Just read an intriguing article (Android’s hollow revolution and hope for 2012) by a writer who is actually pro-Android but is realizing what a mess the Android platform is—and its not just about device fragmentation, it’s also about carrier intrusion and the creation of a system more closed than what Apple’s iOS is frequently accused of being. Personally, I have found it baffling when Android users bash iPhones for not being “open” because I haven’t found one person able to explain why that’s any sort of an advantage other than confusion for the average user and an opportunity for Android geeks to spend a lot of time hacking a phone to be able to do what you want it to do when an iPhone does that out of the box.

Also, MacObserver had a good article (iPhone Crushes Android at AT&T Corporate Stores in December) where they shared how AT&T moved 981,000 iPhones compared to only 126,000 Android devices. Ouch. (clarification: that is AT&T corporate stores only—but still impressive).

I don’t even try to really debate these things too much, with user experience being so subjective and in these matters, so incredibly biased (including yours truly), but I really think you are going to begin seeing the Android reality distortion field begin to wear off as the numbers will begin reflecting what the public has begun to realize after a few years of real-life comparisons between the two platforms and for the first full-year, the ability to purchase the iPhone from your preferred carrier (apologies to T-Mobile customers).

And if all that weren’t enough, just wait until Apple announces the (real) iPhone 5 and and the iPad 3 (sooner rather than later) in 2012.

Just thought I’d post a quick little help for any of those out there that want to take advantage of a good keyboard deal but wondering if it will work on your Mac system. One little caveat before I go further, this tip is for OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and earlier and I haven’t seen how this works on OS X 10.7 Lion yet. Personally, I’m waiting a little longer to upgrade my main workstation, but that’s another story.

While OS X does a pretty decent job of supporting the basic typing ability of almost any keyboard or mouse out there, there is the one nagging reality that if you have gotten into the habit of keyboard combo shortcuts, that the Command and Option key functions are basically switched and can drive you batty when you get an unexpected result from key command. To solve that, the utility that I use is a kernel extension that you can set from your System Preferences called DoubleCommand which allows you to easily and quickly remap your basic system keys that make up the main difference between Macs and Windows operating systems–notably the Command and Option keys. Basically, I only use it to swap those two keys, as you can see in the screen grab below, but you can use it set many other possible key remapping combinations as needed.

While OS X won’t support all the extra bells and whistles that may have been designed into your Windows keyboard like opening up Office apps or Mail or pretty much anything else that is extra whizbang–but surprisingly, the only extra-curricular activity that I really care for my keyboard to perform besides basic typing and F key operations, are iTunes controls. Starting a song; volume control; skipping; pausing–all those functions are supported. So, if you don’t mind missing all the additional functionality, than this is the tool for you. For those that want more control and need better Lion support, there is also a link to another utility, which I have NOT tried myself, called KeyRemap4MacBook that you may find more useful.

What I find ironic in all this, is actually how well Microsoft supports OS X with ALL of their keyboards and mice but Logitech seems to be dragging their feet as slowly and half-heartedly as possible in supporting Macs. This is a great tool to be able to use some of the cooler Logitech keyboards that don’t support Macs with your Mac and not drive you crazy with the Command and Option keys in the wrong place.

On last thing to remember is if you are using this for a laptop environment, when you disconnect your keyboard and go to use your built-in keyboard, your keys remain remapped and now they are swapped again. You will need to launch your System Preferences and turn off the the changes you made. The good news is that the DoubleCommand allows you to save it as a preferred setting in User Preferences so that when you reboot, it will default to whichever setting you prefer. Enjoy.

So, I’ve been enjoying the transition from the old-school RAZR (don’t laugh–you know they still look cool) that I’ve had since forever, to the new paradigm of actually having a truly smart phone.

But just to catch up on what I’ve missed out on over the past two or three years, I also ordered a 4 and a 3GS for the rest of the family and can now have a pretty full spectrum of experience with the iPhones that have really mattered.

One thing I can say is that I probably won’t make a regular practice of posting from my iPhone, but I’m glad that I can and have enjoyed the opportunity to try it out. However, it’s main drawback with the small screen real estate and lack of a real keyboard for speedier typing, make it harder to put a well-written post. Of course I have other impediments to being able to write a well-written post, but I’ll be glad to use this as my main excuse for this post. Until next time..

