FreeBSD, Unix, Apple and other goodies alike
I bought what seems to be the most recommended book in the area: Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X - Third Edition, by Aaron Hillegass.
Although I’m not a programmer by profession I started coding in C when I was 12 and C++ some years later so I’m hoping Objective-C won’t be a showstopper.
I already have 2 projects in mind, more on that later.
I expect to have a review of the book in a few days.
Following up on my previous post, I have a brand new battery on my MBP 
Here’s my tail on the warranty process:
I went directly to Apple IMC Portugal, and they stated I should contact Apple Support first.
Contrary to other countries, we get 2 year warranties in Portugal, and Apple forces it’s customers to call Apple Support first after the 1st year.
Problem #1: The support line is Brasilian Portuguese, which is in somewhat different from European Portuguese.
I would have prefered an English (American) speaking assistant if given the choice.
Mix that with what seemed like a VoIP connection to Brasil with the lowest QoS priority on a congestioned link. Sometimes you hear it, sometimes you don’t. On both calls in different days.
The first line support assistant aka T1 was being teleguided by a T2 ( they were talking in English) and was following his guidance to the extreme, even when he asked me to install Battery Update 1.2, when Leopard which I said I was running comes with Battery Update 1.3
Now that I have a case number with a go for battery replacement in the process I must go to an Apple Authorized Service Provider.
Problem #2: Apple doesn’t allow Service Providers to stock exchange parts as part of their new semi presence in Portugal, so you always have to wait for the arrival of a new part, 3 to 4 days usually. It’s way better now, in the past it took at least 3 weeks so I was told by one of the Service Provider companies I contacted.
Problem #3: I had to leave my old battery until the new one arrived. I asked the service Service Provider if they are going to test it or something. No, just waiting there till the new one arrives and only then it gets sent back to Apple.
I’m pissed. My battery capacity went from 3+ hours when new to <1 hour with a problem. And then my laptop turned itself into a desktop because of the support process. Isn’t support suposed to make things better for you? I got just the opposite.
Contrast that with being able to schedule an appointment to the Genius Bar on an Apple Store and exchange the battery on the spot.
I bought a 1st gen Macbook Pro 15″ last December, 16th to be exact.
I don’t usually use this laptop at work because I have another so it’s pretty much my home machine, and the 34 cycle count on my battery reflects that.
I took it with me on this mini Christmas vacations, and first noticed the battery problem when I booted Windows to play. Just after unplugging the power cord I saw 0:58 remaining battery time. No… Windows is playing tricks on me. Well, OS X must be a joker as well, because I got around the same time.
This was taken from the CoconutBattery widget. CoconutBattery assumes my battery has 5550 mAh Full Charge capacity and says I only have 35% of that. Well, that was taken at 3pm this afternoon. It’s now 6:45pm and the value has gone down to 32%. iStat Pro reports the same.
Looking at System Profiler to confirm the current Charge Capacity value:
Well, 1814 mAh is way bellow 5550 mAh. Apple suggests 80% charge capacity is normal after 300 cycle counts, I’m at 34 cycles just after a year with a 32% charge capacity :S
Called Apple’s new Support Line here in Portugal, a nice Brazilian lady asked me the necessary questions but will have to call Support again to talk to someone from the “Tech team” in order to get my replacement battery approved. More on this next week.
Everyone knows by now but here are my 2 cents on this subject:
This last Friday was a good day to Novell and Linux.
Federal Court Judge Dave Kimball issued a ruling stating among other things but most importantly “that Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare Copyrights”.
This pretty much eliminates SCO’s threat on it’s allegations of copyright infringement of Unix by the Linux community.
Additionally, the Court decided that SCO owes Novell some money made for the licensing deals with Sun and Microsoft. There goes SCO’s cash reserves.
Last but not least, Judge Kimball states this ruling “significantly impacts the claims and counterclaims asserted” in the SCO vs IBM case.
I’m eagerly awaiting on how this one ends 
SCO is expected to appeal nonetheless, but a dead end appeal I’m afraid. Well, I’m not, really hopping to hear the fat lady singing 
Now, what happens to SCO’s Unix licensees? According to Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols Sun should be running to a telephone and callling Novell trying to make a deal. Humm, I don’t see things that bad for Sun. Sure, Sun is a direct competitor on Novell’s Linux with Solaris and OpenSolaris, not on licenses per se but on support contracts. But Sun is gaining momentum in the marketplace with it’s Open Source initiative and I think Novell pretty much knows what the Open Source Community feels and does when Open Source is attacked in any way, that must be really clear and fresh before thinking on enforcing it’s IP against Sun.
Microsoft on the other hand has been close with Novell recently so there too I don’t see anything really happening. Still, now there’s more leverage on Linux’s side against those alleged claims of Linux infrigment of Microsoft’s Intellectual property.
On a side note, I’m wondering if Apple’s decision to go with BSD as base to Mac OSX was just technical. What do you think?
Image from Bill Stearns’ web site.
Hello and welcome to my blog!
Actually this is my second blog, thus the “again”. The first one was mostly to test the then beta service from Google and I ended up not updating it too much.
One of the reasons for this blog is to have an online edition of my howtos, mostly FreeBSD stuff.
As a recent Apple convert in the form of a MacBook Pro I will also cover my life in the brushed metal side of the fence.
And for those of you wondering, I’m Portuguese but I chose to write in English as this blog subjects are not local.
Well, on with the posts!
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