It’s almost as if it’s a new Mac

Finally got my replacement hard disk and RAM for my MacBook Pro yesterday.  Fitting the new hard disk was easy as pie and replicating the data from the old disk was as simple as a few clicks; even the Windows partition copied over nicely.  I now have over 200GB spare on the main disk for my growing digital media library.

Since I was in the guts of the MacBook Pro, I installed the 4GB of RAM that now makes it fly.  After initial launch and quit of apps, they all now open again in only one bounce of the Dock since the data is still stored in RAM and as long as I don’t shut the machine down, they should stay in this state indefinitely.  I did a resource test to see how much of the 4GB would remain after opening EVERY single app and the result hovers around the 1.8 to 2GB mark – plenty of room to play with.

All in all, these upgrades cost me less than £95 and just a little elbow grease.

Lightning striking twice

Went to Leeds on Saturday for the day to visit Sammy-boy and  I’d happened to catch a cold just a few days before.  The same thing happened last year when I visited Leeds with Jim-bob and company.

I arrived roughly an hour behind schedule due to setting off late from Birmingham, and coupled with severe roadworks on the M1 limiting traffic to 50mph, I hit Leeds at around 12:30pm.  I had a look around Sam’s new pad and boy is it gorgeous.  He’s living in an awesome studio apartment literally 2 minutes away from the Leeds Hilton, affording fantastic views of the surrounding area.  Rent is a bit steep he tells me but he’s got so much more free time now since he’s not having to do his previously ridiculous commute.  He does however have a ridiculous cupboard in his kitchen as you can see from the photo above.

We didn’t really have anything to do, though I did need to visit Maplins to pick up a few bits and pieces for my pending MacBook Pro upgrade.  Using Google maps on the iPhone, we got there swiftly and had a look around.  Sam had no idea a place like Maplins existed and was rather impressed by all the components available.  I picked up a precision screwdriver set, which happened to be on buy-one-get-one-free so I gave one set to Sam.  I also bought an external 2.5″ SATA hard drive caddy to recycle the hard drive I’m taking out of the Mac.

We had a wander around Leeds city centre, which I do prefer to Birmingham.  The sun was shining and the place seemed to have character, unlike Birmingham’s mish-mash of 70s and modern architecture.  We had lunch at Wagamama since Sam loves the place and none of his friends do, so I couldn’t deprive him of a visit. We’d noticed that Zavvi seem to have been bought out by a company called Head.  They had 25% off everything, meaning you could pick up a mainstream Blu-ray for just under £10!  This co-incides with the Zavvi on Oxford Street in London apparently reopening as a Virgin Megastore.

Due to the cold I had, I was drinking an inordinate amount of water so was pissing like a racehorse.  The huge Starbucks coffee I had below Sam’s apartment complex didn’t help either, though it had to be the quietest and plushest Starbucks I’ve ever seen.

We had a quick blast through a few chapters on Resi 5, and it’s clear that the game benefits from two co-op players.  Incidentally, I cleared the game again on veteran difficulty and unlocked the infinite ammo gatling gun.  Mowing down enemies in a hail of bullets has never been so fun.

It was now time to head back home since Sam had friends to meet up with and it would take over 2 hours to drive home.  I might get the train the next time I visit him again seeing as he lives virtually next to the train station.

Supercharging a slab of aluminium

Please note, the above is not my setup because it’s far too organised and professional.

A couple of nights ago, I was doing some system maintenance on my MacBook Pro and I noticed that the internal hard disk was getting quite full. Since moving to a digital SLR, the photos I archive are bloody huge averaging 10mb or so each compared to the 2-3mb photos that my Canon Ixus point and shoot could achieve. Granted the initial size is only 120gb (111gb usable) and I have a separate 15gb Windows partition for Bootcamp. Couple that with a large music library and things start to get claustrophobic quickly.

Since the warranty was now over (unofficially, it’s still intact with John Lewis), I thought I’d have a look at upgrading the internal hard disk myself. Trotting over to Ebuyer, I find a couple of very nicely priced laptop SATA drives for £50 or so. It had to be Seagate since these drives are certified to work with Apple’s drive parking and energy management software, though any 2.5″ SATA drive will work if these features aren’t important. I settled on a 320gb 5400 RPM drive with 8MB cache since it would be a like for like replacement bar the size. I’ve heard the performance gains from 7200 RPM drives are immense, but I’m worried about heat dissipation due to the insides of the 15″ MacBook Pro being very tightly packed.

So, I get all my tools together (a very small flathead screw driver and a credit card) and start cracking the thing open. Testament to Apple, the MacBook Pros are very well put together; removing the top keyboard casing requires removal of 30 or so screws (very nicely machined screws at that). The inside is almost entirely dust free which isn’t too surprising considering the fans rarely ever kickup. I decided to do a bit of a mod on the ambient light sensors for the keyboard and screen. I simply want the keyboard LEDs to either be on or off, at maximum brightness, but with with the sensors in place, they dim or brighten according to the lighting in the room. I stuck some black electrical tape over the sensors and voila, they work the way I want them to now. Removing the hard drive is fairly simple once you’re inside and putting the MacBook Pro together again is simply reversing your previous actions.  Backing up and restoring the drives and partitions is done using the wonderful Superduper and Winclone which makes everything a doddle; why can’t Windows have something similar and lightweight?

