Problems Persist

Since my second hard drive was installed, I have been issues backing up to time capsule. I shouldn't get any issue, but for some reason problems are arising. I attempted a backup last night and after about 6 GB of backed up information time machine stops, says there is a problem, and then says if the problem persists to repair the disk. At the moment I am repairing my time capsule sparse bundle in hopes that it will fix the issue. This isn't the first time I have this issue, it happened last week after I installed the hard drive originally. I am guessing it has something to do with the second hard drive being in the computer. I am not very good when it comes to time capsule, and since I don't want to not be able to backup I think I will call Apple on this one.

~Dave

The Second Hard Drive Dilemma

As some of you may remember, I purchased a second hard drive bay from iFixit a while back. Well, unfortunately I have been having some issues. The bay was causing my computer to lock up constantly. Finder would become unresponsive. It would even force me to turn the computer off manually. Even worse, that would cause my hard drive to go into "read only mode". Read only mode meant that my hard drive had to be formatted to be writable again. After this happened three times I made a point to call iFixit to try and solve the issue. The representative told me it was most likely the bay causing the problem, but just to be sure I should remove the drive and test it else where. So I disassembled my Macbook, removed the drive, and proceeded to test it on my desktop computer via a USB to SATA adapter. There was absolutely no issue with the drive at all. At this point I called iFixit it back.


I was told that since it must be the bay at this point, they would send me a replacement bay and that I would send back the old bay. After waiting 3-4 days, the new bay finally came. As a side note: I made sure to leave the laptop disassembled so I could clean it, and to save me the time installing the new bay. With the new bay finally here, I put it back together. As far as I can tell it is working fine. I noticed that the drive still makes programs open slower then I would like, but at this point I believe it is an issue between the drive SATA- ATA adapter which is slowing it down. I haven't sent back the old bay yet as I am waiting to see if this new bay gives me any problems. In the event it does give problems, I have to give iFixit a call back and go from there.

~Dave

Plans for the Future

I have been busy recently with personal stuff, but I do have some plans for the future. First, I will be installing a had drive in my macbook in place of my CD Rom drive so I can have a second hard drive. This will allow me to offload some of the information from my SSD to my HDD. You might wonder, "What about the the CD Drive? You won't be able to use it will you?". No worries there, I thought ahead. I made sure to get a external USB encasement for my drive, thus allowing me to keep the drive and still use it. I made sure to purchase from reputable suppliers. I bought from iFixit.com, as well as Amazon.com. I saved money on my purchase, as well as made sure that I was getting what I wanted. The great thing about iFixit is they help you narrow your choices down to the ones that only work with your computer, so unless you choose the wrong computer it is pretty hard to buy the wrong thing. Later this week, when I receive the items, I will do a write up about it.

~Dave

So...What Happened?

Those of you following me on twitter, you probably know by now that I had an issue with my Macbook. What exactly was my issue though? Well, around 9 PM Thursday night my keyboard stopped functioning. In other words, when I typed nothing happened on screen. The mouse wouldn't move either. My guess was there was a fault connection of some sort which caused the issue.

At first, I was not to keen of going to the Apple Store to get it fixed. Yet, I needed it fixed so I could use my laptop. The reason behind me not wanting to go to the Apple store is because I didn't want to pay a large sum of money for this issue. All I wanted was my keyboard fixed. I thought about it and the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like I would just have to go to Apple. I picked up my iPhone and , through the Apple Store App, scheduled my appointment at the Genius Bar for Friday afternoon.

At about 2:30 PM Friday afternoon I arrive at the Apple Store. I am greeted by a nice elderly man who signs me in. He tells me to stroll on towards the back and wait there until I am called. I knew this already, it wasn't my first time going to the Apple Store, but I just went with the flow. After about five minutes I am called to the counter. The Genius, let's call him Genius, asked me what was going on. I explained to him my keyboard was not working, and, before he could ask, told him my laptop was out of warranty. With that Genius typed some things on his computer and said "Well, we are giving free repairs on cracked laptop cases, let's see if we can fit you in there." That moment just blew me away. The first thing he offered my out of date, out of warranty, product was a free repair. I gladly said yes. Genius explained to me that they would take off my old keyboard and replace it with a brand new one. Genius also made me understand that Apple was not responsible for any data loss that may occur during the operation. I wasn't surprised by this, I had a time machine backup anyway just in case. I filled out the necessary paper work and gave Genius my computer. He told me it would be ready with in 24 hours.

I left the story overjoyed with my experience. I got a brand new keyboard, and I had to pay nothing for it. The cost of the replacement would have been $74! I drove home and started working on some things around the house that needed to get done. It wasn't until about 6 PM that I received a call. When I answered, it was Genius from the Apple Store. He informed me my computer was ready and I could come pick it up when I was ready. I was a little taken aback. I had not expected the repair to be done so quickly. I didn't have time Friday night to pick it up, so I went Saturday afternoon to get it. I walked it, told them I was picking up a Genius Bar repair, and strolled on towards the back. I told another Apple Genius the same thing, and he went to the back to get my laptop. I booted it up in the store to make sure everything worked fine. As I expected it did, and with no data lost.

