Yesterday evening I decided to give BootCamp a try so that I could install the latest distribution of Ubuntu on my MacBook Pro.  I followed the instructions and partitioned off 10 GB of my hard drive for the installation.  I popped in the live CD I made and followed the on-screen prompts.  I restarted, and then something didn’t go right.

I held down the option key and waited for my 2 systems to appear.   I only saw one hard drive.  Uh oh.  So, I restarted and tried again with the Live CD.  This time, it let me install it again.  So, I restarted, held down option and saw 2 drives.  Except one was a CD and the other was a hard drive.  Crap.

I’m not entirely sure what happened, but my partitions got funky last night.  I could only boot into Ubuntu if I had the CD in, and never without.  And when I booted back into OS 10.5, I saw two new mounts on my system; BOOTCAMP and DEV/4.

I tried, to no avail, to reclaim my partitions.  Eventually, I had to settle on reformatting my hard drive and reinstalling OS X to reclaim the partitions.  Now, I’ve only had the MacBook Pro for about 2 months so it wasn’t full of too much precious data, but I backed up all the stuff I needed.  During the re-install process I remembered that I had done a TimeMachine backup on the system.  So, I let the installer migrate my TimeMachine data over and all was well.  So…now I believe I’m going to invest in a bigger TimeMachine drive (mine’s currently only150 GB).

Oh well.  I guess I can try again later.  Although, maybe on a different computer.  :-/

So, I totally bought the iPod touch update the day Apple released it. Yes, it was $20 but I believe it adds much more than that to the value and functionality of the product. And, yes, I believe Apple should have included it out of the box for the early adopters.Now, it wasn’t as easy as 1-2-3 to get it installed on my iPod touch. You have to download iTunes 7.6. Then you have to update your iPod touch to the 1.1.3 firmware. After those two steps, you can now purchase and install the software. Apple says all you have to do is sync your iPod touch and disconnect it from iTunes.

Unfortunately, this isn’t entirely true.The icons didn’t appear after the first sync I did with iTunes, the new firmware and the purchased software. I had to uncheck the “manage music manually” option in my iPod’s preferences. Then, I had to click the “Restore” button. After the restore and reboot, the new icons were on my iPod touch. Then, I had to re-add all my music, photos, videos, and other data. Hooray.

I had one other hiccup with the software. Apple charged me twice for the update. However, if you follow their “report a problem” links in your iTunes purchase history/invoice they send you they will fix it promptly. I emailed them and politely told them I was charged twice. That was on a Saturday morning. I received a response on Monday morning telling me they were going to credit my bank account for the extra purchase and promptly apologised for the inconvenience. Thursday, I checked my account online and they had returned my extra $19.99. Some people have reported having problems with them getting the extra charges fixed, but I didn’t have a single problem.

All in all, it’s a solid update to a great product. I can now confidently take it around in lieu of my laptop if i just need quick internet access. Too bad the iPhones are only tied to AT&T in the US now…

And now I know why my Leopard install went horribly wrong. Seems that the blame isn’t Apple, but instead, from a third party app I had installed. Evidently, some third party software I had installed was using Application Enhancer. For anyone else wondering, this site explains it quite nicely.

Application Enhancer is not currently supported in Leopard. I’m not entirely sure what I installed that used APE, but I remember the icon in my Systems Preferences pane.

The Mac-Fixit link posted earlier describes, beautifully, what you will need to do to reclaim your machine before upgrading to Leopard. I experienced the grey screen, constant blue screen with fans running heavy and case hot. I had to force shutdown the machine, hold down “C” when I booted and then do an erase and clean install. If only I had known this Friday night.

Those two seem to not get along at all.  It’s not keeping the paragraph format over when you hit publish.  I’ve had to add breaks in with the code editor.  Which isn’t difficult.  It’s just a “feature” I’ve noticed while trying to re-claim my machine.

I dunno if it worked well in the previous version of Safari, as I mainly used FireFox. Not sure if I’m the first person to come across this, but there you go.

Well, I went to PeachMac after work today and purchased Leopard.  I wouldn’t say the installation went entirely smoothly, but I’ve had it up and running for about an hour now. Something went fishy while I was trying to upgrade.  It crapped out on a printer driver, which I thought was really odd.  It yelled at me and told me the installation failed.

I got a little irritated, to say the least.  Then I ejected the DVD and tried to boot it up, and it just hung on a blue screen.  I checked the DVD and it had a scratch on it.  Great.  It wasn’t quite 9:45 yet and I remembered that the store was going to be open until 10.  So I rushed to the store only to find them closed.  Fantastic.

Anyway, I got brave and decided to do a clean install after I got back.  I put the DVD back in, let it boot, chose to erase and install 10.5.  About 1 hour later, it was working.  Luckily, I only lost a minimal amount of data.  I’ve been keeping most of mine on an external hard drive for just this reason.

I’m in the process of re-installing software that I lost on the clean install.  Leopard’s very snappy, even on my 1.67 GHz PowerBook G4 with 1GB of RAM.  Even more so than Tiger, I believe.  Safari launches instantly.  Everything runs smoothly so far.  Spaces is really getting a work out tonight as I use one space for software installs and another to type this.

Maybe I’ll write a better review later when I’m not sore about the fresh install.  I shouldn’t have had to do that and I’m sure the upgrade works quite well.  It just didn’t work for me.  Hopefully other people have had better luck. 

I’ve been reading around online that Gmail is in the process of implementing IMAP support for their users.  One of many reasons I haven’t fully migrated my Gmail account to Mail.app is the shoddy support for Gmail.  I could never get it synced right with “pop”.  Things would download to Mail and not appear in the webmail client and vice versa. It was very irritating and made me stop using Mail.app with Gmail.

