Dissatisfaction with AppleCare

September 13th, 2009

About 14 months after buying my iMac, the Smart status of its internal disk showed that it was failing. The machine was with Apple for over two weeks to replace the disk under the extended warranty because they had such a backlog of work.

Since its return, performance in places Has been a bit sluggish compared to the response I’m used to. Not in every task, but I can tell a difference here and there when dealing with large files. So, benchmarks… luckily I am anal to the point of still having benchmarks for every machine I’ve tested for work, and my own.

Here are the disk speed benchmarks for the original disk, a Western Digital WD5000AAKS:

Sequential uncached write: 82.03MB/sec
Sequential uncached read: 84.68MB/sec
Random uncached write: 64.85MB/sec
Random uncached read: 30.11MB/sec

The replacement disk is a Seagate model, ST3500630AS Q, that rates:

Sequential uncached write: 32.29MB/sec
Sequential uncached read: 74.73MB/sec
Random uncached write: 19.16MB/sec
Random uncached read: 28.65MB/sec

That confirms it is significantly slower at writing data, whether sequentially or randomly across the disk, which might explain why rendering frames on the fly in After Effects and Motion bothered me.

So, where would I stand on a repair not being up to the original spec? Would I have any grounds? I mean, they’ve replaced the disk, sure, but I’m not particularly happy about the reduction in performance. Not only that, it’s noticeably louder: audible even when copying a file from an external disk to the internal one or under prolonged disk activity.

Update:

By way of comparison, I also have an aluminium MacBook that’s pretty close in specification. It also has 4GB RAM, a slightly faster 1066MHz frontside bus, and a 2.4GHz CPU (the iMac’s is 3.06GHz). Also, being a MacBook, its drive should be 5400rpm – it’s a stock one that Apple supplied and hasn’t been upgraded since I purchased the notebook. Here are its disk benchmarks:

Sequential uncached write: 56.09MB/sec
Sequential uncached read: 58.14MB/sec
Random uncached write: 28.26MB/sec
Random uncached read: 20.49MB/sec

This kicking here inside…

August 21st, 2009

It’s been a while. Umm, yes… quite a while, given the date on my last post. That’s what happens when you pour ramblings into Twitter and Facebook and almost entirely forget that you have a web host. Let’s see how long I can keep this up, starting with a little walk down memory lane courtesy of Kick Inside, my first iPod.

Last year, I replaced my third-generation, 30GB model with a 120GB iPod classic, lured by the excitement of enough storage to dip into a ridiculously large music collection whenever and wherever I chose. This regrettable event came after almost five and a half years with its ancestor, whose dimensions made it anything but discreet when stuffed into a jeans pocket. The decision to replace a working piece of kit was also influenced by having to pile cash into another replacement battery, though admittedly it would have been a small amount.

My faithful partner was recently resurrected from its comfortable resting place in a drawer, where it lay after two previous battery replacements, a logic board replacement (thanks again, Chris) and near daily punishment for more than half a decade. I should’ve steeled myself against a guilt trip before flicking the hold switch and pressing the Menu button. Oh, how callously fickle I felt as the chunky little box began to boot, not seeming to mind its betrayal less than a year ago.

After staring at a black Apple logo for a few seconds, a wave of nostalgia surged through me. The old school menus appeared on the tiny monochrome screen, rendered in the beautiful Chicago typeface. Other memories returned, too. If you had one of the early generations of iPod, perhaps you recall the immense packaging compared to today’s models, the huge wall charger that was almost as big as the iPod itself, and the inline remote control to which you could attach any headphones. I held the Menu button down and the controls lit in red from behind. How quaint. After being spoiled by the screens of the iPhone and iPod classic, I’m amazed that my eyes coped for so long with the contrast set as close to minimum as possible. Shameful that we move on so easily.

Why so much fondness for a piece of electronics? You may mock the affection for something that’s ultimately an object, a possession, something that many would see as disposable, but just as Jonathan Ive intended that owners should form a bond with the original iMac, this pearly princess was my trusted companion on daily commutes and many longer trips. (Uh oh, here comes the guilt trip again.)

