Posts in hardware
PowerCurl by quirky
Enjoying my MacBook Pro MagSafe adapter’s new cable organizer, the PowerCurl. It’s a slightly darker orange and not as glossy as the photo but it works as advertised and I’m happy with it!
Intel SSDSA2MH080G2C1 Firmware Update
The latest firmware update for the G2 SSD’s came out today. I tried installing it via the USB stick method but I couldn’t get the Darwin bootloader to recognize the stick. Nonetheless, installing the update was remarkably simple. Just burn the image to a CD and reboot, holding down the option key on restart. Once you see the boot drive selection screen, arrow over to the one labeled Windows that has a CD icon. Hit enter and it will boot the disc. From there just follow the prompts to update the firmware.
droid doesn’t
Well, that was quick. After making the following pro/con list I returned the Droid. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on Android though and hopefully 3.0 matched with a white knight device will be much more compelling. At the same time I’m sure Apple will improve iPhone, though as of yet we haven’t really heard anything about what’s coming in 2010!
Motorola Droid vs. Apple iPhone
Pros:
Google Voice integration in dialer
Screen is beautiful and has a ton of pixels
Navigation works well, especially with voice car mode
Wifi/Bt/GPS toggles built-in via home screen widget, no need to jailbreak
App multitasking built-in and somewhat effective
Notification system is better, shows more than just the most recent notification
Better integration with G services, Gmail app is great, calendar and talk
More reliable network and better call quality
You can see the entire screen while typing with the physical keyboard and it has useful arrow keys
Universal click and hold sub-menu access is nice
Quick access to recently used applications by holding home button
Universal back button is useful
Widgets are helpful
Can potentially modify lock screen
Cons:
Big, heavy and brick-like in appearance
Physical keyboard is not very good and doesn’t offer word correction
Cut and paste is cumbersome
Can’t use mobile data during a call
Camera app is slow and camera itself isn’t up to snuff
Limited to 3 home screens
No syncing of music, pictures, videos or bookmarks!
YouTube low quality option is too low quality and high quality option is too slow on 3G
Not enough granularity in media volume settings
No Yelp app and very basic Facebook app
Also, no ability to receive notifications from Facebook
App store is quite a ways behind in quality and selection
Built-in media player is weak
UI frequently seems slow
No pinch zooming in built-in apps like web browser and photo gallery
droid does?
Note: I wrote this last Wednesday.
I’ve been in a place for several months now where in order to be happy with my 3G iPhone I’ve had to jailbreak. The two primary reasons are SBSettings and MusicControls but I also use GV Mobile for Google Voice, the tethering hacks and Backgrounder. There are many other potential benefits but beyond those the device pretty much slows to a crawl. Technically, a 3GS would solve my problems because of the more powerful hardware. But not only is the upgrade prohibitively expensive, it would also likely require a 2-year extension of my AT&T contract. Not to mention that they can be tougher/riskier to jailbreak.. and that jailbreaking in and of itself may not be around forever.
For these reasons I felt compelled to try out the new Motorola Droid. I’ve always liked Android and have been attracted to the platform because I rely on so many of Google’s services.
Some of the potential benefits:
- Verizon over AT&T
- Better notification system
- Google Voice integration and more
- Multitasking
A few of the biggest complaints against the Droid don’t really affect me. Regarding the 256MB app storage limit; I hardly ever play games. The weakness of the built-in media player app; I don’t use my iPhone for video and music much in lieu of Pandora. The weakness of the Android Market may be an issue though. I rely quite heavily on apps like Touchpad, Prowl and Yelp. In any case, it won’t hurt to give it a try!
MacBook Air SuperDrive
I’m the proud new owner of a MacBook Air SuperDrive, hacked to work with *any* PC or Mac! Since I installed my Intel SSD in an MCE OptiBay a few weeks ago my MacBook Pro has been without an optical drive. I saw this mod a while back and decided to try it out. Bought a used SuperDrive for $55 and the USB to IDE bridge for $16, both on eBay. (Update: looks like I could have purchased the bridge here for $4.) About an hour of hacking later and it works perfectly!
Super sexy too:
Griffin Simplifi
Hated that the 3G iPhone didn’t come with a dock. Not a big fan of desk clutter but sync cable and leaving iPhone wherever it ends up on the desk is almost worse. I had an Apple Universal Dock for a while but never used the remote or line out thus I couldn’t justify the cost. Did a little digging and turned up this solution. It’s an SD/MMC etc card reader, iPhone/iPod dock and powered USB hub that somewhat maintains the Apple aluminum style.