Sent from my iPhone

Just as I had been bragging to several people both online and off about how my system has been up and running now for “over” six months (5 days over to be exact), my system decided to not wake up this morning. Bummer. The good news is tear down and bake and rebuild went pretty quick. This time I timed it and it took me almost exactly an hour for the whole process (your time may vary), but I think that’s fairly good. And no screws missing after all these tear-downs and rebuilds too!

This time however, I won’t be pushing my luck anymore. After taking the “hepto-baked” MBP back to the Spokane Apple Store yet again and, yet again, failing to produce the now-coveted Nvidia error code (after I lost count how many attempts the Genius™ tried to produce it [thanks Jason!]), the best they could offer me, yet again, is the $310 repair offer that will hopefully cover anything that might happen to need replacing on my MBP. Other than the fact that it will be like it has been preserved for 3+ years and with 3-year old chip designs and technology, it will be just like having a new MBP and should (hopefully) be good for another 3-5 years.

So, I will be taking it back tomorrow to the Apple Store to submit it to the “depot”. I decided to bring it back home because I’m going to remove the upgraded 500GB drive and put the original 250GB back in it for the service. Even though I have a back-up of the drive, I would have to purchase another drive to restore to–so its easier just putting the 500GB in an enclosure and working from it until I get the system back.

My main concern now, is what replacement system will I be getting. This one will most likely be handed down to my daughter and hopefully its baking days will finally be over.

Stay tuned.

This was too awesome to pass up. A link to this video was posted in the comments section of my blog post Cooking The Books (or Baking my MacBook Pro Logic Board) by Roland who’s IP showed him from Montreal. He did an awesome job putting together this accelerated video (on his revived MBP) that compresses the whole experience into a little over four minutes that’s made even more entertaining by a nice soundtrack: Right Here, Right Now by Fatboy Slim.

Roland is now one of at least 15 people that have commented on my blog posts alone (up to at least the writing of this post) that have successfully baked their logic boards. Only one person has experienced anything like a fail, but there were other indications that it wasn’t the same exact issue that I had originally posted about.

I hope to post again excerpts of some of the success stories for more encouragement and also possibly something to show Apple that they need to rethink their policy in expanding these symptoms to the Nvidia 8600M issue or creating a whole new category. Normal users shouldn’t be expected to have to go through this trouble to repair something that wasn’t their fault to begin with.

It took me awhile to get this posted. Not sure if it was the fact that I’ve had an incredibly busy month or that I was just tired (it is getting a little old) of posting how many times I’ve had to bake my MacBook Pro now—six for anyone whose counting (hence the clever “hexed” title). I’m getting more than a little self-conscious about mentioning it now, specially when you read further and find out how my n00bness has more than likely contributed to this multi-bake syndrome. I’m really only posting this for the benefit of those who will experience the same issue or similar and that they might avoid my fate—so read on.

This last time was the shortest time between bakes—just three measly weeks. The circumstance surrounding this issue was a little different than the previous times if nothing more than the coincidence of having it happen the day after I made a scheduled visit to my local Apple Store in Spokane (deliberately on Steve Jobs birthday, 2/24 hoping to take advantage of any extra reality distortion fields that might be present) to try one more time to have them test my system to see if it would produce the Nvidia error (see my first article: Cooking The Books). I have to take my hat off to the two techs (er, geniuses) that tried everything they could think of to get it to produce the Nvidia error (I’m pretty sure there were some serious voodoo incantations involved) but alas, to no avail. My system was perfectly fine, or so it would seem. I was entirely honest with them about the history of my system and told them all about my baking experiences and they seemed genuinely appreciative that I had been so forthright and seemed to go the extra mile as a result. But, the final verdict was that the system appeared to have no issues that would qualify it for the Nvidia repair policy or any other policy. In short, I was hosed if my board ever refused to come back from the dead.

They did encourage me that if I had them send my system to the main Apple Repair Center that there was a good chance that they “might” be able to replace the logic board for the minimum $310 but, that if it was determined by the tech that accidental damage had occurred like being dropped or spilling a Mountain Dew  on the keyboard (which has never happened) or the premature yellowing of all the stickers from being baked several times and slightly stripped hex screws (that has definitely happened) that I would be liable for the whole cost of replacing the board which was still $1100 at the time of their quote.

