A while ago I praised the iPhone/iPod Touch Software 2.0. Despite of its share of problems, the software update unleashed the true potential of the iPhone/iPod Touch software platform.

Now it’s been a few months since the App Store was opened and since then Apple has managed to release a few software updates. The latest software version currently is 2.1 and the updates have fixed a few problems, but the package is still far from being ideal. Nonetheless, progress has been made. How is the mobile OSX doing now?

Read the state of the iPod

Apple updated their laptop product line this week, giving the Macbooks a shiny new aluminium enclosure as well as a hardware upgrade for all existing Macbook, Macbook Pro and Macbook Air models. Although, somewhere in the middle of the switch to those new aluminium cases, Apple apparently forgot to cut the opening for Firewire (IEEE 1394) port.

Previously Firewire – a standard Apple itself has helped to build, promote and support – has been present on all Macs, desktop and laptop. Most Macs came with a single Firewire 400 port while the recent high-end models (Mac Pros, MacBook Pros) also featured the high-speed Firewire 800 port.
The new Macbook Pro-model still includes the Firewire 800 port, but the Firewire 400 port as seen on the previous MacBook models vanished somewhere. Lost to the sea of half-assed excuses like “nobody used it anyway”, “all cameras use USB 2.0” and “just buy the Pro model” probably.

I own, let’s see, a one camera and three hard drives that use Firewire. I intentionally chose drives with both USB and Firewire, so I’ll be able to still use them if I upgraded, but the camera would be a no go. If I upgraded to MacBook, that is. No matter how nice the design, I have to say that this has me eyeing for good deals on previous generation models…

This is not a good sign, probably they’ll axe the connection from Mini and iMac next. I’d understand if they’d just upgraded the port to newer FW800, as it’s faster and still backwards compatible when used with an adapter, but this makes no sense.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog asked their readers for feedback on this issue and apparently this is a big deal for many. It should be, as many consumer-level PC laptops carry Firewire and it’s rather hard for a firewire device owner to replace perfectly good devices and switch to an inferior connection type. For example, USB is much more processor intensive than Firewire. And yes, USB 2.0′s theoretical speed indeed is better, but the real world-performance is far from that of FW400, let alone FW800.

Bye, Firewire. For now. I hope Apple someday again affords the $2 it costs to implement you on low-end models as well…

Today I found out that Google has added CalDAV support to their calendar. Now CalDAV compatible clients are able to both view and edit Google calendars and the sync goes two ways.

What makes me a happy camper is that now I can finally use iCal and gCal together. I could subscribe to the Google Calendar before, but it wasn’t possible to edit the calendar on iCal. Now it works both ways, so all iCal users can rejoice. Or at least the iCal 3.x users (OS X 10.5 Tiger) as earlier iCal-versions do not support CalDAV. And, of course, there’s always that Mozilla option for those not liking iCal.

Read Google’s instructions for configuring iCal with Google Calendar.

Though iPhone 3G’s release pretty much stole the spotlight, all iPod users can also sing and dance as the new 2.0 software brings the joy of App Store to iPod Touches all around the world. The iPhone you can’t call with just got a bit better.

After playing with the new software for about a week, I can say that while the iPod Touch software version 2.0 is a great ugrade, it leaves room for plenty of improvement. Recommended for all iPod Touch owners nonetheless.

Read about it.

You know that feeling you’re getting something nice in the mail but it proves to be just a bunch of ads? So do Wii owners with Super Mario Galaxy. Nintendo Wii has a nice little feature of illuminating the disc slot with blue light every time that you either get a message from a friend or a system update is available (proving that WiiConnect24 is on). This way you immediately know if you have a new message, even if the console is not on.

Apparently Nintendo uses this feature also on games. I noticed that on Super Mario Galaxy you’ll get messages from the game’s characters as you progress. The problem is that these guys are constantly spamming you with their notes. That’s right Mailtoad, I’m looking at you… Now I get to experience the joy of constant illumination. Guess this is what being popular feels like and inflation just struck the awesomeness of blue lights.

Despite of running a disc-slot disco, Mario Galaxy is a great game. And after finally completing Twilight Princess, I have time to play it. A truly epic quest, it was. Making Twilight Princess last almost a year was not an easy task, but I somehow managed to do it by always having some other – usually useless – things to do, getting stuck and generally hating the water temple. My console also broke in the middle of the game, so that slowed me down too.

The problem with snail’s pace in gaming is that new releases start piling up on you. On Wii I’m still in the middle of completing Mario Galaxy and already a handful of other must-buy games await. Mario Kart and Smash Bros Brawl, for example. Dragon Quest and Nights might be worth a look too. And don’t get me started on Xbox 360. Mass Effect is currently sitting on my shelf, just waiting for that right moment.

