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April 29, 2009

Dear Apple

I call this: mac — Posted by KP @ 1:05 pm

Thank you for your recent emails suggesting that I get my mother an iPod Touch for Mother’s Day.  Were it not for your almost daily reminders, I would not actually have been aware that Mother’s Day was approaching, or that I needed to be planning gifts for both my parents (as I’ll be out of town by Father’s Day).  I’ve been quite busy on the road and thinking of days in terms of load ins and load outs, and completely oblivious to weekends, birthdays or national holidays.  Actually I’m turning 30 in a few days, and the most I can tell you about that date is that we have performances of The Spy at 2 and 8, with a seminar prior to the matinee.  So you can see how I greatly appreciate your reminders that I need to get a gift for my mom.

However, while my mother is a Mac user and might have an iPhone except that AT&T sucks at her house, I don’t believe that the iPod Touch is the ideal gift for her.  She’s not much of a music lover — I think she still has yet to spend all of an iTunes gift certificate I got for her several years ago — and I don’t imagine she’d enjoy watching videos or TV shows on such a small screen.  Personally, I don’t see the point of an iPod Touch for anyone who doesn’t intend to use it first as an iPod.  I would like someday to be able to get her an inexpensive Macbook, as she would truly use that, but this would be exceedingly more difficult if I now spent $300 on a gift she won’t really use.  And P.S. Mr. or Ms. Apple Marketing Person, I have a feeling you have a larger and more regular income than I do and can afford to drop $300 on a Mother’s Day gift — and then presumably match that gift a month later when Father’s Day rolls around.  Well good for you.  

In brief, I appreciate that you’re looking out for my mother, and for my own preparedness, but the next time you feel the need to send me 5 or more emails suggesting I buy a specific gift for someone, please pick something more appropriate.  Thanks!
Love, KP


April 3, 2009

On Apple Repair

I call this: computers,mac — Posted by KP @ 3:29 pm

I am typing this from my Macbook Pro. If you’ve been following my continuing adventures, you will know that last Friday, a week ago, a day that will live in infamy, I opened my computer at the theatre and found that the graphics had crapped out. This was in Phoenix. Since we were leaving Phoenix Sunday, I decided to wait until we arrived in Tucson on Monday (which also has an Apple Store) before taking my poor electronic friend to the Genius Bar to see just how screwed I was.

Monday morning at 11AM, I went in, and was saddened to be told the logic board needed to be replaced, and inconveniently, this graphics failure doesn’t happen to be the same Nvidia graphics failure that would have offered me a free out-of-warranty repair, it’s just one that looks exactly like it. Now I’ve heard horror stories of logic board replacements that cost more than a new computer. I was really surprised to be quoted about $350 for said repair. Considering I don’t even like the current version of the MBP (mostly due to the glossy screen) I was far happier to pay a relatively small amount to get my current computer back rather than have to buy a newer one. So I counted myself lucky, and bid farewell to my friend for a while. Because we’re only in Tucson for a week, and the repair was estimated at 4-6 days turnaround, I felt it unwise to have it sent back to Tucson, so reluctantly I gave the Acting Company’s office as the return address. I expected it to arrive today (Friday) or maybe Monday, and then I would pick it up first thing Tuesday morning when I got home on vacation.

Then yesterday morning I awoke around 9AM, and grabbed my now-incredibly-important iPhone off the nightstand to check my email. I had an email from our office manager in New York, saying my computer had arrived, and did I want it shipped out to me, or would I pick it up? Well I had every intention of keeping it simple and picking it up when I got to New York, but I never imagined it would be there Thursday morning. I counted, “Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday…” and made a quick calculation that perhaps the cost of overnighting an object of such value, while excessive if it were anything else in the box, might be worth the benefits of having my computer for four and a half days when I otherwise wouldn’t have it. So I asked for it to be sent to our hotel, and it arrived during our morning matinee. So far everything appears to be fine, although it’s hard to tell because the internet here at the Hotel Arizona is an embarrassment to the entire hospitality industry.

