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July 20, 2010

Huge Hardware Problem Solved (I Think)

I call this: mac,tech — Posted by KP @ 2:00 am

My Macbook Pro needed an exorcism. There was something just not right with it. It’s not like my first Mac, which was a 2002 PowerMac that to this day just spontaneously freezes and kernel panics with no provocation, despite passing every hardware test known to man. It was thankfully more subtle and less disruptive than that.

Let me tell you about how it began. This machine came with 4GB of RAM. My previous machine also had 4GB of (third-party) RAM, of an inferior kind (DDR2 as opposed to DDR3). Knowing how advanced the i7 chip is compared to my 2007 Core2Duo, I expected that with an equal amount of RAM, and literally the same hard drive, this machine would be the same, only faster. Well in real-world use, it wasn’t noticeably faster. In fact sometimes it almost seemed slower. Things that are heavily RAM-dependent (such as boot-up time) were slower. I’ve never sat there with a stopwatch, and I couldn’t actually do a side-by-side comparison, because the hard drive had moved and now I can’t test the original speed of the old computer, but when I originally got the 4GB of RAM in the old machine, I was amazed how fast it booted. This machine was not as impressive.

Parallels

Parallels is a virtualization software that allows you to run Windows (or whatever you want) while booted in Mac OS. It ran terribly on this machine. I mean so bad — so embarrassingly bad — that if there were some incompatibility with i7 MBPs there would be a huge outcry and people would be demanding an immediate patch or their money back. Even when I reduced the RAM and video RAM assigned to the virtual machine to pathetic levels, it was still slow as hell. At a reasonable level (say half the actual hardware capacity) it completely consumed all resources and the computer was totally useless in both OSes. And yet the Parallels user help forums don’t say anything about the current version running particularly badly, or having a problem with the new Macs. So I’d started to become convinced maybe it’s just me.

Quitting Programs

Lately I’ve had a few programs that have been spontaneously quitting upon launch. DVD Player and the text editor WriteRoom seemed to be the most common. Eventually I got WriteRoom running after what I think was a corrupted text file that it kept trying to re-open on launch. But DVD Player still quit on launch sometimes, and then 5 seconds later worked fine. Because of these problems I’ve been looking at Activity Monitor to see if anything looks odd. What I’ve noticed (sometimes connected to the quitting, sometimes not) is an obvious memory leak.

Memory Leak

There was a huge memory leak somewhere. Because of it (and rebooting into Windows for gaming) I have been rebooting my computer usually once a day, so I knew it wasn’t taking very long for the leak to grow to be a GB or more. Of course there are any number of things that could be causing it. Safari and associated plugins can cause problems, or some 3rd-party app could be buggy, but as it’s gotten worse I’ve been using less and less of my apps to try to eliminate possible suspects. I’ve been on Apple’s support forums looking for a large number of complaints of a memory leak, but I didn’t see much that points to a flaw affecting all users of 10.6.4 or anything like that. In one case, a user mentioned that it could be caused by faulty memory, and in light of the history listed above, that’s the first time I started seriously considering a hardware problem.

If I’m having software problems, and not anything really disturbing like kernel panics, I will always blame it on software, but the fact is, I’ve been very disappointed with the performance of this machine since I got it. It’s not worse than my old one, but it’s not better, and lately I’ve been on the verge of looking into getting 8GB of RAM. I almost blogged something about it last week — “since when is 8GB of RAM necessary for a computer to feel fast? ” — but I stopped when I couldn’t find the exact quote from Bill Gates about “640k is enough memory for any computer forever,” and moreover discovered that he probably never even said it, which crushed my ideas for an opening line for the post. The point is, I stopped just shy of going to Crucial and finding out just how much 8GB costs these days, since obviously 4GB is yesterday’s news.

I ran Apple’s extended hardware test and it came out fine. My experience and understanding about the way the universe works is that Apple’s hardware test has never identified a hardware failure on anybody’s computer ever, and is generally considered only a first step to save you time in the case that your hardware is extremely messed up (in which case you probably didn’t need a test to tell you something was wrong), otherwise you need to use more advanced third-party solutions. Which are complicated and if you do it properly, involve booting into single user mode and using the console.

I went back to the Apple forums looking for anything else, and somebody’s post said something like “sounds like bad RAM, make sure it’s properly seated.” Now that sounds really obvious, and in all my experience of bad-RAM-like symptoms in 20 years of using computers, that has never been the problem, but of course it’s one thing to check, sort of like if your toaster won’t work and the first step is “is it plugged in?” And I suddenly realized that I have never reseated the RAM since getting this computer. I opened it up to change the hard drive when I got it, but I never had any reason to touch the RAM. So I figured it couldn’t hurt to pop them out and put them back.

On Mac laptops the two sticks of RAM are one on top of the other. The first one looked pretty normal, but I held out hope that maybe there was some tiny gap not perceptible to the human eye, but that on reseating would make a better connection. I popped it up, and as I pulled it out I couldn’t believe what I saw below it: the second stick was not just maybe-kinda-sorta-not-all-the-way-in. It was sticking up! Generally you put the stick in at about a 30-degree angle and then push it down until it clicks into place on both sides. The stick was at that 30-degree angle, or as far up as it could go with the other stick properly seated on top of it. It was amazing, and explained everything. I have always felt like the computer was performing like it had half the RAM it should, and within a day or two of owning it, I had gone into System Profiler to check, because I suspected that one stick might not be detected. Obviously the connection was made enough that the system reported the 4GB, but in practical use only one stick was doing most of the work.

It’s rather early to say, but the first boot-up was at least as snappy as my old MBP. I assigned 2GB of RAM to Parallels and started it up, and it’s happily and quickly booting Windows XP in the background as I type. I mean easily 20 times faster than it did before — in a few seconds, compared to minutes of freezing the whole computer before I could even get it to abort the whole pathetic attempt at computing. I feel like Parallels is responding faster than Boot Camp does. Which is actually possible, considering that Boot Camp must have been running off roughly 2GB this whole time anyway.

I’m really shocked that the system ran as well as it did for so many months with a problem like that. I have been satisfied with it, but I was disappointed that there wasn’t a noticeable performance improvement compared to a 3-year-old machine, and the particular difficulty it seemed to have with RAM-intensive tasks confused the hell out of me. Now I’m excited to find out just how good of a machine I really have had all along. I’m sure I will need to revisit my review, which was kind of lackluster and unfinished, because I kept waiting for something to be able to point to to say, “Look, this is faster!”

Take for example this summary:

I’ve now had the machine for almost three months, and my assessment is that it’s good but not incredibly noticeable during normal use. Maybe the bottleneck is still the hard drive, and that’s why it feels exactly the same as before. My hope when I bought it was that maybe a year or so later, an SSD drive of respectable size would be available for a reasonable price. And I’m sure sometime around then, 8GB of ram would be really cheap. I haven’t quite mentally grasped the situation of 8GB being a “normal” amount of RAM yet, but when it’s cheap enough, I’ll buy it just because, and maybe I’ll see why. When I bought my last MBP I bought 4GB of RAM (which was relatively expensive at the time) because I was using the machine to run full-motion-video-with-audio projections for Singin’ in the Rain, and it made an enormous difference overnight — just before we opened we increased the resolution of all the videos, and they looked much better, and played much more smoothly. So I’m sure with the quad core and everything else, this thing has more power under the hood that I would find if I was doing more video and other demanding activities.

