I’m sitting in an Apple Store at the moment, trying out the new keyboard they have. It uses a keyboard scheme more similar to the MacBook keyboard, which may look “weird” to folks used to most keyboards… the keys are a bit more spaced out, so people wonder if it would be hard to get used to, or have trouble reaching keys. Or, at least, I was wondering. Hence this post — it’s a writing exercise, something that will give me a sense of the keyboard response and how the keys “feel” — whether or not I can tell when I’ve been hitting a key or not, or mistyping or similar (I mean, other than my usual typos of course). So far, it feels pretty good. I’m typing at a pretty fair clip (not the fastest I’ve ever typed, but still not very slowly either), and it feels pretty good under my fingers. Despite the “slim” look and feel, I can definitely tell when I’ve hit a key, and on a purely aesthetic level, the keyboard LOOKS sharp: metal case and white low profile keys. I should really check the site to see if it has key illumination (too bright to tell of course — the curse of trying things out in a retail location). Unlike the previous desktop keyboards, rather than having the sound controls over the number pad, the entire upper row is function keys, and then it functions more like a laptop keyboard, with the first twelve or so also controlling hardware (which, of course, you can reconfigure if you want).

I started railing about the lack of the Fn key (which is used by the system to delineate whether you want the key to access the keyboard control, or whatever the function key is supposed to do), but then I finally noticed where it is: it seems to have replaced one of the “magic six” keys that sit above the arrow keys, between the main keyboard and the number pad. Going from memory, I think it took over “insert”, and now delete is on the bottom row instead of the top. Not sure how I feel about that. I’m sure I’d get used to it, though.

Final prognosis? If you’re in the market for a new keyboard, it’s well worth checking out: on board usb2 is nice, it’s got a good form factor, and I’ve felt pretty comfortable typing all this out, and for $49, it’s fairly competitive with other quality keyboards out there (and markedly less than most specialty keyboards). Had I the cash, I’d probably head home with one now!

Most of the time, my computers are a delight to use: reliable, fast, clean, effective. But every so often, bad things happen, for inexplicable reasons. Case in point: my MacBook Pro. The machine has had its issues for a long time, as it’s a revision A, purchased 5 minutes after the keynote that they were first announced at, and as most techies will attest, you take your chances to be at the bleeding edge. I had heat issues, battery issues, logic board issues, pretty much the full gamut of problems that people have listed with the early releases. But, by and large, it’s been a good computer, and I’m happy with the purchase regardless.

A few days ago, the video abruptly started to have issues. Text became nearly illegible, colors were completely off (and in some — but not all — cases, inverted), with bizarre technicolor dithering happening where smooth gradients once lay. As some of you are aware, I’m broke, so I REALLY can’t afford to have my machines fail on me right now, because I simply can’t pay the money necessary to repair them in the case of hardware issues, as my warranty has expired. These symptoms reek of a video card failure, so I was concerned to say the least, and turned the machine off for the rest of the week, until I’d have the weekend to work on it.

My first step was to think about what I’d been doing when this first appeared: I’d just installed the Audio Update from Apple via Software Update, and when it restarted, that’s when these issues cropped up. So, maybe an issue with that? Quick check of known issues (Macintouch and MacFixit are both handy for their user reports for this) revealed nothing. I tried rebooting a few times, and it didn’t go away. I then tried booting into my Windows partion, and while there I was still having issues, when I booted back into OS X, the problems went away until I next rebooted. This gave me hope that it’s not actually a hardware problem, as I was able to reproduce this every time.

It then occurred to me that I’d been doing the phone flashing and modding in the Windows partition, then booted back to the Mac side, then did the Audio update… so it’s entirely possible that something done during that had caused an issue, and I simply hadn’t created circumstances for it to show up until then… so I wiped my Boot Camp partition. Still happening… hmm. So, I put the laptop into target disk mode and backed up my user directory to the desktop, and did a clean install, complete with zeroing data.

The display was still screwy. Well… shit. At least I’d been meaning to clear out and reorganize my laptop anyway. The next step (and probably should have been an earlier step) was to start ticking through different hardware reset methods, things like reseting the NVRAM and the SMC. So, powered down, took out the battery, held the power button for a few seconds (reset the SMC). Reset the VNRAM (option, command, p, r) while booting up, and suddenly no more issues, including across another half dozen test reboots.

I still don’t know what caused the initial problem, and likely never will — I certainly hope it doesn’t come back! Mostly I wanted to share what I’ve been doing all day, and hopefully provide some helpful information for the next poor schmoe who has something like this happen and is Googling for Mac video issues. Tomorrow, I’ll likely be spending the day sifting through my old user directory, and deciding which things I want to put back onto the laptop. Not exactly how I would have liked to spend a gorgeous summer weekend, but sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.

I managed to successfully hack my phone as I’d mentioned planning to do. I’m definitely glad I gave myself the day to work on it, as the process ended up taking me a good chunk of the day. After that, re-syncing it my computer addressbook, then shuffling contacts around, then adding the contacts that for various reasons were only on my old phone (ie, never got around to adding them to my official addressbook)… well, yeah, you get the picture. Long, semi-annoying day of jiggering things.

