior (noise and very high temps), then I think I must have an issue with my MacBook, not the adapter (or perhaps the wall-to-brick cable, but that seems unlikely).

On the other hand, if everyone out there is also recording 123F and can hear the grating static-like noise, then I guess everything's normal...scary, but normal. Still, I find it hard to believe that the brick should be getting that warm, just from the machine being powered up. (As soon as I put it to sleep, the noise in the brick vanishes, and temps return to normal).

June 24 update: I spoke with Apple again this morning, telling them that the new adapter exhibited the same issues as the old. They have agreed (without any prodding on my part) to take my MacBook in for a look-see. So I spent some time this morning reinstalling OS X and removing my third-party RAM chips; it's now ready to go back to Apple on Monday morning.

July 12 update: My MacBook has been with Apple since June 28th, with a status of "Parts on order." Not much of an update, really, other than knowing that I still don't have resolution on the issue.

-rob.



Convert your G5 to Intel power!

I use iChat a lot--it's one of the ways the far-flung Macworld editorial staff keeps in touch with each other, for instance. My iChat info also winds up in a lot of iChat screenshots--some I take, and some taken by others. Most of the time, this isn't a problem. But sometimes, the user taking the photo might have my actual iChat ID visible on the screen, or I'll mess up and have it visible in the header of my buddy list. As a result, my iChat ID isn't a great secret--and since I have a .Mac account, it's actually very easy to figure out.

I used to leave my iChat sessions open, and would chat with whomever stopped by, as I love talking to other Mac users. But as the site's popularity grew, these random chats began to take up more and more of the day, so I eventually had to lock iChat down to only allow chats those on my buddy list (iChat Preferences -> Accounts -> Security tab). Now if someone wants to chat with me, they have to send me an email first. Not nearly as friendly as before, but at least I have time to work again :).

In any event, when I set up my recently-purchased MacBook, I forgot to set up the chat restriction. I didn't notice at first as I didn't have any third-party chat requests come in for the first couple days. Then I started getting chat requests from unknown users. Before disabling unknown chats again, I thought I'd take a few minutes and chat with at least a couple of the requesters, just to see who they were, etc. One of them turned out to be a high school student (or a friend pulling my leg; I'm still not sure which) who seemed to be the ultimate Mac power user--he claimed to own something like six Macs, including a PowerMac G5, MacBook, and MacBook Pro. Although that sounded suspicious to me ($10K worth of Macs while in high school!?), I kept talking with him. That is, until this exchange took place (my lone entry is in green, somewhat obviously):

chat log

So it seems all the industry experts have been wrong for all these years--apparently the PowerPC G5 and the Intel Core Duo CPUs are pin-compatible; just yank the G5, drop in a Core Duo, and your G5 is now a Boot Camp-capable Intel-powered Mac. Hmmm...why haven't I read more about this on the net?! :)

I chose that point to exit the conversation, and then immediately blocked future chat requests from non-buddies. So if this was a friend pulling my leg, you got me. If it wasn't, then this is clearly the most out-there liar I've ever had the "pleasure" of chatting with.



MacBook gaming: A graphics concern?

Macworld logoI wrote up my perspective on playing games on the just-introduced (and video-card-lacking) MacBook. There were some encouraging results, and a lot of not so encouraging results. Overall, I thought the MacBook did a passable job with older titles, a better-than-expected job with some games in Rosetta, and an abysmal job with the few current 3D games I tried.



Music Store search struggles

Macworld logoAfter a particularly infuriating search effort for the Curious George soundtrack at the iTunes Music Store, I wrote this editorial about the store's messed up search functions. Oddly enough, the very day we ran the editorial, Apple updated the store's search functions, and the new functionality addressed every single issue I had raised. Talk about bad timing!





It’s so … black!

MacBook pictureA new MacBook has joined the stable here at macosxhints' HQ--this one's all mine, though, not a Macworld asset like the mini! And yes, I chose to pay the $150 color tax, and bought the black one (five bonus points to the first reader to identify the source of the title of this post). I chose to upgrade because, with two kids in the house, I'm doing more work from my laptop in various rooms of the house, and the 12" PowerBook G4's 1024x768 resolution can be quite limiting. I was tempted by the 15" MacBook Pro, but the one I would want was well over $2500. When the MacBook came out at $1,500, I decided it was time...

