Glass building…

Church tower…

I did some Googling and found very few alternatives – some looked flimsy, some were bulky, some were plain ugly and they were all way too expensive for what they are – molded plastic nubs.
 

What to do…

As you can see here, the MacBook Pro has less than half a millimeter of airspace underneath. It’s part of Apple’s super sleek design, but it naturally restricts significant air flow.

I’ve used two 3M “Self Stick Rubber Pads” under the laptop and right next to the paper-thin feet Apple supplied.

Here you can see the MacBook Pro with the 3M rubber pads – the back is raised by about 1/4″. The pads hold up under moderate heat. Super warm laptops may eventually turn the 3M glue a little gooey. It takes a bit of heat, though. The 3M rubber pads cost $2.50 for 12 – enough for 6 laptops or 6 applications.


 

The solution I went with…

The MacBook Pro is lifted by roughly 1/2″, providing extra air flow. The 3M mini hook is strong, gives a very comfortable angle of lift for ergonomic typing, etc. The 3M mini hooks are $3.50 for a set of 6, enough for 3 laptops or 3 applications.

Here are the two 3M packages. I got mine at The Container Store, but they’re available in lots of stores. And not to be too obvious, but #1 is the 3M rubber feet ($2.50) and #2 is the 3M mini hooks ($3.50).

 

I recloned my hard drive and prepared to wipe everything and install a fresh copy of Snow Leopard. Literally on the verge of rebooting for the clean-sweep, I opened Disk Utility and ran the “Repair Disk Permissions” and “Verify Disk” functions.

Lo and behold, the zip archives are now opening with Snow Leopard’s built-in Archive Utility (which no longer freezes up). I re-installed Unarchiver and reset it as the default unzip app. All’s well, and I saved myself an evening of reinstalling all my apps. Phew!

If anyone else out there Googles “Snow Leopard won’t unzip” or “Archive Utility.app not working”, I hope they land here for the quick and easy fix.

At the tick of 5:44pm, I rebooted my MacBook Pro 1) with the USB memory key attached and 2) while holding the alt/option key down to select a boot drive. I selected the OS X installation partition and opted for the “erase and install” option.

The installation was complete and the system rebooted at 5:53pm. I got through the final setup screens and had the new OS X desktop under my control at 5:54pm. Total time: 10 minutes!

Why was this clean installation so fast? The USB flash memory to SSD flash memory data transfer is much faster than DVD to SSD, and dramatically faster than DVD to spinning HDD.

As a side note, when installing OS X from a flash drive, you don’t have to wait for the standard integrity check of the installation DVD – the verification effort is automatically skipped. I’ve always ditched that step anyway, but for those who allow verification to continue, a good deal of valuable time can be lost. Just another benefit of going all-flash.

There were two things that really sold me on the Corsair P128: the 220MB/s read and 200MB/s write speeds and the 128MB cache. The read/write speeds are near top of the line for SSDs. The Corsair’s 128MB cache is simply staggering compared to the average 8MB or 16MB cache on standard laptop hard drives (16MB cache for the 500GB Seagate).

The P128 is the exact length, height and width as the 500GB Seagate. The P128, however, is much, much lighter.

Here are some simple before and afters:

Here’s the P128 getting mounted in the drive bay:

Dropping from 500GB storage was a bit of a mental hurdle, but I really value speed over size. That’s what external drives are for.

After a few days using the P128, I’m very satisfied. The price still makes me wince, though. Ouch.

Using Carbon Copy Cloner, it took roughly 3 1/2 hours to clone the contents of my 320GB drive to the 500GB. 120GB of photos was the #1 slow down, and #2 was the 320GB drive dragging its proverbial feet. Once the cloning was done, replacing the 320 with the 500 took about 2 minutes – 5 little screws (1 brace and 4 stabilizers on the drive).

The first thing I noticed was that the 500GB Seagate drive boots about 40% faster than the 320GB Hitachi. Apps open up a little faster – not 40% faster, but certainly 20% or so.

Once I’d booted up, I ran several tests and scans on the drive to make sure the drive was going to be stable and error free. Nothing sucks quite so much as banking on a new hard drive, only to have it melt down. Tests showed no drive flaws.

I then ran an XBench test to compare the two drives. The 500GB drive scored well over twice as fast as the 320GB with sequential and random reads/writes. For the non-techies, this simply means that this new Seagate drive whips the snot out of the Hitachi drive.

(XBench is a free utility that every Mac user should have, even if it’s rarely used.)

