The Mac-Users Forum

Good old Jobs took out the firewire in the baseline models, and I was this close to switching. Hopefully a few SPs in, Vista will stabilize.

I love how I ordered a MacBook Pro for work a week and a half ago and now the new one is announced. I haven't looked up the specs for the new one, but does anyone think it would be worth me sending it back and getting the new model (We're still under the 10 day return policy time)? Not sure if it's really worth it.

You should return it Suttytx, and you're not to bright for buying it in the first place. It's been everywhere for a couple weeks that they were announcing new macbooks this week.

I definitely want me a new Macbook Pro, but I think I'll wait until Amazon has them, so there will be no tax, and I can get free 2nd day shipping. plus I gotta find someone to buy my old macbook pro.

Ahhh, the irony. Thanks Mike!

With my old Imac G5 finally being struck down in it's 3 year infancy due to a logic board failure, I hastily turned to apple's Black Friday sale and settled on the new 13" mac book. What I failed to notice was the lack of firewire options.

Silly me and my stupidity. Now that this got past me when going over the specs I have to consider the future, being that I'm obviously a film fan and want to get my hands on a camera of some kind down the line and use it for shorts, odds and ends. Job's may think firewire will give up the ghost but DV decks and HDD's at the production houses where I've been stashed away have always relied on Firewire, will they go with it and latch onto some new successor, mac's latest greatest port.

So I don't know whether to send my forthcoming mac book back or wait it out, I myself just have the 1 external with my old HDD from my G5 awaiting an enclosure, so it's no immediete concern, but this along with skipping out on HDMI for Mini DisplayPort has made me skeptical.

Whatever magical connective contraption mac makes up next (Skynet) could be acquired with a desktop years down the line but now that I looked it up I'm not surprised that there are others unpleased with the decision.

I have an EMAC. yes and EMAC and it works wonderfully. Unfortunately, I'm running 10.3.9 and since I don't have intel dual processors, upgrading to the newest OS is not an option.

What I need is a very cheap version of Tiger. Anyone know where I can find one. I"m a little wary of E-bay.

The only reason I need to change my OS is for Tax purposes. Many of the Tax software programs are not making them for 10.3.9 any more. Also, Adobe Flash no longer supports 10.3.9 either (if you try to update FLASH, they will basically tell you to "F" off).

Actually, since my Imac G5 is dead I put my Tiger 10.4 restore/install discs on ebay, if you want a trusted CHUD source (I won't spit on it or anything.) I'm pretty sure it'll work for an emac.

Can look here if interested.

well I guess I was too late in reading this thread. doh!

Never place a bottle of soda without a top inches away from your new $2000 computer. Anyone ever have luck de-stickifying a macbook keyboard?

No, but I just moved my Dr. Pepper to the other side of the table.

A damp cloth should handle the surface sticky, are the keys jamming? I watched one of the techs at a Mac Store efficiently popping keys in and out of an older Macbook not too long ago, you could clean the innards that way if you have to.

Macbook keys are a pain in the ass to remove on the new macbooks. I did remove all the ones that seemed sticky last night, soaked them in goo gone and rinsed and dried them, then managed to reattach them. Everything seemed good and unsticky. Then a couple hours later they started feeling sticky again and now I can barely type on the damn thing. I've heard soaking them in rubbing alcohol works so I'll remove them all again tonight and try that.

The real problem is the space bar, capslock, shift, tab, etc. All the ones that aren't squares. They don't connect the same way, and I don't want to risk breaking them off.

I've contacted a specialist and he said he could try cleaning them but the keyboard might just need to be replaced.

Ugh. I had a macbook pro for two year prior to this and never spilled a thing on it. This sucks.

My condolences. My iPhone met a similar fate in the night a few months ago. A mere 3 days after I had purchased it, it was charging next to my bed very near a bottle of juice that was nearly empty. Somehow in the night the juice fell over and poured what was left directly on the iPhone, and only the iPhone. The phone was on a sheet of paper and there was a perfect rectangular spill stain, with no drops anywhere else. It was as if my phone was assassinated. Fortunately, because it was so brand new (and I soaked it out and cleaned it up really well), the genius bar gave me a new one.

By the way, fucking apple juice.