Needless to say, there won’t be a song review today. Happy Fourth of July, everyone!

No, not an iPhone. They’re pretty awesome (swung by the Apple Store and played with one), but I ended up making use of the “new every two” feature of my current contract to pick up a Motorola K1m instead. It’s a sexy little phone, and I like it a lot… physically. The interface, however, leaves a LOT to be desired. This is not Motorola’s fault, mind you: Moto’s standard interface is pretty kickass. It’s Verizon. They made their own UI, and it’s ugly as sin, and literally SATURATED with Verizon and V Cast branding, all the way down to advertising V Cast both when turning the phone ON and when turning it OFF, and when talking on the phone, the outside screen has a giant Verizon Wireless logo glowing, making you a walking advertisement. This is patently ridiculous, with added insult in that they turned off core functionality of the phone to make room for their branded materials. The ever so handy shortcut keys? The only things useful that aren’t just links to V Cast or Get It Now services are the alarm clock, calculator, and calendar. I really wasn’t expecting this level of stupidity, since they didn’t do nearly as much of this with the 710 I was using before.

So, I’ve had the phone for a day, and I’m already poring over sites online about how to change the firmware. It looks like I’ll need to do it in my Windows partition, as there are several tools that are currently still PC only (though ports are being worked on), but otherwise the materials necessary to re-flash the phone are readily available. I really hate that I feel like this is a necessary step to enjoy my phone, but it really, really is. If any VZW reps happen to read this (the chances of which are increased by my including brand names and such), PLEASE stop dumbing down your phones! Leave them as is! Motorola has better UI designers than you, let them do their job! It would do a lot to assuage the perception of you as an “evil corporation” if you stopped fucking over your customers like this. You’re Verizon, we’re not going to forget your fucking name, you reeeeally don’t need to inundate us with your branding when we already have your service.

I’m currently sitting in the conference room of the Hilton in Dedham, waiting for the Mac OS X Leopard Tech Talk to start (it’s a developer seminar previewing the new stuff coming up in 10.5… they did one for 10.4 as well that I made it to). I’m still pretty pleased that I managed to make it here, as they really are a lot of fun, and I like knowing things, even if I don’t really get a chance to make much use of it. I won’t necessarily be liveblogging the event (some of this is still under NDAs), but I will try to give a general sense of what’s coming up without getting in trouble with Apple’s legal department. It’s really nice sitting here and seeing dozens and dozens of MacBooks, Powerbooks, and MacBook Pros, and logging into the complimentary available wireless network and seeing everyone up via Bonjour. If I were a bit more adventurous, I’d even try IMing people.

[Update: 2 PM They were quite happy to point out that yes, a lot of this is under NDA, and if things are leaked, they don’t get to continue doing these, so please bear in mind that there’s a LOT of information here that I just can’t go into detail about.

My first session was the introduction to the seminar, which covered basic sales numbers, general updates about the application, and then showcased some shiny new features that are definitely pretty exciting. I’m feeling pretty good about what’s changing in printing, and I’d say those of you who are worried about it changing should be well pleased with what’s being done. Core Animation is showing a lot of potential, and a lot of it has already been integrated in ways that you may not really realize: it’s not meant to just be a shiny, a lot of the time animation is a subtle thing to enhance the user experience, to make the UI more clear in what’s happening. An example is the dock, already: if you drag an application icon around on the dock, things move and shift out of the way. It makes it immediately clear where and what’s happening. In 10.5, developers will be able to leverage a lot more of that sort of animation capability for “free”. I’m really excited about some of the new graphics related toolkits that they highlighted.

My second session was an introduction to Xcode 3.0 and Interface Builder 3.0. I’ve got to say, I’m quite impressed with the new features. I like what they’ve done to streamline the workflow, and the new interface builder is sharp, and seems a bit more intuitive. It’s also apparently significantly more extensible than the old version. A lot of the information is available on the developer site, and I’d definitely recommend checking it out if you’re interested in using OS X as a developer platform.

My third session was “Modern OpenGL”, and it was a treasure trove for my particular field of interest — game development. They’re expanding their support of OpenGL, and some of the features they’ve added have already begun to show a marked increase in speed in existing apps: adding multithreading support on the graphics side to a popular game I play gave a 90% frames per second increase. Some of the example apps were crazy impressive in what they were able to pull off, and easily half to two thirds of the presentation covered ways to modernize OpenGL code and optimize it for performance. Some really nice caveats to remember (I have them written down) if I get back into programming.

I’m taking a break at the moment to let my battery charge, but at 3:15, there’s a session on what’s new in Cocoa that I’d really like to attend. Hoping to attend the sessions on Resolution Independence and Printing in Leopard after that, since those are things that are directly relevant to both myself and others I know. Then there’s just the reception and a chance to shmooze with folks before heading back north. Pretty fun day, all told. Kudos to Apple for hosting it!]