It’s pretty much all right there: the fact that it’s not faster, the fact that the 4GB of RAM and 7,200rpm hard drive inexplicably doesn’t seem to be enough. It didn’t make sense. And if the solution is that simple, I look forward to changing that review very soon!

And one final thought: I mentioned in my review how I don’t read about benchmarks, don’t perform benchmarks on my own machines, and in general don’t care about more details than “slow,” “fast,” or “OMG really fast!” Well the funny thing is, if I had run some benchmarks on the machine for my review, I probably would have realized right away that it was scoring far worse than published reviews. That’ll teach me.


June 21, 2010

Resize Images for the Web Using Folder Actions

I call this: mac,tech — Posted by KP @ 2:38 pm

One repetitive task I do a lot is resizing images to be placed on the website. On the blog I don’t have to worry so much about it because WordPress handles all that stuff in the image uploader, but for the main site, I have a couple standard sizes I use.

No image on the site is ever wider than 500px. If it is, then a smaller images is created at 500px and I will build a link to the bigger picture. Sometimes I want more of a thumbnail, and the size can vary a bit, but 150px is kind of my standard.

Today I decided to play around with folder actions a bit. A folder action in Mac OS X is basically a script that runs when you drag a file onto a folder, that does something to that file. This seemed like a good project for a simple one.

I created the folder action using Automator, which is the GUI scripting tool that comes with OS X. It’s pretty simple to drag and drop different actions to perform basic tasks. Here’s what my folder action looks like:

The other one is the same except it reduces the image to 150px, and adds “_thumb” to the end of the filename.


June 20, 2010

Mac RSS Reader Reviews – Gruml and Socialite

I call this: mac,tech — Posted by KP @ 8:07 pm

I like reading a lot of tech blogs and keeping up with the happenings in the world in general. One way that I try to save time, while at the same time being as close as possible to knowing things the moment they happen, is to subscribe to a lot of RSS feeds.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and is a standard format for compressing web articles into simple text and pictures which can be downloaded and read in other formats besides the site they are on. Some mail clients, like Apple’s Mail.app have RSS readers built in, so you can see articles from your favorite sites in a similar way to how you read your email. Most browsers can display RSS feeds, and then there are a number of separate applications dedicated to more robust management of feeds. That’s what I’m going to talk about today.

My first criteria in choosing an RSS app is that it must be compatible with Google Reader. Reader is Google’s web-based RSS aggregator that is popular mostly because of its syncing features. You can subscribe and read feeds from its rather busy web interface, or use an app on your mobile device or computer that supports Reader. If you read an article in one place, mark it as a favorite, etc. those changes will be synced and carried over when you access your feeds again, no matter what device you’re using.

My choice for an iPhone RSS app is Byline, which was the first (probably no longer the only) app to support offline caching of photos. The offline feature is really important to me when I’m home because I like to read my feeds on the train, and the ability to display photos offline is very helpful as a lot of tech blogs are really boring and pointless when you can’t see the pictures. Imagine reading Engadget, of which 90% of their posts are like, “Look at this cool secret phone somebody snapped a picture of.” “Here’s a picture of Motorolla’s latest thingamajiggy.” Not being able to see the pictures totally ruins it. Byline is $4.99, but there is now a free version that’s ad-supported as well.

On the Mac side, I’ve spent the last few months searching for the perfect RSS reader. Especially when I’m not working, or when working from home, I like to have my RSS reader running in the background all the time, and check on it all day long when it displays a badge showing unread articles.

I tried at least a half-dozen apps, but very quickly narrowed my search to two possible candidates: Gruml and Socialite.

Gruml

Gruml is free, and open-source. It’s also in beta (maybe one of those perpeturally-in-beta things), so it doesn’t always work perfectly.

What I love about Gruml is that it tries very hard to support every feature of Google Reader. You can set favorites, likes, comments, share articles, write notes on articles, and see the list of recommended feeds generated based on the articles you’re reading. So far as I can tell, it’s not missing any of the available features. It has an optional built-in tabbed browser, if you want to visit the web page for an article without leaving the Gruml window or cluttering up your main browser. It also has a very attractive, Mac-like interface. It offers several simple styles for displaying content (I like graphite, myself), and you can create your own if you know CSS.

However, I find it to be slow. Unread counts are very unreliable. If you enlarge this screenshot you can see I have drawn attention to a slight discrepancy in the unread count of the Lifehacker feed. On the sidebar it says 252, but in the list it shows only 1 (which is correct). More importantly, the number in the dock icon’s unread badge is 295, which includes the phantom 251 articles. It’s really annoying to see the unread badge in the dock when in fact all the articles are read. I’m constantly clicking on things that I shouldn’t be because it’s mis-reporting read and unread feeds. A recent update has improved the speed a bit, but I always feel like it doesn’t try to retrieve feeds until I click on them, which causes a bit of a lag, and is absolutely unacceptable when on a slow or intermittent internet connection.

The bottom line is, I want to like Gruml so badly, but the performance issues make it unpleasant to use. But as it’s beta and being developed for free, I can’t complain, and I have high hopes that someday it could be perfect.

Socialite

Socialite approaches the concept of an RSS reader a bit differently than most. It’s not just about RSS. The concept is that it’s a place to keep up on all your social networks: blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Flickr, and lots of other stuff, all in one place. Socialite is a paid app, which sells for $29.00, but never fear, there is a free version which is ad-supported, and just recently was improved to unlock all the paid features. Also, the developer, Realmac Software, very often participates in bundles like MacHeist, and I’m hoping that it will be included in the next bundle that comes out.

The two ways I use Socialite most are for RSS feeds and Twitter. It’s not the most feature-rich in either — basically it tries to access many different services using a somewhat unified interface, so it’s not particularly designed to use any of them in the most ideal way, but it still manages to support the most common features. It’s definitely handy not to have to check a separate Twitter client, and it does a decent job at presenting Facebook content in a less annoying way than the actual Facebook site. You can also individually select which types of content you want to display in the unread count on the dock icon. I like this because I want to be alerted of all new Twitter and RSS news as soon as they come in, but I don’t care so much about checking Digg or Facebook every time.

Speaking of timely alerts, one of the simplest but most important differences between Socialite and Gruml is that Socialite can refresh feeds every minute, while the most frequently Gruml will automatically update is every five minutes.

One con of Socialite is that it doesn’t have a built-in browser, but it will open links in Safari either in the background or foreground, depending on your preference, which is probably a better, more stable way of doing it anyway. Also, if you have one of the new Macbook Pros that can switch between on-board graphics and the Nvidia graphics card to save power, Socialite for some reason triggers the more power-hungry card, and Gruml does not. No idea what that’s about, and it’s not a dealbreaker for me, but if you’re obsessed with battery life, it would make a difference if you had it running all day.

The Winner, for Now

After spending the last few months bouncing back and forth, through many updates to both apps, I am currently using Socialite. It feels more stable and polished, and although it’s not as pretty, and lacks some of the advanced Google Reader support that Gruml has, the many features it does have work very reliably, and on top of that it also offers access to other services.

