Category: I-phone

Installing OS X Lion on a 3 1/2-year old MacBook Pro made it clearer than ever just how slow my old machine had become. Beachballs left and right, UI lag, incredibly long reboot times, dismal application load times… as someone accustomed to the “instant on” feel of an iPad or iPhone, I was starting to hate my Mac, even though I liked Lion.

Playing around with a new MacBook Air in the shops brought back that feeling of “click it and it happens” to OS X, but I found myself unable to afford one unless I could sell my old machine first. After several weeks of trying, with no one offering what I felt was a fair price for my equipment, I instead decided to upgrade my old hardware with a solid-state drive and some more RAM.

Open the gallery below in a new tab/window and follow along as I take you through my Mac’s surgery.

Hypothesis:

Installing an additional 2 GB of RAM and swapping out my slothlike 5400 RPM HDD for an SSD will make my Early 2008 MacBook Pro run well enough that I don’t need to go for a quick walk around the block any time I need to reboot. Also, it’d be nice if I didn’t have to relaunch Safari every half hour because it’s brought the entire system to a crawl.

Materials:

• One 240 GB Mercury Extreme Pro SSD from Other World Computing
• One 4 GB stick of RAM (for 6 GB total)
• One external hard drive enclosure
• Carbon Copy Cloner
• Phillips #00 screwdriver
• Torx T6 screwdriver
• iPad with iFixit’s repair guides loaded
• Bicycle chain oil (you heard me)

Method:

After waiting the requisite week for my hardware to ship from the States, clear through New Zealand Customs and ship to my house, I was off and running. In one extended surgical procedure, I wanted to:

1. Swap out an existing 2 GB RAM module and replace it with a 4 GB module (for a total of 6 GB, the maximum my Mac’s hardware will support)
2. Remove, clean, and lubricate a fan that’s been making a subtle noise and driving me nuts for months
3. Swap out the factory-installed hard drive for my new SSD.

Swapping out the RAM is easy; so easy, in fact, that even on my older Mac Apple provides instructions inside the case for how to do it. I’d heard horror stories in the past about the difficulty involved in swapping out the hard drives in pre-unibody MacBook Pros, so I steeled myself for a frustrating battle. As for the fan, iFixit classified it as a moderately-difficult repair, but after reviewing the instructions it honestly didn’t look that tough to accomplish.

Step One: Get my data onto the new drive

There are many ways to accomplish this. OS X Lion complicates things since it doesn’t come on media of any kind, so my original plan was to install the new drive, boot it off a USB recovery disk made using Apple’s official utility, then restore from a Time Machine backup.

Then I realized that was needlessly complicated and just used Carbon Copy Cloner instead. I mounted the new SSD in the external enclosure that came with the OWC kit, then used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone a bit-for-bit copy of my Mac’s hard drive onto the SSD. This took quite some time — well over four hours — but it was a lot less of a hassle than booting from the Recovery Disk and then restoring from a Time Machine backup would have been.

To fully replicate my experience, stare at this picture for 300 minutes

Step Two: Upgrade the RAM

This took about two minutes. Replacing RAM on portable Macs is ridiculously easy (except the MacBook Air, of course), and if you have the financial means, I recommend maxing out your RAM as much as you can. In my case, this meant swapping out a 2 GB module for 4 GB, pushing my Mac’s RAM to the maximum 6 GB its older architecture will support.

Step Three: Disassemble the case

This was way easier than I thought it would be. I had to remove a hell of a lot of screws, but once they were all out, prying the upper case away from the bottom was much less difficult than I anticipated. Once finished, my Mac’s innards were open for inspection — and dissection.

This won’t hurt a bit

Step Four: Disassemble the right fan

This wasn’t strictly necessary, but since I was in there anyway and the fan’s subtle yet perceptible noise has been grating on my nerves for months, I decided to dive in anyway. Removing the fan was easy, but removing its tiny connector and the display cable from the logic board were definite “heart in throat” moments. Once I had the fan assembly out of the Mac, taking it apart was no more difficult than disassembling an electric razor.

The fan assembly was slightly gummed up with dust, so I wiped it off with a microfiber cloth. I then used a couple tiny drops of silicone-based bicycle chain oil on the fan’s central arm — when I pulled the thing apart, this had no perceptible lubricant on it at all, which may have been the whole problem.

Putting the fan back together was a snap — literally. When the fan snapped back into the motor assembly, I said aloud, “Huh, must be magnetic or something.” Then I wanted to punch myself in the side of my head, because duh, an electric motor is basically all magnets. Genius.

