When I first read a rumor about Apple converting the 13″ unibody MacBook into a Pro model, I was worried, assuming that meant the price point would be going up. Surprisingly, the price dropped!  Within 7 hours of last week’s announcement mine was on order.

It should go without saying, but I love it!  It was well worth the wait.  This thing feels so solid and has some great features.  The glossy screen actually doesn’t bother me, but I was already accustomed to a glossy iMac and Samsung TV.  I’ve also quickly gotten used to the multi-touch trackpad.  For the first day or two I kept wanting to use my thumb to click, but now I have the new gestures and click methods down.  Also, the battery lasts a surprisingly long time on a single charge (Apple advertises 7 hours which seems to be quite accurate).  It’s also supposed to have a longer life, which would be much appreciated.  I know my iBook battery got pretty bad by the end.

I bought an Incase Neoprene sleeve for it (thanks to Devin for the review). This way I’m able to reuse my excellent Brenthaven bag that was intended for the 12″ iBook.  I found that the 12″ section collapsed quite well after I removed some padding from inside the bag.

Now I just need to think of a name as good as iTramp…

After returning from vacation last week, I noticed that a portion of the screen on my iPhone was not responding to touch. It covered the whole width of the screen, but less then a quarter of the screen height. It made certain funcitons impossible, like starting apps that were in the second row of the home screen.

I tried a number of things in an attempt to resolve the problem (including reseting and restoring), but couldn’t fix it. It was obviously a hardware problem. As a last resort I asked Apple for help. Using their online support tool was super easy, and I was actually able to have them call me! This was perfect considering I was unable to dial the top row of numbers on the phone keypad.

The Apple Support Rep was awesome. He was extremely knowledgeable, and was even in the US. Right away he apologized for my problems and told me they were going to make it right. Even though my phone was 100 and some odd days out of warranty, they were going to replace it for me. The only catch was that I’d have to wait about 5-7 days until they got my phone and shipped me another. This wasn’t a great option for me, since my mobile is my only phone. It turns out that for only $29 Apple was willing to rush me a new phone, as long as I shipped mine to them afterward.

Within 2 days I had my new phone (potentially refurbished internals, but looked brand new). The packaging was awesome, nothing short of what I’d expect from a new Apple product. It even contained the packing tape needed to seal up my broken phone in the same box. I also got the special SIM card removal tool – a pseudo paperclip.

This experience was awesome, and definitely the best that I’ve had with a technology company. I’ve also had a great look at a refurbished Apple product and am very impressed. I’m now definitely leaning towards a Macbook for my new laptop. I may even get a refurbished one with AppleCare.

Thank you, Apple!

1. Dr. Steve Brule, For Your Wine
2. “Living” with Dr. Steve Brule
3. Dr. Steve Brule’s Last Resort Fighting
4. Cinco-FONE: Part 1, Part 2, & Part 3
   
5. T’ird
6. Griddleman (w/ Dr. Steve Brule)
   
7. Cinco Napple
8. Getting the Most Out of Your Child Clown Rental
9. The Poop Tube (warning: filthy!)
10. Cinco MIDI Organizer
11. It’s Not Jackie Chan

UPDATE: Links fixed.

Thanks to the help of Lifehacker, I’ve finally found Autofocus, which I am extremely excited about.  Its simplicity allowed me to start using it in 30 minutes, and I’ve been addicted to it since.  The system seems to work with my tendency to procrastinate, rather than battling it the whole time.  Because of this, it has made my work much more enjoyable.

I won’t go into the details of the system, but rather let you read through them if you are interested.  If you’ve been interested in GTD, but just couldn’t get started, I highly recommend you try Autofocus!

So far I’ve only just started to use Autofocus at work, but if it continues to impress, I’ll definitely start using it at home as well.

After taking a spill, the internal display no longer works, which some certified repair technicians tell me would probably cost one half to two thirds the price of a new MacBook.  That rules out the repair option.  I’m thinking about getting a cheap netbook (running Linux of course, no Windows) to satisy my couch web surfing needs.  More research is needed on that matter.

