Apple Watch Day Two

Tuesday was a sad day, coming to work without my mac for the first time in a long time.

I had work to focus on, basically reconstructing a major project from last years' version. I was able to get our tech support guy to order a new Creative Suite for my Mac Pro and downloaded CS3 trial versions from Adobe to get started. I hope I'll hear from Apple today on the status of my PB and whether I'll get it back before the holidays.

Office Upgrade

The last week has been an exciting one. I got my new Mac Pro and 23" Cinema Display at work, and I'm thrilled with it. I love my PowerBook, but the mew machine is simply awesome. To match the image quality of the cinema display, I added a Logitech X-230 speaker set (the subwoofer is under the desk), and an Apple wireless keyboard and Mighty Mouse. I haven't gotten my new software, so its mostly been used for Mail, and surfing the web, but I can't wait to get my Adobe software loaded on there.

Thanks, AppleCare

Apple has great customer service.

Yesterday, I came to work and plugged in my Powerbook. While I was working I noticed the screen flicker, and the light on the end of the power cord was out. After wiggling the wire, I realized that the cord was shorting out. During the day, I checked a number of sites for replacements, and was tryingto decide between replacing it with one from NewerTechnology or another Apple version. I wasn't looking forward to either, because they were in the 45-79 price range. Then I remembered that I had bought Applecare with my Powerbook in 2005, and I called to see if it would be covered. The agent asked a couple of questions, and told me that it was covered, and she'd send out a new one, but it may take a couple of days due to the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. That was at 1:30 pm Monday. Tuesday morning, the DHL driver dropped off my new adapter. I'm so pleased that they were able to take care of me with no downtime.

My Leopard Installation Experience

I've been working with Leopard since last Friday, and I've noticed a few bugs. Not major ones, but I'll recount what I experienced. The first bug was in the install. The screen came up prompting me to select which drive to install Leopard onto, but offered no discs to choose from. I restarted a handfull of times, and my hard drive finally appeared. After this initial setback, the rest of the installation went smoothly.

My first impression of Leopard was thet it felt faster than Tiger, especially Mail and Safari. But these are also where I noticed stuttering, frrezing and a couple of strange creshes. Here's an example: reading email in Mail, I clicked ⌘-R to reply and nothing happened. I clicked it again. Still nothing. Then I tried clicking th icon in the toolbar. nothing. I quit and restarted mail, and as soon as it opened, my three replies appeared.

Another strange event: I modified a pdf in Illusrator CS, but the preview in the finder did not change. I opened it up again in Illustrator, saw my changes, and closed again, but the preview did not update.

My last issue is that all my printer settings got thrown out the window. Now every time I try to print something, I have to re-sign in to my network at work before the printing will proceed.

Powerbook CD Eject tip

I just got The White Stripes' new Icky Thump CD, and when I inserted it into my Powerbook nothing happened. I mean, no opening of the album in itunes, no sign of the CD on the desktop. Nothing. I launched Disk Utility and it could not "see" the disc either. But I found a great tip at macosxhints. It involved booting the computer into firmware and entering the command to manually eject the CD. It was a handy tip, so I thought I'd give them a plug.