I went home disappointed but thankful my system has been able to go through its repeated resurrections and that I would wait until it died again before taking my chances and bringing my system in. Little did I know that would happen to be the very next day. Lo and behold, that very night, I closed my system just to transport it into another room and when I went to open it, it would not wake up. Now in the past when this occurred, I had gone through many troubleshooting steps which would always involve doing a hard power down by holding in the power button for several seconds. Once that had taken place, it has never recovered on its own without baking. All of the times that I had had the system looked at by Apple techs, the system had been powered down. This time though, I thought I would try to take advantage of the fact that it was still “on” but dead—hoping that there might be some forgotten voodoo chant that could be summoned that would shed light on the root cause of my system failures. I decided to leave my system on and I scheduled another Genius Bar appointment as early as possible the next morning.

Now Coeur d’Alene isn’t that far from Spokane. It’s only 35 miles from my door to the downtown Spokane Apple Store location but 70 miles round trip (which I used to make every day for quite a few years). But it takes about 45 minutes each way and almost a quarter of a tank of gas in my Jeep so you don’t make the decision to go into Spokane if you don’t have to. That said, my expectation was that I was taking advantage of this “powered-on” condition hoping it might make a difference in diagnosing the problem. However, when I finally slid my MBP onto the Genius Bar counter to have a new tech, er, genius, take a look at it, I tried to be very careful in explaining the situation of the “on condition” to which he unhesitatingly responded to by immediately powering down the system, to my dismay, to go through all the same troubleshooting techniques that I told him has already previously been done many times over. Which, predictably resulted in the same result—nothing. Now, to give the guy a break, there’s probably nothing that could have been done, but I would have at least liked for him to have acknowledged and appreciated the fact that I was hoping to take any possible advantage of the “on condition” and then tell me why that wouldn’t make any difference. Instead, the impression I had was that he didn’t hear anything I had just said and went into robot-mode and instinctively powered the system down—doh!

Well, I turned around and drove back the 35 miles home in 45 minutes and another eighth of a tank of gas, completely disappointed. I then proceeded to bake the system for the sixth successful time. The difference this time is that on the way home, I stopped at Radio Shack and picked up a small tube of Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste. This is the one thing that I have not done on any previous baking attempt. In my defense it wasn’t mentioned in some of the other articles and videos that I had used for my initial research so I didn’t think that it was really necessary. As it began to dawn on me that this was probably the main culprit behind the fact that I have had to bake the system multiple times, I had resolved that the next time I would make sure to apply the step of thoroughly cleaning off the old thermal paste residue and applying the new paste.

I have now had the system up and running for over a month now (so longer than last time but still aways from the four month record) so I think that the thermal paste has made the difference. There were some other complicating issues between the fifth and sixth bakes besides the voodoo visit to the Apple Store and that was that I had upgraded to OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and swapped out my old 250GB hard drive for a new 500GB. I had noticed after upgrading to 10.6 a dramatic increase in fan usage so I am suspicious that it may have also played a role in the shorter timespan between bakes 5 and 6.

Well, now onto the “hope” part. That same afternoon after I got home and got my system back online, it just so happened that I had received an email invitation to partake in an online survey of my experience with the service of the Genius Bar…so, I told them, in a respectful and kind but lengthy response of my disappointment. That evening I received a phone call from the store manager where I reiterated in more detail my story to which he seemed genuinely motivated to try to take care of my situation and make it right. I was able to get his word that if I decided to bring my system in for repair of the logic board that he would have the store do the repair rather than sending it out to Apple’s Repair Center and guaranteed that it would only cost me the $310 to replace the logic board (assuming that was the only thing wrong). While free would have been obviously better, I consider that a pretty good deal considering the original Apple Care was for $250 (which I should have paid for), I’m only out another $60 more than that. So, now the only thing is finding the time in my schedule along to take advantage of this offer. Meanwhile, my hexed system keeps on keeping on.

Hopefully the next post will only be about having the logic board successfully replaced. Although, seven is a perfect number. To be continued…

If only it would begin on T-Mobile.