But! Since Google is in the process of implementing IMAP support, this brings me new hope.  I just like my mail being synced on the server AND on my computer.  So, if I were to check it in an email client or through the web, it stays synced.  Also, I think it’s suspiciously coincidental that Google is rolling this out on the eve of Apple releasing Leopard (Mac OS X/Mac OS 10.5).  This would also make it much easier to use Gmail on the iPhone (and now, if only, Apple would release Mail for the iPod Touch).

Anyway, they seem to be rolling it out to accounts at random.  I keep logging in and checking and it hasn’t been enabled for me yet.  And I don’t know any people (in real life) that have it – just the folks who’ve posted screenshots online.

So, IMAP for Gmail is something I’m excited about and I’ve wanted for a while.   And I really wanna use the new version of Mail.app.  Especially since it’s supposed to carry over the label/folder system from Gmail for you.

And, in other news, I’m totally going to “geek out” tomorrow and go down to PeachMac for the Leopard release.  They’re having a launch party from 6 – 10pm tomorrow evening.  So, if you want a demonstration head on down to PeachMac. Heck, if you wanna buy it you can pick it up there too.  They’re nice folks and deserve some business.

In preparation for the release of OS 10.5 Leopard, I decided to upgrade the RAM in my PowerBook. It had only 512MB, now it has 1GB. But the path I took to get there is much more entertaining than the result.

I had been looking at RAM for a while. Apple charges way too much for it. Obviously. So, I was looking at newegg.com and trying to decide on what I wanted. I found some compatible RAM, but once I compared the prices to it on newegg to some brick and mortar stores I wasn’t going to be saving much. And, besides, I have a lot of BestBuy gift certificates that I need to use.

I went down to BestBuy last night and “purchased” 512 MB of RAM for my PowerBook. It didn’t cost me anything, courtesy of the gift certificates. I was happy.

Well, I got home only to realise that I didn’t have a screwdriver small enough to open the RAM bay on the bottom of my PowerBook. Ugh. I decided to leave it alone and go buy one in the morning.

Just in case you’re interested in upgrading YOUR PowerBook RAM you need to buy a Phillips #0 screwdriver. Yes, the screws are that small. Nothing else will work properly. I found a precision screwdriver set for $5 and it worked well.

It took 3 people to pull the cover off the RAM bay. I was getting frustrated, so I let Erica have a go. She got 1 out. I tried again and got frustrated again. Then I let Ben have a try. Ben got the remaining screws out.

I pulled the battery out and popped the RAM in. Turned on the computer and…it didn’t show that there was more memory in the computer. Crap. So, for about 25 minutes I tried a myriad of ways of popping the RAM in and out and turning the PowerBook back on. Nothing worked.

I started to get worried. I thought that maybe the secondary slot on the Logic Board had gone bad. My fears became even more founded when I used the OG RAM and placed it in the secondary slot. When I turned on the PowerBook, I heard a beeping sound along the lines of “omg, I don’t have any RAM!” Ugh.

Well, I popped the original RAM back into it’s slot. Then I tried once more to see if the RAM would fit before I resolved to getting my Logic Board replaced. On the last try, I suppose I popped the RAM in at the appropriate 30 degree angle. Because when I turned on the PowerBook, it worked.

Here it is:

This is what I did on my day off; I played hand model.

Also, the iPod touch is an amazing war driving device. It picks up at least 4x the networks as my PowerBook. Just in case you were wondering what else it’s good for. ;)

I’ve been searching feverishly for an iPod Touch for the past week and a half.  I’ve wanted one before Apple even knew what to call it.  I kept saying that I wanted “the iPhone without the phone.” And, FINALLY, Steve Jobs listened to me.

Anyway, my brother ordered one the day after Apple announced they would be making them.  And he got his last Monday afternoon – technically before they were due to be “released”.  Since he got his on Monday, I decided it was time to check and see if Apple was making any drop shipments to various authorised sellers.

I went round BestBuy a few days last week to check.  Evidently, I missed the last one.  It was a returned item and would have been $40 cheaper.  I was, needless to say, a bit miffed.  I went back there two more days to see if there had been any new ones delivered.  I was out of luck.

Thursday morning I went to PeachMac on Epps Bridge Road to see if they had, by some stroke of luck, gotten any.  They told me that they hadn’t received a shipment, but it was due “any moment now.”  They asked if I wanted to leave my name and number so they could give me a ring when the shipment arrived.  I hesitated and Erica told me to do it.  Actually, I believe she said “Fool.  Don’t even play.  You know you want one.”  So, I left them my name and number and waited for them to call.

12 o’clock rolls around.  1 o’clock rolls around and I decide it’s time to get on the road to my parents’ house.  Well, I’ve been driving and listening to my 5G iPod really loudly for about an hour and a half and my phone rings.  I check the area code and it’s an Athens area number.  I answer the phone.  It was PeachMac.  Their shipment had just arrived.  Dammit.

I was gone all weekend visiting with my parents and brother.  I kept checking places around there to see if they got any in and was out of luck.  I came back to Athens last night and had resolved to wait about half a month to get one from an online retailer.

Today, I received another phone call from PeachMac.  They were calling to tell me that my iPod Touch was “waiting” for me to pick up.  They saved one for me all weekend and I didn’t ask them.  So, at lunch I swung by PeachMac and bought my iPod Touch.  It wasn’t in the display case with the other iPods; they went into the back to get it.

So, I have a new toy and I don’t have to wait until after Christmas to get one.

Nope. Not making this up. I finally got around to watching Macworld 2007 and this is one of the calls Steve made on the iPhone.