My amazing wife bought it for me as a gift, and I’ve been nipping at the bit to get this thing going. This little guy has a low-power Intel Atom processor on-board and appears to be plenty of power for my needs. Also, I won’t need to purchase any additional hardware. I already have 200-pin DDR2 RAM that I pulled from my iMac, and I have a few SATA hard drives laying around to choose from. To start I’ve configured it with a 2.5″ laptop hard drive since it will consume less power and be less “loudy” (something a college professor of mine used to say – still cracks me up). I may add a larger drive in the 5.25″ bay for some storage if I need it later. I opted to leave it without an optical drive, since I can easily install GNU/Linux from a USB drive. I’ve installed a server configuration of Ubuntu 8.10 so far. When idle, the server only consumes 21 watts.

Here are some of my plans for the server, which I may write about in the future:

• Run a VPN server for my home network, possibly OpenVPN
• Build a web-based Wake-on-LAN system so I can wake up my iMac from an iPhone shortcut on my home screen, even while on Edge connectivity
• A backup relay, to upload important data from my network to an off-site location

This question came up during a discussion a few days ago and I felt compelled to find the answer. Apple included the ability to remotely wipe an iPhone when they released version 2.0 with Exchange support. They also gave the ability to force the use of a passcode lock. But does that mean your corporate data is secure?

Each time a user syncs their iPhone with iTunes, the contents of the device are backed up onto their computer’s hard drive, in which your employer’s IT department has no control over. This means that someone could potentially obtain this data from their computer, which may not be password protected, encrypted, or have basic security controls like patch compliance or a firewall.

I wanted to dig into the backed up content to see what was hidden there for an “attacker” to find. I used a tool called the iPhone Backup Extractor. It allows you to extract the backup data for specific iPhone applications. For this topic, I was only interested in the Mail and Calendar apps, since that’s all I sync with my employer’s Exchange server. The data for the default Apple applications was all located under the application “Other”. To my surprise there was no information stored in the Mail folder other than some configuration information. This, at least, is excellent news.

However, inside the Calender folder I found a SQLite database file. I simply opened it up with a text editor to see what was easily visible. Right away I noticed information that was obviously from appointments on my work calendar. Since I only used a text editor, I was unable to determine if any attachments were included in the backup.

It appears that the answer to the question above is yes, however this would depend if there is any sensitive information in the synced calendar (and potentially contacts, since I didn’t evaluate it). One problem here is that in the event of a lost or compromised personal computer, the employer’s IT department probably wouldn’t be informed, and would have a hard time determining what was in the backup.

[cue the dream sequence]

My wife and I had just showed up at my parents’ house and I noticed my old dog walking around in the front yard. “But Jessie is dead!”, I said. We walked around to the back yard to let her in there and were greeted by their current dogs. Charlie, however, (the oldest Wire Fox Terrier) was twice his normal size. At this point I realized I might be dreaming. So what do the lucid techiques tell you to do? Check your watch multiple times, or do something that will check reality. Well, I didn’t do anything practical like that. I just jumped in the air a little and some guy appeared and disappeared in a flash. Very strange, but then I knew I was in a lucid dream. Sadly the dream didn’t last much longer, but I did get to experiment with a few things…

[end dream sequence]

How was I able to determine so quickly that I was in a dream, and why did I not wake up at the first instance of disbelief? I wonder if it had to do with it being late in the morning and I probably should’ve been awake anyways. Did it have to do with my brain getting a little more conscious in the later morning?

I felt like I might be talking outloud in my dream, but I have no way to know if I was. I didn’t appear to have disturbed the dog that was 2 feet away from me.

Now I’m waiting for another.

What evidence could I present to you that would make you change your mind?

He emphasized that an open-minded person should be able to answer this. However, blind faith in something probably isn’t going to allow for one.

Personally, I find comfort in the scientific method and transient truths based on empirical evidence.  Why is it so bad to reevaluate beliefs based on new evidence?  Is it an issue of stubbornness?

The Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast is available on iTunes.