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Archive for May, 2008

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Thursday, May 29th, 2008

Among the rampant rumors in anticipation of the WWDC are claims Apple plans to seriously rejigger the case designs of its Mac notebooks, possibly a reflection of the flourishes that debuted in the MacBook Air.

The main fly in the ointment is that Intel’s newest chipset has been postponed for a few weeks for various reasons, which means there’s little incentive to introduce any new models until then. Then again, Steve Jobs could conceivably announce the product revisions, blame Intel for the delay, and then explain they’ll ship some time in July. I can see that.

However, the real question here is whether it makes any sense at all to alter the highly-successful form factors of the MacBook and the MacBook Pro. Some suggest that the plastic casing of the former might be less than robust under hard use, and, being a notebook popular among students, aluminum might prove to be more reliable. Then again, my son spent several years using an aluminum-clad PowerBook G4, and the case suffered from bumps and dents, things that might never have harmed a hard plastic shell.

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Wednesday, May 28th, 2008

Widely anticipated, the 10.5.3 update made it unheralded arrival Wednesday morning with an advertised 68 fixes and enhancements to Leopard. However, that may be only part of the picture.

You see, some sites that have allegedly seen Apple’s developer documentation on 10.5.3 claim there were over 200 changes made, and that doesn’t make much sense either, since a single bug fix or enhanced feature can mean that many files have to be altered with lots of interrelated elements required to produce the desired result. So 10.5.3 no doubt contains tens of thousands of updated files when all is said and done.

Certainly, this is one huge mother of an update. If you’re a Leopard user, you’ll find a copy waiting for you in Software Update. The size will vary depending on the number of files that Apple deems appropriate for your Mac. The official Delta version, a strictly 10.5.2 to 10.5.3 update, weighs in at 420MB. If you never went for 10.5.2, or you want to take as few chances as possible, you might try the Combo updater, which contains all the alterations from the original 10.5 release, at 536MB.

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Tuesday, May 27th, 2008

This isn’t going to be your standard WWDC prediction article, because so much of that so far has focused on what form the next iteration of the iPhone will take, and what apps will be available for it on day one. What’s more, I’m sure you’ve heard quite enough on that subject already, and you’d rather wait for the main event, and discover the truth or falsity of the expectations.

That’s true even if you have given up trying to locate an iPhone for sale now. In fact, I suggest you wait for the  new model before you decide whether a possible closeout on the original — if you can find one — makes any sense.

There is also some speculation that Apple might debut new form factors for the aging MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks, but they are incredible sales successes, so where’s the incentive? But even if new models appeared for the summer and fall buying seasons, the internal hardware wouldn’t be all that different, so it wouldn’t be so revolutionary.

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Monday, May 26th, 2008

Long, long ago, someone referred to a specific attempt at reforming the state of the U.S. economy as “voodoo economics.” Maybe they were right, maybe they were wrong, but when it comes to the often-aggravating problems that occur with technology-related products, you sometimes wonder whether a little magic might be called for.

Back on the heady days of the Classic Mac OS, when something went wrong, there were always a few pat steps to resolve your problems. Restart and disable Extensions, remove preference files, rebuild the desktop and check your hard drive directory. It didn’t matter what the real cause of the problem might be. It was easier to repeat the standard repair methods by rote than to think about it.

In fact, I remember getting into a few arguments with people who recommend the foregoing remedies even when the problem clearly had nothing to do with any of them.

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