Apple’s patches have generally worked well for me. The latest 10.4.11 patch for Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) also brings Safari 3 for Tiger users alongside fixes. I usually apply the software updates pretty fast, usually a couple of days since the release, at most. I’ve probably been in luck, since this is the first update I’ve had problems with.

I’m not alone with my problems, apparently, as there have been reports of the update breaking the system to a point where it doesn’t even get past startup.

I chose to install the update for my Mac Mini through the software update a bit after it became available. Download went fine, but the installer decided I wasn’t ready for the future and quit installing less than halfway through. After that it threw the install package to trash. Ok, I thought, decided to reboot and try again – just in case anything funky was going on.

This proved to be a mistake. Mac Mini didn’t seem to be able to locate the startup disk anymore, getting stuck on grey loading screen flashing with folder icon and question mark. First thoughts were hardware failure, and – sure enough – Apple Hardware Test indicated a memory error.

I replaced the faulty memory, tested again and it came out ok. Yet OS X refused to start. Checked the disk with my laptop only to find out it was fine, and finally chose to do a repair install on OSX. After that everything was back to normal, except Safari kept crashing constantly and identified itself as version 3 while rest of the system was still version 10.4.10. Because of the unsuccessful update? Let’s try it again. No dice. Again a failed install and a system unable to boot…

Reinstall #2 returned things to normal (aside from a still broken Safari). This time I decided to download the combo update and guess what, it installed with no problems whatsoever. Everything still worked after reboot and even Safari was back to normal.

Now, had I downloaded the 350 megabyte combo in the first place, none of this would’ve happened. Except the faulty RAM, of course. That sucked. Unfortunately, I installed the 110 MB package that came through software update and so did many others. Makes me think that either someone at Apple slept through the testing phase or none of their systems suffered from this. Or they tested with the combo update…

Amusingly the PowerPC-version of the same update that botched up an Intel Mac Mini did not have any issues with my iBook G4. Magic of working RAM I guess. Wonder what are the odds of memory going bad just as you install a system update?

The Wii has returned to the household.

The warranty report I got from Nintendo simply said “console replaced”, so whatever it was, wasn’t easily repaired and they sent me another console instead. Fortunately they were kind enough to transfer my data to the new console: all game saves and settings were intact, as were Miis. I had to redownload the channels though, but that was no biggie – especially since I could still download Internet channel for free.

A few things still come to mind:

1. Although Miis were transferred, I can no longer edit them. Since they were made on another Wii, the system now tells me they weren’t made by me and disallows editing despite of my account being transferred to the new Wii.
2. What was the issue in the first place? Obviously it was serious enough to have the console replaced, but it took them three weeks to deal with it. Either it took more than a week to diagnose the problem or they’ve got a nice backlog of consoles waiting to be repaired (that, or serious understaffing issues). Still, it would’ve been nice to know what was wrong with the console.

On the bottom line, though, I’m happy I decided to send the console for repairs. Few more months and the warranty would’ve expired, making this possibly an expensive deal.

Who would’ve thought that my Wii goes sour before my Xbox 360? I’m knocking on wood with that one still and glad Microsoft extended the Red Ring of Death warranty. Playing with the console sometimes feels like playing a game of russian roulette and my turn hasn’t been yet.

Most people familiar with current generation consoles have probably heard of Xbox 360′s infamous overheating issue (a.k.a. the Red Ring of Death). This problem eventually forced Microsoft to extend the console’s warranty to three years on certain situations. Apparently Xbox 360 isn’t the only next-gen console suffering from similar problems. Wii has it’s own share too, although this one is much less common.

Apparently some Wii units suffer from graphic errors that are speculated to have something to do with an overheating Wii. Instead of malfunctioning entirely (as in Xbox 360), red pixels start to flash on the screen during games. For some people, the graphic errors also appear on Wii menus. The amount of graphic glitches seems to vary from one Wii to another, some units have huge areas of flashing pixels around the screen while others only have few that appear on certain conditions. There have also been some cases posted on YouTube. Many reasons have been debated to cause this, ranging from defective heatsink to Wireless card heating while WiiConnect24 is enabled. As far as I know, Nintendo has not officially recognized this issue, so the real reason is still unknown.

Last week this issue concerned me personally as I finally sent my Wii for repairs. In my case, the graphic errors occurred only under certain conditions and were not as severe as other people were having. Few areas on Twilight Princess had red pixel coating (Lake Hylia and Sky City) and Super Mario Strikers displayed. Still, I thought it’s not worth risking anything, especially since the warranty ends this December and the flickering looked rather disturbing. I mailed Nintendo’s tech support and they suggested sending the console in. Which I did.

So, now I’m waiting for Wii to travel back and see what’s up. My hopes are on next week. This incident inspired me to finally publish the Thoughts on Wii-article that I actually wrote about six months ago. I had to update it a bit though, so technically it’s brand new.