Step Five: Remove the old hard drive

This turned out to be way less difficult than the horror stories I’ve heard made it out to be. In fact, it wasn’t really much harder than upgrading the hard drive on my old PowerBook G3. The tight clearances in this section of my Mac did make the job more difficult than I felt it had to be, and the Bluetooth antenna’s cable kept getting in my way, but eventually I got the drive out, removed the mounting bolts on its sides, and slapped it into the external enclosure. Ahh, 250 GB of mobile backup goodness.

Step Six: Put in the new drive and close ‘er up

Putting the new drive in was just about as annoying as pulling the old one out — the clearances here really are far too tight on the pre-unibody MacBook Pros — but with a bit of effort I was able to slide the new SSD into position. After going through this process, I can see why Apple decided to call the hard drive a non-user-serviceable part on the older MacBook Pros; unlike the simple “pull tab A and done” procedure for the old MacBooks, there really is quite a lot of opportunity to screw something up on the MacBook Pro if you don’t know what you’re doing.

After that, closing up was a simple matter of putting the top case back on and screwing way too many screws back in.

Screws fall out all the time. The world’s an imperfect place

Step Seven: Push the Power button and pray

The moment of truth after every major hardware repair: Will the thing even turn on? Will it explode in sparks and smoke? Will I be greeted by that evil flashing question mark folder? Did I screw five things up in the process of trying to fix three other things?

I’m happy to say that my MacBook Pro booted up without issues — and immediately. The speed with the new SSD is astonishing, especially compared to the dog-slow 5400 RPM hard drive I’ve been suffering with for so long. Applications launch nearly instantaneously, even notorious I/O hogs like iTunes and Aperture. It’s almost bewildering how much faster my Mac seems now with this SSD; it truly feels like a brand new machine.

Something was missing, and it didn’t take long for me to figure out what it was. Noise. The fan noise was all but gone, and the constant whirring and clanking of the old hard drive was replaced with blissful silence. I can still sort of hear the fan, even after cleaning and lubing it, so I’ll probably have to replace the entire assembly at some future point. For now, though, all is well.

Result:

Do I finally have enough RAM to run Safari for more than 5 minutes before it eats all the frigging memory? Does removing that bottlenecking 5400 RPM HDD and substituting a nice, fast SSD mean I stop seeing the Spinning Beach Ball of Death 15 times a day?

Was spending north of US$600, in short, worth it?

Absolutely yes. I feel like I have a brand-new machine now, and the performance with the SSD has been so extraordinary that I will never use an old-school spinning platter hard drive as my Mac’s main drive again. The 240 GB SSD I have in my Mac now may be more cramped than the 750 GB monsters Apple is shoving into MacBook Pros these days, but the performance of the SSD kicks my old drive’s butt up and down the block.

Want proof? Check out the video below, where I compared the reboot time on the same machine, running OS X Lion set up to automatically restore applications after rebooting. After viewing the video, it should be obvious why I’m thrilled with this upgrade.

If you’ve been on the fence over an SSD upgrade because of the extremely high dollar-to-gigabyte ratio, I’d say it’s definitely worth considering the upgrade if you can afford it. I knew my old hard drive was holding my Mac’s performance back, but I didn’t realize just how bad it was until I put my Mac through surgery.

Intensive surgery on an old MacBook Pro yields huge performance gains originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 19 Aug 2011 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

According to Patently Apple, a new patent application from Apple suggests the company is interested in baking augmented reality functions into the iPhone’s built-in Maps and Compass apps. In one implementation suggested by the patent, users could take a picture of their surroundings and perform a navigational search based on the image, including turn-by-turn directions.

Apple’s augmented reality function would overlay information on the iPhone screen’s image, giving users data on objects they’re currently viewing such as streets, buildings, and so forth. Building from there, the patent essentially describes a GPS navigator that feeds off input from the camera and overlays information in real-time.

Many third party apps have come out utilizing augmented reality functions in one form or another, but what the patent describes sounds like some pretty futuristic stuff. Standalone GPS devices and even the Maps app on the iPhone do a decent job of giving directions, but there’s still an abstraction layer between the user and the real environment with these interfaces. This new augmented reality navigator would go a long way toward paring away the more abstract portions of navigation.

The standard patent caveat applies: since this is only a patent application, there’s no guarantee this will ever actually debut on one of Apple’s devices. However, given the functions described and the already powerful capabilities of the iPhone’s hardware and OS, I don’t see any reason why this function wouldn’t eventually find its way to market. Maybe it’s something to look forward to in iOS 6 next year.

