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MacBook Car-nage: Surviving a drive-over
Yesterday, I had a distraught customer come into the store and lay the remains of a black MacBook (13-inch Early 2008) on the front counter. My immediate thought was that the machine had been trashed and was just at the shop to be recycled. I asked the customer what happened and he explained that it had been run over by a car. At this point I thought to myself, "Yikes, there's gotta be a story behind this one." As it turns out, it was just an unfortunate accident of forgetfulness. He just returned home from a road trip and set the machine down to bring in a load from the car. After being inside for a bit, he came out and decided to check his mailbox, which was just down the road. He stepped into the car, backed up and... CAR-NAGE! What's most amazing here isn't the accident, but what he discovered when he tried to power up the MacBook. Even after having a car completely crush it, it still worked. When the customer told me this, I couldn't believe it. I opened the display -- which you can see is absolutely smashed in the picture -- and pressed the power button. To my excited surprise, the machine turned on and booted into Leopard. After running a full suite of diagnostics on the machine, I found it needed a display assembly, optical drive, and optical drive bezel (the part of the inner frame that the discs go through). All of that was cheaper than getting a new machine, so I went to work. It took me a couple hours and some frame bending here and there, but after all was said and done, I gave the customer back a machine that would pass any warranty inspection at the Genius Bar. See the gallery for more pictures! Disclaimer: The Unofficial Apple Weblog cannot and will not be held responsible for any damage done to your computer by cars. Just because we think it's cool that it may survive doesn't mean you should go out and crush your MacBook. %Gallery-72641%
Snow Leopard: what's broken (or working) for you?
Remember that time you installed Windows XP before it even hit the market? Remember how your AGP video card would only display a maximum resolution of 800 x 600 and your audio card would only emit bleeps and bloops? Ah, those were the days. Quite a bit has happened since XP landed to wash away the awful stain that was Windows ME, though it's still no shock to hear that new operating systems leave more than a few applications broken. Over the past few days, we've seen oodles of gripes from across the web from loyal Mac users who just can't believe Snow Leopard has borked their favorite software, but we're wondering how things have been on your machine. Have you realized that your Optimus Maximus no longer boogies with OS X 10.6? Are you bummed that iStat pro isn't giving you the details it used to? What kind of hell has broken loose since you threw caution in the garbage and updated your machine? %Poll-33949%
Apple releases MacBook Pro firmware to silence those 7200 RPM HDDs
That new MacBook Pro's 7200 RPM HDD singing you too many ballads lately? As promised, Apple today released a new firmware update to silence that troublemaker. If it doesn't come up through automatic system update, you can obtain Hard Drive Firmware Update 2.0 (catchy name, eh?) via the read link. Admit it, you're gonna feel just a teensy bit lonelier once your laptop stops chirping so much. Update: Apple today also released Bluetooth Firmware Update 2.0.1, which alongside various bug fixes improves compatibility with the company's wireless mouse and keyboards on all machines with the Broadcom chipset -- that includes all unibody laptops and any Mac released in 2009. [Via TUAW]
Apple 'fesses up to 7200 RPM HDD issues, aims to dispatch a fix forthwith
MacBook Pro owners suffering from 7200 RPM noise pollution and performance issues, Apple has acknowledged your pain and wants you to know that it's working hard to remedy the situation. According to CNET, the problem seems to be restricted to 500GB / 7200 RPM hard drives, with the likely culprit being code that's somehow "causing the drive to sleep during use." No word yet on a release date for the patch, but you'll know as soon as we do. As you know, we'll pretty much take any opportunity we can find to run a Lloyd Dobler Photoshop.[Via Register Hardware]
MacBook Pros with 7200RPM HDDs getting a touch too noisy?
