Category: acquired things

 

This past weekend I took my iMac back into the Apple Store to try and get the now-blemished (after another repair) display resolved. Per usual a part was ordered, and on Thursday morning I took the machine in to have the display replaced. Last night when checking on the repair status I noticed that the machine was ready, so I called Apple to see if I could pick it up. Extremely unexpectedly, the person who took my call explained that the data transfer was almost complete and that I should be able to pick it up in the morning. I found this very bizarre, as a data transfer is normally only done when upgrading a machine or replacing the hard disk.

It turns out that something went wrong during the repair and instead of having me wait on another part I was going to be given a new / replacement iMac and the data transfer was to get everything moved over. Talking to the tech when I picked up the machine it sounds as if someone “plugged something in wrong” or somehow made the logic board (motherboard in Apple-speak) fail and instead of waiting for yet another part to arrive Apple instead opted to just give me a new machine. This includes a receipt exchanging my machine for the new one, AppleCare transfer, and all.

The machine returned to me is the Mid 2010 model which has some nice upgrades over my original one (Late 2009), as shown here. Specifically, it has a slightly faster processor (2.96GHz Intel i7-870 vs. 2.80GHz Intel i7-860) and better video (ATI Radeon HD 5750 w/1GB RAM vs. ATI Radeon HD 4850 w/ 512MB RAM) and a comparable hard drive (Western Digital WDC WD1001FALS-40Y6A0 vs. Seagate ST31000528ASQ).

The nicest upgrade was the way the RAM ended up being reconfigured. When I took my Late 2009 27″ iMac in it was fitted with 4x 2GB 1066MHz PC3-8500 SO-DIMMs; two OEM Apple parts and two purchased from Crucial. When returned to me the new / Mid 2010 machine had 2x Apple 4GB 1333MHz PC3-10667 SO-DIMMs. This swap was necessitated by the newer machine’s faster RAM requirements, and it’s really nice to see that Apple replaced things in this way. Before this I had no free slots, which meant that going above 8GB of RAM would have required me to throw out two existing modules. Now there are two free slots, so whenever the next upgrade comes around I won’t have to toss out any parts.

This worked out pretty well, as the new machine has a just-fine display that came wrapped up just like new. There’s a slight small bit of what appears to be plastic on the inside of the glass in the lower right corner, but it’s so small that I don’t really notice it and can probably remove it with a slight puff of air; nothing to complain about at all. There was also a small black smudge on the front bezel, but this came off with a bit of alcohol.

While this whole experience was a bit frustrating overall, I’m content that it worked out this way. I received a newer machine, it appears to work fine, and my inconvenience was offset by a minor, but nice upgrade. And to think it all started with nothing more than a bad optical drive…

(As part of the upgrade I also received the disc set that goes with the machine, and this includes an iLife 11 install disc. This will be quite handy.)

Update on October 21, 2014: When at the Apple store attempting to get the GPU in this iMac fixed for free, I found out what happened to my original 2009 iMac: the LVDS connector on the logic board was damaged. Apple must have then opted to replace the entire machine.

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Unlike the Magic Mouse (which hurt my hand within minutes of beginning to use it), Apple’s Magic Trackpad is a rather nice cursor input device. It’s identical to the touchpad in Apple’s newer MacBook Pro family, where multi-touch is used in conjunction with an entire touchpad that clicks, eliminating the need for both buttons and tap clicking. I personally cannot stand tap clicking on touchpads, so I will normally disable it and either have one hand on the button and the other on the pad (when I need to work quickly) or lift my finger to move it to the pad to click. With this device one can simply use multi-finger gestures for scrolling and app switching while clicking the entire pad with one (or more) fingers.

As the Magic Trackpad ships, Apple has support for scrolling, primary and secondary clicking (left and right), application switching, and Exposé activation. What Apple (stupidly) did not include is any method of sending a tertiary (middle) click which is the de-facto method for opening links in new tabs in all modern web browsers. Without this one has to either hold Command (⌘) and click (a two-handed affair) or secondary/right click and select open in new tab (slow). Both of these make quickly reading web pages difficult.

Thankfully a guy by the name of Clement Beffa wrote a MiddleClick, a utility which makes three-finger taps (or clicks), an input not captured by Apple’s software, send a middle click. The version (currently) on the main page (MD5 checksum e7a7e1b5f5e55cb5ffac6d091f03f8c9) is slightly broken and the 3 Finger Click option in the menu doesn’t work. However, this version (MD5 checksum 1b02e356684c40bbbb21cf83f70c52ca) does work properly and I’ve been using it to three-finger click for a few hours now. This makes basic web browsing and reading pages a one-handed affair

The only complaint that I now have about the Magic Trackpad is that the pivot for clicking is near the top of the pad, which makes clicking the pad near the top more difficult than when it is pressed near the bottom. This isn’t terrible, though, as clicking the pad near the bottom does not feel abnormal and is what I (currently) find myself doing naturally.

For the time being I’ve unplugged my mouse, and I’m quickly finding the Magic Trackpad to be quite comfortable to use. It’ll take another week or three before I’m sure that I’m comfortable with it, but for now things seem to be going quite well. I’ll need to go back the a classic mouse when using EAGLE for PCB CAD, but that’s a special case because quickly using it requires the one to do things such as hold one mouse button while clicking another.

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I occasionally have to work from home, and most of that work ends up involving long conference calls. I’ve taken to using VOIP for these calls, but until now I didn’t have a quality headset to use during such calls. I’d tried everything from speakerphone via my iMac‘s built-in audio to an iMic and old analog gaming headset, but nothing sounded good and was comfortable to wear for more than a few minutes.

Having used Plantronics headsets for years at work I decided to see what they offered for portable / computer use and came across the Blackwire C610, one of their enterprise products and purchased it from PROVANTAGE for just under $70 shipped.

Without loading any drivers or software this headset shows up as a standard mono USB audio device, and its inline volume and mute switch works independently of the computer. The mute button also beeps through the earpiece to indicate mute status, and illuminates a dim red when the mic is muted. The headset weights a bit less than the handset alternative headset that I’d used at work for the last nine years and comes with the typical cord clip. There is also a two ear version (the Blackwire C620) for those who don’t like one-ear headsets.

The headset comes with both foam and leatherette ear piece covers, and the sound quality is outstanding. In tests calling friends and on conference calls I’ve received no complaints about quality, and when specifically asked I’ve been told that it sounds better than any mobile phone I’ve used recently. (This probably also has a fair bit to do with the PCM codec used by my VOIP provider.)

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