For the love of Butter.

Posted on July 28th, 2006 by phiber811, under Service Rants, main.

Dear Apple,

Please tell me, Why must I remove the logic board, fan assemblies, processor, speaker assembly, and several dozen screws, in order to replace the lower SATA cable on a G5 tower? Why couldnt you have moved those two screws forward, say, an inch and a half?

I hope your dog dies,
Me.

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The reward of a job well done.

Posted on July 28th, 2006 by phiber811, under New Mods, main.

I recently got in a bottle of Auto Air’s Sparklesent Toxic Green. I had also promised to paint an iBook for one of the MacMod boys. With that in mind, I set to work on a thursday evening, and came out of the garage with this.

Only a preview of the final project mind you, but damn, it came out well!

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What The Deuce?

Posted on July 25th, 2006 by phiber811, under Service Rants, main.

My part time service kid just unpacked a white macbook for a customer. His task, swap out the factory ram with 1GB modules. Several minutes later he comes into my office and says “Is this normal?” and hands me the factory ram. the connectors are all covered with white oxidation. As in evidence of a liquid spill. Here’s the kicker though. all the packaging is pristine, which means that this happened in manufacturing. How the hell does that get through quality inspection?

Now, we have to try and send the unit back to the Supplier as defective, and get another one. Did I mention they’re highly constrained? Did I mention that the customer is coming in today to pick it up?

Yeah, thanks for that, Apple.

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Of mice and well, mice.

Posted on July 25th, 2006 by phiber811, under Tools, main.

As of this morning, Apple has announced the Bluetooth version of the Mighty Mouse. When they shipped the original USB Mighty Mouse, I walked out of my office, got in my car, and drove to the closest apple store to buy one. As a rule, I’m a bit picky about my input devices, and I was all about what apple had done. It made complete sense. I even said to myself, “when they ship a bluetooth version, I’m all over it!” That was then.

In the time since I bought my mighty mouse, barely a year, I’ve been saddened. The mouse that was, turned out to be the mouse that isnt. At least, isnt for me. I spent more time scrubbing the scroll nub clean with a q-tip and alcohol, than I did actually having it work. That was my primary gripe. I’d never had to clean the ball on an old analog mouse this much, and I couldnt remove the nub. Annoying. Then, at the one year mark, my mouse utterly died. Its input control went bonko, and its ability to recognize what click was what, went right out the window. The Mighty Mouse was unplugged, and cast into the drawer of busted tech, and I reverted back to a Apple Pro Mouse, intent on finding the next good replacement.

In almost a perfect sene of timing, my new mouse arrived last night. From Japan. Elecom Electronics is one of the largest manufacturers of mice and such in Japan, and their stuff is truly unlike any of the garbage plastic we see here in the west. A little hunting through jlist.com yielded my find, which is the Elecom Palvo (medium size). Yes, they have small and medium sizes. Yes, they come in half a dozen eye catching colors. Being an apple nerd, and realizing that I may one day paint it, I went with white.

This little wonder is only $36 from the fine people at J-List. You get two buttons, and a clickable scroll wheel, which happens to all work perfectly with the button programming we’re used to.

With all this in mind, and a very nice mouse attached to my keyboard, what do I think of Apple’s bluetooth Mighty Mouse? I think its about time. I laud Apple for getting it out the door. Will I buy one? Nope. I’ve no desire to spend $70 on a mouse that I might get less than a year out of. But, thats me. If you want one, go and get you one.

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