On the down side, the Seagate drive is just as loud as the 320GB Hitachi. That was a little disappointment to me. That said, the drive isn’t “noisy” per se, it’s just that the spinning is clearly audible in a near silent room or if one listens within 6 or 7 inches of the laptop body. No huge deal.

Other positives? XP boots and runs faster in Parallels. So does Windows 7. So does Linux. Photoshop CS4 opens up 25% faster and runs actions in an instant. File transfers to other 7200RPM drives are way faster. In short, pretty much everything is better and faster.

The best part of all? After Leopard, tons of apps, tens of thousands of photos, etc. I’ve got about 300GB free. Awesome!!

If you’re considering buying the Seagate 500GB drive, I hope these comments help. And hopefully you wind up with a good stable drive that passes any tests you subject it to.

Over the last few years, Apple has been reducing the size of it’s product packaging. Some packaging has been reduced by well over 50% – iPod/iPhone cases, MacBook and MacBook Pro boxes, etc. Software packaging (like that for OS X Leopard, iLife, iWork, etc.) has been dropped by about 75% in size, which is really great for the environment (and for Apple’s profit margin – win win).

After getting a new MacBook Pro, I was looking at the installation DVDs for OSX and iLife. They’re still DVDs – ostensibly an aging medium, especially with USB sticks and other flash memory becoming so widely available and inexpensive.

I think it’d make sense for Apple to ditch future OS X installation DVDs in favor of a locked USB installation device (or even SDHC card with a USB reader). Every Intel-based Apple computer, whether an iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro or Mac Pro, comes with USB ports and can boot directly from those USB ports. USB data transfer speeds are much better than DVD transfer, so theoretically, OS X installation or repair could be greatly improved via USB.

Price is one thing to consider. I know USB flash memory is higher priced than DVD disks, but in bulk, USB drives can’t be too expensive. Besides, Apple would be able to drop packaging sizes by at least another 50-75%, saving more money and earning an even better reputation.

I’ll bet even Greenpeace would give a thumbs-up. Maybe. Those guys are tough to please! (I remember when Greenpeace was warm & fuzzy, all about hippies saving the whales and seal cubs. Seems like such a long time ago.)
 

The problem? When the MBP is connected to an external display and then goes to sleep for x-period of time and then wakes, something tweaks and the video card gets the delirium tremens, causing the external display to get all confused and flashing with static. Here’s what it looks like:

(Audio has been removed from this clip.)

Fortunately, unplugging the external display from the DisplayPort adapter and then plugging it back in seems to remedy the spasm, but it requires manual intervention (which is very un-Apple). Some folks on the Apple forums report that a full reboot or PRAM reset give temporary relief from the static.

Update: Within minutes of making this post, Apple released a firmware update for the unibody MacBook Pro that’s targeted (in part) at fixing this issue.
 

Update part deux: The firmware update fixed the video static. Thanks Apple!
 

I snapped this shot not knowing if it would turn out as good as it looked in real life. Not too shabby!

I used my Rebel XTi with a Canon EF 50mm lens (1.4) set at f/6.3 and 1/1000 second.

 
What I like about this photo is that it looks like the moon rising over the barn and trees, but it’s really the sun. Très cool.
 

Crucial and newegg to the rescue! I ordered a pair of DDR3 1067Mhz RAM chips for $125. That’s pretty affordable!

Here are a few shots to illustrate how easy it is to upgrade the RAM (and, coincidentally, the hard drive) in the new MacBook Pro and MacBook. Thankfully, upgrading RAM and hard drives on the new unibody MacBook Pro is easy and won’t void or risk the warranty. (Just don’t sneeze or drool onto the logic board when doing work and you should be fine.)

 
First, remove the battery plate and battery. This exposes the hard drive for easy replacement if you ever want to upgrade to a 320GB 7200RPM drive or even one of the new 500GB 5400RPM drives. (I wonder if the MacBook Pro could be run off an external 10,000RPM SATA drive like the VelociRaptor. That’d be awesome!)

Removing the battery plate does not expose the memory bay like in the earlier MacBook Pros, so there’s more work to do.

There are 8 screws to remove from the bottom plate of the MacBook Pro. You’ll need a simple jeweler’s screwdriver. Remember the order of screws as there are three different sizes.

Here you can see the inside of the MacBook Pro exposed. It’s gorgeous. I was pretty impressed with the exterior design of the MacBook Pro, but this shows it’s true inner beauty.

This is where the RAM chips go. There are little tabs on each side of the chips. Pulling those tabs apart by less than a millimeter will “eject” the RAM for removal.

