: : d u r a : m a t e r : :

July 11 is the word



Hmm. I've held off until now - my current non-iPhone contract is up soon. ...temptation strikes, especially with the push-synchronization features with my Outlook setup at work...

USD$199 for an 8 gig model, USD$299 for the 16 gig.

More here, at Apple.

An amusing story of determination by a software engineer unofficially at Apple.

Bill Gates could still smile, despite a rough day:



The reason for this third run-in with the law in New Mexico are not clear, as all records of this particular arrest have been lost.

The world could have been very different, very different.

Here is an in-depth review of Apple's latest Operating System release, 10.5, or "Leopard" on Ars Technica, by John Siracusa.

Bottom line: I agree with Siracusa that the upgrade is well worth it, for the backup features of Time Machine alone. Screen Sharing for remote troubleshooting is also a great bonus. As Siracusa puts it:

If you are your family's "Mac Guy," the newfound ubiquitousness on screen sharing alone is reason enough to get everyone to upgrade to Leopard.

I have installed Leopard on my:

• big machine (a MacPro Intel DualCore, amazingly fast, no problems);
  
• on my wife's laptop (iBook G4, required an "Archive and Install," occasional freezes on wake-up now); and
  
• on my PowerBook G4 (BIG problems because my hard drive was near full before the upgrade, resulting in the "Blue Screen" after restart, eventually I had to erase everything and do a completely clean install, and then reinstall all my files and non-Apple software [gee, now where are the original CDs and the licence codes for all this??]).

Strangely, I have yet to see the intro movie which is supposed to play after the first boot into Leopard.

I have not installed Leopard yet on our iMac G5... that one gives me the jitters to do - it's a first generation iMac PowerPC chip machine that occasionally chokes on 10.4.10 Tiger, but I imagine the later iMacs will do just fine. I will take that step tonight with the knowledge that at least I do have pre-upgrade full backups of every one of these machines on a whopping big 1 Terabyte hard disk I carry around in my backpack... that disk will now settle down to a more mundane existence as the iMac's Time Machine external hard drive.

The lesson in spades: do a backup right now, for God's sake! I'm glad that my wife's business made me actually take that seriously, and set up a routine to capture all the 'mission-critical' files and applications.

For all their crowing in the new TV ads, the Apple Mac OSX system does have its problems. Or as Apple would rather I phrase that, the user can easily cause complex problems.

Consider this pair of messages. After a great deal of editing I tried resetting the .Mac synchronization for my Address Book data file, and got the following error:



Fair enough, but the message advises me to do exactly what I was already doing - trying to reset the remote database with the data on my machine. Not to be worried by such messages, I tried again, and I got the following warning:



"Ah, that's better," I thought, "at least this is a warning, rather than an error."

I edited away again, until ALL of the addresses disappeared in a flash. Everything. The only cards left were the default Apple card and my own card. Repeat above process (errors and warnings given again), and vwolah, time to shut down and start again.

...and indeed, all my data was back (albeit duplicated). Now this machine will synchronize, but none of my others will. Humph.

I strongly advise against using this multi-platform synchronization strategy. You will lose data, guaranteed. Middle initials. URLs. And oddly, telephone numbers.

A good example of why electronic chats do not work well. I wasn't sure whether I was really speaking to an Apple agent, or whether this was an "Agent" as in an artifically intelligent agent that was parsing my posts against a FAQ...

Agent:
Thank you for contacting Apple Chat support. My name is Abhishek, please give me a moment while i access your records in our database.

Agent:
Thank you for your patience, may i know if you are calling about an existing issue or will this be a new one?Paul:
Hello Abhishek, good day to you wherever you may be. A new Issue - headphone port on an iMac.

Agent:
Hi Paul, how may i help you today?

Paul:
When I first purchased the iMac, I tried headphones and external speakers, and they did not work. I assumed I had the wrong jack and sold my speakers. I just bought a new set, and they don't work either (I have tested them on other equipment, so I am fairly sure it is the port on the iMac).

Agent:
As i understand you are unable to connect the external speakers to the imac using the jack, is that correct?

Paul:
I can connect, but the sound is not correct - it is distorted.

Agent:
I will send you an article that addresses the issue....

Agent:
I have pushed a page onto your browser, it should come up on the right side of your Chat window.

Agent:
The url for the page is ...

Agent:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86810

Paul:
Yes, thank you I have seen this one - the speakers do have a 3.5mm metal analog jack, but it does not seem to go all the way into the Headphone jack on the iMac.

Agent:
May i know if you have purchased the jack as per the configuration shown in article?

Paul:
Yes, the speakers were bought from Apple.

Agent:
I would suggest you to take the headphone and speaker set to the Apple Store and have them check the jack with the other Apple computers....

Paul:
I have tried the speakers on my Mac laptop, and they work there...

Paul:
These speakers work on other Macs. Other speakers have not worked with this iMac. Ergo, it is most likely the port on this iMac.

Agent:
I believe the issue is related to the port of the imac, as you have tested the jack with other Macs.

Agent:
I would advise you to take the imac to the nearest Apple Servie Provider and they will be in a better poition to help you with the issue.

Paul:
OK, thank you for your help today, Abhishek.

Agent:
You are welcome.

Agent:
Is there anything else i can assist you with?

Paul:
Unless there is some way of installing it myself (I have reset the midplane on this machine before), I think we are done.

Agent:
Is it okay for me to end the chat?

Paul:
Yes, sorry. I did not realize I had to actively end it. Thanks again.

Chat Session Ended, Goodbye. (5010)

...Bummer, I was all set to blast my new JBL Creatures, but it looks like I will be sending the iMac off for repair (again).

It was good to wake up laughing today -- news that a handheld phone was being released with a Windows operating system made me think that just as we get rid of the telephone solicitation scourge here in the U.S., we will be opening opportunities for viruses to call everybody in our cellphone's directory... argh, and with all the junk numbers I compulsively keep in my phone from all my travels, that would be a very expensive virus.

I'm waiting for an all-in-one integrated wearable CDMA2000 EV-DO/EDGSM/CDPD/WiFi phone, GPS and PDA iPOD. But for now I still have my trusty 1997 Newton, which does just fine thanks - it's fully capable of doing most of the above. It's just such a brick.