I think I'm going to bring it to the genius bar tomorrow and see if they will take pity on me. I've got the keys soaking in some rubbing alcohol now and i'm going to see if that unsticks them, but the problem still is the space bar and other keys on the bottom, left, and right edges that are attached differently. The space bar is really fucked now. Worst case I'll probably have to pony up a few hundred bucks (this would probably be through a non apple store deal as they would probably charge close to 1000 to replace the keyboard).

I officially hate 2009.

Well I seem to have rather successfully destickified the keys using rubbing alcohol, and managed to get off the space bar, caps lock, and tab button to destickify those. In the process I broke the little plastic bits off the back of the D and \ keys so they'll no longer stay on the keyboard. Also the backlight is kinda messed up. I can tell its not an electrical problem but more a problem in the clear plastic the light shines through.

...

Actually typing now the keys are starting to feel sticky again.

Fuck.

Well gonna have to replace this. My only consolation is that I'll hopefully be able to sell my old macbook for a few hundred dollars to offset the price of the replacement keyboard. Have a couple repair places I found looking into it so I can see who comes back with the best price. What an extremely costly lesson this has taught me.

Wait, how much does a replacement mac keyboard cost?

Mike, that blows beyond belief. There is nothing worse than having something expensive and brand-fucking-new get messed up. I hope it doesn't cost you too terribly much, and that it has that New Mac smell when it's repaired.

I have a ThinkPad that still has a few sticky keys from where I spilled a cup of soda on it a year and a half ago. I've just been trying to hold out until this summer when my work will finally spring for a new one (plus I've switched to using a desktop I own for most of my more intense work).

Does anyone have a white MacBook? My girlfriend has one and the piece of plastic that lays around the track pad and keyboard is cracking where she puts her wrists and I didn't know if this was common. I could do more searching on it but I was just wondering if it happened to anyone else here.

What generation is it? Brand new, or an older one? I know several with that model, though I haven't heard of that particular problem. It may just be bad luck that she happens to hold her wrists at two particularly weak points in the architecture.

I think it's about a year and a half old at this point. It's not here at the moment so I can't check the exact model but if I had to guess I'd say it's from May 2007.

I remember it was right when some new models came out but I can't remember if she went with the new ones or the old ones (she's a grad student so money was a big factor in which one she bought).

Going to cost me $445 to fix. If I went through MacService.com it would cost $395, but I found someone who will get it done for me in the same day which is hopefully Monday. Kinda kills me that I went with the cheaper MacBook Pro and am now paying excessively for something I already have. The keys now actually aren't all that sticky, but with the broken off keys and dirty backlight I should probably just get it taken care of. *sigh*

That blows, does AppleCare cover stuff like that? It's already saved my ass a couple of times but I'm not sure if it'll insure me if I fuck up the MBP myself.

Well $450 and a lot of stress later and my MBP is good as new. It was pretty nerve wracking as it was clear he had never taken apart a new MBP before and was going based on the vague instructions on ifixit. After 3 hours it was back together (with these new MBPs you can't just replace the keyboard. you need to replace basically the entire outer body, minus the bottom) and he turned it on. The backlight didn't work first, then I saw that the airport card wasn't being recognized. I felt pretty sick to my stomach for a bit. I told him to open the back again and check all the connectors (the airport card is actually in the bottom of the display.) He did so and he said everything appeared fine. He said "well, there's not really any sign of me being in here so you can just take it to apple." We put the bottom back on and I crossed my fingers and turned it on again. Everything worked. And now I'll make sure there is never any kind of liquid within 5 feet of it.

Blows that you went through all that, but I'm happy to hear it's good as new.

So I've come across an old, and beat-up, Powerbook Titanium that was given to me by a friend who received it as a sort of "spare parts" computer but never actually gutted it. But the thing never had any serious issues, just old and sorta beat up.

Just the laptop. I had to buy a charger for it on eBay but that was relatively cheap, the main problem is that it was password protected.

I tried putting in my MacBook Pro Install disks and trying to boot from CD-Drive while pressing C at startup but it just crashes it.

I've tried almost everything and nothing seems to work. Even starting up in Safe mode wasn't a success.

I really don't care what's on it so losing any data is fine, I just need to get past the damn password.


UPDATE: So I was able to make a new Admin account and password and get myself in. Awesome, but even after I "demoted" the old Admin to Standard User I still can't change their password.

Will it still let me wipe the HD if they're "side" of the HD is password protected?

What version of OS X is it running?