Patent suggests augmented reality coming to Maps and Compass apps originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 19 Aug 2011 06:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Artist and composer Ben Grosser sent us a tip about his latest project, an interactive robotic painting machine. The machine has three computers that run python code written by Grosser, two of those being computers for those who “Think Different” — a Mac Pro and a MacBook Pro.

The process is fascinating to watch and hear, as the machine “listens” to outside sounds as input into what it should paint and creates its own body of work. Grosser noted that he’s been critiquing the machine as it paints, giving it audio input as it makes brush strokes indicating whether or not he likes what it’s done. He mentioned that he’s “found that I tend to dislike these paintings more than others it makes, suggesting that listening to a constant critique of one’s creative process may not be productive.”

A video of Head Swap: Collaborative Work for Amplified Violin and Interactive Robotic Painting Machine (2011) is shown below. In this video, the machine listens to music composed by Zach Browning and played by violinist Benjamin Sung. Part of what you hear is actually the machine as it goes through its motions, creating its own counterpoint chords as it paints. The art created by the machine may not appeal to everyone, but it’s a captivating and Apple-powered work that can produce striking and somewhat beautiful paintings … and music.

Macs as artist: The interactive robotic painting machine originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 19 Aug 2011 00:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Touch Arcade has a list of the games on the App Store currently compatible with ThinkGeek’s iCade arcade stand for the iPad. It’s certainly more than just the one official Atari app that it was compatible with at release, but the list is still pretty short, with only 16 titles included:

• No Gravity
• Warblade HD
• Sideways Racing
• Silverfish MAX
• Match Panic
• Mos Speedrun
• Velocispider
• Super Mega Worm
• Super Mega Worm Vs. Santa
• Compression HD
• IronStar Arena
• Emerald Mine
• Space Inversion
• Space Inversion 2
• Space Inversion Puzzle
• Freeesh

The good news is that with titles like Super Mega Worm and Velocispider in there, these are definitely some quality titles, not just filler-ware. The list is still pretty small when you think about the App Store in terms of total number of games.

Hopefully spotlighting titles like these will encourage developers to step up and support the iCade, especially when a game like theirs makes sense for a real-life arcade stick and buttons. True, the audience of people that actually owns the device is smaller than the iPad audience in general, but the iCade is a pretty cool and unique setup, and it would be nice to see it supported a little more widely.

iCade-compatible games listed originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

iFixit is, of course, the great upgrade and repair community with all kinds of step-by-step instructions for Macs, iPods, iPhones, and almost any other devices you happen to have, Apple or otherwise. Now, the company has introduced a new release called Dozuki, which is designed to make sharing and providing manuals for service or repair even easier. Dozuki is still in a closed beta, but the idea as we understand it is that users will be able to create and share manuals via PDF across all of iFixit’s outlets, including the official iOS app. Guidebook is the side of the platform that will deal with documents, while Answers will share questions and their answers with whoever needs them.

Both sides of the software are currently in a private beta, which you can sign up for on the website. Dozuki is set to launch to the public later on this fall.

iFixit introduces Dozuki, to provide and share crowdsourced service and repair manuals originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

The Turkish Anatolia news agency is reporting that Apple may make a bid for a contract to supply 15 million iPads to school children in Turkey over four years. During Turkish Trade Minister Zafer Caglayan’s visit to the US, Apple reportedly told the Trade Minister that it would consider manufacturing some iPhone and iPad peripherals, like Smart Covers and ear buds, in Turkey in order to win the contract.

However, an agreement by Apple to manufacture accessories in Turkey might not be enough to secure the contract as the Turkish government had previously said that the tablets themselves would need to be manufactured in the country. Besides Apple, Microsoft and Intel are also reportedly interested in submitting bids for the 15 million tablet contract.

[via Bloomberg]

Apple, Microsoft may bid to build tablets for Turkish school children originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 20:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

True to its word, Aspyr Media put Duke Nukem Forever on the Mac in the month of August, a short while after the game’s release on PC. You can pick up the title at GameAgent through Aspyr’s website, or on Steam (where you get it, thanks to SteamPlay, for both Windows and Mac), but if you want to go cheap, MacUpdate is running a promotion where the game is $5 off the standard price, and you’ll get Jets’n’Guns Gold for absolutely free as well. That’s about the best deal I’ve seen, if you’re planning on buying the game and don’t mind where it comes from.