Some points to note: it now only takes me about 15 minutes to tear apart the machine (disassemble is probably a gentler way of saying that). It takes a little longer putting it back together because after spending a great deal of time trying to reconnect the only connector that connects to the underside of the board (connecting with me on this?) and then position the board at an angle so that I can get the port side (the other side) to fit through the openings in the case and allow the board to seat properly. I invariably fail to remember that I didn’t connect the battery unit before I went through the convolutions necessary to seat the board. I then remove the board, affix the battery and then go through said convolutional placement of board once more. So, in all, the reassembly takes at least 10 minutes longer for me. However, I’m getting real good at it. Maybe next time, I will remember to affix the battery beforehand.

For those coming to this article for the first time, I have three other posts of the whole MacBook Pro logic board baking ordeals:

Cooking the Books (or Baking my MacBook Pro Logic Board)

Twice-Baked Mother Board (or Refried Logic of my MacBook Pro)

Ooops! I Baked It Again (3rd Time!)

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything about AppleTV. Or Boxee. When Boxee came out for OS X, it took the desire (or need) out of wanting to get a dedicated AppleTV for the purpose of using Boxee. And, to be honest, while the form-factor is intriguing, I can’t see it in my entertainment center and I have little desire to purchase a Boxee Box. We’ve settled into a comfortable routine with our Netflix queue and Netflix instant watch offerings for watching movies that we didn’t want to wait for in the queue and especially to catch up on past episodes of Lost or 24 without commercial interruption (which is essential when you’re trying to catch up on multiple seasons before series finales). Hulu and Boxee apps for OS X, or even surprisingly, the network sites like FOX and ABC, have been sufficient to watch any current season episodes of anything. Of course, now that Lost and 24 are finished, there’s only an occasional Lie To Me or Kitchen Nightmares that I care to watch. And if we really like something, like BBC’s Elizabeth Gaskell Collection box set (don’t look at me like that), we’ll invest in the DVDs. As for gaming, we’re still using our almost 10-year old GameCube! So, admittedly, we are not the ideal demographic in this space—or, are we? Now, with all the new rumors surrounding AppleTV’s change back to iTV and being brought over to the iOS platform with the promise of apps similar to iPad and iPhone—will the game be changed? Will we finally take the plunge? That all depends…

Of course, one of the things that it really depends on is us taking the plunge on a real HDTV set. We have a 24″ monitor that suits our purposes but its not the ideal. We’re still as committed (even more so) to keeping our family time not focused on entertainment but quality time spent together with games (of the board or card variety) or reading good and edifying books or just plain old, good conversations. So its always a battle to not let the “ooh, shiny” side of technology get the better of my judgement. Of course, financial verities are a good way to keep things in check too.

Another thing that it would depend on, is if Apple is able to offer a subscription model that is compelling enough to replace our Netflix subscription or at least low enough to augment it. And what might make that whole point moot is if, by virtue of embracing the iOS platform, that Netflix and/or Hulu iPad apps will be able to be easily modified to run on iTV similar to Wii, PS3 and Xbox if they chose. I’d much rather buy a device at the rumored $99 price point than $199 or $299-$399. Of all the rumored specs, thats the one I’m hoping is most accurate.

And as I’ve already mentioned, the gaming aspect is not as big of an incentive as it would be to many, but I can definitely see the logic and appeal now that Apple has some serious gaming momentum going for them for the first time in a long time. It only makes sense to capitalize on the lower cost of iOS games and I think iTV has the serious potential to break out of the hobby stage and into the same stratosphere currently enjoyed by the iPad and iPhone 4.

And the big fuss over 1080p being downgraded to 720p is in reality, not a big deal. However, I do think Apple is going to have a challenge overcoming the market perception after so much has been invested by BestBuy and other retailers to “educate” customers to the “benefits” of buying the best 55″ LED 240MHz 1080p behemoth that money can buy. Of course the biggest benefit is more money in their pockets.

Well, until Apple makes any announcement, I’m perfectly content with our current Netflix arrangement. To be honest, I’d be more excited if Apple announced the iPhone was available on T-Mobile—but alas, it looks like I will be having to choose whether to switch over to AT&T (which I’ve successfully resisted for three years) or Verizon (another rumor). Until then, back to werk!

Well, it’s taken me a little while to get this post up—not to mention the fact that its taken me a long while to get any posts up—but I thought this one was worth it just as an encouragement for anyone else who might be dealing with a fried MacBook Pro logic board that is out of the AppleCare warranty coverage. I also needed to get this post up before I forgot most of the details.

