Relatively Ignorant Blog

My MacBook Pro has recently started shutting down unexpectedly. I did some web searches and found that a number of people had been having the same problem.

I suspected power supply and battery problems but last night found out the real culprit – the poor thing’s been cooking! Fan monitors showed zero RPM for the CPU fan(s).

Oh dear. The Apple Hardware Test reported hardware failure 4SNS/1/40000000: 'TC0P', so it’ll have to go to the Mac doctor soon.

In the interim, I have nursed the MacBook Pro a bit by putting it on an upturned baking tray as a heatsink and having the ceiling fan in the office on full blast.

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I have discovered iusethis mac software and have been nominating the software I use.

It’s a great way to learn about other Mac software by seeing what other people use.

A bonus – you can log in using OpenID. I wouldn’t have bothered if I had to create a new online username and password.

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When I got my PowerBook nearly two years ago I started using NeoOffice for office documents. It is a Mac-specific port of OpenOffice.org and was a bit slow on the PB, but usable. I don’t use office apps very much at home and it was perfectly adequate for my needs.

After upgrading to the MacBook Pro I had to ditch NeoOffice because it didn’t work on Intel-powered Macs. It was also based on OOo version 1.x so it was a bit out of date. I switched to the OOo version 2 release that uses Mac’s X11.

OOo worked fine (but not very Mac-like) until last week, when it broke: it wouldn’t even start. The killer was probably Apple’s X11 update which I automatically installed (as you do…). Installing a new version of OOo and deleting OOo pref files did not fix things.

I couldn’t be bothered trawling the Net for solutions, reverting X11, etc. (the usual geeky fix-it-yourself stuff) so I took another look at NeoOffice. Lo and behold! the NeoOffice team had updated it to be based on OOo 2.x and to work on Intel Macs. A double bonus.

It is in beta but has worked fine for me so far. I can use the Command key again (As God Intended™). I have even donated money to support NeoOffice development.

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Fun with layers! I am sitting with my computer at home, connected to a server at work like this:

1. My computer is a MacBook Pro running OS X.
2. It is running a virtual machine in Parallels Desktop.
3. The virtual machine is running Windows XP.
4. Windows has a VPN client connected to my work.
5. I am controlling my Windows 2000 PC at work using PC Anywhere.
6. My PC at work is connected to the server at work using a Microsoft Remote Desktop connection.
7. The server is a VMWare virtual guest running Windows Server 2003.

That’s three computers, five operating systems (counting VMWare ESX) and a couple of network layers (VPN to the network at work over virtual Ethernet on Parallels connected to WiFi and cable broadband).

Yes, I know that I can remote to the server direct from Windows XP in Parallels (after connecting via the VPN) but that would spoil the fun, wouldn’t it?

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Mark Pilgrim’s recent announcement that he is switching away from Mac OS X to Ubuntu Linux after very many years using Apple’s products has caused a few waves. John Gruber reacted back at length and Mark replied spelling out his gripes in more detail. Tim Bray thinks he will switch soon too. With the weight of these eminent thinkers on my head, I thought more about why I switched to Mac 18 months ago and whether I would switch again. (Leaving aside the matter that I have just bought a new MacBook Pro and won’t be changing for a couple of years at least.)

My overriding feeling is that I switched because Windows really annoys me. I had used and programmed Macs and PCs on and off over 15 years and was sick of the whole Windows thing. I still use Windows at work (I have no choice) but wanted a different experience at home. I’m getting into digital photography and felt the Mac would be a better match to my ‘creative side’. I also like the geeky side of Mac: it’s a Unix box under the hood and has a real scripting language built-in.

Perhaps the tipping point for me was about presentation. For example, I care about the way language looks: not only spelling and punctuation, but typography as well. (Evidence: I own a copy of Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style — a beautiful book.) So I want to be able to type the correct quotes, dashes etc. in any application, not just Word and those with some kind of auto-correction. On a PC, it is a pain: at work I bother to type Alt+0145 and Alt+0146 (with leading zeros, on the numeric keypad) when I want open and close single quotes. (And it’s an extra challenge on a laptop without a numeric keypad.) On a Mac it is much easier (although not always intuitive): Option+] and Option+} (respectively) – a single, combined keystroke, not four. The folks at Apple thought of that in 1984.

I agree with a lot of Mark’s concerns about format lock-in and, luckily, have avoided them. I have stuck with cross-platform, standard apps that I used on Windows: notably Firefox and Thunderbird. I also use OpenOffice for the small amount of office-type stuff I have to do.

Could I give up what I have now and switch to Linux? A quick look at Ubuntu today (running under Parallels Desktop on my MacBook) reveals the best Linux desktop experience I have had so far. Perhaps 70% of the functionality I want is there. (Adobe Lightroom for Linux? Not likely, I fear.)

But not enough to switch yet. (How do you enter a RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK in Ubuntu?)

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A couple of weeks ago I took deliver of a new MacBook Pro. I decided to upgrade my 12-inch G4 PowerBook because I had the opportunity to buy it as part of a salary sacrifice program.

So far, so good. It’s much faster running universal binaries, Rosetta apps run about the same speed as on the PowerBook and I love the bigger screen.

I plan to blog some of my experiences with the new machine not too long after they happen…

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