It isn’t perfect but I actually like it quite a bit. First of all, in many of the reviews I read people mistakenly say it adds one USB port. It’s such simple math I don’t understand why they’re getting this wrong. It will add two USB ports to your desk. Previously I would connect a USB sync cable to my computer, using one USB port. Now I connect the Simplifi to my computer, using one USB port and can still connect two other devices to the back of it. Since I only have 3 USB ports in my MacBook Pro this is a nice benefit and part of the reason why I bought it.
Another one of the complaints were the horribly bright blue LED’s on the front and back. They were terrible and we’ll never know why they didn’t use white. Oh well. I cracked it open the day I got it and replaced them with white LED’s I had in my toolbox. Problem solved.
Also, though it has a rubbery base it doesn’t grip the desk as well as I would like. I put a little bit of double-stick tape underneath it to fix that. If you don’t want it to be too grippy you can stick the tape on your shirt first to dust it up a little bit.
The final complaint is that it doesn’t charge an iPhone or iPod unless it’s plugged into a computer, even though the unit has its own power. This is more complicated to fix so I just live with it. Definitely annoying though since I use a laptop and not a desktop pc.
Otherwise, I’m happy with it. It matches the look of my Cinema Display and through the use of Apple’s dock adapters supports nearly every iPod device. It can be difficult to remove SD cards once inserted into the reader (since it doesn’t have a spring mechanism) but whatever, I don’t use them that often. And at $40 it was just $10 more than the ExpressCard card reader I was about to buy for my MacBook Pro. So for a dock, 2-port USB hub and card reader it isn’t a bad value.
Here’s what it looks like after my white LED mod:
Logitech VX Nano
I *really* like this mouse.
For so long I was using bluetooth mice because I didn’t like giving up a USB port to a clunky receiver. But a few weeks ago I got fed up with the continually skippy and jumpy tracking and decided to find a new mouse. After reading a bunch of reviews it was clear nearly everyone was happy with their Logitech so I took the plunge. I prefer smaller mice so I picked VX Nano but they have a larger model called the MX something available that uses the same receiver.
Upon setting it up I was instantly surprised at how smooth it tracks both on screen and physically on my mousing surface. You absolutely can not tell it’s a wireless mouse. It fits my hand well and just feels right. The wheel has a perfect amount of resistance and provides satisfying feedback when you spin it. The wheel button also tilts left and right. This is huge for me…once you get accustomed to flicking the wheel button left or right for forward and back (browser, finder, etc.) you practically can’t go on without it. It’s also nice to have some extra function buttons. I don’t find myself using them often just yet but we’ll see. I set them to Exposé show all and show desktop.
Finally, the receiver. Just two things. 1) It is impossibly small. 2) It works on the USB port of my Apple Aluminum keyboard!
So in the end, I highly regret not buying this sooner. I got a dramatically better mousing experience and sacrificed nothing. The USB receiver is so small you don’t even notice it and it is low power enough that it runs off a keyboard USB port that I wasn’t even using.
Intel SSDSA2MH080G2C1 34nm Solid State Disk
Finally got an Intel SSD. Ended up going with the 80GB because I didn’t want to get totally ripped off, considering they will probably be much cheaper next year. It really makes a world of difference in startup/shutdown, app loading and overall OS performance. I will never be able to return to a magnetic disk. Check out these benchmarks from Xbench:
Before: Disk Test 25.12
Sequential 35.71
Uncached Write 62.98 38.67 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 40.53 22.93 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 32.47 9.50 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 24.59 12.36 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 19.38
Uncached Write 7.74 0.82 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 38.45 12.31 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 27.87 0.20 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 64.86 12.04 MB/sec [256K blocks]After: Disk Test 249.92
Sequential 160.48
Uncached Write 132.43 81.31 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 130.05 73.58 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 137.63 40.28 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 413.30 207.72 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 564.64
Uncached Write 666.21 70.53 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 250.09 80.06 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 1815.24 12.86 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 967.47 179.52 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Wow!!
So as to not completely hamstring my MacBook Pro with such limited storage, I decided to retain the original 320GB drive and put the SSD in an MCE OptiBay! Not a cheap solution but I’m thrilled with the setup. I do experience less battery life but it seems less than 10% worse and the performance improvement more than makes up for it.
Samsung DTB-H260F Remote
After picking up one of these tiny ATSC tuners on ebay (sans remote) for super cheap, I discovered there are no controls on the front of the unit…oops! So I set out looking for a remote and all I could find was a Canadian vendor on ebay selling them for $20 + $20 for shipping…umm, no thanks. I sent them a nice email saying that price is ridiculous and they laughed at me. So I did some more searching and turned up the Samsung part # for the remote, MF59-00291B. I popped that into google and et voila, found several domestic distributors selling them for as little as $17 + $8 shipping. Pwnt. I’d say the 2.5 minutes of google searching was well worth the $15 I saved!
