iBook: hinge of death

My G3 dual USB iBook is on its last legs. The drive died last year and I replaced it, but that was probably a mistake. Now the display is getting dimmer and the hinge is very stiff; these are known symptoms of a design defect that affects iBooks.

The G3 iBook has about a three year lifespan with average use. I think I fell a bit short of that, but I used it very heavily. Three years is the range of AppleCare coverage; if AppleCare service was higher quality I'd get it for my next iBook. Alas, it is not.

I'd hoped I'd make it to the Intel ibook, but the roll out of the Intel MacBook Pro has been so troubled I figure I'll just buy a G4 iBook. The old one may end up attached to an LCD panel in the kitchen, or it may just be junked.

I wouldn't mind a four year lifespan for a laptop, three is a bit short. My old PowerBook 165 lasted about five years, but nobody makes anything that reliable any more.

Update 4/2/06: Macintouch has the best information on this. Nobody mentioned iGlide in that query, it does show up in the few remaining Apple discussion posts on this (they archive older posts and there are few G3s left). WD-40 is a bad idea, it destroys the plastic. I wonder if iGlide is just Teflon spray but I may give it a try. I'll try loosening the bolts slightly to each side of the hinge then spraying it.

Update 4/9/06: Tried iGlide. It had no effect. The instructions require one to remove the rubber feet and loosen the associated screws, that broke 2 of the 3 feet. I sort of expected that from past experience, crazy glue holds them on now.

Update 4/11/06: Oddly, the function is now improving. It just took a couple of days. Crazy glue works well on those iBook feet ...

Update 5/11/06: Still works fine. I sent the company a note saying how pleased I was. I did mention the feet braking, and they sent me a set of replacements. The crazy glue will likely last the lifetime of the iBook, but that's impressive. They also gave me a strong hint of where the lubricant comes from. No, it's not WD-40 -- that would dissolve the plastic. I won't repeat it (sorry), but the source is consistent with the successful results I saw.

Update 11/18/06: The hinge is again in bad shape, and now the cracks are growing and the alignment is off. The treatment gave me 6 months, time enough for the MacBook Core Duo 2 to come out. Worth it really, but not a cure. I suspect the hinges go when some teflon like surface wears off; they probably can't be cost-effectively repaired. I could probably reapply and get some more time, but instead we leave the iBook permanently open. It's not bad for carrying around the house.

Aperture: can't import iPhoto Library

When Apple updated iPhoto 6, they broke the ability of Aperture to import iPhoto libraries: Aperture can't import iPhoto Library from iPhoto 6.0.1 or 6.0.2.

Wow.

That is so extraordinarily stupid.

I have a draft post somewhere about Apple's attitude towards quality. Briefly, quality has never been a big deal with Steve Jobs. Look and feel yes. Out of the box experience, sure. Quality and reliability - no.

I remember some versions of OS 7.x that were so bad they made me want to weep. Apple had good machines back when all PCs were well made, but their build quality over the pasts 8 years has been average to below average. Dell might be worse, but Apple has nothing to brag about.

OS X has improved overall, but new releases seem to break as much as they fix. Sometimes they break what they fixed in a prior update. Let's not talk about how many external firewire drives have been killed in the past few years.

Unfortunately the quality blight is industry wide. As bad as Apple is, and they're pretty bad, there aren't any good alternatives. This most recent blunder, however, is pushing me towards Adobe and away from Apple. I"m going to start using Lightroom beta two for image acquisition and initial work, even if I save them in iPhoto for now.

The joys of rich text format wordprocessing

I needed to lookup something I'd written in Living with the Beast so I googled on faughnan OS X word processor. I found my page, but next to it I found a great article that referenced it:

O'Reilly Network -- TextEdit's Default Format: RTF... Why?

... A quick glance at Planet Jeffery's list of text and RTF editors for Windows gives you an idea of the level of demand for utilities like this. Writers, or anyone who needs to meddle with text every day, have been known to find the bloat and weight of well-known word processors too much to handle. Those who have to use Word come up with strategies for coping--see John Faughnan's Living with the Beast for an entertaining example.

Many people have simple requirements, such as access to simple formatting controls while writing. A lightweight processor, especially one that uses the RTF format, is often the best solution...

Aside from the reference to my page, it's a terrific reference that describes the pros and cons of using RTF as a file format. Today RTF is still the most interoperable file format, though I think every RTF user is hoping that a more robust open document format will replace it (such as the OpenOffice entry or even, shudder, Microsoft's maybe-sort-of-pseudo-open-for-now-kind-of alternative).

Aperture 1.1 is almost here ...

Apple's updated their web site: Apple - Aperture - Aperture 1.1 Update.

Among the new features are improvements in sharpening, noise compensation (including an auto feature), performance improvements and bug fixes.

I'm ready to try it, but I do get educational pricing. Maybe late April or early May if the initial reports aren't too bad.

Microsoft Access SQL: Ancient mystery solved

Don't get me started on Microsoft Access. It's hard to avoid colorful language and impolitic metaphor. Suffice to say few tools combine such power and such misery in a single package.

One abiding mystery with Access is the documentation for its flavor of SQL (not to mention the occult and bizarre functions, abandoned bastard children of VisualBasic, one can embed into queries). I've often searched on "Microsoft Access SQL" and found nothing [2]. Recently, reading the very good Wikipedia article on Access I came across a clue. Since the default database engine is "Jet", maybe a search on "Jet SQL" would work better.

It does: Microsoft Office Assistance: Microsoft Jet SQL Reference

[1] For example: Create View.

CREATE VIEW can be executed only through the ADO library.
Access itself uses DAO, so any attempt to CREATE VIEW from the query design
window will fail.

If you try to create a view within Access itself, you get a very helpful error message: "Syntax error in create table statement". Sigh. I do love my Mac.

[2] It's mostly in the help file but Microsoft's brilliantly helpful implementation obscures this. BTW, I think Vista and Office 2007 will be, both, catastrophes.

iPod Diagnostics

A terrific link from TUAW - how to sort out iPod problems: iPod Diagnostics - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

SSH tunnels for secure network access

It's not for the faint of heart, but here's how geeks secure their communications channels: How-To: SSH tunnels for secure network access - Engadget

The big problem is "hotspots". If a hotspot doenn't have a password, then communications between computer and hotspot can be easily monitored. Passwords can be snatched enroute. VPN is one answer, SSH Tunnels are another.