Microsoft—in a nutshell—is a company that had one successful product that we are all beholden to—that then used that capital to buy other people’s products and ruin them. They are not bad people, but they do stab their friends in the back. Also, they are a bunch of nerds, which is probably why they have never managed to produce a decent interface.

Google—in a nutshell—is a company that had one successful product that we are all beholden to—that then used that capital to buy other people’s products and ruin them. They are not bad people, but they do stab their friends in the back. Also, they are a bunch of nerds, which is probably why they have never managed to produce a decent interface.

Apple is a company that produces amazing, human-usable products. I love them for the same reason I love any such company, and I forgive them their eccentricities because their products are so amazing. They make decisions that I’m told are bad for me, yet I don’t see that reflected in their products as I use them.

-via motherfucker

1. My BlackBerry won’t mount on my Mac as a Mass Storage Device
Mass Storage Mode allows your phone to mount as any USB hard drive or flash drive would thus allowing you to copy files back and forth between the phone and your computer. Firstly, the phone needs to have Mass Storage Mode enabled. This is done by going into the phone’s options menu and then selecting “Memory.”

• Media Card Support: On
• Encryption Mode: None
• Media Transfer Protocol (MTP): On
• Mass Storage Support: On
• Auto Enable Mass Storage Mode When Connected: Yes or Prompt

If you have these settings and your phone still won’t mount, the likely cause is a carrier unlock. Unlocking your phone disables Mass Storage Mode. To remedy the problem, iCrack has a patch to re-enable it. However, the patch runs on Windows only and doesn’t work in all circumstances. To manually enable Mass Storage Mode, you need to enter what’s called the Engineering Screens. Follow the directions from BerryReview to access the escreens:

To access the escreen, access the device “Help Me!” screen. For QWERTY devices, perform the key combination Alt+Shift+H on the home screen. For SureType devices, type Alt+EACE on the home screen. For SurePress devices, hold the Escape button, and tap the screen upper left, upper right, upper left, and upper right corners in that sequence.

The “Help Me!” screen contains the application version, PIN, and current up time. Without leaving the “Help Me!” screen, enter that information into the generator. The generator will give you the 8 digit code for the current “Help Me!” screen. If you close the “Help Me!” screen, the device uptime will no longer match the uptime used to generate the code.

Type the 8 digit code into the “Help Me!” screen. You will not see the digits as you type them, but once all 8 correct digits are entered, the escreen will activate. Make sure to use Alt for the numbers on QWERTY devices. Make sure to use multitap to enter the digits on SureType devices.

Once activated, the escreen will replace the “Help Me!” screen for the duration specified when generating the code. You can close the escreen earlier by setting your device clock ahead past the expiration time, reactivating the “Help Me!” screen, then setting your device clock back to normal. Note: Devices with a vendor ID of 1 (RIM engineering sample devices) will always have the escreen open.

Obtain the 8-digit code with this generator.

Once you’re at the escreen, click “OS Engineering Screens” and then “USB.” Select the seting for “Mass Storage (MS)” and click the BlackBerry button and choose “Toggle MS.” Now your BlackBerry should connect to your computer with no problem.

2. My BlackBerry experiences random sync errors telling me to “Retry Sync”
I really don’t have a good explanation for this one. Sometimes syncing contacts (or anything else) with BlackBerry Desktop Manager for Mac works, and other times, the sync fails telling me to retry. When you are receive an error message, hold down the option key and click on the sync services icon in the menubar and select Reset Sync Services. If you don’t have this menubar icon, go to System Preferences>MobileMe>Sync>Show Status in Menubar. Doing so will probably prompt you to reconcile some sync conflicts but hopefully you’ll only have to do this once.

I hope this helps any other BlackBerry and Mac user who’s experienced the same problems.

MacBook Pro (Mid 2008):

• 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor/2GB DDR2 RAM at 667 MHz
• 160 GB hard drive @ 7200 rpm
• 256 MB nVidia GeForce 8600M GT
• 15.4″ matte LED-lit display
• Illuminated Keyboard
• 2 USB/1 Firewire 400/1 Firewire 800

Unibody MacBook:

• 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor/2 GB DDR3 RAM @ 1066 MHz
• 160GB hard drive @ 5400 rpm
• nVidia GeForce 9400M chipset
• 13.3 LED-lit glossy display
• Glass multi-touch trackpad
• 2 USB ports

Ultimately, the performance is nearly identical. In real-world usage, the MacBook boots faster than the MacBook Pro, but I attribute this to the fact that there is significantly less occupying its hard drive. It’s hard to give up the MBP. While the unibody construction is sleek and very durable, the sentiental connection I have with my MBP is hard to get over.

The old MBP does have a few extra perks as well such as an ExpressCard slot. For most average users, this is hardly a point of significance. I can’t remember the last time I used any card-slot peripherals.

For those of you with older MBP’s considering a new laptop, I generally agree with what’s been said at Wired, and here. The conclusion seems to be that if you actually use more advanced features (card slot, firewire, do heavy film editing), stick with the pro. Otherwise, the new Unibody MacBook has closed the gap between pro and consumer models in a good way; save yourself some dough and go for the regular MacBook.

