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MacBook Surgery Part 2

After waiting a week I finally recieved a hard drive from Halifax-based GreenLyph, a drive which turned out to be bigger than the one I ordered.

I'm guessing that was thier way of making up for the delays with my order and if it was, I'm grateful - it went along way to easing my frustration.

Installing the drive turned out be easier than putting in the ram, which was a pretty simple process but required a frightening amount of pressure to slot the memory chips in properly.

Both upgrades were made easier thanks to extremely helpful how-to-guides on the web.

Once I had the drive in, I rebooted the machine using the OS X Leopard DVD and formatted the Fujitisu drive to Mac OS X journaled file system. After another reboot I was able to select a restore from backup option, which restored everything from the old 60 gig hard drive on to the new computer.

Following the hard drive upgrade, I've found my machine quite a bit more responsive. I'm not sure if that's because the new drive is a 5400 rpm model (versus 4200 rpm model) or if its becaue when Mac OS X's Time Machine backup application restored the computer it didn't both copying over log files and caches, thus giving the system a bit of a, for lack of a better phrase, digital enema.

Either way, I'm happy with the results of the MacBook tune-up and I feel a whole lot better about Time Machine, which can not only restore individual files but entire systems quickly and reliably.

From the D'uh file

From the Globe and Mail's Technology section:

The App Store – an online marketplace for downloadable games and other software that run on the iPhone – launched the same day as the latest generation version of the device on July 11, is already proving to be a hit with users and a potential gold mine for software developers.

“It has certainly changed the game,” said Josh Martin, a senior research analyst with Yankee Group in Boston. “We know now that the reason people are buying iPhones … is because they can personalize their experience.

The expectation was that the App Store is what would differentiate the iPhone, and the numbers seem to bear that out.”

Read the full story (well worth it) here.

There's one point in the story I think needs to be debunked:

Although Apple has taken an early lead with the App Store, Mr. Martin said he expects Apple's competitors to follow suit and produce their own online software marketplaces.

and like the competitors for the iTunes store in general, they will fail, miserably?

Why?

Because when you control the gadget and the software you control the total user experience. No one else can offer that unbeatable combination of software and hardware excellence.

MacBook surgery - Part One

I finally got around to upgrading my first-generation MacBook (CoreDuo, 1.83).

I ordered a two gig ram kit from Crucial.com (which cost $62 plus $18 in taxes and customs fees) and a 160 gig , 5400 rpm, hard drive ($102) from GreeenLyph, a Halifax-based company.

The RAM, which was travelling from the US, arrived right on time. The hard drive? Not so much. It hasn't even shipped out yet. (Err).

While I'm waiting for the new hard drive, I decided to install the ram. (On the wise advise of a co-worker) and I'm testing it out to make sure everything is stable. It's easier to troubleshoot if you make one change instead of two.

The installation was a little harder than I thought it would be (you really have to push the RAM in firmly, as in leaving-an-indent-on-your-fingers-hard to make sure the two modules are perfectly seated.

Overall, I didn't notice that much of a speed difference on boot up, however, applications seem more responsive as does OS X Leopard as a whole.

The next step will be a bit tricker - swapping out the 60 gig harddrive and restoring all the data via Time Machine.

The third and final step, purchasing a new battery, will be the easiest. My hope is that with the upgrades I'll be able to give this Mac, which is destined for my wife after I upgrade to a MacBook Pro in the fall, another two to three years of useful life.

An Olympic-sized failure

I wonder how many chairs Steve Ballmer threw out the window over this one?

"At the exact moment Li Ning was rounding the lip of the Bird's Nest during the amazing torch-lighting climax, someone snapped this photo of our good friend the BSOD nestled amongst the Nest's steel twigs."

Read the whole thing, with comments, here.

(Image via Gizmodo).

Samsung Instinct Review

From this morning's innovate section (B1).

MONCTON - The Samsung Instinct is an elegant, full-featured touch cellphone that is arguably the best consumer device Bell Mobility has ever launched in Canada.

But it's not in the same league as Apple Inc.'s iPhone.

