Archive for the 'Mac OS' Category

Sunday, November 8th, 2009

Snow Leopard issues with Vodafone and Huawei dongles remains unresolved

I am extremely frustrated, but the frustration is amplified by the fact that I do not know who to blame - Apple, Vodafone or my ISP, Mobile1 (Singapore).

Since I have upgraded to Snow Leopard after my mate assured me that he has not faced any critical issues himself, I found myself crippled with the breakdown of my mobile dongle. I can no longer present my product to potential investors and customer on the go, which is extremely critical. It has been close to 3 months since I experienced it, and I have to say I am very disappointed that the situation has not improved at all.

I can only keep my finger crossed :X

Sunday, July 19th, 2009

Tips for prolonging battery life for your MBP

First up, some references:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=278451
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1232366
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1490
http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html

After sloughing through silos of Google results, I summarize my findings as below:

1) When you first get your battery, do a calibration. (go to pt 3).
2) Also, calibrate at least once a month. (go to pt 3)
3) You can calibrate by first charging to its full capacity, and leaving it in this state for 2 hours. Then, perform a full discharge. Leave it for 5 hours after your MBP sleeps… (save your work!) Next, simply leave your connector in until battery is fully charged.
4) Ensure 2 discharge cycle twice a week at least - i.e. make sure u earn 2 discharge cycles a week. 1 discharge cycle can span over several usage without the connector plugged in. You can verify this with programs like iStat.

Voila… now let me come back to this post 6 months later (;

Saturday, July 19th, 2008

10 Reasons why Mac over PC for me forever (and why I’m never going back!)

Before you gogoo “Not another Mac vs PC arguement”, I need to state upfront I am writing only to to glorify my choice. I’m truly grateful that I made the switch over to Mac 3 months ago - my x41 IBM was close to dying of slowdom then. Speaking of which, I had to admit I was stupid in installing Vista in Bootcamp, because there really is no use for it. (If you really want to run a windows environment, I suggest you use a simulator tool like VirtualBox).

Though I really miss the 1.2kg weight of that little machine x41, my heavy MBP made sure I had not carried the extra 1.5 kg everyday in vain because:

1) Expose is really fun for me to change windows, and I sometimes do it for fun. And I like going to desktop with a single quick movement.

2) Front Row shows me latest theatrical trailers - nice! & I can play with Apple Remote.

3) Audium and Growl notification are so pretty.

4) I can do 2 finger scrolling. Trust me on this one, it does not get better than this.

5) I can switch tabs while browsing with swiping using MultiClutch, and back/forward with rotating. MultiTouch is more useful than I originally thought.

6) Photoshop and Illustrator loads very very very quickly.

7) Girls notice me a little bit more in Starbucks (I think).

8.) I am encouraged to use Terminal to do my work. And talking about work, you can only develop iPhone applications on Mac because Apple says so. (SDK only works in MAC OS)

9) My Mac has crashed just once in the 3 months despite my rough approach in installing stuffs.

10) Overall productivity increase by about 10-20% for me, since I can multitask better now because of many reasons cited above.

Alot of people “thinks” others buy Mac to show that they are really cool, fashionable and even stupid. I have to agree partly - many individuals I know buy Mac because they are attracted to the interface and designs, but as a business owner, getting Mac for the whole IT department saves much trouble in IT issues such as virus outbreak or hdd crash. (My MBP auto defrags all the time). From another perspective, there are so many Mac OSX developers that you have a good chance of getting some applications you fancy in Windows already.

I have to do virtual meetings over the net and my partner and I work through iChat with remote desktop presentations as well - thus we do not have to invest in other software. Thus economically, Macbooks make alot of sense too.

If you disagree with any of my reasons, comment and let me know now!