MacBook Pro hard disk storage really seem to be down on its luck this generation. First was the 3Gbps SATA transfers (now fixed), which honestly didn't affected but a marginal percentage of users upgrading to SSD themselves. Now comes word from a number of irate users on the Apple support forums that claim their HDDs, specifically those spec'd at 7200RPM, are suffering from performance issues and some audible clicking / beeping sounds. The folks at Other World Computing chimed in to say that it might have something to do with the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 G-Force drives, which takes anti-shock precautions that are possibly causing both noise and extra strain. If you're not hearing anything now, we wouldn't suggest you start getting hyper paranoid over the issue -- it's the internet, where things often get blown way out of proportion, in case you haven't noticed. If you're still worried / curious, hit up the read link for the full collection of anecdotes.[Via Engadget Spanish and MacNN]
iTunes Store & App Store problems
With the App Store celebrating its first birthday, there is a fair amount of news coverage, and with Michael Jackson's memorial service being broadcast, his fans are sure to be hitting iTunes up for some of their favorite songs. So it stands to reason that today is probably not a good day for the iTunes store to be having problems. Don't you just love Murphy's Law? Reports have been steadily coming in for the past few hours that users are unable to download songs, searches are timing out, and the App Store is not working properly from the iPhone. Several users have also posted threads on the iTunes discussion board with connection problems. I myself had troubles with searching for music from iTunes earlier today, but things seemed to be working better a short while later, so I figured things were fixed. Since then, however, we have received several other reports of troubles, yet things are working fine for me still. So it seems that this could be chalked up to routing troubles depending on your location, or it may just be intermittent and I've been lucky.Either way, it's safe to say that there is definitely something going on, although exactly what it is remains a question. Searching seems to be working, albeit a bit slowly, and downloads are working fine for me, but others have reported not being able to download at all. As they say, YMMV (your mileage may vary).Are you having troubles with either of the stores? Let us know in the comments.Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
Breakfast Topic: Losing stuff in World of Warcraft
I won't mention the actual story so as to avoid spoiling fellow current or future fans, but in a certain non-Warcraft related story I am reading, a character seems to have died in the latest chapter I've read. It happens, but this character was easily my favorite in the series, so I'm sort of bummed more than usual at seeing a fictional character die. I've queued up my melancholy song playlist on Winamp and everything.Now in World of Warcraft, loss is a pretty apparent them as well. The loss suffered by nearly every sentient race to the scourge, the fall of the High Elves, the fall of the Broken, it seems like every PC race on WoW has experienced some loss or seen some great hero fall. In addition, sometimes there's the smaller losses as well. Like, say, giving up Archeus for a weapon with an inferior backstory and proc. So what losses in World of Warcraft have left a mark on you? Is there a certain story of loss in the lore that especially resonates with you, or do you still mourn the loss of a certain item or NPC as you've leveled up, or even some NPC or Quest that's been removed?
Pioneer KRP-600M plasma showing up with cracked screens?
Maybe Pioneer just needs to change shipping companies here, but we're seeing a frighteningly high amount of cracked screens on the KRP-600M over at AVSForum. The problem has become so bad, in fact, that users have started a dedicated thread just to grumble about it. Thus far, 11 responders have seen their precious plasma arrive with a cracked screen, while 18 received theirs in good shape -- not a good ratio in terms of quality control standards. We aren't sounding the fire alarm just yet, but we're curious, have any of you unboxed your shiny new set only to weep for hours due to a busted panel?[Thanks, Gio]
WoW Moviewatch: Unbroken trailer
I've been looking forward to this one for quite some time. Firebolt Productions has released the promotional trailer for their upcoming film, Unbroken. It is a movie about a group of Draenei refugees hiding from the barbarous Orc invaders. While I know the Orcs were the original inhabitants of Draenor, I can't wait to see how the rich tapestry of lore is going to play out in the movie.It's nothing short of legendary to see the cast of folks involved in "Unbroken." Selserene, the Hackleman brothers, and Matt Greenberg, just to name a few. With this kind of talent all operating under one roof, I have to expect greatness from the movie. The preview trailer is gorgeous. The opening lines in the voiceover promise a heartrending story. The animation is just beautiful. The landscapes of Outland reveal an alien but thriving world. The brief character shots and profiles all look like Firebolt spent an immense effort to choose the best models possible for their actors.It's a trailer, so it's hard to say how compelling the final dialogue will be. But everything about this trailer tells me Unbroken is going to be awesome.If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.Previously on Moviewatch ..
Forums go up; forums go down...
