I made a post back in December regarding my MacBook Air and a battery life issue.

About 2 weeks ago, I brought the Air back to the Apple store again, despite being completely shot down the first time. I had a 12:30 appointment, got there right at 12:30, but no one talked to me for a few minutes, so by the time I got someone’s attention, I was informed since I was late, they cancelled my appointment.

At this point, one of the non-genius people saw how frustrated I was and came over to talk to me. I explained the situation, and she told me I could do a drop-off thing where I leave it with them. I got a call the next day, they can’t figure out what’s wrong with my Air and I’m getting a new laptop. Amazing that it took so long to get to this point – considering I haven’t been able to use the computer regularly for the entire year. I tried to get them to let me upgrade to a MB Pro, but no dice.

I got the call today that my new Air was ready for pickup. I showed up at the store, and asked the guy again about swapping the Air for a Pro (paying the difference, of course). Apparently now it’s not a problem.

Conclusion: the battery drain was because the computer was completely hosed. New computer seems awesome. I am happy again.

~ jhaddad$ nmap localhost
Starting Nmap 5.00 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2010-01-05 11:06 PST
Interesting ports on localhost (127.0.0.1):
Not shown: 499 closed ports, 492 filtered ports
PORT STATE SERVICE
80/tcp open http
88/tcp open kerberos-sec
548/tcp open afp
631/tcp open ipp
3306/tcp open mysql
3325/tcp open unknown
5900/tcp open vnc
9000/tcp open cslistener
10000/tcp open snet-sensor-mgmt

For more detailed information, try netstat:

netstat -an

You’ll get a breakdown of every socket open on your machine – useful for figuring out who’s connected and from where.

The OSX version of netstat lacks a few options – such as the useful ‘-p’ option to display the process id (PID) – which can be useful combined with kill to get rid of unwanted connections – for instance,an SSH tunnel accidentally left open.

1. When I’d leave it unplugged for a few days, the battery would be dead. After a bit of testing I noticed I was losing roughly 25% of my battery life overnight if it wasn’t unplugged.
2. It started creaking when I’d open it. I was genuinely concerned it would just fall apart when I was trying to open it.

Obviously both of these things suck, so after a bit I brought it to the Apple store. They pretty much replaced everything in it – battery, logic board, screen bezel, hinges, and gave it back to me. So problem #2 was solved, but for some reason I kept seeing the battery issue.

I brought it back Monday of this week. The guy there (Ryan) explained to me that since I wasn’t up to date w/ my software, the tech guys would basically just give it back and refuse to work on it. He suggested resetting the PRAM and calibrating the battery. He also didn’t seem to think that losing 25% battery overnight was weird, even though I’ve owned 2 MacBook Pros and 2 iBooks that never had this issue – I could leave my MacBook Pro unplugged for days and it would only lose a few %.

I did these things, but it didn’t make a difference. It was only after a ton of looking around that someone suggested turning off bluetooth.

After turning off bluetooth, I let the laptop sit overnight in sleep. I checked it the next morning, and it was only down 4% from the night before. Huge improvement. I think I could have accomplished the same thing if I turned off the “Allow Bluetooth devices to wake this computer” setting, but since I’m not using it, I’d rather just disable it.

Anyway, if anyone knows anything else about this issue, I’m interested to find out more. I like the Air as a “sit on the couch and browse the web” laptop, hate it for doing any sort of IDE development. Also not great for playing Scrabble on Facebook – it can’t hold the entire board on the screen. Lame.

NAnt 0.86 (Build 0.86.2898.0; beta1; 12/08/2007)
Copyright (C) 2001-2007 Gerry Shaw
http://nant.sourceforge.net

For more information regarding the cause of the build failure, run the build again in debug mode.

Try ‘nant -help’ for more information

BUILD FAILED

Failed to initialize the ‘Mono 3.5 Profile’ (mono-3.5) target framework.

Function call failed.
Expression: ${not pkg-config::exists(’mono’)}
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

‘pkg-config’ failed to start.

ApplicationName=’pkg-config’, CommandLine=’–exists mono’, CurrentDirectory=’/Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/2.4/share/NAnt/bin/’

A few google searches suggested that this might be because pkg-config wasn’t installed – but it’s included in the Mono distribution. I finally realized the symlink wasn’t being created in by the Mono installer. Running the below command fixed everything.

sudo ln -s /Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Commands/pkg-config /usr/bin/pkg-config

This looks like a pretty cool tool to get a good idea of what’s going on in your PHP script without having to install tools like XDebug and Webgrind / KCacheGrind.

I’m not sure how this is anything new, tons of applications have their own volume setting. Quicktime, VLC, Windows Media Player.

Doesn’t seem like such a bad idea to get out now. It’s essentially just a giant ad for Fox TV shows and movies.