When I set out on this quest months ago, I intended to within a week be able to write a review of the RSS app I liked best, but I found it too hard to pick a clear winner, so I submit both for your consideration. There are reasons to love either one, so take your pick!

Postscript

If you’re looking for some feeds to subscribe to, these are some I recommend. Most browsers and RSS readers work happily together and you should just be able to click on the links, but I’ve included the URLs for them as well in case you need to copy and paste them.

HeadsetChatter Blog (well I read this so I can check on how my articles are looking in RSS, you should read it to keep up on all the latest posts!) http://headsetchatter.com/blog/feed/

TUAW – the Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/rss.xml

The iPhone Blog http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheiPhoneBlog

App Advice Awesome for finding out about iPhone apps that are put on sale or free for a limited time. http://feeds2.feedburner.com/AppAdvice

TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/TechCrunch

Gizmodo http://feeds.gawker.com/gizmodo/vip

Kotaku (video game news) http://feeds.gawker.com/kotaku/vip

Boy Genius Report http://www.boygeniusreport.com/feed/

Lifehacker http://feeds.gawker.com/lifehacker/vip

The Bowery Boys (NYC history) http://theboweryboys.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

Strange Maps http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/feed/


May 29, 2010

Apple Pro Mouse, Better Late Than Never

I call this: mac,tech — Posted by KP @ 3:39 am

This is an Apple Pro Mouse from 2002. It’s one of my favorite pieces of Apple hardware ever, in terms of design. It also happens to be a terrible mouse, even before you consider the fact that it only has one button and no scroll capability. That one button does have a wonderfully satisfying click, though.

Because I love it so much, despite its near-uselessness, I keep it as close as any spare mouse in my life, in a box under my desk, along with a Microsoft travel mouse (which is probably even older) which has two buttons and a scroll wheel, and is about as bad at tracking. These two very portable, very attractive mice are the ones kept at arm’s reach when a mouse is suddenly needed. My absolute favorite time to use it is when my PC is freaking out because one of my Razer gaming mice aren’t playing nice with the drivers. In my mind the conversation goes something like this.

PC: You have no mouse.
KP: Yes. I do.
PC: No you don’t.
KP: This is a $125 mouse. Why can’t you see it as a generic mouse without the driver?
PC: If your hardware is already connected, please install the driver provided by the manufacturer.
KP: That would be much easier with a mouse. Can’t I just use this one to select the file?
PC: This one what?
KP: This mouse that’s plugged in.
PC: You have no mouse. If you would like to install a mouse, click OK.
(rustling under desk)
(sound of USB connector sliding in)
*boo-doop*
Pro Mouse: Boom.
PC: Name?
Pro Mouse: Apple Pro Mouse connecting, please.
PC: (sigh) Um, OK. What do you do?
Pro Mouse: I have an X axis.
PC: Uh huh.
Pro Mouse: I have a Y axis.
PC: Uh huh.
Pro Mouse: I have a button.
PC: Is Button 1 a left-click, right-click, middle-click, or other?
Pro Mouse: I have a button.
PC: You have a button? That’s what you do, you have a button?
Pro Mouse: Yes.
PC: Are you lost?
Pro Mouse: Is this the PC that has a 7-button mouse connected and can’t see it?
PC: I don’t know anything about a 7-button mouse.
Pro Mouse: But you see me, yes?
PC: Yes. Your hardware is now configured and ready to use.
KP: Thank you.

Tonight I’m packing for the summer stock season, and having decided that any more gaming will be bad for my productivity, I’m packing my gaming supplies, including the mouse that drives not only my gaming PC, but my home entertainment Mac. So the Mac needs something to do the simple pointing and clicking involved in watching TV and ripping DVDs, so the Pro Mouse has been promoted for a few days.

This practice has been going on since, well, 2002, but I’ve never blogged about it before or properly honored the Pro Mouse, so here you go.


What I Learned Today: Apple Power Adapter Tricks

I call this: mac,tech — Posted by KP @ 1:24 am

My favorite part about my life at the moment is that pretty much every day, I learn something interesting. I’ve decided to share them in a new recurring feature. Interestingly, my first few attempts at this had to be aborted when, in doing additional research for my post, I learned that the exciting new information I had received was not actually correct!

The connector in the power brick of an Apple magsafe AC adaptor is the same as a standard appliance cord

As a stage manager, the situation in which you’d be most likely to encounter this piece of hardware would be plugged in to the back of a boom box you’re using in the rehearsal room, or one that keeps the crew entertained in the shop. It’s also pretty common as a component of most other computer and printer power cords (a lot of PCs have the power brick somewhere in the middle of the process, and then one of these cords that goes from the brick to the outlet). Apple is essentially doing the same thing, they’ve just disguised it as something attractive, but without ruining its compatibility with standard cables. Feel free to use this knowledge the next time somebody tries to get your goat by saying, “I don’t understand why Apple feels the need to make these proprietary accessories.”

I read about this in a Lifehacker tip, which I hope will get published. The tipster suggests that if you find yourself stuck somewhere (he was thinking of it as a way to save money on international power adapters), you go out and buy a cheap kettle or other appliance, and take the cord from that. But I’m thinking of it more in the situation of finding yourself in rehearsal and either not having your extension cord for the Mac and needing to stretch the cord farther, or you’ve lost or damaged the fold-up two-prong adapter that plugs into the power brick. In that case, there’s probably a device somewhere in the theatre or studio that you can borrow the cable from temporarily.

I’m usually pretty thorough in my preparations, and have the longer cord and the two-prong adapter with me all the time, but I pretty frequently end up needing to lend one or the other to a coworker. I can’t wait for the day I need to use this trick, either for me or someone else.


May 26, 2010

Review: Speck SeeThru Satin MacBook Pro Shell

I call this: mac,tech — Posted by KP @ 6:48 pm

I’ve admired these shells for years. I like color, I like customizing things, and I like protecting my valuable devices — as long as the protection is attractive, stays out of my way, and doesn’t add too much bulk. Our wardrobe supervisor on tour this year had almost the same shell, only in a different color. I had many opportunities to study it, as it was hard to find someplace to sit in the front lounge while dodging the six Macbooks and one (gasp) PC that lived on the bus. I would question him about it regularly over the course of the tour. It really didn’t get scratched under the case? How often do you look? How often do you take it off? How long have you had it? You’re really sure it’s not causing abrasions on the aluminum? Do you find you use it differently because you have the case on? Is it too heavy? After six months of this I was reasonably sure it wouldn’t hurt my laptop.

A life lesson, learned the hard way: There’s a button on the case covering the battery button (which illuminates a series of LEDs showing the battery charge). Part of the case is sort of cut out around the button so it’s loose and can be pushed in. As it happens, this color of case is so dark that you really can’t see the LEDs light up. For the longest time I struggled putting the case on and off, checking the alignment, testing the battery button naked, and trying to figure out why it didn’t work with the case on. Eventually I manipulated the plastic button so much that it broke off. I didn’t really care, by that point I was so disappointed that it didn’t work that I was OK with poking something in the resulting hole to get to the real button (I can just barely press it with my pinky, but I have tiny hands). Only then did I figure out that the button was probably working the whole time, and I just couldn’t see the lights. Disappointing on several levels.