Anyway, I have never had a computer so utterly crap out on me in my life (well once, in 1993, and it was a Packard Bell, and it sucked). It has always been my absolute nightmare to have such a catastrophic failure while out on the road. And I am so impressed at how smoothly the process went to get it fixed, at every step of the way. Like most things Apple, it just works. Make an online appointment at the Genius Bar, show up, they tested it on site, took some basic information, and sent it off for me. I see now from my receipt that came back with the machine, the repair center in Texas received it the following day, and repaired it that same day. Two days later it was in New York first thing in the morning. For a computer out of warranty to need the replacement of its most essential part, and to be processed so quickly, and have it only cost about $350 including tax, is pretty amazing. I hope never to have to go through it again, and I know there are horror stories out there, but I feel really good about how it all went, and God forbid I should ever have something like this happen again in my computing life, I will at least feel like Apple will make the process go as easily as such a huge inconvenience can be.

So now I’m back, and can get about the business of catching up on my tour blog, and my big review of my new computer bag.

Oh, and P.S. — bravo to the iPhone. I can’t believe a person as geeky as myself could survive for a week without a computer and not go completely insane. This was only made possible by the fact that the iPhone provides so much of the essential connectivity that a person such as myself relies on. It can’t do everything, of course. There were things that I had to borrow Nick’s computer for, such as doing the show report, blogging, and other things like paying my credit card bill, that I just felt better about doing on a full computer. But for email, calendar, Facebook, keeping my Flickr photos updated with my traveling adventures, reading emails and documents, podcasts, my phone was sometimes a little more cumbersome, but it allowed me to continue doing most of the things I needed to do. The quality of Safari on the iPhone is also pretty amazing. Although it doesn’t support all the more advanced functions of certain web pages, and can be unwieldy to use with pages of unconventional layouts, I was surprised at how many pages I was able to use that I figured would just not work. It wasn’t always pretty, but when I had no other option, I was glad just to be able to keep running my life at all.


March 31, 2009

The Ongoing Adventures of a Geek Without a Computer

I call this: computers,mac,On the Road Again — Posted by KP @ 10:24 am

Day 5 without computer. The 4″ iPhone screen is feeling extremely claustrophobic. I don’t mind it so much for reading web pages, but for any page that requires input and typing (blogs, forums, etc.) it can be really frustrating to use, and usually doesn’t render properly.

I’m currently using Nick’s Macbook. It’s load-in day, and we’re basically done after an hour, as usual. So I’m grabbing this opportunity to bogart his computer once again. It’s kind of comical how many copies I have of my “TAC” folder with all the show stuff in it. It’s still on my computer somewhere out there in the bowels of Apple repair world, it’s on my backup drive, on Nick’s computer, and on two thumb drives. The only thing left for me to do would be to hide the two thumb drives in different places — like put one of them in my suitcase. Which is probably a good idea since normally all three of my thumb drives live side-by-side in my computer bag (which I suppose should now be referred to as “bag”).

We’re loading in in Tucson, where the Arizona Theatre Company has another venue. A lot of the department heads are the same folks we worked with in Phoenix, so it’s been very easy. The theatre is not quite as fancy, but it seems very nice so far. I took some video of our truck driver, Scotty D., backing the trailer at a crazy angle to their loading dock.

Well I must move on and do all the other things that one does while one has a computer.


March 29, 2009

Technical Difficulties

I call this: computers,mac — Posted by KP @ 11:56 am

Greetings from Phoenix. My beloved Macbook Pro has had a graphics failure and is pretty much out of commission (I think and hope it might be the known failure of the 8600M which would mean it’s still covered under warranty). This has happened before.  Last time it magically fixed itself on the morning I was to bring it in to the Genius Bar.  We shall see.  I have an appointment at the Apple Store in Tuscon tomorrow.

The computer is completely functional except that the internal and external displays don’t work.  I’m actually typing this on it now, by screen sharing from Nick’s laptop.  Like an idiot I had turned screen sharing off about a week ago, and had to do some Terminal hackery to enable it through SSH.  I don’t know much about unix, so that made me feel pretty damn cool.

Anyway, as the only way I can access my computer is by borrowing someone else’s, I’m pretty much restricted to necessary purposes, so I may not be blogging much for a while.  We are home in a week, so whatever happens, I’ll have my PC and my poor Powerbook, which surely can’t withstand another tour.  Or can it?


September 3, 2008

The Penny is Relevant Again!