A lie of this magnitude makes the Laptop Hunter ads look almost reasonable. Considering the fact that

• Not all songs cost $0.99 (some cost more but some cost less too).
• Purchasing albums lowers the cost per song
• Ripped CD’s
• Movies take up a lot of room, and if you have an iPod touch, apps
• Maybe I like my iPod to double as an external hard drive

These are all ways that you can fill an iPod without spending $30k. I didn’t even mention pirated music! As far as I’m concerned, digital music is somewhere Microsoft has managed to fail on a much more consistent basis that some of their other departments (Windows XP sort of…and XBox).

Given the outrageous claim that we all spend $30,000 to fill our iPods, my iPod library (movies, music, apps, audiobooks, photos) does take up a significant portion of my hard drive, on my old HP laptop, it was over half; granted I only had an 80GB HD back then.

It’ll be interesting to see how this olds up a few months from now. I generally make it a point to take care of the hinge by not closing my laptop too abruptly. Anybody else experience any similar issues? What did you do about it?

WordClock by Simon Heys is simple, yet elegant screensaver I found that serves also as a clock. It can be customized in a variety of ways. Check out the video to see what I mean.

Word Clock for Mac, PC, iPhone from Simon Heys on Vimeo.

I didn’t want to get the same exact case for the MacBook however. As nice as the Incase sleeves are, they’re pretty pricey at $35. I looked around the web and came across Booq Bags. Booq manufactures a number of different bags, and sleeves for laptops and other devices. I quickly found the Taipan Skin for the MacBook. It certainly looked stylish enough for my Mac (always an important consideration). Also, looking at the dimensions, it fit the unibody MacBook exactly. This was the key factor in my purchasing decision as I have read elsewhere that the Incase sleeves are too large unibody MacBooks. This was also the case for my MacBook Pro; there is about an 1.5 inches of extra space at the top of the sleeve when the MBP is inserted into the sleeve.Taipan Skin. Satisfied with what I saw, I purchased a Taipan sleeve for my own. After a long journey from California, the Taipan arrived at my apartment. The exterior feels exactly the same as the Incase sleeves, however it is not as thick. The construction is solid, with the zipper going around two sides of the case (instead of just one for the Incase sleeve) providing a large point of entry/exit for the computer. While the actual case is thinner, It still provides adequate padding from the other books and objects in my backpack. In fact, the thinness actually means less space is wasted in my backpack. Ultimately, the Taipan offers a edgier, unique style over the ubiquitous Incase sleeve while offering the same amount of protection for a lower price. If you’re looking to protect your MacBook and hate the hard shell cases as much as I do, give the Booq sleeves a look.

The Taipan is also available at one of my favorite online shops, Koyono.

All in all, the construction of the new MacBook makes it seem much sturdier and lighter (although the weight difference is negligible in once it is placed in my backpack). The smaller footprint has led me to use the MacBook as my primary mobile computer, while my Pro sits at home.

For most users, the new MacBook is a significant upgrade over the previous models. While the old model is still available with specs that nearly match the unibody models (the difference being in the bus and RAM speed) at a price break, the unibody is still the way to go. Unless you’re on a really really tight budget, the durability, improved battery life, LED screen and option for an illuminated keyboard are all features that make the unibody models look, feel and perform like the MacBook Pro.

A few things I had to get used to were the glossy screen and the button-less track pad. My MacBook pro has a matte screen, and like many users, I worried about glare. In my usage, I have yet to find a situation where the glare made my hindered my experience. The LED screen is bright enough to minimize most effects of the gloss. The trackpad lacks a button and as a result, I initially found myself doing all sorts of weird things when I tried to click with a second finger placed where I’m used to having a button. This behavior changed quickly and I soon found myself trying to click the trackpad on other machines. Multi-touch is definitely nice and improves upon an already stellar user experience in Mac OS.

All-in-all, the unibody MacBooks are excellent machines and put my old MacBook Pro to shame; a feat only Apple could pull off.

This is a problem that users of all platforms share, however here I’ll be focusing on what I did for my MacBook Pro. On my Mac, there are a few programs I always have running besides Mail, my web browser and any documents I may be working on. These include Dropbox, Quicksilver, and Twitteriffic. One solution would be to disable all these programs from running at startup. Doing this would mean that every time I turn on my computer, I would have to open all those programs manually; something I’d rather not spend time doing.

I had seen Windows applications that allow you to specify a time-delay for startup programs so your system doesn’t get bogged down trying to launch everything at once. I didn’t find a program like this for Mac, however the Mac Tips and Tricks blog pointed out how you could write your own such program easily using tools already included with the OS.

Their solution was to use either Applescript or Automator to force applications to start after a pre-set delay. I won’t repeat the instructions as they are available here. Currently, I am using the Applescript solution as the Automator (while easier to do) resulted in my apps’ menubar icons being placed awkwardly in the middle of the menubar as opposed to their usual spot near the system clock.

All in all, I think this is a pretty cool trick and has prompted me to play around a lot more with Automator and Applescript. Any ideas or suggestions?