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Apple customer to walk for his cause
Since it's a lazy summer Sunday without a lot of ground-breaking news, this story about a Dublin man's "walk of shame" may give you a chuckle. Frustrated iMac owner Karl Hayden plans to show Apple up by demonstrating that it will take him less time to walk to the nearest Apple repair center -- about 156 miles away in Cork -- than for Apple to pick up the computer for a promised replacement. After some failed repair attempts through AppleCare, Apple apparently promised on August 14 to replace the computer. Four days later, Apple hadn't shown up to retrieve the broken iMac before shipping out the new one. Four days doesn't sound like much of a delay to me, but I guess Mr. Hayden's fuse had been burning for a while. He plans to leave Monday morning and carry his iMac with him. Want to take bets on whether he makes it to Cork before the pickup?
Obviously, You Missed Something
I had to smack my forehead last night when I realized that my level 55 warrior was still carrying around nothing bigger than 10 slot bags. It seems so obvious that I'd have upgraded those by now, but inbetween all of the PVPing, questing, instance running, and grinding, it just plain slipped my mind. Herewith, five things that seem really obvious to remember, but a lot of players end up missing.1. Upgrade that equipment! My forgetfulness is your gain. Bags are important to upgrade (because even if it costs you all your gold, you'll make it back quickly with the extra carrying capacity), but it helps to check all of your equipment every time you ding. A guildie of mine had to laugh when he hit level 46 on his hunter-- he realized he was still wearing a leather chestplate, despite having trained to wear mail six levels ago.2. Train those skills. It's happened to all of us. You ding, head back to the trainer to train up, and you find that there's a ton of new skills sitting there for you. You forgot to train last time! Blizzard should have a little optional icon on the UI when there's a new skill for you to go get (or maybe this is a job for a plugin...).3. Professions, too. Professions have even more skills and recipes to train up than the regular levels, so it seems like people forget them all the time. And for some reason, when I'm looking for herbs or mining, I always forget to turn the little tracking marker on after I die (Gatherer helps out a little with this one).4. Repair, repair, repair! There's nothing worse than heading into an instance after LFG for half an hour, only to wipe once and have your gear turn yellow (or, even worse, red). By now, I'm repairing every single time I land from a griffon ride. Every time I enter a new town, the blacksmith is the first person I talk to.5. LRN2PLAY. Of course, this is what all those hardcore players will tell us forgetful types, but this time, they're actually right: studying up on a class's strengths, weaknesses, skills and abilities will make things much, much easier. If you're a priest, don't use Shield-- use Renew, and less mana. If you're a Shaman, use Rockbiter (until you get Windfury, at least). If you're a Warrior, make sure to keep Battle Shout up 24/7.Of course, all this stuff will seem obvious-- until you realize you've forgotten something. But in this game, as in everything, the devil is in the details.
Everything you need to know about Repairing Permissions (and more)
The 'Repair Permissions' function of Disk Utility has been under quite a bit of speculation as of late. There are those in one camp, such as John Gruber of Daring Fireball, who believe repairing (restoring, resetting, etc.) permissions is not much more than voodoo, while others in the support end of the Mac OS X community swear by it as the first line of defense. So what's a confused Mac OS X user to do when trying to draw up a formidable troubleshooting game plan? Heading over to Dan Frakes' Repairing permissions: what you need to know article at Macworld is a great first step at trying to cut through all the confusion. Dan dissects virtually every aspect of the permissions repair process, from explaining what exactly 'permissions' are, to a few specific situations when it's a good idea to add the operation to your troubleshooting tool-belt. It's an informative read that helps demystify this much-debated aspect of Mac OS X.
TechTool Pro 4.5 Announced
Micromat today announced an update to their top-of-the-line system diagnostic and repair software TechTool Pro, bringing the utility to Universal Binary status. As a repair technician, I use TechTool daily to repair corrupted drive volumes, detect failing disks, and stress-test hardware. Although version 4.5 of the program sports no new features aside from Intel support, Micromat is not releasing an updater for previous versions of TechTool. According to the company a large number of under-the-hood changes and tweaks to the program prevents such an update from being practical. Current owners of the software can download a public beta of the new version, and order a DVD update for $25 which will ship in July. Subscribers to Mircomat's TechTool Quarterly subscription program will automatically receive the update in the mail at no charge.
