Mac Geeks

I’d like to recommend this very simplistic laptop stand for your MacBooks – the LineA . The main advantage of it is the fact that it lifts you hot blooded Intel MacBook (Pro) from the desks surface a bit to optimize air circulation. Thus keeping your computer a few degrees colder while under heavy load.

Additionally it raises the keyboard a bit which I find more nice to write on. It’s very simple, robust and easy to store. It comes with a small hull so you can even store it within the tight second skin covers for your precious MacBooks.

It easily adopts to all different sizes of Laptops and even Netbooks can be put on top of it.

Find a more detailed review at the-gadeteer.com

So technically the iPhone 4S is a new device and could have been named iPhone 5 if there would have been a new case design. It’s got a new CPU, new camera, new antennas and new software.
I guess nobody would have complaint that it only feels like an refurbished iPhone 4.

So why seems everybody disappointed with the iPhone 4S then? I guess because Apple forgot about an important feature – the distinguishness of their products. People want to show off that they have the latest and greatest gadget, that they can afford the new iPhone although their other iPhone is just half a year old.
All this glamour can’t be achieved with the new iPhone 4S because nobody will easily recognize it from it’s predecessor.
Poor hipsters and early adopters. This time there is only little reward for staying in line in front of the Apple Store half the night. They’ll only get a new device in the old case that nobody will recognize.

In zunkunft sei vorsicht geboten beim verzehr von getränken die zum kontrollverlust führen können. Eine abgesoffene tastatur in der vergangenheit oft von apple noch kulant auf garantie ausgetauscht könnte in zukunft wohl ob selbstverschulden zurückgewiesen werden:

Ebenso wie im iPhone, iPod touch und allen weiteren neuen iPods stecken auch im MacBook (und MacBook Pro) Flüssigkeitssensoren (“liquid submersion indicators”), die sich im Kontakt mit Flüssigem verfärben – diese liegen an mehreren über die Tastatur verteilten Punkten, wie Apple im Servicehandbuch verrät.

http://www.fscklog.com/2008/10/feinheiten-zur.html

so, please take care, don’t drink and surf!

The free add-in SmartSleep for your System Preferences Pane brings some smarter sleep mode than MacOS X has by default.

Your MacBook (Pro) knows two sleep modes

1.) Sleep – system state is safed in RAM and buffered by the Battery. Fast sleep and fast awake

2.) Hibernate – system state is written to a hibernate file on the disk. Depending on your RAM size this will take several seconds during hibernate and awake

by default MacOS does a mixture of Sleep & Hibernate. Your Mac will save the system state to the disk when you close the lid. But RAM is also buffered by the battery. So awake will use the RAM if still available and ignore the hibernate file on the disk. Waking up is fast though.

It can drive you nuts closing your mac and waiting several seconds for it to go to hibernate if your battery is full.

This is where SmartSleep comes in handy. It introduces some preferences on this and offers the new “smart sleep” state. You define a watermark for the battery. Below this charge level your mac will go to hibernate. Above this watermark your Mac will just use sleep to speed up sleeping and wake up.

But make sure you install the new PrefPane add-in for ALL users (aka /Library/PreferencesPanes). Otherwise it wont work. It will also not work if you install it for both, your local user and in the global directory. The use settings will have precedence and override/hide the global preference pane settings.

I just installed MacOS X 10.5 Leopard on an 15″ Powerbook G4 to test the overall performance.

The installation itself went on without problems. Only the time settings where not done automatically so the date and time was set to sometime back in octobre 2007. This prevented some programs from functioning normally. For instance Adobe AIR was not able to install applications due to network errors. And Google BrowserSync for Firefox was also not able to initialize due to network erros. After setting date and time correct everything went well.

After some evening of testing I have to admin that my 12″ Powerbook G4 feels faster then this 15″ Powerbook. Although the little one has only 1.25 GB RAM instead of 2 GB in the 15″ model.

But overall  it’s ok for normal work. I tested with Mail, Browser, Code, thwirl and the usual web stuff. iStatsMenu is showing that the CPU goes up to 100% several times. But one has to admin that the Intel MacBooks (Pro) have in fact two CPUs to drive.