Why not take a snapshot?

I thought it would be cool to write a post on my iPhone. So I did. Here it is.

This is what graphics card corruption looks like. Weeeeird.

Tags: iphone, mobile, work

Why the iPhone update changed my mind

After impulse buying a 600$ (plus tax) piece of Apple foolishness, I have the ritualistic remorse that always follows such impulse purchasing. While it is nice to whip the iPhone out, and have friends and family ogle it, and ask you all sorts of questions– deep down,it’s hard to shake feeling a bit silly for having dropped 600$ (plus tax) on a phone.That all changed for me today. (Technically, it changed about 4 days ago with the iPhone 1.01 update– but it wasn’t until I read this post on iLounge that I realized it).Apple will tell you that the new iPhone update was basically a security fix update…but it turns out it also fixed a bunch of other stuff:

• Always BCC added to email settings so you can carbon copy yourself
• Battery diplay updates to provide more accurate display of charge
• Passcode lock can have a longer timeout– prevents you having to enter your passcode EVERY time the phone goes into standby mode– instead allows you to picke a time frame to allow the phone to wait before it requires a passcode
• Audio out now works on many popular stereo docks and adaptors

So, back to the regret part…I really only listen to music in my car. Until this update my iPhone just couldn’t take the place of my iPod– it had iPod features, but no audio out to my car’s iPod setup. Read more…

A new power adaptor: AppleCare comes to my rescue

As an owner of a Rev A MacBook, I expected my fair share of issues– I’m currently on my 3rd Macbook, as Apple resolved issues with the previous 2 units by replacing them. Apple has, each time, taken care of my issues (sleep issues = new lappy, dead USB port = new lappy).

Over the weekend I noticed that my power adaptor was buzzing when charging my laptop. I’d read that there were issues with some adaptors, and that Apple had replaced them, so I called on Saturday.

During my less than 20 minutes on the phone, I spoke with 2 courteous AppleCare reps, and explained my concern to each of them. After advising me to unplug the buzzing adaptor, the AppleCare Specialist requested my address info, and today– less than 2 fully business days later– I’m using my new–NON BUZZING– power adaptor

On the topic of 3rd party ram…

3rd party ram is cheap. Cheaper certainly than Apple ram. This might lead one to the assumption that it’s a better purchase than Apple ram. Normally I would be inclined to agree.

Then this happened:

For the uninitaed, that’s a Kernel Panic, in short a total system crash. What’s impressive is that it came up during a system install.

Kernal Panics can indicate any number of software or hardware issues, that eventually cause you computer to crash. In the bygone days before protected memory, and multithreaded operating systems, total system crashes were common. This is not the case any more–Apple suport tends to regard Kernel Panics as a strong indicator of a hardware issue.

Aside: In case this happens to you and you call support, Applecare support will normally ask the following common troubleshooting questions:

• Have you installed any 3rd party ram?

No matter what, if you answer “yes” to this question, all other troubleshooting will usually cease until the 3rd party ram is removed.

• Have you run disk utility to repair permissions, and check your disk?
• Is your drive reporting any type of errors (what’s the status of the S.M.A.R.T. reporting)
• Does this happen in any specific apps / 3rd party apps?
• Have you tested this in another profile?
• Is you firmware up to date?
• Have you cleared you PRam, and reset your PMU?
• Have you run the Apple Hardware Test (AHT), have you run it in extended mode, have you run it in looped extended mode?

Back to the story. I bought 3rd party Ram. It was fine, or so I thought. Then I had the following issues:

1. Kernel Panic when using Aperture
2. Kernel Panic when installing OS
3. Video corruption when using OS (and by using, I mean watching a trailer in Quicktime, and running NO other programs Safari and Software update)

And by video corruption, I mean:

and:

So I put back in the Apple ram (512 megs–ughh!) and thought everything would be fine.

Then my machine wouldn’t login to my user account. The AHT said everything was fine–which was not true.

Disk Utility–while booted from the MacBook install disk–reported errors. “Hmm, that’s not normal.” Letting Disk Utility attempt to repair them resulted in failure, and–as is often the case–the drive no longer showed up on the desktop.

Shit.

DiskWarrior is great with stuff like this, and it was able to repair the drive and get it to show up on the desktop. But now, (even though S.M.A.R.T. reporting was showing that my drive was OK) I was having a hard time believing it.

Various files on my desktop weren’t copying to an external drive, Superduper couldn’t sucessfully clone the drive.

To recap:

1. Kernel Panic
2. Video Corruption
3. Data storage issues

So yeah, a few RMA’s later, my MacBook is back up and running. Complete with new ram, a new hard drive and most (if not all) of my data back in place.

Moral of the story? I have no idea. It’s not like I ran right out to buy Apple ram, or that I’m never going to replace my stock hard drive with a newer, larger model.

In fact, it’s because I got new ram, and a new hard drive, that I was able to revert back to the stock ones when the new stuff failed–or maybe it’s because of the new stuff that I had to.

Either way,I don’t really care–after all, mechanical shit breaks. Plan for it.

Not because it’s free (though that helps): Tangerine

I’ve been hoping for a good iTunes plugin/addon that would help group music by mood. Adding to my desire is my un-deniable ‘Reuben-esque’ physique lately. Toss in a huuuuge music library (currently pushing 50 gigs) and my inability to create decent playlists and you can see why I’ve fallen in love with Tangerine.

Tangerine has 3 main functions.

• Scanning – The app will scan your music library (except for iTunes music store purchases–something about the DRM makes this difficult) and keep a record of the BPM, beats per minute, of each song.
• (Really) Smart Playlists - You can use the app to create playlists of tracks falling in a certain beat range
• Syncing – The app will sync your Tangerine playlists to iTunes.

The burning question: Does it really work?

Yes. Yes it does. Usually…

Sometimes it gets the beats a little wrong, sometimes a LOT wrong. But I gotta tell ya’ it’s more right than wrong, and it scans your library WAY faster than just about any other BPM scanning app I’ve seen.

There are 3 perks that I feel put Tangerine above the rest

• It’s pretty – It’s easy on the eyes, and if Apple has taught me anything it’s that looks do matter. Think of it this way, you can be the smartest, nicest, most wonderful person in class, but if you show up every day with 3 day B.O., un-brushed teeth, and greasy hair…none of that matters.
• Playlist visualization – The app makes use of the album art for your tracks (if you have it– and if you have iTunes 7 Apple will let you download it!) and then shrinks or enlarges the art across a time line like a bar graph.  The tall the album cover the faster the BMP, the wider the cover the longer the song.
• Styled playlists – Just like the stair master or treadmill at the Gym, Tangerine can ’style’ your playlist to be gradually building, decending, random, or stepped.  It’s a great way to tailor the playlist and keep things from seeming too perfect.

Give Tangerine a look and decide for yourself.