WWDC Live Discussion Thread: All today's BIG ANNOUNCEMENTS are HERE! (1 Viewer)

[DavidJ]

Not picking on you Craig. I just need a quote for context and yours was the one I ran across first. I know many 3G owners are upset about the upgrade cost, but there is a counterpoint:

Counterpoint: AT&T isn't cheating iPhone 3G customers

 

[Carlo_M]

Brian, I feel your pain. I do get the sense that Apple is changing their definition of "pro". Clearly you (and others who do music/movie production) are the original definition of "pro" which is why a lot of that stuff that 99% of others don't use (like the ExpressCard slot) was present. I think Apple is shifting to the "pro" user in the sense of someone who is more akin to a PC "power user" (i.e. techies who can build/maintain their own machine, use some sophisticated programs, yet aren't necessarily industry pros), as evidenced by their recent changes in product specs.

Although I likely won't be affected by the Sata 1.5Gbps switch, I still am unhappy with it. And while I do use SD cards, I also use CF cards, so it's curious why they would abandon Expresscard to be more "consumer friendly" yet only offer the SD card option vs. a multi-card option allowing for CF cards as well. Many of Canon's "pro" cameras use CF so I'm not buying the "most people using cameras are using SD" argument. If they weren't going to give people options to plug in the various mem card formats, they should have kept the ExpressCard slot to allow users to buy the all-in-one readers.

 

[Carlo_M]

Wish I had your "Genius". Was totally denied by mine, telling me it's just a "worn out battery" and didn't offer replacement.

Going to write to corporate and see if that makes a difference. Sigh :frowning:

 

[Ted Todorov]

Try simply calling Apple Care first -- maybe you'll get a better result. They replaced my wife's dead 1.5 ~ 2 year old MacBook battery for free, BUT I only called them in the first place because I had read about some sort of model wide defect with those batteries. FWIW, the replacement she got is amazing -- it seems to last forever.

 

[DaveF]

Yes. I called AppleCare.

Your "Genius" is simply wrong. 36 cycles is not "worn out". Apple has a requirement for determining if the battery is bad; I believe it is 60% capacity at some low number of cycles. Your situation is likely close to that threshold.

Mine was replaced with 60% capacity and about 50 cycles.

 

[Carlo_M]

Thanks Dave, I'll try calling Apple Care in the near future. Hopefully they'll remedy the problem. I think the "Genius" had a problem with the length of time I've owned the laptop (2 years) rather than the number of cycles.

On a related note (in the sense of giving more money to Apple):

Pulled the trigger today. Went to my local Best Buy and paid my $50 for the iPhone pre-order. 32GB iPhone 3G Black. My appointment is scheduled for 11am on Friday. I'm excited, to say the least. I was surprised that they offer the iPhone with a white back. I've never seen one in the wild. Does anyone buy this color? When the salesman asked me which color I looked at my girlfriend, who rolled and her eyes and said "black, why would you buy white?"

Although my work does use a MS Exchange server, I think in order to save $15 a month I'm going to start out with the basic iPhone data plan and just check my email via web (which my work also supports) rather than pay the extra and do the Exchange Server configuration (though at that point the mail and calendar of Outlook would, from my understanding, be synced up with my iPhone's Mail and Calendar apps).

I have a question for those who are familiar with both Mac OSX Snow Leopard and Exchange.

Snow Leopard is supposed to bring us full Exchange support. If I upgrade my Mac to Exchange support, I'm thinking it will update both Mac Mail and iCal with my email and calendar from Outlook at work. I'm assuming I can do this for free as long as I do the config correctly.

Will I then be able to sync my iPhone to my Mac's mail and iCal, and hence be sync'd--albeit with some delay based on my last Mac to Exchange sync, not truly in real-time--with Outlook Mail and Calendar from work? Without having to pay for the extra Exchange support for my iPhone?

 

[DaveF]

Hopefully that won't be a problem. But...Apple's official recommendation is to cycle the battery monthly to keep it working properly. But that would be only 24 cycles in two years. Good luck!

 

[Carlo_M]

I'm aware of that recommendation and have been doing it (okay, maybe sometimes 1 1/2 months between charges). But I told the "Genius" that up front. I was very honest and said my machine stays plugged in most of the time I use it, but that I power cycled/drained it every month or so. And that only recently did it do this decline.

