Melbourne turned out a rather typically gloomy day last Sunday. On my travels, I discovered a rather quaint boutique on the upper end of Smith St, just before Brunswick St.
Inside were dried, used tea bags, hanging in the window. Not only was this installation revolting, I did reminsce on that fabulous childrens TV show about T bag (anyone remember it?).
But just outside this rather quirky shop was this tree. It was covered on lace! How bizarre!
I will miss the pure white shine of my first laptop
As a new chapter begin to reign, another says good night…and good luck. My trusty white MacBook has lasted a good 18 months, ever since I put down my whole paycheck on the Apple online store and thought I would never see this day.
The journey has been one hell of a ride. From the “it just works” ringing true and to the elation felt during the “unpacking” experience, I have become a true fanboy. Impressed with Tiger’s operating system, I did find the 1GB of RAM limiting. I subsequently doubled the capacity a week later, and then was truly satisfied. I was amazed that for such a slim laptop, it could handle all the functions and processes like the Windows desktop I’ve been using for the past decade. It was sublime. Everything I’d wanted in a computer.
And it was a Mac.
“Why are you selling it?” pipped my mum.
“Because it is too heavy to carry around” I replied.
She nodded in agreement. She has had the privileged of carrying it once or twice.
“But what’s wrong with it?” she quizzed.
“Nothing.”
After another pause, I told her that I will be replacing it with the MacBook Air.
“Oh, that slim one?“
I was floored. My dear mother, who doesn’t even own a mobile phone knew which laptop I was planning on purchasing.
And that is the marketing power of Apple.
Even for those who claim to be computer illiterate, Apple sure has pulling power. Even when I did bring my MacBook into work to show my latest vacation shots, the gravitational pull towards such a beautifully designed, white laptop is astounding.
But the time has come when in the technological world, and the electronic design of “planned senescence,” 18 months for a computing device is bordering on obsolete. Already the MacBooks have been revised – with a better LCD screen, bigger internal HDD and bumped processing speed. It was already making my MacBook look like the older sister.
But what made my MacBook look like the older, uglier sister, was the gorgeous MacBook Air.
The aluminium casing of Apple's slim beauty
The moment Steve Jobs announced it at WMC 08 in San Francisco – undoing the red string of a standard yellow office envelope and pulling out the thinnest MacBook, I just HAD to have one. But I could not justify the high cost and a second laptop. Even though it was marketed as a secondary computer, two MacBooks for an individual is ludicrous. Not even I could justify it.
But I have. Ultraportability without sacrificing the screen or keyboard size was realised in this sleek new device. Sure it didn’t contain an optical drive. I rarely used mine on the MacBook. Sure it only had 80GB of HDD. I would just have to purchase an additional external HDD and wirelessly sync my media and content. Sure that would mean forking out more money to bring the MacBook Air up to my standards of usage, but it was worth it.
The other features including an ambient light sensor, backlit keyboard, free Leopard OS X installed and it’s ultraportability design and stunning form factor was definitely a winner for me. So I now bid my MacBook good night. You have served me well. I cried as I selected the “Erase + Install” option last night. It is the final chapter.
It will go to a good home. And I will miss it’s white casing. It might be the last, as Apple plan to upgrade it’s MacBook and MacBook Pro lines very soon. They all might be turning aluminium. They all might be black. Who knows? At least I can see myself upgrading to another MacBook Air in 18 months time. So time will tell.
The changing of the guard
The thin factor difference is astounding
Another smart funny ad from the “Fight the Fuzzies at school”, brought to you by Kellogg’s Sultana Bran. Clever ads with a punch.
Apparently this teacher isn’t doing her job quite well, considering both Sam and now Kylie had failed their maths tests.
SMB vs. APF
DEFINITIONS
AEBS – AirPort Extreme Base Station
AFP – Apple Filing Protocol
APX – AirPort Express
HDD – Hard Disk Drive
MBA – MacBook Air
SMB – Samba
HALLELUJAH! Thank God for the Apple Discussion forums. After 3.5 hours on the phone to Apple Technical Support, trolling through the online discussion forums has led me to the discovery of SMB vs. AFP connectivity issues.