Be warned, of course, that the critics didn’t really enjoy the long-awaited title all that much, claiming that the design showed its age and depended a little too much on the game’s reputation rather than actual innovation. But that hasn’t stopped the game from being a financial success anyway, and odds are that if you’re a Duke fan and just want to play the game, you’re not that worried about how it stands up to the test of time. Hopefully you’re low on your supply of gum, because Duke is ready to get back into action.

Duke Nukem Forever out now on Mac originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 20:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

The iPhone and iPad have really pushed developers to have more and better features for editing photos on mobile devices. I’ve used and been impressed with apps like Photoforge, PhotoStudio, PhotoWizard and more.

Today I’ve been using and testing Luminance, which adds some clever functions for serious iOS photographers. First and foremost is the ability to add layers of adjustments to photos. While not the first app to do this, it’s intuitive to add effects as layers, which can be removed or made transparent so other effects can show through. Another nice feature is the ability to save any effect as a preset, then apply it to other photos that you import. If you really like to tweak your images and have taken a lot of steps as you add to the original image, Luminance gives you unlimited undos, so you can walk the image back, or jump to any particular change and pick up from there. It’s a powerful feature for an app designed to run on a phone and tablet. There are quite a few presets built in, and they can be modified to taste.

As I edited my photos, the app was solid and speedy. I didn’t see any crashes or bad behavior. The operation of the app is intuitive, and the developers say they were aiming for a blend between an iOS app and Lightroom or Aperture. I think they achieved that.

There are some things I’d like to see, like some built-in help, even thought the app is very easy to use. I’d also like more tools, especially rotate and cropping. Posting to Twitter is coming soon, and I’m told users can look forward to Flickr posting, tilt/shift effects, and creating frames.

I like Luminance because it pushes the editing envelope a bit, and I’m anxious to see how it evolves and improves. I’ve added it to my iPhone photo tool kit. Check our galleries for some shots of the app in action.

Luminance is US$0.99, which is a sale price until August 23.

Luminance app for iOS has some pro features for image editing originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

As a result of receiving over 100,000 Facebook “likes,” iD Software is giving away its first-person iOS shooters RAGE and RAGE HD for free until next Wednesday, August 24. Both games are universal apps with RAGE HD offering enhanced graphics for Retina displays and the iPad.

The games have you role-play as a contestant on a post-apocolpytic TV game show whose goal is to waste angry mutants. RAGE is fun, though unfortunately “on rails,” meaning you can’t wander around and explore the 3D environments freely. Instead, the games dictate your movements through the levels.

But hey, you can’t argue with free, right? Click the links above to grab the games from the App Store now. But be warned, they’ll take up a fair amount of space. RAGE is a 540 MB download, while RAGE HD clocks in at 747 MB.

[via Phone Arena]

RAGE and RAGE HD for iOS now free for a week originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Not only are Mac sales going gangbusters in Asia, but the units moving over there have kicked Apple up a notch: The company has overtaken Lenovo for sales in the region. In terms of revenue, PC maker Lenovo (which has been growing rapidly in China and the surrounding region), pulls in about $2.8 billion, but this past quarter, Apple raked in $3.8 billion in the same area.

Now, there is a catch here, and that’s that Apple is making Macs, iPhones, and iPads, while Lenovo is strictly a PC maker. These numbers apparently include sales of all devices, so it’s not strictly kosher to compare these two companies in the region.

What is important to note is that Lenovo is experiencing huge growth in Asia, and Apple is growing even faster and larger than that. We’ve known for a while that growth in China is one of Apple’s big goals as a company, and a figure like this shows that not only are they taking that goal seriously, but they’re on the road to accomplishing it in a big way as well.

Apple surpasses Lenovo in China sales originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 17:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

The company that’s becoming increasingly famous for regularly shooting itself in the foot when it comes to customer relations just blew off another toe. Our sister site Engadget reports that AT&T is “streamlining” its text messaging plans for new customers; when translated from PR-speak, this means new customers will have only a single, unlimited text messaging plan to choose from. The US$10 for 1000 messages plan is going away.

Existing customers on the $10 plan will have that plan grandfathered. However, new customers will only be able to choose between the $20 unlimited plan or no plan at all, in which case they’ll be charged $0.20 per text ($.30 per MMS). If you find yourself sending less than 100 text messages per month, you may be just fine without dropping another $20 on your monthly bill, but if you find yourself in the 100-1000 messages per month range as I do, AT&T’s move smacks of greed. Shocker.

