Again and again and again and again
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Seems like Steve Ballmer deserved the egging, pity the guy had such a bad aim.
Sex and the City
Link
Apparently she's still on Tiger.
Vlad Studio
You will have to pay a registration fee for the high quality pictures to support the artist and have no signature in the corner, but the free low quality versions seem perfectly fine to me for a desktop.
Rating iTunes
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In other social networking news, it looks like they've had to downgrade their ad revenue forecasts, boohoo. You know you're there to be monetarised right?
MacBook Black & Blues
It matches my
clock
Eventually I bought the
MacBook from John Lewis in March, taking
advantage of their extra 2 year guarantee (which
you’d have to pay extra if you bought direct
from Apple). I’d recommend, if you’re
not a student, not buying direct from Apple. Buying
from a John Lewis meant that if something goes wrong
you have someone else who can moan at Apple first
before you have to.
Talking of things going wrong, they did:
My first impression of the MacBook Black was how dirty
it gets, any smudge finger print on the black is just
far too obvious. Apple do provide you with a handy
cleaning cloth, and you’re going to need it.
Unless you’re less anal than me, and deal with it
looking a mess. My second impression was it being a
speedy machine, just what I needed. Had things not gone
awry, I’d’ve kept it.
However; after a few weeks it started to make some
strange static sound from the left speaker area. The
sound was audible just before the start-up chime. A
static blip (bip, pip, difficult to describe a static
sound) followed by the chime. The sound also occurred
just before any other warning sound. e.g. turning up
volume, received email sound, incoming iChat message
etc. Each sound was preceded by the static blip,
followed by the standard sound for that application. If
the blip had just occurred, it didn’t do it again
for a few minutes.
What seemed more odd, was the static blip could be
heard even if the MacBook was muted.
Unplugging headphones would cause the Mac to do three
static blips in concession, whilst flashing the red
optical light inside the headphone port.
The sound wasn’t very loud, but loud enough to be
very distracting, especially when you knew it was
coming. It wasn’t the hard disk, I know the noise
a hard disk makes, even a failing one which is more
like a ball bearing dlrrrr.
I tried resetting PRAM/PMU, no change. I reinstalled
the OS, Mac OS X 10.5, no change. I even started the
MacBook in Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) using external
FireWire drive and still it made the static noise.
I gave up and took it back to John Lewis. I tried
demonstrating the problem, which was difficult due to
the ambient noise of the shop, but the assistant did
manage to hear it. He pointed out that Apple could be
rather difficult repairing small issues like this but
said he’d talk to their main Mac guy, I also had
a brief chat with him and eventually my guy came back
and said they’d just replace it. That was great
news and a relief.
I picked up the replacement machine the next week when
they had stock. I got home and turned it. Running
through the welcome to Mac animation, the music was
scratchy sounding from the left speaker, uh oh. It also
made the exact same blip sound before the start-up
chime. This did not bode well, but it appeared not to
make the blip noise again whilst running, I held my
breath. The next day it started to behave just like the
first, just slightly quieter, not for long. It then
started to make a louder static sound from the right
speaker area, which stopped, but then came back again,
but even worse, alternating from the right to the left
speaker whenever you turned the volume up (or as stated
above, whenever any "single" sound was made). Just to
add, I’d not installed anything or copied my data
across.
That was it for me and I returned the MacBook for a
refund which John Lewis gave back without any
questions. Thank you John Lewis!
This appears to be a manufacturing fault, as it
happened on two machines. I made a recording using my
camera.
The noise could be replicated simply by clicking on the volume bar in System Preferences which is shown in this video clip. The sound once made would not occur again for a minute.
I recorded it a few times with my camera (hence it being wobbly, I was trying to keep it’s mic near the speaker area). - First with the sound on, which may be hard to hear, then muted. I cut it off a bit early so I did it again a few times with the mute on. You may want to put on headphones or be in a quiet room & turn up the volume.
Some may just think it normal, which it isn’t - neither my PowerBook 12”, PowerBook 17” or my girlfriends White MacBook (a 2007 model) made the odd noise. Maybe some have less sensitive ears and are willing to live with it. It drove me bonzo.
Thankfully I’ve been loaned an iMac G5. I’ll wait for Apple to make a real MacBook update, hopefully a new case or something. I may wait for a month even then to see if anyone has any problems.
Update: I now have a late 2008 Alu MacBook and it has the same issue. After a little more research it appears the problem is the soundcard. What apparently happens is, your soundcard goes to sleep after a certain period and it makes the noise when it comes back on, if you have headphones on you can also hear a sort of hiss noise. So it looks like something you just have to live with. At least I got the better MacBook in the end. 17th December 2008
Apple Defects