Raible Designs

Tuesday July 15, 2008

My iPhone Review Today I picked up a 16GB iPhone at the Park Meadows Apple Store. As far as I can tell, I got it with a stroke of luck. Last night, I was searching Apple's "Concierge" application to see which store (there's 4 in the region now) would look at my Mac Pro (averaging 4 GSOD per day). Most had a 24-hour lead time at the Genius Bar, but Park Meadows had an 8AM available.

This morning, I hauled the box into the mall and doubted the store would be open at such an early hour. Apparently, the store isn't really "open", but the Genius Bar is and they have a camp for kids from 8-10. After submitting my machine to the Genius Bar, I asked a guy about iPhones. He said they got a shipment the night before and they had 16GB White iPhones in stock.

LinkedIn has an Employee Discount for AT&T, so I asked the sales guy if I could use that. He said I needed to buy the phone from AT&T if I wanted to use any sort of "business" discount. I called the downtown AT&T store (they angrily told me they were out-of-stock) and walked by the one in Park Meadows Mall (didn't open until 10). I then rationalized that buying an iPhone from an AT&T store could take weeks. After an hour of contemplating, I decided to go ahead and purchase the white iPhone, even though I wanted black and I wouldn't get the employee discount. My reasoning:

• Employee Discount is 8% which amounts to about $8/month. My last T-Mobile bill for my Blackberry Pearl was over $200. Going from $200 to under $100 makes $8 irrelevant.
• When I bought my Escalade, I liked a black one more. When I bought my last iPod (May), I wanted a white one, but ended up with black (no white in stock). It seems fitting that I'd get a white one when I'd want black. My previous black vs. white purchases haven't bothered me post-purchase.
• These things are hard to find - I should just buy the damn thing.

So yes, I thought about the decision way too much, but managed to talk myself into it. It's a good thing too - they were sold out by the time the store opened at 10. I bought mine at 9:30.

So what do I think of it? I like it, but not for the phone or fanciness of it.

Pros: The main reason I like it is for its iTunes Remote application. With an Airport Express + Bose System at home, I've been wanting this for quite some time. I would've paid $200 for this alone.

Cons: I love the Pandora app, but was disappointed to find it didn't work with my car's iPod connector. I was hoping for Pandora-in-the-car, but no dice. The iPod feature of the iPhone works, but charging via my car's iPod connector doesn't. The enabling-of-charging feature may be software related since there's a "charging won't work" message that pops up when I plug it in.

So 12 hours after purchasing the device, I'm happy with it, but not thrilled. However, it seems like the kind of thing that grows on you and someday you wonder how you lived without it. Should be a fun ride.

Update 24 hours later: I really like that the iPhone has a speaker. I've always wanted a radio in my bedroom at night and now I have one. On the downside, the battery life is abysmal: it was fully charged at 8AM this morning and completely dead by 8PM tonight. Posted in Mac OS X at Jul 15 2008, 10:07:26 PM MDT 6 Comments

Thursday June 05, 2008

New Mac Pro It sure is cool when dreams come true. Look what arrived at the Denver office today.

Update: Believe it or not, I rebooted my MacBook Pro the same minute I plugged in my Mac Pro. Upon reboot, the MBP choked and I've been looking at a gray screen with a spinning icon for most of the day. I'm soooo glad I have Time Machine. Let's hope I can do a restore on the MBP tomorrow.

Update 2: I was able to successfully build the Mac Pro from my latest MacBook Pro backup on Time Machine. Sweet! Let's see how this works:

$ echo $JAVA_OPTS
-Xms512M -Xmx4096M -XX:PermSize=384m -XX:MaxPermSize=512m -Djava.awt.headless=true -XX:+CMSClassUnloadingEnabled -XX:+CMSPermGenSweepingEnabled -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -server

Posted in Mac OS X at Jun 05 2008, 11:21:17 AM MDT 13 Comments

Wednesday March 19, 2008

I Got Lucky Earlier this evening, I decided to upgrade my work laptop to Safari 3.1. Shortly after restarting, I was greeted with the Gray Screen of Death. To fix, I rebooted. Same result. 3rd time is a charm, right? Nope.

/me this is really going to suck, I'm going to have to give up my laptop for several days to get it fixed. Furthermore, this is my only machine authorized to VPN into LinkedIn's network. Looks like I'm going on vacation for the rest of the week.

Rather than trying to rescue the OS or upgrade it to Leopard, I decided to watch TV for an hour instead. When I came back, I disconnected the machine from its monitor and tried rebooting on battery power. Voila - it worked!

Now I'm in the process of using my old friend SuperDuper!.

I got lucky... when was the last time you backed up?

Thursday March 13, 2008

My Entire Family is now on Macs I bought my first Mac in January 2002. I had dreamed about a PowerBook for years before buying it and was very excited when it arrived. A couple days later, I discovered it was practically worthless because it was so slow for Java Development. I used it for pictures and music, but not much else. Through the years, I owned a couple more PowerBooks, but rarely found them fast enough to use on a day-to-day basis. I kept doing most of my development on Windows.

In January 2006, everything changed. I kept my Windows box around at home, but mostly because it was connected to my 23" monitor and I didn't feel like switching things out. When I moved last summer, I put my Windows box in a closet and bought a 30" monitor. I've hardly touched that Windows box since. Of course, it helps that I have Parallels installed on my Mac.

Now I have two MacBook Pros (a 17" I bought and a 15" that LinkedIn gave me). Last year I convinced my sister to buy a MacBook. Time I've had to spend in the last year helping her fix it: 0 minutes.

Yesterday, I took my Dad to his local Mac store and helped him buy a 24" iMac.