I might as well mention that the other LED on the case, the sleep light, shines through just fine, and actually looks pretty cool in red. As anyone who has ever slept in the same room as a Mac knows, the sleep lights on all of them can pretty much be seen from space, and you’ve probably devised some method of covering them up so they don’t scorch through your eyelids while you sleep. So dulling the light with the case is not a bad side effect.

PROS:

  • Attractive design, rich color
  • Protects from scratches and dents
  • Adds very little thickness, lid closes smoothly
  • All cutouts fit around ports and other features well, and seem to have plenty of room for bulky peripherals.
  • If the sharp front edge of the MBP bothers you, the plastic provides some relief from directly resting your arms on the metal
  • Puts a layer of protection between your lap and the metal case, making it possible to use the computer on your lap without burning yourself.
  • Soft-touch surface creates better friction for holding the computer on your lap without it sliding off.
  • Sturdy rubber feet, similar to the ones that come on the new Macbooks.

CONS:

  • Can barely see battery lights through case.
  • Very tight to put on the screen half, to the point that I’m concerned about damaging the laptop with frequent attaching and detatching. I’ve actually cancelled my planned weekly case cleaning because of this. I’m also very sensitive to it because the whole reason I had to buy the new MBP was because the old one’s screen had been damaged. The last thing I intend to do with the new one is severely bend and press the screen once a week. I’d rather it get dirty and perhaps permanently scarred than encourage its early demise.
  • Adds about a pound-and-a-half to the 15″ model (bringing it to roughly 7 lbs)

The weight is significant. You wouldn’t think a thin layer of plastic would weigh so much, but it is the size of the entire computer itself. I had done my research about that beforehand, and I know what a pound-and-a-half is (perhaps you’re familiar with how anal I am about weight when packing for the road), and I know what a difference it is in laptop terms. I think the difference isn’t so great to outweigh (literally) the benefits of protecting the device. This is, after all, the most important thing I own, as well as the most expensive. It needs to last in excellent condition for three, or ideally four years. Making it heavier is a small price to pay for the ability to use it without constantly worrying about damaging it. Of course the case will not protect it from serious damage, but for everyday hazards (like the contents of the kitchen counter falling on the lid on a moving bus), it places an extra layer of protection between the computer and light bumps and bruises. In a situation where I know the MBP won’t be traveling much for a while, I might keep the case off, but definitely on the road or in a rehearsal situation utilizing many rooms and locations, it will be a huge help.

After much debate, mostly about the weight and price, I decided to go ahead and buy this because I bought a new computer bag (review to come eventually, I’m sure), and it has a zipper for a storage pouch that lives in basically the same spot as the top of the laptop. In other words the laptop slot doesn’t come all the way up over the top of the laptop, so the zipper would probably be rubbing against the bare laptop most of the time. Rather than hermetically sealing my neoprene sleeve every time the laptop goes in the bag, I decided that was the final straw to justify the Speck shell.

Magsafe? Magpainintheass.

I worry a little about the newfangled Magsafe connector style, shown here:

The natural way to position it is with the cord headed “upstage,” away from the user, and out of the way of the other ports. The only problem is that the little tab holding that corner of the shell on is right there with the connector laying over it. While it does make an electrical connection and seems to charge fine, it doesn’t look like it’s laying perfectly flat, and I just worry about my AC connection not being a perfect seal. If you don’t mind covering the Ethernet and FW800 ports, you can just turn the Magsafe connector the other way with the cord coming towards you, but that’s a pretty big compromise for something that should just work. It’s a pretty tricky part to try to mod yourself, as the piece that’s in the way is the part that clips that corner in, and if it were to break or be weakened, you’d probably have problems with the shell falling off. It might be easier to shave off a millimeter of the barrel of the Magsafe connector, but that seems like the wrong set of priorities, to damage an $80 electrical device that’s essential for the operation of the computer, for the sake of a $40 piece of plastic. In the future it would be nice if Speck could move the clippy part away from the corner and more toward the hinge, so that section right next to the AC port wouldn’t be so thick. Although it’s possible it would interfere with the operation of the hinge if moved any closer, I don’t know.

If you have the old-style charger, it’s no problem at all. I have an old-skool one at home, and use the new one for travel. I also have a second old-skool one for my old MBP, and should it become a real problem, I could swap them. So, buyer beware, but if you have the old one, you have nothing to worry about.

UPDATE: Before heading back out of town, I had to decide which AC adaptor to bring, and decided not to compromise. I brought the new adapter and filed down the case, after reading of a couple success stories. I used the edge of my Leatherman’s file, and a nail file for smoothing the edges. I decided to quit once it fit, rather than risk breaking or weakening the case by trying to make it look perfectly machined. So it’s not beautiful, but the plastic is fairly soft, and if you wanted to make it look prettier, it should be very possible.

A Few More Photos

Detail shot of the front-right corner:

Outer shell. Sorry this is so blurry. I spent time on three separate days (with a real camera, even!) trying to get a shot that wasn’t blurry but didn’t wash out the true appearance with the flash.

The Details

Once again, the shell is made by Speck, who are purveyors of, well, stuff like this. They also make some iPhone and coming-soon iPad cases. In addition to the satin shells, they make a line of more fully-transparent shells that also come in other colors (including clear), which is the SeeThru line, as opposed to the SeeThru Satin. They make them to fit all shapes and sizes of Macbooks, so look carefully to make sure you’ve got the right one for your model. They are carried in Apple Stores, but I always find the selection to be rather limited as far as which sizes and colors are in stock. I had to order mine online, which I got from Small Dog Electronics, my favorite 3rd-party Apple retailer.

The shells retail from Speck for $49.95, but Small Dog sells them for $39.99, so shop around. You can also get them on Amazon, where the prices are generally a little higher, but you might find a good deal on a specific color.


May 5, 2010

What I’m Using Virtualization for Today

I call this: computers,mac,pc,tech — Posted by KP @ 11:34 am

In my opinion the #1 reason to use virtualization software to run a different operating system on your computer in the middle of your primary one is:
because you can.

Is there any better reason to do anything with technology?

But today I discovered a very useful purpose for it, which for some reason I’ve never employed before. I have an old HP Scanjet scanner (the 3570c, if you care). HP stopped supporting it with OS X drivers many years ago (the last drivers were compatible with Tiger), not that their Mac drivers were ever particularly good. In fact I’m kind of glad they don’t have drivers because my desire to install HP drivers on a perfectly good machine is somewhere around my desire to install anti-virus software.

The scanner is such a pain in the ass to use that I don’t even keep it plugged in most of the time. It sits on a bookcase shelf across my living room. When I have needed to use it (basically when my need to scan something reaches such proportions that I have absolutely no choice), I plug it into my PC, which runs XP and works just fine with the default drivers and Windows imaging software.

So today when I needed to scan some old pictures for the site, I plugged it into my new MacBook Pro, just to see if anything had changed, and of course it was hopeless. The Mac acted like I had just plugged a rock into it (and if you’d like to try and don’t have an HP scanner, ThinkGeek sells USB pet rocks which apparently behave similarly). The scanner also acted the part of a rock. But then I had an idea.