The drive is due to arrive tomorrow along with 4GB of RAM from Crucial, thus future proofing it for a few more years to come. Performance impressions to come soon!

Apple woes

Why, oh, why do you forsake me Father Steve??

For some reason or another, my beloved MacBook Pro’s Superdrive has given up the ghost and now refuses to burn DVDs.  I only have DVD+Rs to test this with but it refuses to even start burning any of the discs I have.  I’ve burnt maybe 5 or 6 discs since purchasing the machine, though I have read a fair few discs through it.  I am not convinced that this has caused the drive to fail though because modern day DVD burners use different lenses to read and write discs; the drive still reads everything perfectly and still burns CD-Rs.  I’m gonna have to drop it into the Apple Store on Saturday to the Genius Bar for them to sort out – hopefully it won’t take too long for them to replace the drive…

It’s alive, it’s alive!

Well, after 24 hours I have almost restored my Mac OSX installation to its previous glory. Why the corruption occurred is beyond me but Disk Utility did not detect any problems. Fingers crossed it was a one off and doesn’t become a regular occurrence.

Cruel irony

I recently upgraded my MacBook Pro to Leopard and tonight, it decided to stop working on me.  The Mac boots up but when it tries to get to the login screen, it gets stuck in a weird cycle which it can’t get out of.  I can boot using the Leopard installation disc and Windows XP boots up perfectly through Bootcamp.  I almost had a heart attack when Windows said the Mac partition had been corrupted and was no longer accessible since ALL of my music is on there.  Luckily, Disk Utility on the Leopard install disc was able to repair it though not to the stage where it will boot properly.  Who knows what’s up in Cupertino…

The Kate Moss of laptops

Today whilst on my way to Specsavers to pick up my new glasses (which weren’t ready yet!), I noticed that the Apple store had the new MacBook Air on display.  I’d seen photos online but only seeing one in the flesh will do it justice because it really is just so incredibly thin!  I picked it up and it weighed about as much as a dinner plate, maybe less.  One really has to wonder how Apple have crammed an entire Mac inside the case.  The screen is very bright, much brighter than the LED MacBook Pro I have and the glossy surface makes all the colours very vibrant.

What made me chuckle was one Apple employee telling a customer that you wouldn’t run Photoshop on there.  The 1.8ghz model is technically faster than the 1.83ghz MacBook Pro which launched 2 years ago and nobody ever had an issue running Photoshop on that; oh how times have changed.

Would I ever get a MacBook Air?  Most likely not because I’m a laptop user.  I’ve never liked desktops which to me seem a bit lifeless because you can’t get a good feel for them unlike laptops which you can carry around all over the place.  I have my MacBook Pro for my day to day desktop replacement needs and my aging iBook for my road and bed warrior needs.

Apple’s announcement of 16gb iPhone’s and 32gb iPod touch’s made me feel inadequate earlier.  Whilst I’ve gotten quite good at juggling the space on my iPhone, 16gb would really come in handy and allow me to have so much more.  If a reliable jailbreak and unlock comes out then I may sell my 8gb model on…

Apple zealots unite!

All true Apple zealots will know of the made for TV movie, Pirates of Silicon Valley (thanks Mike!) and it’s slightly exagerated and distorted view of Apple and Microsoft from inception through to the late 90s. Well, there seems to be a spiritual sequel of sorts called Macheads and the trailer can be found here. Some famous Apple fans can be seen in the trailer (woo for Andy Inahtko!) and the girl who had never “knowingly” slept with a Windows user had me in stitches. Guess my tainted mangina is out the window…

The Steve hath spoken

Another year, another MacWorld. This time of the year is normally a time to rejoice as an Apple zealot yet I feel kind of empty after all’s said and done.

I am very happy about the lack of an iPhone hardware update since I would feel royally shafted if Apple were to launch a higher capacity iPhone or even the mythical 3G iPhone. The firmware update is also most welcome, though the mass SMS option would have been much more useful before Christmas and the new year!

The MacBook Air is an interesting release. It plugs a hole in Apple’s lineup by introducing an ultra-portable laptop to the roster but it’s not in the same league as the 12inch PowerBook it sort of replaces. Whereas the 12inch PowerBook could feasibly be your only computer, the MacBook Air would struggle to be somebody’s only machine and is pitched primarily at people with a fully fledged desktop or power laptop at home or at the office. I work with a website designer who has a 17inch MacBook Pro and something like this is right up his street for client meetings and business further afield. I would still edge towards a MacBook purely for connectivity options and storage, oh and price.

The Time Capsule wireless hard disk sounds like exactly what I’m after so I will rush out to the Apple Store come February to pick one up.  I can stop having multiple versions of files all over the place scattered across 4 different machines and just have one central file server where everything reads and writes to.  And N wireless connections sound quite tasty!

4 days and counting until the reality distortion field hits home

This is absolutely hilarious and only wish I could attend MacWorld in San Francisco to use it.

In other news, my PayPal account was hacked somehow and there was some fraudulant activity.  Rather mysteriously, somebody had sent me £337 which I was not expecting at all.  It was not from any of my eBay auctions and I didn’t recognise the name.  According to the logs, 8 minutes later somebody had gotten into my accoun, added a bank account from Arkansas in the states, and had attempted to move $1010.34 to said account.  Thankfully, this action had put my account into negative funds which is a PayPal no-no.  I contacted PayPal as soon as I got into work and set about putting things right again and all seems hunky-dory now.