You put the new RAM in and take the old RAM out. You do the hokey pokey and turn yourself about. (Gag, I know.)

Here you see the new RAM installed. Check out the logic board and fans. Everything is so compact, tight and compartmentalized.

Another inside shot.

Put the botom plate back on and put the screws back in. Tighten well, but not too much. You don’t want to strip the threads.

That’s it! It took less than 5 minutes for the whole operation. With 4GB RAM, boot time is marginally better, but the real benefit comes with running larger apps like Photoshop, Parallels, Final Cut, etc. I can have much more going at one time than I could before.

A side note: I also notice that the new MacBook Pro runs much cooler than the old versions. When running generic apps like Mail, Safari, Firefox, etc., the old MacBook Pro would usually keep at a warm 130°. When running Photoshop and/or Parallels for more than a few minutes on my previous MacBook Pro, the internal temp would rise to no less than 160° and would often top 185°. This new unibody MacBook Pro runs between 96° and 110° for normal apps and hasn’t risen above 130° even when running Final Cut. Very cool, indeed!
 

After experiencing months of crippling trouble with the video card in my 2.4GHz MacBook Pro laptop (resulting in multiple logic board replacements, LCD screen replacements, etc.), I was generously given a replacement laptop from Apple. Yes, a full replacement. Stunning level of customer service and tech support – clearly above and beyond the norm.

Here’s the new machine. So nice! This new design and the new specs are so far advanced that I look back to my “old” MacBook Pro with a sense of analog nostalgia.

P.S. By way of Google, I found this image of the new logic board for the latest MacBook Pro. Pretty crazy shape!

P.P.S. The only bummer about getting a replacement computer from Apple is that one’s Apple Care warranty doesn’t follow to the new machine. I’ll have to buy another extended warranty asap. It’s a minor factor, but still – darn.

The automatic bump never happened. I called Verizon approximately 8 times to inquire about it and every person I talked to had a different understanding of it, though truthfully, several FiOS service reps were totally unaware.

I called again today and immediately selected the option to talk to someone in billing. I got a very nice girl on the phone who was willing to listen to my gripe. A first time experience for me dealing with Verizon – she knew exactly what I was talking about. Oh My Frikin Gawd! A FiOS employee in the know! Wow! She checked my account, confirmed that the 20/5 option was indeed available to me and put the change request in. For free, by the way.

Now that was pretty awesome. It got even better when she told me when to expect the upgrade to take place. “Now,” she said. My reply was less eloquent – something like “Haruh?!”

Lo and behold, I popped over to speedtest.net and ran a quick test. I got a near perfect score. Here’s the result:

So if you have FiOS, you may be eligible for a free upgrade. Give them a call. Give the billing dept a call. The support guys are serving up a pretty dismal 10% success rate at solving problems.

P.S. It looks like I can upgrade to 20/20mbps for an extra $10 per month. I might just do that!

Fast forward a year or so, and you’d see me sitting at my computer, cursing the task of converting AVI files to Apple TV friendly format so I could watch important videos on my TV instead of my little MacBook Pro screen. Curses, wasted CPU time and wasted disk space from double files… that was the price I had to pay for the pleasure of watching AVI video content. Sometimes I would spend as much time converting a video as I would spend watching it. Bah.

A few days ago, I stopped by Best Buy (I’m slightly embarrassed admitting that I went to that store) and found a very nice Pioneer DV-410V DVD player with a little USB input on the front of it. The DVD player handles DVDs and DivX videos among other formats. It also has an HDMI port for connecting video and audio to my HDTV in one tiny cable.

I set up the DVD player and popped in a micro USB flash drive loaded with a few of my favorite AVI videos and voila! it played the video cleaner and better than the Apple TV ever did! Imagine my surprise! A weight was lifted off my shoulders – the world seemed bright and warm. No more wasted time converting files. No need to stream video. No need to keep my MacBook Pro turned on while I watch videos. Sure, I lost the ability to rent movies from the iTunes store directly from the Apple TV, but I had only done that a couple times in 18 months, so it’s hardly a sacrifice.

Now I can quickly load a dozen or more AVI files on a stamp-sized USB drive and watch amazing quality videos. Buh-bye Apple TV – hello HDTV sneaker net!

Some people may argue that the DVD USB option is lower tech and doesn’t really constitute an “upgrade”. In my opinion, anything that produces remarkably better video, faster prep time, fewer steps, less hassle, consumes less electricity and allows more free time for enjoying video… well, that is truly an upgrade; the best kind of upgrade.

