Robert Vrabel

I have some things on my mind that I feel I need to get out there. I’ve noticed some odd trends lately that piss me off. I find it funny that when new technology is about to be released it gets hyped up so much from the media, consumers, and anyone interested in the product. The product gets hundreds of fake designs created, with leaked specs, all the time. What kills me is when that new technology gets presented by the actual company, everyone gets pissed off that it didn’t have all the bells and whistles that were discussed during the hype.

People… the hype is just that… hype! Apple never promised anything prior to making their announcement on the iPad. They never said it was going to run OSX. They never said it was going to act like your MacBook Pro. They never said it was going to have a 10 megapixel camera that can do video conferencing. They made this device for a specific group of people they had in mind, and they wanted it to be very cheap. Is that person me? Not right now, and the reason is I already own an iPhone and a Macbook Pro, so I feel I’m all set right now.  Who is it for then? Personally I think this is a wonderful device for people who don’t own a laptop and iPhone/iPod touch and are looking for one device to fill that void.

For example, my mom doesn’t own a laptop. She has a hard time using the desktop PC they own because they are complicated and she is scared to break things. She loves watching videos on her flip up DVD player. She loves reading books. She loves sharing photos with people, which right now carries around print-out photo booklets.  You’re honestly telling me this device is not perfect for someone like her? Apple made this device for a certain market, and if that market is not for you… then don’t buy it! Simple as that. They said something along the lines in the presentation yesterday that they wanted something between an iPod Touch and and a Macbook. Creating a Macbook Pro like iPad is NOT between that.

I agree that I wish apple would make a tablet that ran OSX, had usb ports, acted like a real computer. A device like this would easily cost $1,500-$2000 right now. It would basically be as much as a MacBook Pro! If Apple announced that yesterday, people would be pissed at the price and complain about many other things. They would say things like “why would I buy that, I already own a MacBook Pro”, “I’m not paying that much money for one!”, how about “It only gets 6 hours of battery life? What the heck, a kindle gets so much more!”. Sure, but your wanting a laptop now… not a E-book reader.

I really think people just like to complain about anything, but that can be left for another time. My point is, they made this to fill a niche, not compete against their MacBook Pro line. The price tag of $499 is VERY good in my opinion. That is pretty cheap for what it has to offer, but that is just my opinion and from someone who spent $599 on the first iPhone.

I can see in the future that Apple would possibly create another device that is a iPad Macbook Pro, but this time, that was NOT their plan and I think they were pretty clear on that. I’m all for innovation and creating devices that are revolutionary. One thing that Apple is putting out there is that this device is revolutionary… I don’t fully agree with that, I believe the iPhone was… but the iPad doesn’t deserve that tag.

So I guess to wrap things up… you can’t be pissed when a company makes a product and doesn’t fit your needs 100% of the time. You simply just need to not buy the product, not ridicule people who do want it, and take a closer look at it and see what market it is good for.

I recently just upgraded a Hard Drive for a Macbook. I purchased the Western Digital Scorpio Black from newegg.com.  The process was very easy and only took about 5 mins.  Having the correct tools is key.  You will need:

• coin (or something to unscrew the battery)
• Small screwdriver (I used a eye glass set)
• Torx 8 (T8) screwdriver

Since you can access the hard drive straight from the battery location, you can basically just pull the other one out, unscrew the casing, and put the new one in.  Once it was loaded in, I booted off the Leopard Disc and proceeded with a “Restore My Computer” through Time Machine.  The process took about 6 hours over ethernet and everything was restored exactly how it was before.  I assume it could be drastically cut down based on how many backups you have inside Time Capsule. I was curious how much of a performance gain would occur with the new hard drive so I recorded some load times.

So there is actually a HUGE performance gain from using 7200rpm instead of 5400rpm.  Now what are the downsides?  We’ve noticed that the fan for the computer kicks on more often doing simple tasks.  I’m sure this is due to the hard drive producing more heat.  The hard drive is self doesn’t seem to be louder, but the macbook’s fans definitely are.  Most people complain about vibrations, I couldn’t really tell much of a difference but if its spinning fast you can notice it if you feel the bottom directly under where the hard drive sits.

In conclusion, the performance gain and amount of space is totally worth it for the downsides mentioned above.  I would recommend upgrading!

I recently did the latest update to Leopard which totally screwed up my macbook pro.  The update made finder and the dock unusable, so I basically couldn’t do anything once it booted in.  I tried doing an archive and install and upon installing leopard it would fail.

The strangest thing to me is that Tiger would work perfectly fine and then upon installing Leopard it wouldn’t work.  Doing some research online (which was really hard to find anything) I discovered that that the failure to install leopard could be due to memory issues.  I didn’t beleive it at first.  Doing a update to the OS and having it screw up be related to a memory problem? Looks like I was wrong.  I did the Apple Hardware test and sure enough it was reporting some strange memory error, which I couldn’t find a description online when typing the error code in.

I ordered some new memory from Crucial (4gb) and with my luck one of the sticks was bad!  I ended up having to use one of the good sticks, and one of the good sticks from the orginal set.  So now I got 3gb and I was able to install leopard again and do the update just fine.

Very strange! Apparently Leopard is VERY dependant upon RAM. If you’re having strange issues, replace your ram.  Its really cheap to do and could solve all your problems.

I bought one of the most amazing products yesterday.  The Apple Airport Express.  I am specifically using it for Air tunes which allows you to wirelessly play music to any device that you hook into it.  I connected it to my wireless network and plugged in a audio cord into my receiver.  Next all I had to do was open iTunes from ANY computer on my network and select “Play over Airport Express”.  Next thing you know my iTunes is playing wirelessly to my main set of speakers!

To top it off, the iPhone 2.0 firmware came out recently which allows for applications to be installed on the iPhone.  Apple has put out a FREE “iTunes Remote Application” which connects to your computers iTunes which you can control volume, playlists… anything you could as if you where sitting on your computer using iTunes. This basically turns you into a MOBILE DJ!  I can now stream music from my laptop to my main set of speakers, and then control it from ANYWHERE in range of my wireless network.

This is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen, this will come in handy so much when throwing a party and a song comes on that you want to change or if someone requests a song. All you have to do is pull your iPhone out and control everything! How great is that!

Apple just released a 2GB shuffle for $79.00 and slashed the 1GB from $79.00 down to $49.00. What a steal of a price! I never paid attention to the shuffles before, but i would consider purchasing one of these now when i start working out again. Having something so small with just workout music on it is a lot more practical than working out with my iPhone. Especially while running. You could also just leave it in your gym bag so its always there for you. I never understood the purpose of having two devices with two separate libraries in the past, but it makes sense in a situation like working out – the smaller the better.

I installed the newest 10.5.2 update to my MacBook Pro two days ago and ran into a problem. My computer installed it and restarted but it hung on getting to the log-in screen. I posted my problem in the apple discussion board for help and received some information from people. I decided to do an Achieve and install which moves all your existing stuff to a “Previous Systems” folder and does a re-install of Leopard. I then updated it after that and it seemed to be working properly.

Today, one day after my post, i received a a phone call from Scott Player from Apple Care Engineering Software notifying me that he read my post and wanted to call to make sure everything is working properly since he wants to make sure i am not without a computer. I called him back and explained the problem and he sent me an E-mail to send log information from the pervious system so there software engineers can take a look at the problem to see what happen.

This level of support is unbelievable. I have never been treated so well from a company in all my life. This one phone call totally makes up for the inconvenience this caused me. Cheers to Apple for always going the extra mile!