To make matters worse, it's completely sporadic! I've "recalibrated" the battery per their instructions several times. Sometimes when it's working, it reports the full charge capacity as up to 4100 mAh. And sometimes it dips below to 2000 mAh. But it usually hangs around in the 3000s. I told her this and she didn't seem to care.

To me if a battery has worn down, it's full charge mAh should be in decline, not varying wildly, 2000 one use, 4000 the next, 3000 the next, etc. etc. And when I'm running on battery it will change on the fly, like my % life will go quickly from 100 to 60, then jump to 75, then decline steadily again (indicating that while powered on and running on battery, the full charge mAh will have jumped from say 2700 to 3600).

Keep in mind I'm describing what appears in the "Full Charge" rating, not what the current battery charge is, which is why I find the jumping back and forth between values to be faulty.

Thanks for the well wishes, I'm going to call some time this week, time permitting, from work.

 

[Sam Posten]

IMO the ONLY reason to go to SSD right now is if you need to be absolutely positively sure you will never throw a drive head. Modern hard disks are absolutely rock solid so this is not a consideration for the vast number of consumers and the big deal with SSD is they let Apple charge you a premium for them when the can no longer get away with doing so on RAM and standard hard disks.

 

[Sam Posten]

Don't think of them as a card reader for consumer cams.

Think of them as infinitely swappable but semi-slow boot-camp partitions. So you don't have to taint your 'real' hard disk with boot camp but you can have a Windows XP, Vista, 7 or Linux flavor of the week (hi ubuntu!) on a SD card any time you want. Yes, you can boot from the SD card slot! For $50 a pop and easily user serviceable. And when real high speed SD cards are available at real cheap prices, this will be even more attractive.

Note: this feature is not fully baked yet. But it will be.
Boot from the SD card slot in new MacBook Pros - Ars Technica

Sam

 

[Michael_K_Sr]

Unfortunately I don't feel this way anymore. I've seen more hard disk failures in the last 18 months than I have probably seen in the previous 10 years. Can't stress to people how critical backups are.

 

[Ted Todorov]

If you have been using Seagate Barracudas or Drobo enclosures I feel your pain. Otherwise, do share, so I'll know what to avoid. Until my recent encounter with those bad boys I had never had a single Mac HD failure. I've had good results with numerous OWC external drives and Western Digital internals.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

The reason I am looking at SSD (though too pricey that I will
actually purchase) is for boot-up speed. If I am hearing correctly,
there is a significant boost in overall boot-up. Plus, the resale value
on a SSD laptop knowing that there is no wear-and-tear like a drive
is a real plus as well.

 

[DaveF]

Given the plummeting cost of SSDs, I'd think you'd get better resale value from a conventional drive until SSDs prices are the same. And SSDs do have "wear and tear": they have limited read-write cycles that are balanced across the drive via smart software to maximize drive life. These effects have been reduced substantially; but then again conventional drives can last years without incident.

On MacBreak Weekly, Leo Laporte noted that his SSD MacBook had fast bootups and app load times. That seems to be the only benefit right now. (disappointing to those of use who thought SSDs would usher in improved battery life or be faster in all cases)

I don't know about hard drive failures. I hear talk about bad Seagates and good WD. A few years ago, it was the opposite; WDs were the ones likely to fail and Seagates had the warranty and were rock solid. Anecdotally, you should not a hard drive from anyone

 

[Carlo_M]

Brian,

Looks like Apple heard loud and clear from you and your fellow pro constituents, at least about the SATA interface (I'm afraid there's no going back on the ExpressCard slot at least on this revision of the MBPs).

But let's hold out some hope. Firewire disappeared from the 13" Macbook line, only to reappear once they were rebranded to MBPs this time around. So all is not lost for ExpressCard, especially since they've opted to keep it in the 17" model.

 

[Carlo_M]

Holy thread resurrection, Batman! [/url]

Hopefully that won't be a problem. But...Apple's official recommendation is to cycle the battery monthly to keep it working properly. But that would be only 24 cycles in two years. Good luck!

 

[DaveF]

Good to hear! I thought for sure your battery would be replaced without question. Glad to hear that someone came through, despite your unusually brain-dead first "Genius".