10.3.9

Anyway, you can totally reformat the drive and wipe all existing users/info off it. Obviously if you don't have an OS install disc you don't want to do that (and obviously you couldn't from inside the OS itself).

Another option is to get a PPC Linux Live CD and boot from that and see if it has any utilities. Of course, if you just need the OS X 10.3 install image you could probably find a torrent for it or if you don't have any luck with that send me a PM and I may be able to help you out. I've got an old TiBook that had hte backlight die on the display so I could probably scrounge up a 10.3 disc.

I hate to hear people say stuff like this. I'm not going to say that a Mac is for everyone, everywhere; but if you think the elimination of a FW port on the current Macbook compensates for all the positives of switching, I'm wondering why you'd even consider switching at all?

I'm sure the decision to eliminate FW from the MacBook was a challenging one, but just like pulling the floppy drives out of Macs before everyone else- it's going to cause some bad press for Apple in the short term. From my understanding, there were internal configuration changes that prevented the inclusion of the port, as well as a decision that most people buying the MacBook weren't using FW anyway. Of course some are, but I'd be willing to bet that for everyone that does, there many more that weren't.

I have to ask, what are you using the FW for? If you're doing video, there's the legacy white MacBook, or obviously there's the MacBook Pros. There's even more options if you look into Refurbs [which are great and you shouldn't think twice about purchasing]. You could get yourself a last-generation MacBook Pro at a good price, with the FW ports you seem to want, plus more power than the new MacBook provides.

Just because the new MacBook isn't exactly what you want shouldn't be the deciding factor on making the switch, there's way too many other positives; and there are options available for you if you WANT to switch.

Yeah, I'm curious what you are using FW for that would make it so essential to your purchase....

Aside from most DV Cams worth a damn, firewire drives are the next best thing to opening up a Macbook and adding another hard drive. USB 2.0 just can't compare - it's not as fast and it's not as stable. USB relies on our computers processor to do a lot of the crunching. Firewire has a chip of its' own, thus systems will not slow down when large amounts of files are moved around.

Given that Apple gives such meager hard drives (and charges up the ass to bump up the specs on any of their machines), firewire drives are the way to go if you work with a lot of data and working off of a file server isn't always ideal.

I love Macs and Apple does a lot of great stuff.. but eliminating firewire was a boneheaded move.

I've been shopping for a new laptop for a while now, and decided on getting an Apple a few weeks ago. I was planning on waiting until this summer to get one, but Apple had the MacBook Air for $999 refurb today, so I said screw it and grabbed one. I'm not new to Apple products, I was an iPhone launch buyer and bought the iPod as soon as the 2nd gen came out. What should I know as a new convert?

What I ask everyone who says they might want a Macbook Air: Are you sure you want this to be your main computer? One USB port. No optical drive.

It's the one purchase from Apple that I ask people to really be sure about.


Insta-Edit: I just re-read your post and it seems like you already bought it. How do you like it?

It hasn't arrived yet. I paid for next day shipping, so hopefully it gets to the office shortly. Apple's interface to check the status of your order is atrocious. It won't even say if it's shipped or not, just that it will ship within 24 hours. But as for your comment on wanting it as a main computer, hell no. I have a desktop that I use for gaming, media, etc that I spent a nice penny on, not including the multi monitor set up I have. I use my laptop for web browsing, chatting, and bullshitting around on the couch when I'm at home. Which is pretty much exactly what the Air seems to be best designed for, but definitely not at $1700. If it gets here early today I'll post some impressions this afternoon.

Well, first impression.

Apple Online Store customer service sucks. I paid for, as it explicitly says, Next Day Business Delivery. I called to get a tracking number, and was told it had not shipped, it ships within 24 hours then I will receive it within 24 hours after shipping. Well that does not sound like next day delivery. At all. I explained my opinion to the rep, and compared it to Amazon's delivery where if I order by 5PM I get the item the next day no question.

But he kept going back to 24 hour shipping, then 24 hours later I received it. So I asked for the shipping number. He did not have it because it had not shipped yet. But I ordered it at 9AM, it was 1:30PM the next day, quite a bit more than 24 hours. So Apple's ship within 24 hours line isn't even true. I told him this was the first time I was disappointed with Apple's customer service, and would appreciate if he would include my comments in his system, and would appreciate more speaking with someone about the incredibly deceptive shipping options. $20 for next day delivery that I won't receive for four days is not next day delivery.