After two weeks of trying to iron out the not-to-impressive wireless network, I had resigned to the fact that everytime I woke my MBA from sleep, I have a 70/30 percent chance of losing connectivity with my external HDD that is connected to my newly purchased AEBS.
Error message after waking computer from sleep
Even taking the advise of a “product specialist” – to format my external hard drive to HFS+ (Mac OS Extended [Journaled]), AND making sure the Partitioned Map Scheme was GUID (I had it on Master Boot – which is better for Mac/Windows file sharing), selecting the external HDD to “mount” at start up/login (through System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items) and then resetting the whole system to balance out the various products (MBA, AEBS, external HDD and APX) – it did not guarantee the external HDD to be located under “Shared Devices” in the Finder window.
The product specialist did touch on a fact that my NETGEAR wireless modem could be dynamically reassigning a new IP address to AirPort whenever I woke the MBA from sleep – hence the AEBS not being able to “follow” the ever-changing IP address. One work-around was to assign a static IP address. But that would mean configuring the NETGEAR wireless modem router and a bunch of other things, to which Apple could not help me with.
So, the solution? Waking up my computer from sleep many times until I can see my external HDD under the “Shared Devices”. This involved waking, login out, login in, rebooting, resetting….and a combination of all those.
BUT oh, what a discovery! It is 1:22am and after reading a thread about connectivity issues relating to external HDD with AEBS, here is the revelation:
Some users did not have problems with the Airdisk, other users report major problems, like lost connection after Macbook sleep. Why did some user reports this major problems and other say everything is fine: I think that’s because they use different filesystems on their Airdisk and therefore they use SMB OR AFP as connection protocol. I assume that user with Fat32 formated USB-disk did not have the same problems because the use SMB to connect to their disk. My disk is HFS+ formated and so Leopard (10.5.1) uses per default the AFP to connect. I have major problems especially after my Macbook wakes up from sleep modus, then I get the “connection lost” error and I am not able to reconnect to the Disk again. I have to reconnect the usb cable to the AEBS or restart the station. But I find out, that the SMB connection to the disk works fine, even if the AFP corrupts after the sleep modus
Solution – (Go > Connect to server > smb://IP-ADDRESS/….. ).
Now comes a time of testing this SMB connection out. I have added both SMB and AFP to be connected to the server, and when I wake this computer from sleep in the morning, I will do some more vigorous testing (waking from sleep, login out/in, rebooting). My bet is that the AFP will be corrupted and that the SMB will still have a strong and stable connection.
Wish me luck!
The Ghosts of Macs
…Out with the old….and in with the new…
When you get a Mac, the first thing you noticed when you turn it on, it just works.
This has been the motto of the Apple company since the mid 90’s. And although this works most of the time, the slew of new products and their relevant software has eroded this mantra…somewhat. As an “out-of-the-box” experience, it still holds true. There is no multiple “authorization” steps, or rebooting. Switch it on, and it automatically connects to your existing network, wirelessly.
Once the administrator account has been set, and you tinkle with the preferences, the software update loads up and you are required to install the necessarily new security and/or software updates. No incompatibility issues encountered.
Or more importantly, no more BSOD.
However, with the introduction to substandard software (MobileMe anyone? Can you hear me? No? Has my contacts been ‘pushed’ yet?), crippling firmware (Remote Disc, Time Machine) and buggy hardware (AirPort Extreme), my faith in the Apple mantra has waned.
Take into these two accounts. With the introduction of my new MacBook Air, the puny internal drive required a whole new upgrade of hardware. I decided to replace my aging (18 months) MacBook with the Air as my primary computer, while retaining all my data and information. This required a way of accessing my media file located externally from my internal drive.
In comes in first problem.
Deciding against the crippling Time Capsule (it’s ability to decrease your networks speeds considerably while preparing to back up) or its limiting function as ONLY the servant of Time Machine, and not as a NAS, I passed it up in favour of the AirPort Extreme. The lesser cousin, if not the original, had the ability of connecting printers and external hard drives through it’s one (another limiting factor) USB port – thus allowing the computers on the same network to access them, wirelessly.
In theory this sounds great, but in practice has resulted in migraines, 3.5 hours of calls to the Apple technical support line and many hours configuring, reconfiguring and researching on the internet on the way around the multitude of problems encountered.