While the Samsung Instinct ($130 on a three-year contract) looks undeniably like the iPhone, the similarities are only on the surface.

Both phones feature full-screen touch capability, meaning there is no physical number pad or keyboard. Both use finger touches to navigate between programs such as web browsers, e-mail programs and GPS navigation.

Both feature YouTube as well as Facebook integration.

The Instinct even boasts several features that the iPhone lacks - a QVGA camcorder for recording video, multimedia messaging services (MMS) and haptic feedback. Haptic feedback allows the Instinct to respond with subtle vibrations to the touch, which lets you know when you've pushed a button.

The Instinct's GPS system also offers features lacking in the iPhone such as full, turn-by-turn directions with voice automated guide and 2D and 3D maps.

One feature the Instinct lacks that the iPhone has is Wi-Fi connectivity. This gives the iPhone a distinct edge when it comes to mobile browsing speed when Wi-Fi is available as well as savings on data usage as Wi-Fi data doesn't count against monthly limits.

Yet for all its added features, the Instinct remains a 'me-too-phone' and is burdened by a slow and clunky user interface. Surfing the web on its browser was pouring-molasses-on-a-cold-day slow at times, despite being on Bell Aliant's advanced EVDO high-speed mobile data network in Moncton. Using the browser was frustrating at times as well because the software's zoom-in and zoom-out button for web pages lacks the sophistication and the ease of Apple's pinch and spread finger motions.

The Instinct isn't an iPhone-killer because it lacks Apple's winning combination of elegant hardware, sleek, easy-to-use software and tight integration with the iTunes Music and Applications store.

Unfortunately for Bell Mobility and Aliant, Rogers Communications Inc. has a lock on the iPhone in Canada.

The iPhone can only run on Rogers' GSM network, so beyond any contractual deals between Rogers and Apple, there's also a technological hurdle that both Bell and Telus would have to overcome in order to offer the iPhone. This technology barrier also means Rogers customers can't switch their iPhones over to rival services.

Both Bell and Telus use a CDMA-based mobile network. GSM is widely used in the United States and around the world.

But while the Instinct won't necessarily knock the iPhone off the top of the smartphone hill in Canada, that doesn't mean its not going to do well as a close runner-up.

Bell's introduction of the Instinct does take advantage of one of Rogers' key weaknesses: price.

Bell Mobility is offering a $10 a month unlimited data plan with the Instinct while Roger's best plan (a promotional deal that's scheduled to be discontinued at the end of August) is $30 for six gigabytes of data. Now, in fairness, six gigabytes a month on a handheld device is virtually unlimited. Even under heavy usage, the average iPhone user is going to be hard pressed to break past one gigabyte of usage.

But Bell's data price point is compelling and could herald lower prices from Rogers once demand for the iPhone plateaus. As it stands, Rogers is still experiencing unprecedented demand for the iPhone with new shipments arriving each week.

The Instinct retails for roughly $70 less than the iPhone. However, that doesn't include the cost of upgrading the Instinct's memory from the two gigabyte card included with the phone to an eight gigabyte card (about $40), leaving the Bell device with a roughly $30 edge over the iPhone.

Both devices are fairly close when it comes to voice and data plans, including features such as text messaging and caller-id. The Instinct's $129 price comes only if subscribers buy a $15 voicemail, text messaging and mobile web browsing.

Bell's cheapest plan is about $59.70 a month, including fees, before taxes. Meanwhile Rogers' cheapest iPhone plan is about $67.50 including fees, before taxes.

For those who are in an existing Bell contract and don't want to terminate it or for those who prefer Bell's service to Rogers', the Instinct makes for a compelling upgrade.

But for those looking for the bleeding-edge of smartphones and want the ultimate mobile user experience, the iPhone is still the clear choice.

(Image via Bloomberg News).

Over 10,000 visits

Wow,

In the past four months I've amassed more than 10,000 visits. Nice.

Thanks for reading and please keep stopping by.

I'm going to try and get back to at least a post a day in September.

Oh, and from the irony file:

LAS VEGAS — With thousands of hackers milling around the Black Hat convention here, and widespread snooping on the public WiFi network, one place was supposed to be off limits: the press room.