The Raible Family is now an all-Mac family and I work at an all-Mac company.

Life is good. Posted in Mac OS X at Mar 13 2008, 11:27:17 AM MDT 7 Comments

Thursday December 20, 2007

Part Apple Fan, Part Geek I like to think I'm not too committed to anything (except my kids and skiing). The following quizzes seem to indicate I'm on the right track. Moderation is good.

52%How Addicted to Apple Are You?
48% Geek

Proof that the holidays are treating me well? I'm heading to the hills for 2 days of skiing with my sister tomorrow. Forecast: Powder. Posted in Mac OS X at Dec 20 2007, 01:26:53 PM MST 4 Comments

Tuesday December 11, 2007

Life with a 30" Monitor Back in August, I asked if it was better to have one 30" monitor or two 23" monitors? After many comments, I concluded:

After reading The Large Display Paradox, it seems like I should either find something like WinSplit Revolution for the Mac, or get 2 monitors. I agree with everything that Jeff Atwood says about maximizing windows, that's why I originally thought two 23" monitors might be better.

For some reason, I threw this conclusion out the window in September and bought myself a 30" monitor. Within minutes, I concluded He who says 30" monitors are no good has never owned one. It's simply one of the coolest computing devices I've ever purchased. It makes developing in my home office simply awesome.

Below is a picture of my home office. The fireplace and "AirTunes to Bose System" make it one of my favorite offices ever.

Posted in Mac OS X at Dec 11 2007, 12:03:24 PM MST 12 Comments

Tuesday November 06, 2007

Going to see Fake Steve Jobs Tonight One of the perks of working at LinkedIn, and being out in Mountain View this week, is I get to attend a talk tonight where Guy Kawasaki interviews Fake Steve Jobs. It's my first trip to the Computer History Museum, so it should be a fun show. If you're not able to make it tonight, it looks like they'll be live streaming the event from the LinkedIn blog.

My only question is - do you think FSJ will act like Jobs or himself? I'm hoping for the former.

Update: That was an awesome event. Thanks to LinkedIn for hosting it and for Fake Steve for the great stories behind his journey.

Update 2: The LinkedIn Blog has videos from the event. Posted in Mac OS X at Nov 06 2007, 02:41:15 PM MST Add a Comment

Tuesday October 30, 2007

My Upgrade to Leopard By now, you've seen many stories about upgrading to Leopard. Here's mine.

In the past, I would've slapped the DVD in, selected upgrade and prayed for the best. Now I'm older and (apparently) wiser. First, I cloned my hard drive with SuperDuper!. Then I attempted to upgrade. I started the process on Saturday morning and didn't check it until Saturday afternoon. At that point, I was greeted with the lovely blue screen of death. I didn't even bother to look up the problem - instead opting for the clean install.

The next time I checked (Sunday evening), the installation was completed. I registered, clicked through some stuff and started copying files from my backup drive. On Sunday night, I closed the lid on my laptop and haven't used it since. I guess new operating systems don't excite me as much as they used to. Then again, I do have two MacBooks, so I don't really need the Leoparded one.

It could be that I'm burned out on technology - or it could be the Rockies and Broncos performance this past weekend has got me bummed. Who knows - the good news is there's lot of trick-or-treating to be done in the next couple of days and I'm sure to cheer up with the kids around. Posted in Mac OS X at Oct 30 2007, 01:42:39 PM MDT 9 Comments

Saturday August 25, 2007

iPhone Unlocked My only good reason for not getting an iPhone? You have to switch to AT&T. I had AT&T a few years ago and their customer service sucked. I've been on T-Mobile for a few years now and couldn't be happier. Now it looks like the iPhone will work with any provider. Very nice!

It's high noon, Apple and AT&T -- we really hate to break it to you, but the jig is up. Last night the impossible was made possible: right in front of our very eyes we witnessed a full SIM unlock of our iPhone with a small piece of software. It's all over, guys. [Read More]

Will I get one now? Probably not, I don't spend enough time on the phone and I'm perfectly happy with my Blackberry Pearl. With that being said, I have seen and fondled one and they are quite nice. Posted in Mac OS X at Aug 25 2007, 12:53:20 AM MDT 2 Comments

Friday August 24, 2007

RE: One 30" monitor or two 23" monitors? My post asking about one 30" monitor or two 23" monitors generated quite a few comments. After reading The Large Display Paradox, it seems like I should either find something like WinSplit Revolution for the Mac, or get 2 monitors. I agree with everything that Jeff Atwood says about maximizing windows, that's why I originally thought two 23" monitors might be better.

However, the problem with two monitors is I'd need to get Matrox's DualHead2Go Digital Edition to run both on my PowerBook MacBook Pro. Frederic notes some issues I might experience with this device:

It worked ok with 2 17" LCD monitors but did have some issues with most games... One thing to keep in mind is that it may not have the bandwidth to drive anything over 2x1280x1024.

I don't play games (too addictive), but if I can't drive both monitors at 1900x1200, it's probably not worth it.

So you're getting a 30" monitor then?

Maybe, but there's a problem with the 30" that I didn't think of: I'd need dual video cards in my Windows box to drive it. Not only that, my KVM switch probably can't handle a 30" monitor. If I'm wrong, and I can drive a 30" monitor through a single DVI KVM switch, let me know. In the meantime, I'm strongly considering a single 23" with my MacBook Pro on an iCurve next to it. That gives me dual monitors when I'm on the Mac, but not on Windows. That's OK - I don't use my Windows box that much anyway. Posted in Mac OS X at Aug 24 2007, 11:08:31 AM MDT 9 Comments