The official forums have been quite fickly over the past few days. Sometimes you'll be lucky and you'll be greeted by what you're trying to look at, other times you'll get an "error500" message, and still other times you'll see a message like the one pictured above.The plight of the official forums seems to mirror the activity on the servers. Queue (har har har) the Homer Simpson-esq: Forums go up; forums go down... Forums go up; forums go down... The past few days of hellish lag, unstable forums, and broken parts of the game have been like the song that never ends. (Note to self: Eat some lamb chops tonight.) After four days of the patch, we're still getting a constant stream of tips detailing bugs and other errors.I wish I could say that we'll report to you when this is all fixed, but honestly I don't think that is going to come anytime soon. Perhaps next Tuesday they'll roll out another patch to fix some of this, or change something in the datacenters, etc... It's really nearly impossible for us to know exactly what's wrong.
All the World's a Stage: So you still want to be a Shaman
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the twenty-first in a series of roleplaying guides in which we find out all the background information you need to roleplay a particular race or class well, without embarrassing yourself. There's something about shamans that gets us thinking and talking. Whether it's something as simple as the proper pronunciation of "shamanism," or something as profound as a shaman's humility in relation to the source of his or her power, the lore and ideology of the shaman class often resonates with players more than many others in the World of Warcraft.One reason for this is that shamans have been such a pivotal force in the lore, possibly more than any other class in the game (depending on your point of view). Other classes, such as warriors, or paladins, come as a sort of pre-defined archetype in fantasy games that don't seem all that different from their original forms in other fantasy settings. The actual beliefs of a priest, for instance, don't seem to matter so much to many players, so long as the class can heal like we expect them to. Even the druids, with their central place in night elf society, sometimes seem more like nature-based magic users rather than true philosophers in their own right.Shamans, however, have a major burden to bear in one of the central plot shifts of the Warcraft storyline -- namely that the orcs, who entered the Warcraft stage in the Warcraft 1: Orcs and Humans computer game as rampaging demonic evildoers bent on destruction, and actually turned out to be a peaceful race that just got tricked into being evil. Shamanism had to be much much more than just an archetype with some special powers -- it had to be a way of thinking, a system of belief that could be taken over by demonic corruption and yet at the same time act as a beacon of truth and goodness once that the demonic taint had been defeated. Shamanism has got to be complex and profound, or else the story wouldn't make sense.
Three of four undersea internet cables get cut, hasn't affected you yet
So, there's good news and bad news, and per tradition, we'll be starting with the latter. Three of four undersea cables that route internet traffic from Asia to North America have inexplicably been cut, meaning that your international Quake III server may be a bit slow this evening. The good news is that this fiasco clearly hasn't affected you yet. The AP has confirmed via Egypt's communications ministry that the cables have indeed been severed, causing massive outages in select portions of the world. Oddly, no suspicions of subterfuge have been mentioned, but we have all ideas rumors will start to swirl if another gets snipped. So, tell us readers -- are you still online? Wait, don't answer that.[Via ZDNet]
iPod touch survives run-in with pickup truck
While the iPod nano is being called fragile, the iPod touch is ready to demonstrate its toughness.A user at the iPod touch Fans forums posted pictures of his touch after being run over by a pickup truck. The glass screen is shattered but intact, and the back of the case is dented. However, it still works. "It worked perfectly, the touch screen, the music, the wifi..." writes forlorn owner spongyiq.He claims that siding a finger across the busted display "...doesn't hurt," but we'll just take his word on it.While we're on the subject, here's a few other pieces of Apple hardware that met a cruel fate: Nano meets highway traffic, fares poorly Great balls of PowerBook fire iPod sets man's pants on fire Shattered iPhone, still works Of course, we'd be remiss if we omitted the granddaddy of them all: Does the iPhone blend?[Via Gizmodo]
BlackBerry Bold doesn't handle pavement well
Always looking to make lemonade out of lemons, the self-proclaimed BGizzle took the opportunity to inform prospective (and current) BlackBerry Bold owners of the handset's fragile nature. To no one's surprise, the naked Bold didn't stand up too well to pavement when dropped from about two feet -- maybe this is where a real metal bezel would come in handy? Anywho, we're not told whether or not the essential functions were fubared, but we'd recommend taking his advice and snapping up a skin / case before welcoming it to the world.