I call this: mac,phones — Posted by KP @ 7:56 am

This may be the only thing giving purpose to coins in the 21st Century.

Coinstar has begun offering gift certificates in place of cash receipts for coins. Doesn’t sound that interesting yet, right? OK, Coinstar is now offering iTunes gift certificates for coins, AND, you don’t pay any kind of fee on the amount you deposit. If you have $4.28 in coins sitting in a drawer or bowl somewhere, you get $4.28 to spend on the music or iPhone/iPod apps of your choice. This, combined with the fact that Duane Reade is now installing Coinstar machines in many of their stores, has made my app purchases for my iPhone essentially free.  I even bought the one that looks like a lighter, just because I can (iLightr, it’s much more realistic and interactive than the others, though I don’t recommend buying it with money that didn’t come from your metaphorical couch cushions).

Anyway, this development has brought me great happiness, and turned change from a nuisance into an easy way to pay for apps and music.


July 14, 2008

3G iPhone!!!!!!

I call this: mac,phones — Posted by KP @ 3:57 pm

So I got a 3G iPhone this weekend. In brief, it’s everything I thought it would be: incredibly cool, and lacking a number of obvious features that I hope I can live without.

Things I LOOOVE:
MobileMe (when it works). Push seems to work sometimes and not others. Sometimes my phone receives mail before the desktop, and sometimes it seems to forget to check. The other thing to know (which Apple never really made clear) is that push only works on the iPhone and the MobileMe servers, your desktop will not push out to the “cloud,” only at 15 minute intervals. I can see how this will result in things getting completely out of sync.

I woke up this morning to see that about 700 of my contacts were gone. They still existed on my Mac and on MobileMe, so everything was fine, but somehow the phone lost them. Not sure what’s going on with that. I love the idea of what MobileMe is, and I can’t believe it’s taken Apple so long to get something going on the concept of “Exchange for the rest of us.” I don’t work in a corporate environment, but my job could sure benefit from Exchange-type features, and Apple was just the company to do it. I’m glad to see that’s finally taking shape. I just hope it’s more reliable than .Mac was. So far it would seem… no. But it’s only been like 4 days.

Coming from AT&T’s Tilt (aka HTC’s Kaiser), which has horrible video performance, the UI is just gorgeous. This is not something really particular to the new iPhone, but it’s nice to finally get to experience a responsive UI. There are a lot of things that are just iPhone-specific that I’m now getting to enjoy for the first time. Like a wifi setup that’s easy enough to do that I actually bother to activate it to take advantage of the higher speeds. On the Tilt it was such a pain that using AT&T’s network everywhere was faster and more reliable in the long run.

The camera is actually really good so far. It is what it is, and I know other people expected an upgrade, but this 2MP camera takes much better photos than the 3MP one on the Tilt. It seems to do pretty well in low light conditions as well.

Google Maps — so much better than the versions available for other phones. Most of all, the bookmarks. I don’t understand why all the other versions don’t have an easy way of saving locations you use all the time. It works basically like other versions, I haven’t tried the turn-by-turn directions on the road yet. I did get completely lost driving in Boston last night and the GPS helped me escape back to the safety of the Mass Pike in just a few minutes, using just the time I had while stopped at red lights. I didn’t actually do a search for directions, just pressed the button to find my location and looked at the map to figure out which street I had to get on. The GPS link is very fast (probably using a combination of cell location, that wifi-search-thing they’re using, and actual GPS — but I think the real GPS must work quickly because the location is too accurate to be anything else). My Tilt could take minutes to get a GPS lock, if ever.

The App Store I’m a bit addicted to the App Store at the moment, seeing all there is to see. I have always bought tons of software for my phones, but this is the first platform I’ve used where free trials aren’t the norm. I haven’t made any purchases that I really regret, but I know they’re coming.