This resulted in abrupt server disconnections, chaotic incorrect linkage of files through various media settings, corrupt data and a rather ad hoc “network”. It has been more trouble than its worth. However, theoretically speaking, it is a dream. I can wirelessly browse my entire music collection all residing on the external drive on my iPhone, and then selecting it to play wirelessly to my speakers.
Yes, when it works, it’s the most satisfying moment. When it doesn’t, I am music-less. The sound of silence is roaring. And half the capabilities of my “desktop” is lost. All because of an unknown setting through my DSL/cable wireless modem, AirPort Extreme and my MacBook Air. It should be on the same network, it should be able to recognise each other, it should have my external drive mounted onto my computer always. But it doesn’t.
When it works, it causes an jubilant elation of accomplishment. When it doesn’t, it only causes frustration and heartache.
Which brings me to the second issue – the software provided to work around the limiting capabilities of the MacBook Air.
Remote Disc. This is the most disabling, piece of shit I’ve ever encountered/installed. In theory, it shares the optical drive of one computer (be it a Mac or PC, a DVD or CD drive) with your brand new spanking optical drive-free MacBook Air. It has only one ability – install purchased software for the MacBook Air.
It cannot stream a DVD movie, play audio CDs, rip music or burn.
Ok. Since I only wanted to install iWorks 08 that I had purchased from the Apple Store onto my MacBook Air, I assumed it would be fine using my ‘redundant’ MacBook. I installed it, had to reboot (that is odd. Macs aren’t known for their requirement to reboot after installation of software, except for major software updates) and fired it up.
The MacBook Air could recognise the shared DVD drive, but could not receive authorisation. After tinkering with the options, it had me baffled. Assuming it was the difference in operating system (Tiger vs. Leopard), I did a software update, noticed there was more updates for the ‘DVD or CD Sharing’ capabilities for Tiger and installed them.
It still wouldn’t work.
In pure desperation, I tried an ancient PC, running Windows XP. I installed the software and guess what? It didn’t ask me to reboot! On a Windows machine! How ludicrous! I was astounded. The I pop in the iWorks 08 installation disc into the DVD drive and powered up my MacBook Air. Yes, it could recognise there was something to share. Yes it sent out a request for authorisation. And yes, the Windows machine accepted the request.
In 3 minutes, I had the new Apple iWorks 08 software installed onto my MacBook Air. And all it took was a Windows machine. How embarrassing.
I could have purchased an overpriced external “Superdrive” for $139 to install the software, but also have the ability to do any other optical drive can: watch DVDs, listen to audio CDs, rip music, burn discs….but then, it’s USB powered drive is only workable on a MacBook Air. How crippling is that? Apparently it has nothing to do with the power source of the Superdrive, but a change in the BUS internally – which could be rectified with a firmware update. But will that happen? No.
One can hope that Apple will fix up its growing list of failures – MobileMe, Remote Disc, AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule. As I tentatively embrace my new system setup, I am wondering about the ghost of my old MacBook…and relive the simplicity of having everything on one piece of device. But that is the price you pay for a wireless setup on the most sexiest machines I’ve ever typed on.
..Below is a transcript between myself and my patient on Friday afternoon…
A woman comes in for a pelvic ultrasound scan
I ask her what’s wrong
She wants to know something about months
“Bleeding for months?” I ask
“No, we need to find out the months”
“The what?”
“You know..”
“Ah, no…”
*awkward silence*
“I’m pregnant!” she finally blurted out
“OH I see…you want to know your dates?”
“Yes..how many months I am”
“OK”
So I scan her…
“Is this your first scan for this pregnancy?”
“No”
“Oh! how many scans have you had?”
“4″
“FOUR?! They would have found out your due date…”
“Oh no! They were for my previous children…”
“OK…SO, is this the FIRST scan for THIS pregnancy?”
“Yes!”
“OK!”
*scanning…scanning*
“OK…you’re about 12w1day…”
“Ok…so, how many months does that make me?”
“We don’t go by months, weeks are far more accurate…”
So I tell her again…
“You are 12w1d…”
She repeats slowly…
“12 weeks……1 day……so does that make me 1 month pregnant?”
………….
…………….
*more awkward silence…*
“There are roughly 4 weeks to a month…so that would make you…..?”
*nervous laughter*
“Goodbye!”