Looking for the ladies in Outland
Reader Thiago asked a good question today: Why do so many NPC races not have female models? I admit, it's something I and a lot of other fellow lore nerds in my guild have noticed and discussed before. Why have all the females gone? I figured it might be fun to do a little bit of an analysis, and see what might have happened to all these ladies. This is by no means a complete list of the femaleless races in game, of course, or I'd have to spend a couple days on this article. But here's a few select ones to discuss.
Re-thinking the iPhone's home screen
The iPhone's home screen works just fine with 16 application icons on the main screen and four more on the dock at the bottom. It still works well with another screenful of 16 more apps on the adjacent screen. But, says Chris Devers, as you start adding more apps, the home screen UI doesn't scale well to cope with them. Flicking across five screens of apps to find the one you want is time-consuming. And moving an app from screen five to screen three is chaotic, unless you've left "gaps" on each screen as you went along - in which case you'd have six to juggle, not five. And even then, it's still chaotic.OK, so not everyone is going to be collecting that many third party apps. But for people who do, says Chris, there needs to be a better solution than this. He's posted a set on Flickr to illustrate his point.What might work? A Quicksilver- or Spotlight-style app, where you type some characters from the name of the app you want and it gets launched? Or a gesture launcher, where you "draw" what you're looking for?
Are you affected by MobileMe mail outage?
What's up with MobileMe email? In recent days we've been hearing from a lot of very unhappy MobileMe subscribers. They're unhappy because their email accounts have been inaccessible.David told us: "Some MobileMe mail users have been without mail access for four days straight now."At the time of writing, the MobileMe status report says: "1% of MobileMe members cannot access MobileMe Mail. We apologize for any inconvenience."But TUAW reader Drew told us: "Just got off the phone with AppleCare and they tell me MobileMe email is going to be down for 2-3 days, and that it's the whole system, not just the 1% as noted on the support site. Those of us that use .me as a work address are hosed. Normally I wouldn't care but I have 2 photoshoots to coordinate Sunday. Is it me, or does this feel like a M$ launch?"Well, readers, you tell us. How has MobileMe mail been for you over the weekend? Thanks to everyone who contacted us about this issue.
Ask a Lore Nerd: Only a little broken
Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, the column that answers your questions about the story and lore of the Warcraft universe. Click the Comments link below, ask your question, and blogger/columnist Alex Ziebart will answer you in a future installment!skoll asks...Whats your speculation about the Burning Legion in the new expansion, since Kil'jaeden has been killed/defeated? IF he is dead.. will it that be the end of Burning Legion? If not, what you think their role will be?Answer: Well, Kil'jaeden isn't dead. Not at all. In the Sunwell Plateau, Kil'jaeden is being summoned but never fully makes it through the portal. We bop him on the head and he just falls back in. What presence will they have in Wrath? Well, it will probably be minimal. I am sure they'll have some presence, the Legion doesn't really have any love for the Scourge, but it won't be anything like what we've seen in The Burning Crusade. Kil'jaeden is alive and well, but I think they'll scale way back on demons just because we've seen so many lately. They will probably want to step away from thrusting the same thing on us for another entire expansion.
Forum post of the day: The future is not what it used to be
With the Wrath Beta Opt-in available, we're one step closer to the expansion. We're all anxiously awaiting the time when the expansion is ready. I'm still having fun with the existing World of Warcraft, but I'm a bit antsy. There is a lot of frustration over existing conditions, especially when it comes to PvP. Chloroform of EU-Magtheridon isn't interested in waiting. He listed his grievances in the EU-PVP Forum, "Balance issues, queue times, destroying premades, AFK problems, uneven teams, world pvp screwed by 9000yd aggro range ultra guards." Like many others, Jasse of EU-Bronzebeard blames the arena for the death of PvP.
Forum post of the day: If the NBA was like the Arena...
It's pretty clear that despite it's flaws, I love the Arena. I know that a lot of people don't but usually the forums are filled with complaints rather than constructive criticism. I was pleasantly surprised by a post in the PvP forums that was amusing and made a great analogy for the Arena Syatem. Phel of Tichondrius compared arenas to the NBA. I've included his complete list after the break.