If you’ve never tried one of those DVD players with an internal USB reader, you absolutely MUST. It’s awesome.

P.S. As for the $90 in my pocket, I promptly sold the Apple TV and had $90 left over after the cost of the new DVD/USB player. Nice.

P.P.S. The aforementioned $90 lasted about 12 minutes as I bought another cool gadget that I absolutely had to have. C’est la vie.

Pre-pre Installation

On June 13th, the first Verizon tech showed up to run a line from the sidewalk to the garage. The house is less than 3 years old, so there was already conduit prepped. The only problem was that the builders didn’t have the brains to mark where the conduit terminated inside the garage wall.

The Verizon tech had to guess where the termination was and I wound up with a 6"x6" hole in my sheetrock. Wrong spot. Wrong spot means big hole in the wall and no cable drop. After fumbling around for another potential drop point, another 6"x6" hole was cut into the wall. Success on the second attempt.

As for the holes in the wall, I was told that such booboos were commonplace and that Verizon would send someone out to fix the sheetrock the following business day (Monday), free of charge. I waited the whole day and no one showed up. Nice.
 

Pre Installation

On June 17th, two more Verizon techs showed up to string the fiber optic line from the street to the second of the two holes in my sheetrock. It took them 3 minutes. Not bad. They didn’t repair the sheetrock. They stood in my driveway smoking cigarettes for about 15 minutes. Nice.
 

Installation

The very next day, I got a call from “Paul”, a thick-accented guy. He said he was running 15 minutes early for my appointment and asked if it was ok for him to arrive early. I agreed. After all, how can one argue with that? Paul turned out to be Pavel, a very nice Ukrainian guy. We got along great – I spent time in Kiev, so we had plenty to talk about while he was setting up the TV and modem.

Despite the 3 hours allocated for the entire installation, Pavel got his whole job done in less than 45 minutes – that’s full installation of the Verizon FiOS service box, TV, modem, everything. He was smart, quick and very professional. He even turned down a nice tip.
 

Property Damage

After Pavel left, I called to see if someone would fix the sheetrock. After 8 or 9 phone calls and over 5 hours on the phone (much of it on hold listening to awful, brain-melting, self-congratulatory Verizon ads and Muzak BeeGees), I failed find someone who will take responsibility for fixing the sheetrock. I got passed around from support people to supervisors to techs to regional support folks. Total incompetence and “I don’t give a shit” attitude by everyone on the phone.

I finally landed one support guy in Texas who said that I should just have the sheetrock repaired myself and Verizon would reimburse the costs. At the same time, he said he’d submit a “ticket” that would require a guaranteed call-back from a local supervisor within 48 hours.

I got the two gaping holes repaired for $112.97. I called Verizon to request reimbursement, whether by check or account credit. Another dozen calls ensued, with everyone passing the buck to the local Verizon dispatch/support manager. They eventually gave me his cell phone number. I called, left a voicemail and never heard back from him.

4-5 days later, I called Verizon again – nada. Total lines of crap from everyone I got passed to. The mandatory 48-hour call-back gets extended by 48 hours each time I call.
 

Property Damage, Follow-Up

After seemingly endless calls to Verizon to get a reimbursement for property damage done during the initial installation, I managed to track down the Verizon tech that came out to my house to do the install. She agreed to find someone at a local command center who’d look into the issue. As a result, I got a call from a nice lady with local Verizon management. According to her, Verizon isn’t responsible for damage done to the property by the original installation contractor.

When she was informed that a) three Verizon techs and four support reps acknowledged that they were responsible, and that b) the “original contractor” was Verizon (duh!), they agreed to a reimbursement. I was told a check would be sent to me right away. Three weeks later, a check arrived. Issue successfully closed.
 

Download Speeds

In the mean time, our 15/2mbps service was averaging 5mbps down and roughly 1.2mbps up. That’s 1/3 the advertised download speeds. Calls to tech support were fruitless – reboot, reset the modem, blame it on the Mac OS, pass it off to a higher level support group, offer false promise of call-back. No one has been able to successfully troubleshoot the slow speeds.

Here’s a speed test (speedtest.net) done July 1st with my 15/2 FiOS service:

Here’s the last speed test I did while I still had Comcast running (test run June 16th):

According to Verizon FiOS support, FiOS speeds may not be faster all the time, but they’re consistent. Ha ha ha. Ouch. That kind of consistency is nothing to brag about.
 

Download Speeds, Good News Follow-Up

For some reason, the first 2-3 weeks of FiOS service sucked badly. Verizon techs couldn’t figure out why. Neither could I.