Joel Downs believes Tivo should open an app store. I suppose if they are going to continue with their business model, it would make sense, since it probably won’t be long till the Xbox has Tivo functionality. It might already, but I wouldn’t know.

Speaking of an App store, Apple seems to be doing OK. The sad thing is I still haven’t thought of an interesting app to write.

Enjoy!

A few months ago, I bought a triplehead2go, and I ran 3 20 inch monitors. Then I got greedy, and decided to step it up to 2 26″ screens (the LG W2600 to be exact). Unfortunately, the triplehead2go doesn’t support 2 monitors running at 1920×1200, and my MacBook pro certainly didn’t have dual video cards. The latest round of Mac Minis support dual monitors just fine.

Mac Mini Specs:

AirPort Extreme (802.11n)5
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate)
Gigabit Ethernet port
One FireWire 800 port (up to 800 Mbps)
Five USB 2.0 ports (up to 480 Mbps)
Mini DisplayPort video out
Mini-DVI video out
Combined optical digital
audio input/audio line in
Combined optical digital
audio output/headphone out

Extended desktop and video mirroring: Simultaneously supports up to 1920 by 1200 pixels on a DVI or VGA display; up to 2560 by 1600 pixels on a dual-link DVI display using Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter (sold separately)

If you were waiting on this like I was, well, buy one… like I did. And before you ask, yes, I did hook up an external 7200 RPM drive.

The complaints vary. I’m still confused by this complaint by my friend David. He wants iTunes to recognize band names after he’s changed them. If a band has a name, why should iTunes still recognize the band name after you’ve changed it?

Of course, there’s always things that can be improved. Here’s a few ideas that I’d like to see, in no particular order.

• Do not include songs that I’ve rated less than 3.

There’s a reason why a song in my library has a 2. Lets just assume I know that I don’t particularly like a song that I’ve given a 1 or 2. Or, make it an option. If it already is, then I’m a jackass and I can’t find it. Leave a comment letting me know where it is, if this is the case, and I’ll gladly choose it. Or, it could be solved by the next feature…..

• Let me pick which playlists genius selects from

Say I’ve got a playlist of “songs I never heard”, which might be 8 thousand songs. I’d like genius to pick songs similar to “Cyanide” off the Death Magnetic Metallica Album, but only ones I’ve never heard before. Why? To do it’s job and find my music I’ve got stashed away and have no clue what it is.

• Let me add songs to the playlists that I opt to save.

The current version of the genius playlists do not allow me to add songs that I feel are appropriate. That’s kind of a bummer, because if I click refresh, and then realize a great song was left off, I’m stuck. The only solution right now is to select all and create a new playlist from selection (shift apple n). Not terribly inconvenient, and I don’t even know how’d you deal with the UI mess of hitting refresh again and losing your customizations. Lose them completely probably.

• Not genius specific, but I’d like to see more flexible smart playlists.

I just want an SQL like syntax for building playlists with nested AND OR support. I’m pretty sure I’ll NEVER get this. However, it seems like it wouldn’t be too bad to write if there’s a decent lexer/parser out there for objective C. I haven’t explored that.

I’m aware I can create playlists based on other playlists. Unfortunately I’ve got about a dozen playlists laying around that I don’t even listen to. I know, put them in a folder. Yes, I’m nitpicking.

Games: Interesting. I’ve always been a pacman fan. They will be starting with the following: Bejeweled, Cubis 2, Mahjong, Mini golf, pac man, tetris, texas holdem, vortex, and zuma. Glad they’re compatible with my 5th gen iPod.

iTunes 7: According to iLounge, iTunes will give you cover art for free if you are missing cover art. That’s pretty sweet, since most of my music was ripped off of CDs. 3 different views of iTunes, list view, album view (with art and tracks), then “cover flow view” lets you rapidly find what you want by album cover.

From iLounge: you can now sync between multiple computers using an iPod, as long as both are authorized on the same account

- Good. About damn time.

Bringing video quality up to 640×480 – pretty awesome news there. Might be time to start buying the TV shows that I don’t feel like paying a cable bill for. It would be even cooler if my iPod was 80 gigs…

The big news, of course, is movies. According to iLounge, most titles will be $9.99, with new releases and preorders at $12.99, and after the first week up to $14.99. Nice to know they’ll be a fair amount cheaper than in the store. I’ll probably bring my laptop into work to download off our T1 line.

New iPods: 80 gig is pretty sweet – it would have been nice to have this a few months ago before I bought my 60 gig, but oh well. I dont’ really care much about the nano packaging though.

Search: Nice to see. I hate scrolling through looking for music when I have 15K songs.

Mac TV Unit (set top box): Psyched to finally see this coming out. Specs: 1/2 size of Mac Mini, built-in power supply, USB, Ethernet, 802.11 “wireless component video”, optical audio and HDMI ports, plus old RCA stereo audio ports. Works with Apple Remote.