Macintosh

Still having problems with looping echo on my Powerbook G4 15" There’s a new website about the problem, so go there and sign up if you experience this problem. It’s incredible that Apple has chosen to keep this problem quiet. Instead of admitting that they have a problem with the latest 15 and 17" Powerbooks. Instead they give lame excuses and tells the customer that they can only run one audio program at a time. But even that doesn’t work. Give it enough time, and this could become a PR nightmare for them. If they just admitted that they have a problem and that a fix is on the way, but right now no one even knows if they are going to fix this. ...

After reading stuff like this and this, I wonder Is it only me who sees the connection? There’s been a lot of discussions on the net about Apple getting a bit of the Intel “Intel Inside” payoff and if they consider putting the logo on the new macs? My uneducated guess is that Mr Jobs actually made Intel change their logo to something worthy putting on a Mac. Just my guess. But I’m known to be insane… ...

I have had a bit of a snag in my program Im writing, so to do something else for a while. So I tried to install Ruby On Rails, a much talked about web developer framework. And after reading all the hype, I just had to see what it was like. So off to Ruby By Rails homepage to read up on it. They have a presentation area that has a couple of Quicktime films demonstrating Rails programming. And rails looks good! But another thing caught my eye, the guy managed to write code fast and easily it seemed. And the guy doing the demonstration was doing it on a Mac OS X machine. The speed and the way of working with text really blew me away. But nowhere could I find the name of the text editor. So I had some googling to do. And I found it. It’s called TextMate. So I wanted to buy it so I could use it to program my new VoIP software client. But I don’t have much money to spend on software right now, being totally broke, but after seeing the price €39 I bought it immediately, you can’t complain at that price. The integration with XCode looks good. I haven’t had any problems so far. It’s nice to see that you can find great software from small firms and download and buy them directly. ...

The IAX client I’m writing is coming along nicely. It’s now in a state that makes the program usable. And today I made changes so I could compile a universal binary. And the program works on my PPC mac, but I use some libraries I needed to change the makefiles for, so I don’t know if they work on a Intel Mac. It would be cool if I could get the first release to support universal binaries, so hopefully I can find someone who has a developer machine, or a pc with a hacked Mac OS X for Intel on it.

On the latest versions of Apples Powerbook, there is a function called hibernate. Normally when you close the lid on your Powerbook to let it go to sleep, forgetting to plug it in to a charger, all your unsaved data will be lost. With hibernation activated, you just plug in your Powerbook with the depleted battery and press start. Now the desktop comes up, just the way it was when you put your machine to sleep. But this only works on the new machines? Well, some people beg to differ. Go read it and see if you can hack your machine to get it to work. I did it on my Powerbook G4 867ghz and have had no trouble so far. ...

I’m currently looking for a new job, so I needed to write a CV and some other stuff. So I thought that this would be an excellent opportunity to try out Apple Pages. Sure, it’s a bit buggy and slow in some instances, but over all it’s actually a pretty decent program. It won’t replace Microsoft Word for power users, but for people like me, who need to write simple documents, it’s perfect. My guess is that Apple have not done to well selling this program. And if they go the normal route, they’ll just stop updating it and let it die. This is a lesson that Apple really need to learn from Microsoft. They have to stick to it, improving the program, and the buyers will come.

In apples voice/video chat program, it appears that it uses some kind of SIP protocol to communicate. But Apple, why not implement SIP phone ability into iChat AV? Being able to make voice phone calls to other SIP phone systems would be really cool.

I’ve been generally happy with tiger on my powerbook. The Spotlight search really has helped me finding my stuff. But I’ve had problems with slowdowns after working with my computer for a couple of days. I never turn of my computer, just putting it to sleep when I’m done working, and after a couple of days the machine would get slower and slower. I finally gave up and started to search for the problem. Turned out that Dashboard (when loaded) ate memory like a hog! My guess is that their is a memory leak when using some of the widgets. But for me, Dashboard is to slow to be of practical use for me, so I opted to disable it. And now the machine works great again. ...

[caption id=“attachment_2955” align=“alignleft” width=“400”]©John Lillis[/caption] I got fed up with the fan that’s running constantly on my Powerbook 12" rev b 867mhz after installing the 10.3.8 Update. So here’s how you do it: Download Update 10.2.8 and use Pacifist to extract /System/Library/ExtensionsAppleADM103x.kext from MacOSXUpdate10.2.8.pkg to the desktop. Do a backup of AppleADM103x.kext from your startup disk at /System/Library/Extensions to your home folder. Copy AppleADM103x.kext from your Desktop (the one you extracted from 10.2.8) to /System/Library/Extensions, you’ll need to enter the admin password to do that. Start Disk Utility and do a repair permissions on your start volume. Problem solved. Just for good measure, reset the parameter-RAM by holding down Command-Alt-P-R at startup. My machine now turns on the fans at 148 Fahrenheit instead of 125 Fahrenheit. For some reason Apple choose to change the temperature when the fan starts on Rev.A Powerbook 12" after Mac OS X 10.2.8 from 148 Fahrenheit to 125 Fahrenheit. This gives the result that the fan runs almost constantly due to the fact that the powerbook operates normally at 125 Fahrenheit. I did this hack back when Apple changed stuff in the 10.3.2 update, and they haven’t updated AppleADM103x.kext until 10.3.8. ...

After updating to 10.3.8 Apple managed to lower the temperature that the fans turn on and off. So now when doing medium light work the fan goes on. And it drives me crazy. My guess is that they only changed the values one or two Fahrenheit, but it’s just at the point where my normal work load is. I tried the old trick to replace the kext for the fan control, but to no avail.