Instead of booting up my PC, stretching the USB cable across my workspace, and going through the hassle of moving the resulting files between systems, why couldn’t I just start Windows in Parallels, direct the scanner to connect to it, scan the photos in XP, and drag the file from the Windows desktop onto the Mac desktop? The answer is I can, and it’s that easy. As far as I’m concerned it’s just as easy as having to open a specific app for the scanner, with the added bonus of not having some intrusive drivers installed on my main system. I have no idea why I’ve never thought of this before.

So I will leave you with two bits of knowledge: if you have old hardware you need to use occasionally that’s incompatible with your Mac, you may be able to use it without much inconvenience by using it through a virtualized Windows installation.

And two, here’s what my bedroom looked like in 1990 when all my walls were covered in New Kids on the Block posters.


My Secret iPad Weekend Revealed!

I call this: computers,mac,tech — Posted by KP @ 3:33 am

The new iPhone prototype isn’t the only secret in town. For the last several weeks, I have been part of a vast interstate conspiracy. My co-conspirator, who I will refer to by her code name, “Mom,” had enlisted my help to pull off the greatest Apple-related surprise of all time: to buy my Dad an iPad.

That may seem really simple, but I assure you, it wasn’t.

First of all, you must understand why this mission was so important. Dad had been in the hospital a few weeks back, and had to have a couple operations, and he’s been generally immobile and uncomfortable for weeks. When he first had his surgery, Mom felt bad and decided that although they otherwise wouldn’t really have the budget for an iPad, life is too short not to have one, and he really needed something to cheer him up and keep him occupied during his recovery. And honestly, my parents are the perfect audience for the iPad (I am not), and I’d been telling them this for… well, as long as we’ve known about the iPad.

First Complications

Mom called me up while he was still in the hospital because she wanted to get one right away, and wanted my advice about which one, and would need my help setting it up over the phone. I hopped over to the Apple site to check the specs and everything, and was hit with the first major roadblock that I hadn’t even thought about: it requires USB2. Both my parents’ Macs are from early 2002, just a few months before Apple began shipping computers with USB2.

Dad has an iMac that he got from his old job, which wasn’t even that great of a machine when it was new. It doesn’t even have a DVD drive, which is why it’s still running Panther. Panther. I don’t think it’s really possible to anticipate the frustration that causes when trying to work with it. Like he wants to know why he can’t open some websites. I said, “probably you’re running a really old browser, and it just needs to be updated.” Well guess what, you can’t get an updated version of Safari on it, and you can’t use Firefox 3 either. I had been planning on my next visit to try and get DVD sharing working to install Tiger, which might barely run.

But in light of this USB problem, it was obvious that something more drastic needed to be done about this whole ancient-computer problem. Mom was practically ready to go out and buy him an iPad and a Macbook. But by this time, Apple had just released the i7 Macbook Pro, and my current machine had been showing enough signs of imminent death that I knew I had to buy one the day I got home from tour. So I said, “Look, I’ll have a new computer by the time I get home, my Powerbook isn’t much newer than the ones you have, but it’s a lot more advanced, and it will be a lot better than what he’s using now, and I won’t need it.” The problem would have to wait a couple weeks until the tour was over, but we had an economical solution.

Secondary Complications

While my computer was dying for the last three weeks of the tour, I called a lot of Apple Stores. Every city we were in, I knew how close the nearest Apple Store was, and if they had 15″ 2.66GHz Hi-res anti-glare Macbook Pros in stock, just in case I needed one. While doing this, I also inquired if they had iPads, since if I ended up buying the MBP I would just buy the iPad at the same time. This revealed the second complication: you couldn’t find an iPad anywhere. Now Mom and I were getting worried that we wouldn’t be able to get one before my totally-not-suspicious visit on my birthday. I forgot to mention, we had planned that to be the day of the surprise.

When I got home, a week before the planned surprise, I began working the four Apple Stores in New York (I had been calling the flagship store on Fifth Ave. the whole time, pretty much any time I called another store, to see what my odds were like at home). I already had my Macbook Pro because the old one died completely in Philly. An employee at Fifth Ave advised me that they get surprise shipments all the time, but usually sell out in a couple hours, so my best bet was to just keep calling and if I hit a time when they were in stock, race to the store and get one.

I took this past Friday, April 30th, off from my search, because it was the day of the release of the 3G iPad, which I did not want, and I knew all Apple Stores would be a madhouse (and actually shut down for a couple hours in the middle of the day to prepare for the event).

But my hunch was that my last opportunity, Saturday, would be my best bet, as the availability of the 3G iPad would dilute the demand for the wifi one, and that stores probably received a big shipment of both for the launch of the 3G.

So when I got up on Saturday I called the closest store — the new one at Lincoln Square. They did indeed have wifi iPads, but only 16GB. I wanted 32. But it was an option. I would have to confer with Mom. But first I called Fifth Ave. The guy I spoke to said, “We have limited quantities of the 64GB.” Soho and 14th Street were plain sold out. So I called Mom (after spending a good five minutes on the phone talking to Dad while Mom finished watering the plants or something, trying not to give away my urgency in talking to her.) When we got on the phone in privacy, we conferred about our options, and decided that the 16GB would probably be too small at some point, so it was better to go for the 64, if any were still left, so that we could go ahead with the surprise.

So I raced down to the Fifth Ave store, which was absolutely insane on a Saturday afternoon. There were so many different iPad lines, and I was sent to the wrong place at least four times before I found the right line. Unlike the stores I visited on tour, or even the other ones in New York to a certain extent, which are selling their wares to the local neighborhood, the Fifth Ave store is really where the whole world comes to buy an iPad. Now I’m not just competing against the entire population of New York, but apparently also France, Japan, Latin America, and who-knows-where-else.

After a stressful time on a long line, I finally made it to the front, and was sent off to a corner register near the Genius Bar, all alone, where it was suddenly quiet and serene.

“Which one would you like?”

She reaches to the shelf behind her and selects a simple white box and places it on the table. Scans it with the fancy new iPhone checkout machine.

“Credit card?”

“ID?”

“Sign here with your finger.”

“Is an email receipt OK?”

“Here you go.”

And I put the bag into the messenger bag I had selected specifically for its iPad-sized carrying properties, and disappeared into the Central Park afternoon with my precious cargo.

Success!

When I got upstairs, I took out my phone (where my receipt had just come in — I checked it showed the correct model of iPad) and shot off a quick email to Mom simply saying “Mission successful! On my way home.” We had agreed weeks earlier not to say too much in emails just in case Dad should come by her computer. Now Mom checks her email usually a couple times a day. Clearly she had been checking it obsessively since I called her, because five minutes later she wrote back — in all caps — about what a wonderful daughter I was.

As I made my way home, I felt like I was a secret courier carrying sensitive spy materials over some border. Finally I got home, and very, very carefully did the unboxing. I really wanted to preserve as much of the unboxing experience as possible for Dad, so I cut the shrink-wrap so that only the bottom came off. I used my cable so that all of his accessories could stay wrapped up, and I found to my delight that the iPad touchscreen could be used through the plastic cover that wraps around the whole device itself. I carefully lifted the flap at the bottom so it could be plugged in.