But in a case of reporters spying on other reporters, three journalists working for the French publication Global Security Magazine were booted Thursday from the hackers' conference after they were allegedly caught hacking into the private computer network set up for the media.

Source: The Globe and Mail.

Terminator technology

From CNet

Researchers at the University of Illinois and Northwestern University have created a camera with a layout similar in size and shape to the human eye. The eye camera is based on "single-crystalline silicon detectors and electronics, configured in a stretchable, interconnected mesh," according to the University of Illinois.

The curved technology will put an entire image in focus, in contrast to today's cameras, which take images that are sharper in the center than near the edges, according to researchers. Plus, the technology could be a big step toward the development of a bionic eye similar to the one worn by the "Terminator."

Linux get serious about taking on Apple

From The Register:

Billionaire, cosmonaut and founder of the fast-growing Ubuntu Linux distro Mark Shuttleworth dreams impossible dreams.

No, not a return to the stars. He believes in something that's far harder for mortal open source engineers to achieve.

That dream? To produce a desktop more beautiful to ordinary users than legions of Apple programmers supping on the milk of chief exec Steve Jobs' alleged brilliance are capable of producing. That includes a desktop not funded by a clutter of annoying banner or Flash-based ads, but paid for by subscription-based services.

Now you're done dreaming, go home and code for the victory.

In a Tuesday evening O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) keynote, Shuttleworth called on delegates to make a concerted effort not just to catch Apple but to overtake the company in the quality of the desktop experience they deliver users.

His company Canonical, Ubuntu's commercial sponsor, is working to make the Ubuntu desktop "more beautiful" in the next two years, he told OSCON.

"I think the great task in front of us in the next two years is to lift the experience of the Linux desktop from something stable and usable and not pretty, to something that's art," Shuttleworth said.

"Think of the way the iPhone uses a pure software experience, it abstracts away all the hardware," he said. "You can paint anything on the screen because it's all software."

Read the full story here.

Making Linux prettier would help ine race against Apple, but it's just one part of a complex formula that includes tight integration between hardware and software development, a fast, easy-to-use and great looking operating system complimented by easy-to-use yet powerful personal media management software (pictures, audio, video).

I just don't think the open source community has the money to challenge Apple. Microsoft does, but it's throwing it down the drain on trying to acquire Yahoo! and developing table-size versions of the iPhone.

The U is for Useless.

From the Associated Press:

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Anna Patterson's last Internet search engine was so impressive that industry leader Google Inc. bought the technology in 2004 to upgrade its own system.

She believes her latest invention is even more valuable — only this time it's not for sale.

Patterson instead intends to upstage Google, which she quit in 2006 to develop a more comprehensive and efficient way to scour the Internet.

The end result is Cuil, pronounced "cool." Backed by $33 million in venture capital, the search engine plans to begin processing requests for the first time Monday.

Cuil had kept a low profile while Patterson, her husband, Tom Costello, and two other former Google engineers — Russell Power and Louis Monier — searched for better ways to search.

Now, it's boasting time.

I thought "cool" people didn't need to boast? Also, these particular Cuil shouldn't be boasting about anything. Its search results are dismal, it attached random, incorrect images to results and sometimes you can't even connect to the server.

Cuil is a classic example of sizzle over steak. A hot-looking but functionally-challenged web site isn't going to change the world the way Google has. Besides, Microsoft has the market covered on functionally-challenged software. They may even have a patent.

Cuil needs to go back to formula (see the first Spider-Man film) before it's too late.

iPhone data usage and battery life update

Since I picked up my 3G iPhone on July 11th I've had a chance to put it through its paces.

So far I've used a combined (upload and download) 164 megabytes (8 up / 156 down). I've used GPS Maps, e-mail, web surfing extensively on Moncton's 3G network on the EDGE network in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.

As far as battery life goes, I've used it for a maximum of five hours in one day (near constant web, e-mail, GPS use and light calling) before having to charge it.

I consistently get between three to four hours of medium usage along with about two days of standby time before charging.