TUAW Tip: Mac OS X can verify itself now
Disk Utility is a great maintenance and troubleshooting tool for those times when your Mac starts acting up. Repairing permissions can sometimes be handy (even though its true validity is in question as of late), but using the Verify and Repair Disk operations is often a more useful tactic. However, until Mac OS X 10.4.3, you had use Disk Utility to verify or repair your Mac's drive from some sort of an external source. You either had to plug into another Mac in Target Disk mode, or reboot and use the install disks that came with your Mac - not the most friendly process to your workflow. But now, With 10.4.3 and later, you can start up Disk Utility right from within Mac OS X and chose the verify option to make sure system level elements like your file catalog are all in order. One warning though: it is completely normal for your Mac to temporarily freeze or 'seize up' at the beginning of running this operation (you should get the infamous beachball), as this Apple support document explains. After a little while, depending on your Mac's speed and all that jazz, it will come out of its daze and you can continue working/chatting/surfing while it finishes the disk verification process.This is a really handy tool, perhaps even more valuable than checking permissions, and should be a welcome addition to any Mac maintenance arsenal.
Maintenance 3.5 released
Maintenance, the Automator action that performs many system repair and clean-up tasks, has been updated to version 3.5. New features include: Ability to automatically restart after Maintenance has run Ability to automatically view the results file Time stamp added to results file Also, for a few versions now, Maintenance has included an AppleScript that I believe performs the same tasks for pre-Tiger 10.4 versions of Mac OS X. Included with the download is a ReadMe PDF that explains what each task is and when/why you should run them.Maintenance is free and available from Automator World.
iPod troubleshooting: Remember the five R's
I'd bet that many of us are familiar with the scenario that Don Foy describes at Macsimum News: You're listening to your iPod when it inexplicably freezes up. No amount of button pushing will get it to do anything. Or, you plug it into your Mac and nothing happens. It doesn't show up on the desktop and iTunes does not see it. How do you remedy the situation? As Don suggests, remember the five R's: Reset your iPod Find out how to reset your model here. Retry with a different port. Perhaps the iPod itself isn't to blame? Restart your computer Reinstall the iPod software and iTunes Restore your iPod Caution: This wipes everything! This should have your little friend happy and healthy again in no time. Now, wasn't that easy?
Apple to iPod nano service providers: Fix cracked screens
Apple has stepped up to the plate regarding cracked screens on iPod nano's. Here at TUAW Jan reported on the screen cracking issues back in September of last year. If you have a 5G iPod and not a nano, hardware failure such as cracked screens should be covered if you are under warranty. Now it seems Apple will replace the screens free of charge on the iPod nano's on a case by case basis.This repair coverage should be taken care of at both Apple stores and Apple certified service providers. Let us know if you hear otherwise![via Engadget]
Maintenance 3.2, now with non-Tiger goodness
It's no secret that we TUAW bloggers love Maintenance, the Automator app that runs a whole slew of maintenance and cleanup tasks. Some of these tasks are designed to be automatically run late at night by OS X, but unless you leave your Mac running 24/7 or you're crazy like me and you're simply up till all hours of the morning, you probably shut down or sleep your Mac and these tasks never see the light of day. Maintenance is great for taking care of these OS X cleanup tasks and can also run other operations such as permissions and preferences repairs - all from a slick little Automator action.But wait, what's that? You aren't using Tiger yet? Well fret no more! With the latest update to version 3.2, Maintenance now includes a good ol' fashioned applescript for non-Tiger users. I'm sure this works on Panther, and kinda sure it could work on Jaguar too, but I can't find any documentation that specifies. If anyone knows for sure, please enlighten the rest of us.Once again though, I highly recommend using this action as it's quick, unobtrusive, easy to use and pretty comprehensive in covering the key OS X cleanup tasks that have to be run.
iMac G5 repair extension program
While I haven't experienced it, I know of a few people who have had video issues with their iMac G5's. Apple is now offering a repair program for the affected iMacs. According to Apple, a "specific component failure" may cause first generation iMac G5s to exhibit scrambled or distorted video, no video at all or no power. If this sounds like your machine, check to see if its serial number is within the following ranges:W8435xxxxxx - W8522xxxxxxQP435xxxxxx - QP522xxxxxxCK435xxxxxx - CK522xxxxxxYD435xxxxxx - YD522xxxxxx If so, your computer may be eligible for repair, free of charge. Good luck to anyone experiencing these issues. We hope you get it sorted out.