The next 10 hours were spent preparing it in every detail possible. Part of the surprise, maybe the hardest part, was that I wanted to hand him this magical and revolutionary slab of awesomeness, and it would already be filled with all his music, his favorite movies, some TV shows, the most necessary apps, and some books he might like (we have a very similar taste in books, which is helpful).

Some CIA Stuff

The original plan would have required at least several hours at my parents’ house to transfer all his files from his old computer, and then sync everything to the iPad, while hiding the fact that anything was going on.

But when I got home with the iPad and called Mom, we got on iChat, and she helped me to set some stuff up. Dad knew I had been planning to install Tiger and do some major work on his computer on my next visit, so on that pretext, Mom turned on his computer, and while screen sharing through iChat (which is a really awesome, Apple-like, just-works implementation of VNC) I then installed a VNC server on his computer and — get this — using VNC to control my Mom’s computer, used VNC to control my Dad’s. So it was like a screen within a screen within a screen, which was kind of confusing at times. You have to remember, he’s on Panther, so I can’t just do iChat screen sharing with him.

Anyway, much to my relief, his iTunes library was only a little over 2GB (which surprises me). Through a mix of several methods, over the course of many hours, I uploaded and downloaded his entire music library onto the Powerbook. I used three methods simultaneously: iChat file transfer, uploading to my iDisk, and uploading to my website FTP. In this way I hoped to overcome the bandwidth limitations of each. It seemed to work OK, I guess.

I also took his contact file from Entourage and imported it into Address Book on the new computer. I set him up with a GMail account, because they have Optimum Online as their ISP and the email it comes with is from the dark ages, only supports POP, and only supports SMTP from your own house connection. Dear God, if you must use them as your ISP, don’t ever try to use the email, just get a free account from Google or Yahoo or something.

While all this was going on, I bought him some movies and apps with my iTunes account (thankfully Apple has finally instituted the ability to give a specific app as a gift), and then activated them on his new computer.

The most important part, I told Mom, was keeping him away from his email while all this was happening. No doubt the process of registering the iPad, being gifted apps, and downloading free apps, would trigger a series of emails from Apple, like the one that came through this morning entitled “Your New iPad.” To ward against this, I added a rule to Entourage on his current computer that if any mail came in with the sender, subject or message body containing “Apple,” “iTunes” or “iPad” it would be immediately marked as read and moved to the spam folder.

When all was said and done, both the computer and iPad were set up and ready to go. Mom said I should work for the CIA. But as I told her, I don’t think the CIA would put me to work doing something as innocuous as surprising somebody with an iPad. I should also mention that this kind of work is much easier when you know all of your quarry’s passwords — or at least have access to his computer and the administrator password to check his keychain.

OK, OK, the iPad!!

So the bonus to this exciting experience of course was getting to spend about 10 hours playing with the iPad. Some thoughts:

PROS:

  • Very pretty. It feels very solid and well-built. Typical Apple.
  • One of the movies we got for him was Avatar. We just watched a minute of it. The HD video is amazing.
  • The UI for the default apps is great. I especially wish I could have a calendar that’s so easy to read on my iPhone. Just having a week view would be wonderful. I set up accounts for my parents on my Google Apps domain so they can subscribe to my work calendars and see where in the country I am, when I have shows, etc. Seeing my schedule on the iPad was really cool. It’s the one thing I’m really jealous of.
  • The iBooks app is really nice. I like that they have brightness controls easily accessible. On the night the iPad spent with me, I will confess I read a book sample chapter in bed, just to see what it was like. It’s by far the best ebook-in-bed experience I’ve had.

CONS:

  • It is kinda heavy. At times my wrists were getting tired from holding it a certain way. But I think some of that may be because it was still in plastic and I was holding it very delicately so as not to smudge or wrinkle the plastic. When reading in bed I rested the iPad on my stomach. Holding it up for a while probably would have been annoying.
  • Doesn’t come with some of the default apps from the iPhone (weather, stocks, calculator, etc.). I don’t consider this a con so much, as a lot of people end up replacing those apps with something better anyway, and there are several free options. But the big one is no Clock app. This is more important because until third-party apps can multitask, there’s no way to set an alarm that will stay active if you leave the app. I know the iPad is not an iPhone, but this seems like a feature you’d still want no matter what. If Mom had an iPad in the kitchen she’d want to set a timer for the oven or whatever, and then hop over to the iPod app or something while waiting for it to go off. That seems like a big oversight to me. Hopefully in a few months OS4 will come out for the iPad and it will be a non-issue.

    • Summary

    Well Dad was completely surprised, and thrilled with his gift. When handed the package, he thought we had gotten him some sort of computer accessory, but he’s savvy enough to know that when he opened the wrapping and saw “64GB” on the back of the box, there were a very limited number of things that size that contain that kind of storage.

    The whole event was basically a big Apple commercial. He has learned from years of working with Macs and iPods that you don’t need an instruction manual or technical knowledge to work something, and you won’t break it by trying things out. He just started poking around exploring how to make things work, and discovered things I hadn’t found yet either. The biggest discovery was that on the iBooks app, the page-turning animation actually changes based on how you “grip” the page with your finger (i.e. if you turn from the top it shows the top corner curling over, and so forth, basically mimicking perfectly whatever motion and speed you make with your finger).

    From my perspective, I still feel that the only time I would really use an iPad would be in bed. It would be great for reading, watching videos, and light web surfing without having to drag my entire laptop into bed, or squinting at the tiny screen on my phone.

    My fears about having yet another device to keep in sync were pretty much eliminated. Most of the syncing I would care about is over-the-air, and I wouldn’t mind plugging it in to sync new apps and media with my Mac any more than I do with my phone. If money was no object, I’d probably get one (with 3G), but I can think of very few occasions where I would take it with me out of the house, in place of my MacBook Pro.

    All that being said, when the day was over and it was time to go home, I was rather sad to leave it behind, even though I have no idea what I’d really do with it. And that, my friends, is what they call the Reality Distortion Field.


April 23, 2010

The Computer Rental

I call this: computers,mac,On the Road Again,theatre — Posted by KP @ 5:33 pm

As you know, my Macbook Pro’s screen finally died this week. It died after I got home from the show on Wednesday. Thursday morning I brought it to the theatre and plugged it into the spare light board monitor in my office. There it served sort of like a desktop computer, while I had to write down the running times with a pencil, of all things. Then I took notes on my iPhone. Then at intermission and after the show I went to the office and actually entered everything into the database.

Between shows I went to the Apple Store and bought a new Macbook Pro. I got it home about an hour-and-a-half before our van call for the evening show, so I got as far as cloning my old drive (almost) before I had to leave. As the transfer was still going on, I decided I really could survive without a computer for one performance.

Nick had a good idea, which was for me to email him the database file so I could have his computer on the calling desk, and it would be exactly the same as usual — except his 13″ Macbook would fit on the desk better.

When we arrived I went out on a Starbucks run. I was feeling good about my purchase, and still have a ton of money on my Starbucks card (because we’ve rarely been near a Starbucks on the road), so when Nick tried to give me money to pick him up something to drink, I said I’d take care of it. We then agreed that the venti iced tea lemonade would be payment for the rental of his computer.