As a little background, I put my MBP (17″ 2.5GHz-early 2008, Model A1261 to be exact for you that are searching) to sleep by closing it up for the night, which I’ve done for the past 2+ years with no problems. The next morning I noticed that the glowing power light on the latch release was off and thought it strange and then went to open and wake it and nothing happened. After futilely trying to wake it by varying degrees of banging on random keys and quickly pressing the power button I waited several minutes before I committed to powering it down. After powering it down, I tried to start it back up. While I could hear the hard drive spin up and the optical drive go through its start-up whirrings, there was no start-up chime and no effort to display anything on screen. I tried all the start-up key combinations to start in safe-mode, reset PRAM, start diagnosis—nothing worked. Tried to insert original system install disk and boot from that, all to no avail.

After going through the Apple Support boards, I could not determine a culprit and since there are no Apple Stores closer than the 330 miles to Seattle yet (soon in Spokane I hear), I resorted to taking my system to the only certified Apple Repair shop in Spokane. We were hoping that it would fall under the Nvidia Graphics chip issue so that Apple would cover the replacement (note to self: on future MacBook Pro purchases: Get the full three-year AppleCare coverage!). Since the system would not even get past the initial boot phases, there was no way to even diagnose any other problems. Which AppleCare concluded that it would not fall under the Nvidia replacement program. Which that meant it would be in the neighborhood of $1000-1200 to replace logic board ($800 logic board + labor)—which is not much less than the $1200-1400 my system in good condition was going for on ebay. I’ve since gathered the necessary courage (and tools) to do it myself, so I could save the labor charges in the future. I also found a resource that I might consider as well if I had to face the issue of replacing the logic board again; DT&T Service claims they can replace my model logic board with a refurb for $450. Maybe next time…

I was faced with trying to sell the dead MBP on Craigslist or ebay whole for $600 or try to recover more by dismantling it out and selling the parts on ebay and maybe be able to make up to $800. I determined that the time and effort involved in managing that many auctions wasn’t worth it and posted it on Craigslist. I got exactly two calls on it—one by one of the techs at the shop who diagnosed it originally to ask if I’d ruled-out the Nvidia issue (doh!) and the other by a guy who was tempted to buy it to try to fix it, but just didn’t have the time—he asked if I had considered “baking the logic board”. He quickly countered my skepticism with a plea to Google the term and that I’d find a plethora of advice on how to do it. (Update: when I wrote this, I couldn’t find the contact info for him but just recently found it. Here’s his link: http://www.spokanepcrepair.com/) So I did and he was right-there’s a bunch of crazy gamers out there resurrecting dead graphics cards, Xboxes and logic boards.

I’ve never been afraid to get under the hood and swap out RAM, replace a hard drive or optical drive, but removing the logic board from an expensive laptop (at least when it was bought), was a little beyond my comfort zone. Figuring I had nothing to lose if I messed up the logic board I found some helpful videos on YouTube that showed how to disassemble my MBP and remove the logic board. After running out to get a better selection of Torx screwdrivers, I found this video helpful (with the exception of the backing music):

After successfully removing the logic board, I then proceeded to prep it for inserting it into the oven. Now if getting into the guts of a $3K+ computer doesn’t make you nervous enough, then actually taking the most important and expensive element out and sticking it into an oven should do the trick. One of the things that nobody covered very carefully, was how much of the additional plastic parts should be removed before inserting into the oven. I was initially fearful after reading several posts where the user would actually remove ANYTHING that was plastic and re-solder it back on afterwards. I wasn’t really committed or prepared to do that. I was most nervous about the USB, DVI and Firewire ports because there was no way I was going to be able to remove those and put them back on. I concluded that they have to be made up of at least heat-resistant plastics, and I hadn’t read or seen anything that lamented melted ports and that I should be OK.

I was careful to remove a piece of foam cushioning that is attached to the board and placed it back on afterward.

Here it is after I removed the foam piece:

One thing (actually two) that I did not think to remove were the two sleeves for mounting screws that are located at the top of the board (see circled areas in image below). I thought they were metal, but they turned out to be not-so-heat-resistant plastic and I unfortunately learned that lesson the hard way. They are no longer the best part of the securing system of my logic board. I managed to recover one, but the other was toast.

