Tapirtype Blog

That's about it. Happy Groundhog Day!

I was knitting on the T this afternoon, and two big jock frat boys got on and sat across the aisle from me. They saw me knitting.

Ok. I love my MacBook Pro (her name is Mallory, she's pleased to meet you, too). She's the best computer I've ever had. Maybe adjusted for inflation the Apple II+ or original Macintosh I had when I was growing up give her a run for her money, but we're talking top echelon computer royalty here. She's fast, she's sleek, she does everything that I need her to do with enough left over that she keeps me looking out for solutions to problems that I don't even know I have yet. And did I mention that she's fast? I've even gotten over the silly "MacBook" branding.

This makes her handful of flaws that much more frustrating. She's so close to perfection! A couple of weeks ago my power cord gave out. Apparently because the MagSafe design requires pins to be held together with no physical interlock, the plug has spring-loaded pins. And springs can fail leading to stuck pins and no power. This prompted me to do a mad dash at a backup before I ran out of power so I could bring her in to the Apple Store folks to get that and the host of minor annoyances taken care of.

So... How is she now after a complete working over (which by the way involved a complete wipe and reinstall so I'm really glad I got through that backup)?

• Annoying display smudge that was there from day one? Fixed!
• Annoying "processor whine?" Still whining away as strangely as ever.
• "Display whine" when not at 100% brightness? I didn't used to have that, but I do now! (It's really soft, though.)
• Airport reconnecting after sleep? So far so good!
• Strange Airport lockout after waking from sleep? Again, so far so good.
• Bent part of the case (manufacture defect, not from dropping her or something)? Only partly fixed, but good enough for me.
  
  And last, but not least...
  
  
• Failure to go to sleep upon closing her lid after running fine for a few days? As of this evening, a big old not fixed!

Looks like Mallory's going to be taking another trip down to the Apple Store...

My screen got pretty dirty yesterday and it was bothering me so I grabbed a couple of those iKlear polish wipes and went to work. I've normally had pretty good success with them, but after a few minutes of wiping away the situation was worse than before with large splotches all over from drying unevenly. I tried again, being very careful. Same deal. So fine, I think, I'll risk using the fancy lens cleaner we've got. If it's safe enough for expensive coated optics, it's probably safe enough for my screen. Same problem.

Finally it occurs to me: You know what they usually tell you to use in the instructions? Distilled water. I work in a lab. There's distilled water and kimwipes all over the place. Instant streak and blotch free screen.

Now I'm not saying that this would have cleaned it best from the beginning. After all I'd wiped it off like five times with other cleansers, so there was plenty of opportunity for them to do the real work of dissolving grease. But it does go to show you that just because someone makes a fancy specialized product for a task doesn't necessarily mean it'll do any better than the most commonly available tools.