All of a sudden, with no obvious causation, the upload and download speeds normalized at 90% to 101% of the 15/2mbps account speeds. That’s right – I’ve actually seen downloads exceed the 15mbps download cap. I haven’t had a single service outage since the sudden improvement. Go figure.

 

Legal Bittorrent

I have tested a number of bittorrent services, downloading “public domain” movies, etc. I have seen 10-15mbps downloads on a constant basis. With Comcast, I considered myself very, very lucky if I was downloading at 4mbps. Upload speeds are also awesome. The main thing I really notice with FiOS and bittorrent is that when files are screaming up/down at near max speeds, the rest of my online activity is not hampered. With Comcast, if I downloaded at over 2-3mbps and uploaded over 400kbps, everything else would crap out. Email would fail, websites would crawl to a halt and the internet was essentially useless. Not so with FiOS.
 

Video on Demand – Foreign, Porn, Horror

Oh, Video on Demand. Free movies available all day, all night, ripe for the picking. Comcast offered 80-90 good movies for free. I was excited about the FiOS TV videos on demand. The sales reps I talked to explained that there are tons of choices. This evening, I checked out what might be available for free. Porn. Horror flicks. Obscure foreign films. Three odd-ball Disney films and a cornucopia of 3-4 minute shorts. What the f-ck?

I called Verizon FiOS support to see if I was missing something. I got a support rep who sounded like he was heavily stoned. After verifying every last minute detail about my account, he asked what the problem was. I explained the bogus selection. After a long pause (was he toking? eating? picking his nose?) he repeated my problem back to me like a junior high school counsellor, only he got it wrong. I explained again, telling him my options for free Video on Demand were Horror, shorts and Porn. When he heard ‘porn’, he asked me “for free?!” I said, “Yes, for free, but that’s not the point. Comcast has nearly 100 good movies – comedies, action, suspense, whatever. Where’s the selection on FiOS?”

Stoney suggested that I re-educate myself on the remote control and VoD settings. (Painfully stupid.) Another few repeats of my “actual” problem to dipshit support man left him slightly dumber than before. He concluded that it has to be a billing issue – that the monthly FiOS TV plan I’m on must restrict free Video on Demand movies. Good lord.
 

Channels Go Wacko

After 5 weeks with the Verizon TV service, and after having saved all my favorite channels for quick and easy on-screen access, Verizon changed their entire channel lineup with not so much as a ping for warning. No letter, no call, no on-screen “hey, we’re about to shuffle the entire deck, dude” – nothing. Now none of my favorite channels have the same numeric value any more. What the heck is that all about?
 

My Overall Observation of FiOS

Technologically, Verizon’s FiOS service is awesome. Download and upload speeds are fantastic. Speeds are consistent, too. As an alternative to cable high-speed Internet, FiOS gets a very, very good score of 8/10 or even 9/10.

Verizon’s main weakness is a confounding combination of corporate idiocracy, contradictory management policies and untrained/unintelligent support staff. Not all Verizon support techs are detrimental to the cause (honestly, some are very smart and helpful), but too many low-rent reps spoil Verizon’s potentially wonderful image.

It seems that Verizon is simply just too big and clumsy for its own good. It seems as though Verizon can’t manage itself worth a damn, and if it wasn’t for the solid technical delivery of its services, Verizon would probably implode or get eaten up by competitors.
 

Oh, and I just got another Verizon FiOS invitation letter encouraging me to switch from cable to FiOS.

The new MobileMe service doesn’t include Backup 3. Time Machine doesn’t read/open individual files. Google searches resulted in various complex ways to retrieve data from the backup.sparseimage files that Backup 3 produced. I called Apple support to get help figuring this out. After being put on hold a number of times and having to re-explain the situation again and again, my support rep put me on speaker phone with his supervisor. That supervisor suggested the simplest of simple solutions. Double click the backup.sparseimage file that Backup 3 had created.

Derr. Way too simple. Of course, the backup.sparseimage file just opened up like a DMG file would – as a separate volume (like a drive). I could browse all the folders and files that had been backed up in 2006, drag & drop to my desktop and another external drive as needed. Simple solution.

So, if you have an old .Mac Backup 3 archive that you want to grab data from, and if you are using OS X 10.5 Leopard, just open the old Backup 3 folders until you see “backup.sparseimage” and give it a quick double click. C’est tout. That’s it.

Granted, if your backup.sparseimage is corrupt, double clicking won’t help a whole lot. But for those ex-.Mac users who have stable backups, this is a nice revelation.