I had two major concerns prior to purchasing--the keyboard and the glossy screen. It took but a couple seconds of typing in the store to allay the keyboard issue. The keys, though they look decidely non-standard, have very standard spacing. I had no troubles at all with touch typing, and I loved the amazingly solid feel of the keyboard.

[continue reading…]



Hide iDVD? I think not!

Last week, for the first time since installing iLife '06, I had an excuse to use the newest version of iDVD. In general, I love it. But someone at Apple made one seemingly insanely poor decision involving the "burn progress" screen:

DVD burn image

That's the screen that appears when you start the encode (if not yet done) and burn of a final DVD. In prior versions of iDVD, this area was a separate tab within the main iDVD interface. Now it's been attached to a drop-down sheet, as seen above. Within that sheet is a progress bar and a ticker that counts off how many items have been processed.

So far so good, though a progress dialog in a sheet is a somewhat unique concept. But the other change that came with this new sheet is incredibly unwelcomed--you can no longer hide iDVD in any traditional manner. If you try Comamnd-H with iDVD in the foreground, it just beeps at you. If you switch it to the background and then do "Hide Others" from some other app, everything except iDVD hides, and you'll hear the beep again. I even tried AppleScripting it, with no success.

OK, fine, I thought, I'll just minimize it to the Dock. Nope. That doesn't work either. Argh!

Since the sheet is dynamic, my screensaver won't kick in if it's visible. So it seems you're just plain stuck with the iDVD box onscreen, which is an amazingly poor decision on Apple's part. I finally managed to at least make it non-visible by using Backdrop, a utility that lets you drop a desktop picture (or solid color) down as a layer. So I ran Backdrop, set it to display a nice picture, then switched Backdrop in front of iDVD. iDVD was now hiding behind Backdrop, and since Backdrop takes up the whole screen, I couldn't accidentally activate iDVD by clicking its window. I could still switch to it with Command-Tab, or by clicking its icon in the Dock, of course. But at least it was out of sight, allowing me to more easily work on other things while it rendered away in the background.

Why oh why can't we just have Command-H work again, as it did before?!



Trust me, they won’t even notice…

So let's assume you're a big, powerful, corporation, generally viewed as "customer centric" with very cool and useful products. Sometimes, though, you have the occasional 'what we're they thinking?' moment with a product. Let's further assume your name is, oh, I don't know, how about...Apple? Here's yet another of those moments they seem to have with some regularity:

iPhoto icon

That, in case you're not familiar with it, is the button in iPhoto toolbar that lets you publish a selection of images to your .Mac homepage. Click it, and a wizard comes up that helps you select the theme, layout options, and other features for your photo page. You then click Publish, and presto, your images are published on your .Mac homepage, complete with a very nice slideshow feature. Presto, bango, simple!

So what's the problem? Well, that button (and the wizard it launched) has simply vanished in iPhoto6. There's no discussion about it in the manual, nor in Help, nor in the Read Me, nor in the Knowledge Base. It has simply disappeared into the ether.

Instead of using the handy wizard, you're now supposed to send all your images through iWeb, which will then force you to create an actual site, just to contain what should be a simple slideshow page. Yech. There is a workaround, which I'll write up in detail for macosxhints next week. (Short version: export and resize to 800x600, upload the folder to your iDisk, then use the .Mac homepage to create the photo page.) But the workaround is a far cry from the ease of use of the old wizard.

Now personally, I never used this feature, as I don't use .Mac for my photo pages. However, after recommending the iLife upgrade to my mother, I definitely got an earful about this "new and improved" iPhoto when she found her single most used feature missing in action! Since I feel responsible for the problem she now faces, it's the least I can do to try to help spread the word about this, and hope Apple can see fit to return a basic feature to the application.

I'll probably be writing about why this is a Really Bad Thing on macworld.com next week, but I wanted to get something up about it now, while it was fresh on my mind. Of course, based on Apple's treatment of the discussion I linked to above, I don't have a positive feeling about the chances of this feature's return...

Locked!

Perhaps, though, if enough people make enough noise about it, they can bring back what was a powerful and easy-to-use feature.