So far I have: Super Monkey Ball (just because it’s the “in” thing to buy — it’s cool)
MotoRacer (just to play with the accelerometer in a racing game)
Enigmo (a puzzle game which got great reviews — I like it)
SplashID (a secure password and personal info app which I’ve used for probably 7 years now on Palm)
Citytransit New York (I’m away from home right now, but this is a really cool subway / train map and service advisory program which I can’t wait to put to use)

I haven’t gone crazy with the free apps, but these are the ones I have:
Remote (Apple’s own app to control iTunes on your Mac or AppleTV via wifi)
NY Times (nice format for checking out what’s going on in the world while bored)
IGN Reviews (for those times when I’m in a game store and need to read a review fast)
Shazam (listens to a song and tells you the name and artist — seems to work well, even on showtunes)
Facebook (quite limited, but good for quick status updates and stuff)

BAD THINGS:
No ability to send mail from an alias. I have 3 aliases in addition to my main account on MobileMe. Unlike on the desktop Mail app (or any other phone app I’ve ever used) there’s no way to send an outgoing message from one of the other aliases. It’s not something I need too often, but it’s making me consider switching away from my MobileMe account and getting a bunch of gmail accounts for my secondary emails instead.

Copy and paste (of course). Have only needed it once so far in the last 3 days, when someone texted me and asked for someone else’s phone number.

Tethering: I would gladly pay AT&T more if I had to in order to get Bluetooth tethering support. I use it CONSTANTLY at work, and kind of can’t live without it. I often work in places without internet access, so I need to bring my own, and doing everything on the phone is not enough — I need my laptop to be able to get online. The only way I managed to buy the iPhone at all is with the hope that if I had to I could stick the SIM card in my Tilt and tether that way (I hope). But that involves carrying the Tilt around and keeping it charged. Once the new software is jailbroken there should be a way to do it. I just hope that happens soon. I really wouldn’t mind doing it legally, if AT&T were willing to take my money, but I guess they’re not.

I read on a theatrically-minded review that you can’t turn off the cell radio without going into airplane mode, meaning you can’t use wifi with the cell radio off. I have happily found that this is not true! You go into airplane mode and it will shut off all radios, but you can then turn the wifi radio back on. This is very helpful for theatrical types because phone radios (particularly GSM) cause interference with speakers and wireless headsets, and the sound people and anyone on headset with you will hate you if you leave your phone on during a show. But wifi frequencies do not cause this problem, so I’m used to using wifi to continue to have data access when I need to turn my phone off, and I’m glad to see the lack of this was just a false alarm.

Anyway, so far I’m very happy, and I know this is just the beginning for MobileMe and the App Store, and there should be some new stuff coming soon.


March 4, 2008

Sometimes Apple Scares Me

I call this: mac,theatre — Posted by KP @ 4:43 pm

But in that way that you can’t even worry about your privacy because it’s just so damn cool.

Hey, two posts in one day! I have to tell you what just happened to me.

I’m doing this reading next week, so I’m in preproduction. I have some contact info for the cast and creative team, so I’m starting to enter it into Apple’s Address Book app. I’m using the cool new feature that Mail has in Leopard where it detects phone numbers and e-mail addresses in your mail and offers to add them to your address book. Since the only contact info I have is in plain text in an e-mail from the director, this saves me a lot of retyping or cutting and pasting. The system is not perfect by any means, but it’s still a time saver.

So I get to this one actor, who is a Broadway actor that I’ve vaguely heard of, but one I’m sure I’ve never met. I create a contact in my address book based on his e-mail address, and when I later go back to sort my contacts, I find that the guy’s headshot has been added in the photo slot of his contact file! I then see that his e-mail is from a dot Mac account, which no doubt somehow explains this. I’m not sure if this is a feature you have to opt in for, but what I’m guessing is happening is that Address Book automatically matches @mac.com e-mail addresses to the person’s account and their own address card. It hasn’t filled in any other personal information though, as I’m still lacking his phone number (this is definitely a good thing, for privacy reasons). Maybe it just does the picture. I will post an update if I find out more about how this is done.

UPDATE: Found out how it’s done. A quick search on MacNN solves all.
If you have a .Mac account you can go to the webmail page (webmail.mac.com) and click on preferences (upper right of your mailbox area). In the “Composing” tab, there is a place where you can add your photo. Presumably from there all Mac users will see this photo when they read your e-mails in Mail or they enter your e-mail address in their Address Book. I didn’t have a photo set, but obviously I need to add one now. Will it look unprofessional if I use my default iChat icon?


