Holy Shmoly! » Apple

Windows screenshots on a Macbook Pro laptop

Donncha O Caoimh — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 11:41:08 +0000

Creating a screenshot in Windows is normally simple. Press Print Screen, fire up paint and paste it in. However what do you do when you have a laptop keyboard without a PRT SCN button?

It’s rather simple actually, thanks macrumors people.

To create a screenshot on a Macbook Pro laptop press either fn+shift+F11 or fn+ALT+F11. The latter one grabs a single window. Fire up paint and CTRL-v those pixels in!

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Colin and Nick discussed video formats t…

Donncha O Caoimh — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 10:46:30 +0000

Colin and Nick discussed video formats this morning on Twitter. Colin said that “iMovie lags like crazy on H.264 video” which might explain why the transitions in my first commentary didn’t render correctly when I did the voiceover in iMovie, and resulted in the video lagging behind the audio later in the video.

Anyway, I went searching, and found MPEG STREAMCLIP which will convert MP4 files to Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC). A 596MB file became a gigantic 11GB file! I haven’t tried editing a video with transitions yet but hopefully iMovie will perform better.

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Is the iPad suitable for gamers? For iPa…

Donncha O Caoimh — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 09:59:51 +0000

Is the iPad suitable for gamers? For iPad games yes, but really the device doesn’t interest me. I spend all my day at a desk where I have access to more powerful machines. If I was going anywhere would I lug around an iPad? Possibly but the price definitely puts me off as I do so little traveling. It’s not available on this side of the Atlantic yet anyway.

Some of my colleagues at work are going mad over the iPad but I wondered if it was suitable for gamers? Here’s one gamer’s review of it. The ability to play split screen games is interesting. I’d love to give it a go, but God, I’m trying to drum up the enthusiasm to finish this post quickly. It was never meant to be a gamer’s device:

Here’s the verdict:

If you have to question if this a true gaming device or not – then it’s not a gaming device. Its just a device with games on it.

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Crash Different

Donncha O Caoimh — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 09:59:47 +0000

An oldie, but as they say, “a goody”. For all the Mac fans who are sick and tired of their computers crashing. (Hey Mark!)
Found this on a CD while sorting through my CDRs and music collection. Most are now ripped to MP3 and the physical media is heading into the attic for safe storage.

Why is it that most of my compilation CDs are from about 10 years ago? Does music become less relevant the older you get? I’ve never bought music online but if I do, Blue Lights on the Runway by Bell X1 will probably be the first album I buy. Love “The Great Defector”, their current single.

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Mac OS X Leopard and Nokia N73 Bluetooth Problems

Donncha O Caoimh — Sun, 25 May 2008 06:23:34 +0000

When I got my new Macbook a few weeks back I thought I could use the Bluetooth functions to browse and copy files from my Nokia N73. It worked just fine on my previous Macbook, an old 2 year old machine destroyed by a cup of tea, so I wasn’t expecting any problems.

Unfortunately it seems that Mac OS X Leopard and the latest firmware of the Nokia N73 just do not like each other. No matter what I did, I could not get the Macbook and N73 to pair. The configuration tool stopped every single time on the “getting more information” part of the wizard. I’m not the only one experiencing problems. There’s a long thread on the Apple website. Both Apple and Nokia have been informed and are aware of the problem but I suspect it’s something in Nokia’s latest N73 firmware.

I have a card reader, now to find the SD sleeve that came with my Sony Ericsson phone. Nokia didn’t include one with their phone.

PS. does anyone else find the keyboard of their Macbook isn’t as responsive as it should be? I have to really hit the y and Enter keys to make sure. It is very annoying!

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Macbook Porn

Donncha O Caoimh — Tue, 06 May 2008 11:03:31 +0000

After I destroyed my Apple Macbook I thought I’d never get to put stickers on a Macbook again. Luckily the machine was insured and the replacement Macbook came this morning.

Compared to the previous machine this one is a huge upgrade! The new Macbook has 2GB of RAM, a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 160GB drive and comes with Mac OS X Leopard installed!

Now, where did I put that Ubuntu install disk ..

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How to win an Apple Mac Air

Donncha O Caoimh — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:42:33 +0000

Join Twitter.
Follow @wubud.
Tell your friends.

@wubud (pronounced woo-bud) is where Paul Walsh will reveal his next venture. You may remember Paul from a previous post here about his qik adventures when he missed his flight home because he was talking to people on the Internet. He landed a bed in a penthouse suite so don’t be too sorry for him!

Anyway, he explains on his blog why he’s going down the Twitter route and it’s an interesting experiment. It certainly caught the imagination of several people we both follow and I know others are blogging it too. Nice way to spread the word, eh? I think the incentive to win a Mac Air helps too, don’t you think?

So far only 203 people are following @wubud so it may take a while to get to the 5,000 followers Paul wants.

Paul’s in San Francisco next weekend, so you never know, he might reveal the master plan to you if you ask nicely if he hasn’t done it before then!