It’s quite likely that this move is at least partially a response to iMessages in iOS 5, expected to debut in the fall. The feature allows iOS device owners to bypass the SMS protocol when sending messages to other iOS devices. Since the majority of US iPhone owners are still on AT&T’s network, this could have led to a measurable drop in the number of text messages sent on AT&T’s network, resulting in lost revenues for its SMS packages.

AT&T to eliminate $10 text message option for new customers originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 17:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Pro Tools is the industry-standard audio creation and production software used in the music and entertainment industries. Traditionally, Pro Tools takes its sweet time to be updated to work on newer OSs, but today Avid has released a Pro Tools 9.0.5 beta, which adds support for OS X 10.7 Lion. Note, however, that even though Pro Tools 9.0.5 is officially qualified to work on Snow Leopard systems, that’s not the case with Lion. Hence the “beta” status. If your livelihood depends on Pro Tools, you probably shouldn’t upgrade your production workstations to Lion and version 9.0.5.

If you intend to upgrade, note this warning and advice from Avid. When Lion is installed on a system with Pro Tools, the OS will disable some Pro Tool plug-ins. Given that, Avid recommends against updating a Snow Leopard workstation that already has Pro Tools installed. Instead they suggest Pro Tools users create a new partition on their hard drives, then install Lion from scratch, and then install Pro Tools 9.0.5.

You can check out Avid’s Read Me file on the matter here (PDF) and download the Pro Tools 9.0.5 update here.

[via Loopinsight]

Pro Tools beta adds Lion support originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Huge news from one of Apple’s biggest competitors today: Hewlett Packard (HP) and its board of directors have “authorized the exploration of strategic alternatives for its Personal Systems Group.” In plain English, this means HP may be planning to spinning off its personal computer division into a separate company, while parent corporation HP will concentrate more fully on enterprise sales and deployment.

If this move sounds familiar, it’s because that’s almost exactly what IBM did in 2005 when it sold its PC business to Lenovo. IBM has since focused on enterprise applications and often stunning R&D projects, and the company has arguably been better off for it.

Perhaps more pertinent to those following the ongoing smartphone “wars,” HP is also discontinuing its entire tablet and smartphone business. Sales of the TouchPad were reportedly extremely disappointing to both HP and its retail partners, so while unfortunate, the move is not particularly surprising. HP will continue development on webOS despite discontinuing sales and production of webOS devices, which brings to mind the possibility of HP licensing webOS to other smartphone manufacturers.

From the sounds of things, HP’s chief competitor going forward will be IBM instead of Apple. Good luck to them.

HP to spin off PC business, discontinues TouchPad originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Yes, Engadget will be having one of their reader meetups next week and myself and fellow editor Dave Caolo will be there to personally meet and greet you Apple fans in attendance. If meeting two handsome geeks isn’t enough to draw you to the event, we’ll also be giving away a ton of loot — just about everything we’ve reviewed since the summer began!

The event is an all-ages shindig at Guastavino’s, which is located at 59th Street in New York City. Show up by 6:30pm on Thursday, August 25 to queue up and (we hope) get inside. The venue only holds 1,000 of us, so please be patient if there’s a long line.

No, Android fans, we will not be in a dunking tank.

TUAW at the NYC Engadget meetup August 25 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Sometimes your screen is just too bright in the evenings. For the sake of your eyes, Sunset lets you reduce the brightness of your monitor below that of the standard brightness controls and without having to adjust the backlight.

If you reduce the brightness of your screen using the on-board controls, what you’re doing is reducing the brightness of the backlight bulbs or LEDs behind the screen. Sometimes that can cause buzzing, or other droning noises, and sometimes that just isn’t dim enough. Sunset takes a different approach purely in software that overlays a dimming mask over your screen with different levels to suit your brightness needs.

This means that if your display makes an annoying sound when dimmed, or you just can’t get it dim enough, Sunset will dim your display to your satisfaction without issue. Sure, dimming your display with Sunset doesn’t affect electricity usage or the life of your backlight, but it will save your eyes at night.

The little program sits in the menu bar and can be configured to respond to global shortcut keys like F1 & F2. If you have more than one display, Sunset can dim all of them to the same level or you can pick and choose which one to dim independently. The only thing missing is some sort of auto-dimming set to a specific timer, but the manual control works well.

Sunset is great if your lowest monitor’s brightness setting is just too bright, or it makes an annoying sound when not on full brightness. It’s simple, easy to use and gets the job done for an introductory price of US$1.99 (regular price $3.99).

Daily Mac App: Sunset originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments