Tag Archives: upgrade

Apple Existence, Geek-Speak

Forty-Five Minutes

Yep, 45 minutes to install Snow Leopard on the MacBook Pro. Not bad, in the big scheme of things. However, there are some warts.

The first is that the reminder application from X-Rite that prompts me to profile my screen every now and then requires Rosetta to run. Boo. The other is that iStat Menus is not yet Snow Leopard compatible (per their site).

Neither of these are show stoppers for me (although I’m curious if I can calibrate my monitor with the current X-Rite software; there does not seem to be any mention of any issues with a quick look on X-Rite’s site).

Stay tuned kids… Doc Oc is next!

Apple Existence, Geek-Speak

The Leopard Has Arrived!

My copy of Snow Leopard has just landed on all fours on the doorstep. Less than five minutes after FexEx dropped it off, I have begun installing it on my MacBook Pro. There are rumors running rampant that it could do an upgrade in as little as 15 minutes. When I inserted the disc and began the installation (which had very few options), the installer said it had 45 minutes to go, and now it’s up to 54 minutes. I suspect the 15 minute upgrade will be nowhere to be found. 🙂

Stay tuned for more as I get through the upgrade, and start getting some first impressions.

Apple Existence, Geek-Speak

iTunes 8.2 Has Arrived, But Whither the iPhone 3.0 Update?

I was thrilled to come home tonight to find that Software Update was bouncing, awaiting me with news of a new version of iTunes becoming available. And on the list of updates? Compatibility with the new iPhone 3.0 OS upgrade. But…. no 3.0 upgrade. Anywhere.

Dunno why I’m so excited about the promised new upgrades for my iPhone and iPod Touch, but for some reason, I’m kinda jazzed about it. I don’t develop on that platform, and I haven’t done enough research to have a real good reason to move to 3.0. But, I know I will, as soon as it’s available.

And I’ll probably find things to complain about. I know me well enough to understand my tendencies!

Apple Existence, Geek-Speak

Sprucing Up the Deauxmayne

Tonight, a shiny new 250GB hard drive arrived from OWC, which I had ordered to upgrade to webserver (Mac Mini). I’d been holding some memory from my MacBook upgrade, with the intent of installing that in the MacMini when I upgraded the hard drive. Tonight was the night!

As with any hard drive upgrade, the first line of defense is ensuring that there’s a backout plan. For me, that meant copying the current 120GB drive to the new 250GB. I’d purchased an OWC external drive enclosure a while back, just for this project. At around $25, this is a bargain, and will be the eventual destination for the 120GB drive, likely to be used for Time Machine. When I installed the 250GB drive in it, I found a nice 2GB disk image of freeware, courtesy of the folks from OWC. Cool! After a two-hour copy using Carbon Copy Cloner, I was ready to dissect the Mini.

I’ve been in the Mini before, and it’s not a lot of fun to take apart or work inside. It’s built to be a compact, powerful system — which it is — but there’s a lot of voodoo beneath the covers to keep it all together and cool enough to function. I found two sites that speak to the disassembly of the little guy, one here and another here. Both recommend a putty knife to help pry the bottom from the top. In my case, Darla had a nice cake frosting knife that worked just dandy. Carefully going through the steps on the DIY sites, I finally got the thing apart, split the innards in half, and replaced the memory and installed the new drive. After one miscue involving a power cable — always test before closing the covers! — the Little Server That Could was back to serving webpages in no time at all.

Next stop…. Leopard!

Apple Existence, Geek-Speak

Deauxmayne Doin’s

Ya know, there’s nothing like instant gratification. A close second is almost instant gratification. This afternoon, I had three doses of almost instant gratification.

Yesterday, I pulled the trigger on ordering a 320GB harddrive for The Little MacBook That Could. With that upgrade, there’s really nothing else I need to do that little beastie. I got the drive from OWC, who specializes in all kinds of Mac upgrades and goodies. Along with the drive, I ordered an inexpensive external housing for use in transferring data around from the old 120GB drive to the new 320GB drive.

The cool thing about ordering from OWC is that I am close enough to them (as UPS drives) that I can order something before 6pm, use regular shipping and always have it waiting for me when I get home from the work the following day. Cool.

I opened the box, and set to installing the 320GB in the external enclosure, attaching it the MacBook after installation. The MacBook had no problem seeing the drive. So far so good.

Then I downloaded Carbon Copy Cloner to do the drive copy from old to new hardware. This piece of software flat rocks. The author distributes in a non-crippled fashion — which is great if you suddenly hear a drive clicking or have some other harddrive disaster-in-the-wings. CCC did a dandy job of duplicating the data onto the new drive, even making it bootable. Now it was time to take the MacBook apart and swap drives.

This is the point where I have to tip my hat to OWC. They have terrific installation videos and manuals for doing everything I’ve needed to do to all my Macs. Really top notch.

So I begin to take the MacBook apart, and get the drive into my hands…. only to discover that the screws are torx. A big fat “D’oh” eminates from the congregation. I don’t have a torx set anywhere (I checked). As it was already 8pm, I frantically checked Best Buy’s website to see if they carry anything like that. Surprisingly, they don’t. That was a shocker. Becky suggested calling Home Depot. I figured if they would talk with me, they wouldn’t have a clue what I was looking for. However, they did talk, they did know what I wanted, and I went to buy it. I picked up a Husky 8-in-1 torx set, and decided to pick up the matching 8-in-1 phillips/slotted set. The torx went down to a T4, and the phillips went down to a #000 — good sizes for working on the little stuff, and seemed to be solidly built.

After getting the old drive removed from the drive tray, I installed the 320GB into it, slide it in, and put it all back together. I hooked up the juice, hit the power button, and crossed my fingers. After a small heart attack moment — it sat on a gray screen a loooong time before the Apple logo popped up — the thing booted, and looked normal. The only weird thing was that the drive wasn’t named the same as it was. I didn’t know if the apps would care, so I changed it to the default “Macintosh HD” name. I hit a couple of apps to ensure that things were working, and all was well. As I write, I’m scanning slides again, and from all appearances, it appears that the MacBook has no idea that it’s had it’s brain swapped.

My second impulse buy yesterday was the Garmin City Navigator NT North America map set for my GPS-60CSx. I’d never bought maps for the old GPS-60CS (stolen a while back), but had always wanted to play with them. However, the old unit didn’t have a lot of storage — 56MB, I think — and that really seemed to limit the usability of the add-on maps. However, the new unit has a card slot, and I’d already dropped a 2GB Micro-SD card into the thing in preparation for one day buying these maps. With that size card, I knew I could put the whole set on the unit.

The maps require a Windows machine for installation, and that meant using Becky’s machine to get them on my GPS. I started the installation, and finally hooked up the GPS via USB. On the old unit, you had to really make sure you had good batteries in it, or you hooked it up to power, as connectivity off the unit was serial, I believe, and that sucked the juice. The new one seems to be able to draw juice from the USB connection, letting you leave it connected as long as the USB port is hot, with no drain on the batteries. That’s cool.

I’ve got to admit that the process for getting the maps on the unit was not well-defined. I had to define a map set, and then start the transfer that to the GPS. After about 90 minutes of work, the maps were on the GPS, and all was well with the world.

And lastly, in the not-so-immediate-gratification department, my copy of Office:Mac 2008 arrived. I ordered it last week, and had been led to believe that it would be another month or so before I’d see it arrive. I guess the slow boat from Redmond to St. Louis got a little boost, and I was the beneficiary of a little surprise. I’ve installed it, but haven’t really started playing with it yet. I do notice that the icons look different than the old version — nice touch, I suppose. For me, the biggest thing I wanna play with is Entourage, and to enjoy the Universal Binary version, rather than having to always run Office under Rosetta.

When I first switched to the Mac, I picked up Office:Mac 2004 and had used Entourage quite a bit for my mail functions. My perception at the time was that it seemed to handle spam better, and was more versatile with rule-based mail activities. It’s been about two years since I’ve used it regularly, so it probably deserves another look after the rewrite.

So big doin’s at the ol’ Deauxmayne tonight, and probably more goodies in the offing. Stay tuned!