MacBook random shutdown: balky heat sink sensor

I'd read many theories about the random shutdown problem with MacBooks. None of them turned out to be right. Apple had a hard time sorting it out -- they were replacing motherboards and machines for a while. The problem, apparently, was in a heat sink sensor:

PC World's Techlog MacBook Shutdowns: Case (Finally) Closed?

... Last Monday: I get a phone call; my system is ready for pickup. The courteous Genius who gives it back to me provides more details on the defect: Some MacBooks have a heat sink sensor that malfunctions, thinks the system is overheating when it isn't, and shuts down the machine thinking it's preventing potential damage.

Modern laptops are insanely complex. Apple needs to invest more in self-diagnosing hardware.

iSync users: avoid Motorola phones?

Reading this and a related iSync article I come away with the impression that sync is unreliable with Motorola phones, but I'm very intolerant of sync errors.

I think Motorola sells the most phones in the US...

Google product search without the parasites

Give me back my GOOGLE™ is a Google front-end that's designed to screen out the morass of software generated and fraudulent 'review' sites that now infest results of a product review search. The author uses a basic blacklist approach. Yahoo! had a similar product that allowed one to bias search away from vendor sites.

I hope Google is figuring out how to get rid of these lice, but in the meantime it's nice to see prototypes for future solutions. In the meanwhile I use Amazon for review information -- if you sort for lowest ratings first then read up you get excellent product information. If you're a hardware geek, the newegg.com reviews are quite good as well. Then there's Ars Technical, Tom's Hardware, limiting search to bloglines subscriptions, etc.

So it is possible to find good product reviews, but Google isn't yet part of the solution.

Force iPod to mount in manual mode

A good way to mount an iPod without overwriting it with an unwanted sync:

macosxhints.com - Sync parts of iTunes libraries from many Macs to an iPod

...hold down Command and Option when you first connect the iPod to mount it in manual mode...

More techniques for reviving dead hard disks: swap circuits

I thought I'd hear 'em all (my favorite is chilling a drive in the fridge), but this is new to me. I suspect drive recovery services have known this forever ...

MacInTouch: timely news and tips about the Apple Macintosh

[Ken Spencer] My daughter had a lot of photographs, some of which were not backed up, stored on a LaCie D2. She plugged it in one day, saw smoke and was out of business... when the board in the drive enclosure went, it took out the board in the Hard Drive! It was a Maxtor. In desperation, I bought an identical Maxtor, and discovered that the controller board connects to the drive with spring loaded contacts under the board. Took out 5 screws, took the old board off the Maxtor, exchanged it with the board from the new drive, and was able to recover everything! She bought a WiebeTech drive enclosure, and they were very helpful in helping her try to solve her problem.

[Robert Burke] Regarding Ken Spencer's solution to the bad hard drive logic board, I too have done this. One of the users I support had his hard drive die in a newly purchased refurb PowerMac G5 some time ago. On a hunch, I swapped the board with a like unit from another PowerMac we had. The drive worked as normal and I was able to get all his data off so he could take it in for repair. Note, though, that I'd only do this with the exact same model of hard drive, and same version of board if possible...

Timeature 1.0.1 RC 1 has got the goods

Adam has addressed the biggest lack of the very first release of Timeature:

Timeature 1.0.1 RC 1 "Date Picker valid range is now beween 1902 and 2037"

I don't think I've got any images prior to 1902, though obviously it would be desirable to address this limit. After all, one might wish to date a picture of a fossil to 1 million BCE ...

I'll give it a few days to settle down, but if this version of Timeature is stable then I'll have Aperture on my G5. Then I can start whining about the performance ...

Embedded Media HTML Generator

I've been frustrated trying to figure out how to embed video into my personal web site. I could have used this tool (now I just upload to google video):

Embedded Media HTML Generator - Download Squad

... Our pal Russell Heimlich from DV Guru points us to Embedded Media HTML Generator, an easy-to-use web service that will generate the HTML needed to embed QuickTime, Real, Windows Media, and Flash files in your web site...