What about me? Do I want to win a Mac Air? ‘Course I do! My Macbook died this evening. A cup of tea spilled on it while I was feeding the baby. I quickly dried it off as best I could with paper towels but the screen was black and the thing is dead. Luckily backuppc had done a backup 6 days ago so I doubt I lost much stuff.

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How to Insult the Mac Brigade

Donncha O Caoimh — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:30:16 +0000

I’ve insulted the Mac Brigade. I am so sorry. I didn’t realise that putting stickers on an Apple Macbook was such a heinous crime. HOW COULD I HAVE BEEN SO STUPID?

Well, that’s how Bernie puts it anyway. Sort of. He posted a photo of my Macbook at BlogTalk and the response surprised me. Hahahaha. Thud! (Laughing my head off)

For those who missed the original shot, here’s one I took moments ago. There are stickers from Laughing Squid (and a button too), getfirefox.com (Thanks Nikolay), Zooomr.com, Hyku, that WordPress crowd who get everywhere, and 2 from Om Malik: FoundRead and NewTeeVee.
The other button says, “hard bloggin’ scientist” and I got that from Jan Schmidt last Tuesday at BlogTalk. Thanks!

Lovely isn’t it? Who’s on your laptop? Anyone got a Dell sticker to put on the Apple Logo? It’d shine through nicely!

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How to replace and calibrate your new Macbook battery

Donncha O Caoimh — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:01:57 +0000

Last week I bought a new Macbook battery from the Apple Store to replace the slightly aged one that came with the machine. I’m travelling shortly and I need enough juice to ~~play MAME and Doom~~ do some work while I sit in airports waiting for connecting flights.

Late last week a parcel came for me, my new battery! Here’s how I replaced the old battery and calibrated the new one, with nice pictures.

The Macbook battery compartment is simple to open. Grab a coin, insert into the slot and twist.

Now, why couldn’t they make the iPod battery as easy to replace? Phone covers can be removed to get at the battery and sim card so it’s not a difficult job to do. There’s an interesting iPod battery FAQ here. I expect this question applies to any Lithium Ion battery, not just the iPod’s one.

Q: Is it okay to leave the iPod in the dock, or otherwise attached to external power, for extended periods of time?

A1: Yes. The iPod’s circuitry will no longer charge the battery once it is determined to be full, even if the iPod is still attached to external power.

A2: This can also be a more complicated issue. Lithium ion batteries age faster when stored at full charge. If your usage of the iPod consists almost exclusively of use while plugged in for extended periods of time such as weeks or months, and very limited usage from the battery, the battery is essentially always in a charged state. A fully charged lithium ion battery ages at a faster rate than a lithium ion battery at the optimum storage capacity of approximately 40%. However, keeping an iPod battery near this optimum storage capacity can prove difficult to manage. A lithium ion battery also ages from use, as well as from storage, so the aging effects of constant use of the battery in order to keep the charge closer to 40%, versus constant use while attached to external power, come close to being even.

Once I switched my Macbook on again my new battery was at 39% already and following the official Apple docs:

Charge the battery fully until the LED on the power cable goes green.
Leave it plugged into mains power for 2 hours. (doing that now)
Disconnect mains power and run the laptop off the battery until the machine goes to sleep.
Turn off the machine or let it go to sleep for at least 5 hours.
Plug the laptop into the mains again and fully charge the battery.

I wonder if calibrating your battery really helps? Has anyone done a controlled test over a length of time to compare two batteries?

I’m not sure why Coconut Battery reports that the “original battery capacity” was 5200mAh. Maybe that refers to my old battery?

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Apple Store Promotion Code

Donncha O Caoimh — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 22:03:24 +0000

So I was looking for a new battery for my Apple Macbook laptop and popped on over to the online Apple Store, picked up the battery, filled in my credit card details and then I was presented with this tempting textbox.

Hmm, could I save a few quid if I had a promotion code? I went searching for one as I’ve had luck elsewhere saving a bit of money online. Clicking on the first link appeared to be a forum thread. It quickly became obvious that lots of people were in the same boat, and judging by the 51 pages of posts by “macrumors newbie” status users they’re a lot more desperate than I am.

Oh well. The battery was €139, including €24 VAT which isn’t too bad. Should arrive in a few days time. I’m using Coconut Battery again to monitor battery usage, but this time I’ll try the battery calibration techniques on the new battery first.

PromoCode Needed!
I got some money for Xmas and i want to buy a macbook at the apple.com store.

Can somebody please send me a promocode ?? Fast?

Looks like someone was offering promotion codes to the first 2 to PM him.

Apple is folding it’s biz agent program at the end of 2007. As a going away present, I’m putting my last two codes out there for you, dear reader.

The fine print:

* They expire 12/28 (yeah, that’s tomorrow)
* They are NOT good in the ed store
* They are NOT good if your company already as a deal with Apple
* They ARE good for refurbs

Please don’t ask for it if you can’t use it. If you CAN make use of it, PM me and I’ll send it your way!

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