There was one more thing that happened on the way out. I was looking around, checking out the new Macbook Pros with Thunderbolt. I was approached by another Apple employee, a nice elderly man. He asked me if I had any questions or if there was anything he could help me with. I responded with "No thank you, I am just looking around". He must have noticed me eyeing the new Macbooks because the next thing he said was "You know, these are the new Macbooks. They have Thunderbolt. Let me tell you, I got one of these and going from a dual core processor to a quad core is amazing. The speed difference is mind boggling." I nodded and kept looking. It was at that point that my brother, who was there with me, asked if there were any cords or products for Thunderbolt. The sales rep started talking about how nothing was out yet, but there were products in the making. He asked my brother what type of laptop he had, to which he responded "A Macbook which I bought last year". The sales rep said it was too bad he had bought it last year, if it were in the last three months they could give him the new one for free in exchange for his old one. He did state that my brother could upgrade his RAM to 8GB and that would help speed it up. For some reason it was then that the sales rep looked at me and said "Do you know how to do that?" I responded "Yes" and kept quiet. He continued to talk with my brother about various things such as dual booting windows or running VMWare Fusion. Each time though, he asked me if I knew how to do these things. I kept answering yes. It was after about 5 minutes that he said to me, politely, the following: "You know, you seem to know a lot. You should look into getting a job at the Genius Bar as a Genius." It was right there and then that may experience became almost perfect. Now I have to think about whether or not to look into getting a job there.

~Dave

iPad 2 Event Next Week

 Earlier this week a note was sent out to many media site from Apple. Unfortunately, I didn't get one, but thanks to the internet I can see what it looks like. In fact, I have a picture right here.

Tada! Nice note isn't it?

It would seem that Apple has invited people to come see the next iPad launch. It has become known around the web as iPad 2. So far, there is speculation of quite a few new things. First, there is rumored to be a new and improved speaker slot for when the user is not wearing headphones. Next, it is almost confirmed that there will be a front and back facing camera. This would allow Facetime chats between the iPad and the Macbooks, iPad and the iPhone, or both. Seeing as Apple just released Facetime 1.0 for their new Macbooks, I am going to guess that is what it will be used for. There is also an unknown port on one of the sides. How is this known? Well there was a next gen case floating around, and it showed an open slot. The slot has been rumored for an SD card, thus expanding the memory of the iPad 2. It is also rumored to be a sideways docking connector, but that is unlikely. I personally am hoping this port would be used with the new Thunderbolt technology Apple Released in their new line of Macbooks. This would make syncing the iPad 2 a lot faster.

Leaked specs of the new speakers.

Hopefully Apple add most of these features to the new iPad. There was rumor of a better screen, but a recent source told Mac Rumors that won't be happening. The source, according to Mac Rumors, is a very reliable source and has been right about most Apple launches. 

This event comes right after the announcement of the new Macbooks this past week. Usually Apple will wave the new Macbooks in everyones face at the press announcement, saying how great they are and how they "fit right into the Mac family". Guess it is time to wait it out and see what the announcement brings.

~Dave

New MacBook Pros

As rumored, the Apple Store website was down yesterday morning. Within just a few hours, it was back up with the new Macbook Pros. Although it does not boast all the features which were rumored to be implemented, namely a dedicated boot SSD and much better resolution screens, it does come with some notable changes.

Kicking it off is the new chipset inside the Macbooks. If you buy the 15" or 17" Macbook Pro you have the choice of either a Quad Core i5 or i7. However you purchase the 13" you will be given the choice of either a Dual Core i5 or i7. Both a huge speed boost over the last generation, some boasting speeds of 3.4 GHz with turbo boost in use. This means turbo boost will shift the speed of your processor when needed so that you don't see any speed reduction when using your computer. In addition, Apple has made hyper threading standard on every Macbook Pro. Hyper Threading means you have two threads per core instead of one, so you would have eight virtual cores even though you have a quad core processor.

Next up in line is the biggest news of the announcement: Thunderbolt. This is Intel's Light Peak technology renamed to sound cooler. Thunderbolt boasts transfer speeds of up to 10 GB/s. However, you will never reach this speed because the Macbooks are still using copper instead of fiber optic wire. The goal of this technology is to speed up transfer rates. If this goal is reached, you could theoretical sync your iPod in less then a second. You could also transfer huge HD videos in seconds too. When this product reaches its peak, the consumer will be very pleased. Right now, it can be used for Apple's Cinema Dispaly, and also with an external raid drive known as Promis Pegasus RAID. The raid drive allows up to 12 TB of drives, and will allow you to transfer information extremely fast.

Finally, Apple has decided to go full fledge AMD Raedon in this release. For what ever reason, they did not choose Nvidia. The new Raedon in the Macbook's are the up to 3x faster then the last generation, allowing better graphics on games like Half Life 2 and Portal. Yet again, this card is only in the Macbook Pros 15"-17" models. Looks like the 13" was left out on this one.


Overall it is a good release, but not exactly what people wanted to see. Hopefully Apple will add a dedicated boot SSD in the future for the Macbooks. You may want to consider waiting long if you want a Macbook, mostly because the only "new" technology released is Thunderbolt. Plus, Thunderbolt is so new that no one has any products for it yet, so it is useless at the moment. Then again, it is up to you.

~Dave