The instructions I followed for baking came mostly from this post on Overclockers. I preheated my oven to 375° F (helpful marital tip: coordinate with spouse if attempting to do this anywhere close to dinner time—trust me on this). I placed the board on rolled-up balls of foil (not sure why—just doing what I saw in the other pics) on top of cookie sheet covered with foil (to catch the grease drippings, or melted plastics I suppose—thankfully there was neither).

Time to take a deep breath… At this point, it should be noted that we actually gathered the whole family around to pray for God’s mercy and that He might bless this endeavor in that it was affecting my ability to provide for the said whole family. It was time to start baking…

After reading through numerous posts (well over 20 or so) about different temperatures and times to bake for, I settled on 7m:30s at 375°F for these two reasons: one is that most of the realistic sounding posts hovered between 7 and 8 minutes so I thought 7:30 should do it. And the other was after reading several posts that 375° would be sufficient to soften the soldering joints to just barely the melting point allowing them to reseat better and where anything over 400°F would melt the soldering too much—along with all the other plastics and burn the stickers.

It’s not easy holding your breath for over 7 minutes, but with prayer, we persevered (it was a family event at this point). After letting the board cool for about 10 minutes (I think “rest” is the proper cooking terminology), it was now time to start on the process of putting the board back in the case.

One thing that helped immensely in the re-assembly process was that I took pictures with my digital camera of all the critical assembly points so that I could reconstruct it all back together to the original condition. With the exception of the oft-pointed out melting of the mounting screw sleeves, everything went back together smoothly and with all the family gathered around (actually they were out watching a movie because it was pretty boring watch me put the machine back together) to hear the delightful start-up chime and watch the screen flicker to life and post a question mark because I hadn’t put the original hard drive back in. But that question mark was a beautiful thing, because it meant that it was alive and looking for a suitable, bootable drive. I had removed the hard drive and placed it in an external enclosure so that I could access it from my older system to at least be able to get some work done and also to initially rule out that it was a hard drive issue. I wasn’t worried about losing my data, as I use Apple’s Time Machine and had my drive backed-up. Putting the hard drive back in was fairly quick to do, and after that was in, the system booted up beautifully.

Well, I don’t have any pics or video of it coming to life but suffice it to say, that I’m typing this post on it and have been working on it happily for the last (almost) 30 days and thankful to the Lord in showing His mercy. I’ve read that there are no long-term guarantees with this fix and to not expect it to last forever. How long that turns out to be, I’ll be sure to post in the future, but I’m taking the precaution of planning for its imminent replacement (hoping my system doesn’t take that last statement personally).

There does seem to be a casualty after the baking in that since I’ve made the fix, it looks like I lost one of my USB ports on the left side closest to the power plug. It provides power to the device, but the device (both input and disk) is not recognized. That and the fact that I had to re-enter all my passwords as once the board’s battery is disconnected, the OS X Password Keychain is wiped. So, that’s a bummer, but well worth the trade-off of having a working system back.

If I could recommend anything to anyone in the future of how to prepare before an event like this happens is, in addition to keeping your drives backed up (at least with Time Machine), is to have a good password manager with all your passwords stored—specially if you have multiple email accounts and website accounts in Dreamweaver that you manage.

And finally, be sure to give a hearty and heart-felt thanks to a gracious Lord who has shown us mercy indeed! Hallelujah!

(Update on Aug. 24, 2011: After hearing of so many success stories of others inspired by this article and baking my MBP six times [five more times after this article], one of the important steps that I did not perform during this bake and therefore did not include in this article is to be sure to clean the old thermal paste off of the processors and the corresponding heat sinks. And then to re-apply a quality thermal paste to the processors and heat sinks. The first five bakes lasted for various durations between one month and four with the average being two to three months before having the problem again. Each time, I failed to clean the old and apply new thermal paste. On the sixth bake, I finally did that and have not had to bake again since Feb 24, 2011 [exactly 6 months so far]. I have detailed this in my post: My MBP is Officially Hexed—But There’s Hope, please read that in addition to this post before baking. Also, as of today, I have counted a total of at least 22 people who have successfully cooked their books and posted back on one of the “Baking the Books” articles—so hopefully, that will give you hope.)