Tag Archives: Apple

iPod woes

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Recently, my 2 year old 4G iPod broke. I was listening to a podcast whilst walking to work when the audio froze. I took it out of my pocket and found that everything had frozen – the UI as well as playback.

I tried to reset it on the move, but nothing could unfreeze it. I had to wait until the battery ran down, which took nearly a day in its paraplegic state.

Upon connecting to the mains adapter after it had finally ran out of power, the iPod restarted, but a sad face stared out from me, and nothing could get rid of it. I restarted it again, tried to force it into disk mode, but all to no avail. Just a new icon saying things really were up the creek and I needed to take my iPod to someone to have it fixed.

Arse.

So it’s sat on my desk for a couple of weeks, waiting for me to have time to take it to the Apple Store in Southampton. Until today. For some reason, while shopping for food, an idea occurred. Tehmina‘s iPod (a trusty 2G iPod still going strong) dates from the time when Firewire was the only option, and iPods were Mac only (oh those were the days!). I have been using the supplied USB connection on my iPod thus far. It shouldn’t make any difference, but since I had nothing to lose, I thought I’d give it a go.

Whilst I’m typing this, my ‘broken’ iPod is syncing with iTunes.

When I plugged it in with a Firewire lead, it mounted on the desktop straight away, iTunes launched, and told me that I needed to restore my iPod. One click of the “Restore” button, one iPod reboot, and all seems back to normal.

So, if you’re reading this because you’re having trouble with your iPod, try connecting it to your Mac with a Firewire lead, if you’re lucky enough to know someone who has one.

I’ll be trying to source my own iPod Firewire lead – not only has it ‘fixed’ my iPod, but the sync is happening much much faster.

17" Apple PowerBook screen problems

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[Update] The line is back, despite after disappearing temporarily after a reboot. See the photo below.
[Update 2: 2nd May] A second line has appeared 6 pixels to the left of the first one :-(
[Update 3: 10th May]A third line, this time magenta, is now flickering on and off 495px in from the left. I’m going to need to get a new display.
[Update4: 8th June]I’ve now got 6 lines, cyan, magenta, and yellow. One right down the middle of my screen. I’ve now found a website dedicated to getting Apple to recognise this defect.

My 17″ PowerBook is now 2 years old. It’s been used every day since I’ve had it, and been my workhorse. Even though the new Intel MacBooks are out there I have had no (well, ok, a few) urges to upgrade, until today.

Just an hour ago, a vertical cyan line appeared running down the height of the screen on the right hand side. It would flash on and off randomly, as if the row of pixels were stuck. A quick Google revealed that I was not alone. Some afflicted PowerBook owners often reported that once you have had one line appear, you’ll probably get more. There are photos of some rather extreme examples at crosspond.com.

I’ve just rebooted, and the line has gone away. Maybe it was a glitch, maybe it’ll return. If it does, I’ll take a photo and submit it to Crosspond’s “Bridget Riley” website.

Since I’m in the UK, and if the problem persists, I should be able to get Apple to replace the screen (under the Sale of Goods Act 1979), but I’m not sure. I’ll keep posting about it here, in case others with the same problem pop by.

17

[tags]apple, powerbook, screen defect, 17″ PowerBook G4, hardware[/tags]

WordPressDash

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This is just a quick test post to see if WordPressDash, a widget for OSX’s Dashboard, still works with WordPress 2.1.x

I should also be able to use tags from this widget, thanks to Ultimate Tag Warrior‘s ability to find embedded tags within the post itself.

Well, if you’re reading this, and there are tags listed, it worked..
[tags]WordPressDash, widgets, dashboard, osx, apple, blogging[/tags]

Apple's iPhone will be a closed platform?

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I’ve been a Mac user for over 3 years now, and like most Mac users, I was excited when Steve Jobs announced the iPhone at Macworld San Francisco on Tuesday. Apart from the device looking utterly amazing in every way, it was revealed that it actually runs a version of OSX. Wow. Or so I thought.

I’m sure I’m not alone in first thinking “Wow! A pocket Mac!”. David Pogue’s blog reveals further disappointments. It won’t run iChat, it doesn’t have GPS (despite having a Google Maps app), and the web browser doesn’t run Flash. I thought it was meant to be an “internet communicator”, Mr Jobs!

As reported by Macrumors, the iPhone will not be an open platform. Apple want to control everything that runs on the phone. An article in the New York Times, where Steve Jobs is interviewed about the iPhone, states him as saying:

“We define everything that is on the phone,” he said. “You don’t want your phone to be like a PC. The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn’t work anymore. These are more like iPods than they are like computers.”

I disagree. I used to have a Nokia 6600, which ran the Symbian OS, on which I ran lots of 3rd party applications and none of them ever prevented me from making a call. Ever. Is the ‘OSX Lite’ that runs on the iPhone really that flaky?

Or, more likely, maybe it’s because of Apple’s obligations to Cingular. Because of the iPhone’s built-in WiFi, 3rd party applications could be developed to use the device for VoIP, which could damage Cingular’s revenue from voice and data calls. Who knows.

Still, it’s easy to be cynical before the device is released, and there’s still 6 months to go. Maybe once it’s on general release, people will find a way around things, or Apple will add some more features. I’m sure that it will do what it does very well indeed, just without the flexibility to do things your way…