Speaking as a former customer service rep, you should have asked to speak with his manager. A baseline customer service rep is useless in a situation like that, where you're talking about apparent fundamental flaws in the system.

Got it in a few hours ago, and I'm finally down downloading the software updates. Definitely like it. I'm still getting over how small it is. I sat my iPhone down next to it, and they're the same thickness. Kind of odd learning some of the differences between Windows and Mac, but other than that I'm enjoying it. Text on Firefox seems a bit blurry sometimes, but other times very crisp. The display itself is very pretty. Only real shock to me so far was that the HDD is 80GB but 25GB were already used up on the OS. I'm reconsidering loading up my iTunes library now.

Well, sometimes it seems like half of the OS is printer drivers. You can uninstall a bunch of those and get a couple GB back. They're located in the /Library/Printers I believe.

You can also delete iWork and iLife and a bunch of iWhatever applications to get space back.

Unfortuantely the way apps are bundled and the universal binaries has kind of resulted in bloated Mac applications.

I'll definitely be going through over the next couple days and trying to remove anything I won't use. Garage band? No thanks. I didn't see anything in the printer directory though. I learned the F9/F11 windows shortcut today, and also the touch shortcuts to minimize/maximize windows and movies. Any other cool shortcuts I have to know?

A question for any Macbook owners. My sister is planning on getting herself a Macbook and I'm trying to help her decide what to buy. Between these two models, can anyone tell me the pros and cons?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834100019

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834100039

Can you give an overall impression of what your sister will be doing with it?

If it's word processing, music, pictures, and internet surfing type stuff, the older model will do just fine. The plastic MacBooks are sturdy well made notebooks that are worth the dime.

If she is going anywhere beyond that, with any kind of heavy-duty image processing or video work, then it might be worth the extra couple hundred for the newer model. You'll get all of the perks of the newer design (The aluminum unibody is wonderful, the trackpad is excellent, much brighter/higher contrast screen, and it's just an overall sharper looking computer), plus you'll get what is, from everything I've read or heard, a pretty badass nVidia video card.

So essentially, if you think your sister will actually tap it, the extra horsepower of the new model should be worth the extra dough. If her needs are more basic though, the older model will work great.

That pretty much answers what I wanted to know. Considering she doesn't have much need for it outside the basics and she doesn't seem all that keen on spending an extra $300, I think we have an answer. Thanks a lot for the help, its much appreciated.

The only warning I'd give is that the white MacBooks can get quite dirty looking through every day use and despite their sturdiness my girlfriend has managed to crack the plastic where her wrists rest on the front edge of the laptop. That cracking is not a common issue I don't think but I wanted to at least throw it out there.

Also, my girlfriend has a sticker from schtickers.com that looks pretty great on her laptop. Definitely gives it some personality besides the boring white laptop look. If your sister is looking to have something that looks a bit cooler that's a way to go.

Also, for a case she went with a laptop sleeve from fabrixcases.com and it looks pretty great and does a fairly good job of protecting it. If you don't want to carry around a dedicated laptop bag and want something that's moderately stylish it's a good way to go.

I have one of the white plastic Macbooks and bumped the RAM up to 2GB and found the Adobe CS3 applications to run very smoothly on it. I've run Final Cut Pro on it as well, though it didn't run quite as smoothly, it still worked - just rendered a lot slower.

Not that your sister plans on doing any of this stuff, but just to illustrate that those Macbooks aren't sub-par in the least. They are sturdy little work-horses. Hell, that laptop runs Vista better than any "Made for Vista" laptops I've used.

As much as I'd love one of the newer ones, I have no reason to upgrade at this time (plus, no firewire on the new Macbooks.. only the Pros.. BOO!)

Thanks for the info, I'll let her know about those sites seeing as they seem to be right up her alley.

One more thing...

The company InCase makes fantastic accessories for Apple products. The wonderful thing about them is that they understand the design-beauty of Apple's stuff, and they try to complement that.

This hardshell protective case: http://www.goincase.com/products/det...l-case-cl57116 is great...

...and this sling-backpack http://www.goincase.com/products/det...g-pack-cl55078 might be one of my favorite purchases I've made in a long time.

Thanks for that link Renn. Looks like I'm buying a Macbook Air and iPhone case.

The iPhone slider case is great, my phone never leaves it. If I ever get some extra cash, I'd like to buy the Power Slider case.

I feel like a shill, but I've just always been completely pleased by whatever I've bought from them.