April 4, 2007

This week’s Apple news

I call this: computers,mac — Posted by KP @ 3:57 pm

Quick wrap-up of some interesting things that happened this week:
Steve Jobs will lead us from the evils of DRM
Some time ago, Steve Jobs wrote an open letter saying that he felt the future of digital music was to remove digital rights management and let consumers play their purchased music however they want and on whatever device they want. Well it’s actually happening. The iTunes Store will be selling DRM-free, higher-quality (256kbps) music published by EMI for $1.29. If you already own the songs you will be able to upgrade to the non-DRM versions by paying the extra 30 cents. You will still be able to buy songs in the original format for 99 cents if you choose. Some people are mad about the price increase. I think freedom to do what you want with music you own is worth more than 30 cents, so I’m happy. It will be interesting to see how long it takes before all the major labels convert.

Complete My Album
In more minor iTunes news, there’s this new feature available now on the iTunes Store that will be helpful for people who own songs from an album and don’t want to pay the full price when they later decide to purchase the entire album. If you go to the Complete My Album icon on the store, it will show you your albums and how much it will cost you to complete each one. Cool way of doing it, I think. Unfortunately, you only have six months after purchasing the song to be able to apply it to the album cost. That’s kind of lame.

Lower prices on Cinema Displays
Always a good thing, given the high price of quality flat-panel monitors. The prices are:

  • 20-inch: $599
  • 23-inch: $899
  • 30-inch: $1799

Personally, if I was in the market for one, I would be cautious, because a price drop usually means something better is around the corner, and the discontinuation of the standalone iSight would seem to indicate that soon all Apple monitors will have built-in iSights. Even if you’re not interested in an iSight, you never know what crazy improvements they’ll come up with. But if I had unlimited funding, I might be interested in one (or eight) because of this…

8-core Mac Pros
I don’t get as excited about processors as some people get (at least when I know I’m not going to be using them), but I do know that quad-core is all the rage, and two quad-cores is naturally double the rage, and as a result people have been hoping for the announcement of an 8-core Mac. Congrats.

So it uses two of the “Clovertown” 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5300 processors which should give it a rating of “really fucking fast” on my personal benchmark against my 1.25GHz G4. It can take up to 16GB of RAM, and I’m not sure if this is new to this model, but the video cards can support up to 8 monitors (I assume that would mean 4 of the 30-inch ones). Damn. If I had a million dollars, I’d buy one of these and 8 23″ monitors wrapped around my entire desk, just because I can.

So how much does it cost? Well the starting price on the Apple Store is $2499 for a Mac Pro, but that’s not for the new chips. I configured a system with the 8-core chips, 16MB of RAM, and eight 23″ HD monitors, and it came out to $19,473.90, including tax. As this is only slightly below my average annual income, I think I will have to settle for the Macbook Pro I’ve got my eye on.


March 23, 2007

Mac OS 10.4.9 and USB webcams

I call this: computers,mac — Posted by KP @ 12:32 pm

One of the more interesting things to happen in the Mac world in the last week or two is the release of OS X v10.4.9, which among other things, enabled the use of USB webcams natively with iChat and Quicktime and whatever else you might use them for, without the need to buy shareware drivers as was necessary before.

If, like me, you never bought the now-discontinued iSight because it was too expensive, and you think, as I did, that this means you can now go out and buy the cheapest webcam you can find — you’re wrong. Not all webcams are compatible, only those which are UVC compliant, which seem to be only the ones that are almost, or as expensive as the iSight was. Bummer.

Nevertheless, I needed a webcam, and this finally got me to go out and buy one. After perusing a number of Mac-oriented forums, and finding very little concrete evidence of which webcams actually work, I found this thread at MacNN, which seems to contain the most information. So with a list of theoretically compatible models, I went to CompUSA. The cheapest I found was the $79 Quickcam Pro 5000, but it’s kind of huge, and I wanted something that would work well for my Powerbook, but also sit nicely on a regular monitor, as I intend to give it to my parents once I buy a Macbook Pro. I found the best value for my needs was the Logitech Quickcam Fusion, for $99.

I was very happy to discover that all I had to do was plug it in, open iChat, and there it was. It also works nicely for recording video with Quicktime Pro. It’s still an awful lot of money just to get a camera working, though. It would be cool if someone could come up with a hack to make the button at the top do something in OS X.


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