When I got back to the office with our drinks, Bobby was sitting at my desk, and casually gestured to a piece of paper and said, “Nick left you an invoice.” I really wasn’t gone more than 10 or 12 minutes, and Nick came up with a brilliant plan. I have encased it in a sheet protector and hung it in our road box.

Nick’s Macbook on the calling desk (which is very crowded and normally requires my script pages to lie on top of the wrist rest, so the 13″ size was a nice change!)


April 22, 2010

Macbook Pro i7 Review

I call this: computers,mac,tech — Posted by KP @ 11:53 pm

Today between shows I purchased the new 2010 unibody Macbook Pro with Intel’s new i7 processor. My faithful 2007 Macbook Pro finally gave up the ghost from the screen problem it’s been having for the last six months or so.

First Impressions

It’s so pretty. Throughout all of this you have to remember that while I have a lot of friends with unibody Macbooks, most of my experience is with the older style body, so there are things here that are new or unusual to me that will not be shocking if you own a more recent model.

I love the rounded curves. It feels so much thinner. The unboxing experience was very simple, but even expecting Apple’s typical style, I had to stop and admire it, despite the fact that I was in a huge rush to get it up and running before the evening show. I failed miserably at that, by the way. I didn’t even get as far as finishing the clone of my old drive.

I just can’t get into the black keyboard. I’m still firmly in the phase of adjusting to a new tactile experience, and I think like most people I will soon prefer typing on it, but black plastic in the midst of an otherwise characteristic Apple design of sleek aluminum is weird. It’s like something you’d find on a PC, slapped in the middle of the most Apple-like hardware you could imagine. I mean it’s a single slab of aluminum, with a trackpad. It doesn’t even have a mouse button. The speaker holes are so tiny you can barely see them. Even the power button is trying to hide in the corner hoping no one will notice it. And in the midst of all this cutting-edge design, the keyboard is black plastic. I’m going to assume Jonathan Ive is smarter than me, but I don’t get it. I can only imagine he wanted something else and it was impractical, and for some reason white plastic looked worse — maybe because it would be harder to make it light up, or look good when lit up. I also recognize that the glossy screen (which is the way Apple obviously intended this model to be seen) has a black border, which would make the black keys look a little bit less like they wandered in off a Vaio.

Screen

I got the 15″ high-end model (2.66GHz) with the hi-res anti-glare screen. The first thing you should know: this is not a build-to-order option — you don’t need to order it online. Which is important because I’m reading that people ordering them online are being told there are shipping delays on the anti-glare screen. I called Apple Stores in the last three cities we’ve been in, while my MBP was gasping its last, and every single one of them had this model in stock. In many cases they only had the 2.66GHz one, not the lower-end 15″. But if you want the one I have, you can just walk into a store and get it.

I’m not ashamed to say I’m one of those snobs who won’t use a glossy screen, because it’s so important for my “design work.” And it’s just annoying. Apple discontinued the matte screen in most models for a while, and I’m not sure how many iterations of the feature they’ve gone through since then, but to dispel any rumors, it is indeed a matte screen, despite the fact that they’ve changed the nomenclature to “anti-glare.” I don’t want to poke it too hard, but it looks to me to be the same type of screen the older matte models have. It’s not a glossy screen with a coating or anything horrible like that. As far as my eyes can tell, it’s the same kind of screen that used to be default on all their laptops.

One fact Apple doesn’t much advertise is that the matte screen still has the silver border around it like the older Macbook Pros and Powerbooks, not the black border that many people think looks very slick on the glossy screens. This has to do with the fact that the sheet of glass on the glossy screen can hold everything in in one unbroken expanse of screen, but the matte screen needs some support to hold it in. I’m not bothered by it in terms of design, but I must say that given how sexy the body design of the unibody is, I was disappointed to find that the silver bezel is actually wider than on my old one. The screen is the same size, but in some ways it looks smaller or more low-tech because it doesn’t have a fancy thin edge around it. The glossy screen’s edge isn’t that thin either, but black is slimming, and the glass extends all the way across the surface, so people don’t tend to notice. My new screen also has a black piece of rubber all around the outer edge, which probably does awesome things in regards to making it close nicely, but the black against the silver also accentuates how fat the border is.

Size

I’m sure the above situation was necessary not because of how the screen is made, but because of the width of the base, which must need to be that wide to hold all the internal components in such a thin package. Obviously the lid needs to be as big as the base, but a 15.4″ screen is a 15.4″ screen, and if the lid gets bigger, there will be more blank space around the edges.

I was surprised, when I tried to pack up my old MBP for travel in the new one’s box: the box has a form-fitting cutout for the computer, and I was sure it wouldn’t fit. Actually the old one fits inside with room to spare. It’s much taller, but the box doesn’t care about that. In two dimensions, at least, the unibody is bigger. My first reaction was how hard it can be to cram it onto a calling desk already, now I’ve got additional millimeters to worry about. It also explained for me why I often see the models in the Apple Store and think I’m looking at the 17″ (because it’s bigger than mine), but it’s really the 15″. This is why I decided the 17″ was a bad idea, despite considering it last year.

Little Details I Am Just Getting

These are old features, but they are new for me and make me happy:

  • Multi-touch trackpad! Basically the one feature I wished my old MBP had. The best part of this is the four-finger up-or-down swipe, which does two different kinds of Exposé. Now I can stop using my F-keys as F-keys and let them perform the special tasks they’re intended for like playing music and adjusting brightness, since I don’t have to devote any of them to Exposé. Other features I will use a lot include forward and back browsing, and zoom in and out.
  • iPhone headphones control music playback. This is just a nice detail. I actually forgot my 3GS headphones (with the volume buttons) on this leg of the tour, so I have been using my backup pair (with just the play/pause button) for the last month or however-the-hell-long we’ve been out here. So I haven’t been able to test the volume control, but I’m very excited to.

The old Switcheroo

Just getting to the point of playing with it was a big ordeal because of the way I wanted to set it up. I bought a new hard drive for my old MBP right before going on tour, about six months ago. It’s 320GB, 7200rpm. I felt that the slow HD speed was the bottleneck on the computer’s performance, so I was very happy to upgrade it. I’m still totally satisfied with it, both speed and capacity-wise, so I wanted to install it in the new machine, and take the stock 500GB 5400rpm drive and put it in the old machine. Because of the differences in hardware and related system files, you can’t just swap them and turn the things on, so it involved a lot of booting in firewire mode to shift all the bits and bytes around (see the comments for another perspective).

When I opened up the back to change the hard drive, I was struck by how orderly and tightly packed everything is. We heard all about this in some Steve Jobs keynote years ago, but seeing it in person (after just opening my old MBP, which is not quite as tidy and densely packed inside) really emphasizes how much care Apple put into creating as small a package as possible with as many features as possible.

In case you’ve arrived here interested in the hard drive swap, here’s the order of operations.

Swapping the hard drive in your new Mac for your old one

  • Do an additional external backup of your old drive (Time Machine or whatever)
  • Put the new computer in target disk mode by holding “T” while it boots
  • Connect the two computers by firewire
  • Using Disk Utility, format the new disk for Mac OS Journaled
  • Using a utility like SuperDuper (free), make a bootable clone of your old drive onto the new drive
  • Shut down both computers, and physically swap the drives (find instructions online for how to do that with the model you have — on older ones this will void the warranty)
  • Boot the old computer (containing the new drive, which is now a clone of the old one). It should boot perfectly, as if nothing has happened.
  • Turn on the new computer in target disk mode, and connect the computers using firewire.
  • Using Disk Utility from the old computer, format the old drive (which is in the new computer) as Mac OS Journaled.
  • Eject the firewire connection from the old computer, and disconnect the cables. Shut down the new computer.
  • Insert your Mac OS install DVD into the new computer (if it’s shut down it won’t go all the way in, but it will be sucked in upon booting).
  • Power on the new computer, holding down the “C” button to boot from the CD.
  • Follow the regular Mac OS install proceedures.

Speed?

Rule #1: I hate benchmarks. They bore me. My assessment of hardware generally falls into three results:
1. OMG holy shit that’s fast!
2. Fast enough
3. Slow and it pisses me off!

I have been really busy this week, and haven’t actually done anything more than what I need my computer for to do my job and some casual web browsing. I haven’t touched my Windows partition yet. I’m kind of scared, because it’s the one from my old MBP.

When I have opinions about more demanding processes I will update — certainly when I get around to gaming I will have opinions — but if you want benchmarks, there are many sites that specialize in that better than I ever could with my limited number of models to test — so that, combined with the fact that I don’t even care enough to read their analysis in depth, much less write my own, is why you will not find it here.

Update:
I’ve now had the machine for almost three months, and my assessment is that it’s good but not incredibly noticeable during normal use. Maybe the bottleneck is still the hard drive, and that’s why it feels exactly the same as before. My hope when I bought it was that maybe a year or so later, an SSD drive of respectable size would be available for a reasonable price. And I’m sure sometime around then, 8GB of ram would be really cheap. I haven’t quite mentally grasped the situation of 8GB being a “normal” amount of RAM yet, but when it’s cheap enough, I’ll buy it just because, and maybe I’ll see why. When I bought my last MBP I bought 4GB of RAM (which was relatively expensive at the time) because I was using the machine to run full-motion-video-with-audio projections for Singin’ in the Rain, and it made an enormous difference overnight — just before we opened we increased the resolution of all the videos, and they looked much better, and played much more smoothly. So I’m sure with the quad core and everything else, this thing has more power under the hood that I would find if I was doing more video and other demanding activities.

Gaming on this machine definitely feels smoother. Compared to my last MBP, its performance reminds me more of my home PC. That’s not to say it’s as good as a full PC, but it’s more similar. My PC also was last upgraded in 2008, so it’s not cutting-edge.

I’ve also been wondering more about buying Windows 7. Of all the things to drop a couple hundred bucks on, Windows doesn’t sound like the best investment, but I’m starting to feel like it might be approaching the point where the advantages of an OS that can support more than 3GB of RAM, and other advanced features of the hardware, is more helpful than the possibility of incompatibility with games and gaming hardware. I still think XP is solid, for what I need it for at least, but I’m starting to feel how old it is, especially because a lot of the newer games require at least Vista. I think trying Windows 7 on this machine might be a good way to start out with it, before screwing up my gaming rig.

Battery Life

In addition to my lack of patience with benchmarks, I also don’t feel the need to sit around with a stopwatch calculating battery life, especially when there are many kinds of activities that can have an impact on how quickly the battery is drained. What I will say is that after a full day of using the computer off the battery during two shows, the little picture of the battery in my menu bar was showing it getting very close to running out (maybe a quarter of the bar full). When you click on said icon, it estimates the actual time remaining. What, percentage-wise, was “almost run out” was estimated at over two more hours of run time! Now bear in mind that I haven’t been using the machine that long, and the system may or may not be smart enough to have properly calibrated the battery without a full charge cycle. But it’s funny that with a 9-hour battery life (basically double that of my last computer), what used to mean “time to plug it in” now means something entirely different.

Update:
The battery got amazing life on the first day at work, as I said. After that it went through some period where it was more like 5 hours for a few charge cycles, which had me worried. But that first day the wifi was off because the theatre’s wifi sucked, and there were few apps running in the background, so who knows how many factors may have been different. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect to get 9 hours during normal use. With your wifi and bluetooth off, brightness down, and not running any apps that engage the Nvidia video card (some of which are completely nonsensical — my RSS reader triggers it!), then it’s a possibility. With more heavy usage, I think 5 hours is probably about right. I very often get through a whole work day without plugging it in, because I’m a little careful with pacing my usage throughout the day. For a performance, you can run it the whole time, no problem.

External Display Disappointment

One thing that has been a complaint about recent Macbook Pros is that Apple did away with the full-size DVI video-out port, and has switched to Mini Displayport (MDP). What this means (theoretically) is that you now need a new adapter (which inexplicably doesn’t come with the computer, where before you always got one or two most common ones for free). But if you’re thinking “OK fine, I’ll get the MDP to DVI adapter, and then use my old DVI adapters, and I can connect to anything,” you’re in for some disappointment.

While not indicated on the packaging anywhere (although the baggie is clear and you could just look at the connector), the MDP-DVI adapter does not support DVI-I. In practical terms, what that means is that the four little pins that surround the big horizontal pin are not supported. The female end of the connector only has a slot for the horizontal pin, so if you have a DVI-I connector you’d like to plug in, you can’t, because there aren’t any holes for those four pins. In more technical terms, DVI-I supports analog as well as digital connections (so in order to connect to VGA or RCA equipment, you need that analog signal). So although the packaging just says “DVI” all over it, it is very specifically DVI-D.

So OK, now you’re thinking, “Alright, so Apple gets me to buy a bunch more $30 adapters so I can connect to all this different stuff.” Well, no. Apparently not. See, as far as I can tell, some of those adapters don’t exist. First of all, there is no adapter that supports DVI-I, so there’s no hope of chaining it to your old adapters (which would probably be bad for video quality at some point, but if you’re stuck between “works” and “doesn’t work” it wouldn’t be a bad fix). Also, I see no MDP-RCA adapter listed on the Apple site. There is an MDP-VGA, which I have recently purchased, which works fine for using my Samsung TV as a second monitor. I think Apple then expects you to get an adapter somewhere else that goes from VGA to RCA or S-video.

All I can say about these cables is be very careful. Apple has been bouncing around with various types of mini connectors on their laptops and desktops in recent years, so there’s a lot of Mini Displayport, Mini DVI, Mini VGA, etc.

Most of all, and I’m not sure if this is a defective product or by design, the MDP-DVI adapter I first bought does not work with my Apple Cinema Display. This is an old monitor from 2002, with an ADC connector on it, which is plugged into a KVM switch which can switch between two DVI inputs (from my PC and Mac) so I can share the screen and keyboard/mouse with two machines. It’s an unconventional setup, but the point is it receives its signal from DVI-D, it works with the other three computers in the house, and it should work. I get nothing. No indication from computer or monitor that anything is happening or plugged in. Now I have read on the reviews page for this item on the Apple site, that a number of people have purchased defective connectors of this type, and upon buying one (or sometimes more!) replacements, it suddenly worked fine. But I don’t have another DVI monitor to test with at the moment, so I have no way of knowing if it’s just a bad connector. But I intend to find out.


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