Some moments that I've had, some moments of pleasure

Some moments that I've had, some moments of pleasure

For years, Apple’s iPod marketing touted the benefit of being able to carry thousands more songs, a remarkable feat just a few years ago. I resisted it during the first couple of generations until something snapped, and the physical limitations of carrying just a few MiniDiscs (or a couple of cassettes) became a thing of the past. I could be as bipolar with my listening habits as I cared to be, without being weighed down or uncomfortable.

Since then, Kick Inside has been shied away from the younger, more nubile iPods and iPhones that are a common sight on London’s trains and buses. In a bout of musical pretension, I took up Apple’s offer of an engraving on the back, thinking more affectionately of the music than the player that would store it. Today, the text is barely legible against the heavily scratched backplate, yet the sentimental notion is unexpectedly apt.

HD video arrives in the UK iTunes Store

January 27th, 2009

Finally! The recap show and first two episodes of Lost season 5 have debuted in the UK store, the latter priced at £2.49 each. An HD series pass costs £41.99, a tenner more than the standard definition version. So far, that’s the only high-definition content, with no other series nor any films, which remain the territory of Apple TV.

But my big gripe is that they didn’t launched these versions a day earlier, as I bought those episodes yesterday. Now, if only you could upgrade your SD purchases to HD, akin to moving from FairPlay-protected tracks to DRM-free versions.

Milking the sympathy vote

January 24th, 2009

 

Last night, I gave myself a special birthday treat and stumped up nearly £15 to see Milk, Gus Van Sant’s biopic about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to hold public office in the USA. It’s exactly the sort of film that I like to see alone, allowing time to think about it on my own terms afterwards. So allow me to put on my amateur cinema critic hat and spill out a few thoughts onto the screen.

Enjoyable as it is, largely due to Sean Penn, and more bearable than most gay-themed films, Milk is poorly fleshed out. It’s even flat in its portrayal of events, and of a passionate man who felt the effects of militant and quiet repression first hand, and its effects on a social and personal level.

There’s no fire in Milk, who is portrayed with too little passion, instead being shown from beginning to end as a calming influence and often a clever opportunist, though the film misses out on an opportunity to highlight this at its most grand by squeezing in Milk’s outing of a man who stopped a Presidential assassination. Of all the script crams in, it’s disappointing that this falls by the wayside.

However, the film doesn’t fail to explain the political activisim that Milk embraced throughout his 40s, but it’s most successful in demonstrating this on a social level in surprisingly non-graphic reconstructions of police brutality and the intimidation faced by gays in 1970s San Francisco and interspersing it with archive footage. But the edit packs in mere seconds of real emotion from Penn for a couple of key events in Milk’s personal life. The rest of the time, he’s portrayed with the resolve of a military leader who can’t show a glint of emotion for fear of how it would impact on his officers’ morale.

Josh Brolin does well in part of Milk’s colleague on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Dan White, painting him as a man slowly going off the rails for whatever reason—on which Milk speculates early in the film—but for someone so critical to the story, Brolin is the most woefully underused and unexplained person in the whole film. You never really get a feeling of what’s going on in his life, and the film merely skims the surface of his impeccably preened hair.

Close contributors to Milk’s campaigns for election also  barely get a look in, though, in truth, there are too many of them to spare each more than a little screen time. Most disapppointing among them, though, is the time devoted to his campaign manager at the time of his eventual election, Anne Kronenberg, mostly squeezed into the frame for her introduction to a slew of predictable lesbian jokes. Her role is topped off with an endearing moment when Milk ignores the pessimism of his long-standing supporters and goes with her advice on how to attract more votes. It’s a heart-warming moment that reveals a close respect between the two people, but the relationship is quickly shoved to the background.

Scott Smith, Milk’s partner throughout much of his political life, is played well by James Franco, whose chemistry with Penn is convincing enough but, save their meeting and a couple of key moments, it feels like much of the progression of their relationship hit the cutting room floor. Milk is a pleasant enough experience but too run of the mill to be properly effective. Of course, that quality could help it garner recognition in the upcoming awards season.

The end result is the portrayal of a gay Princess Diana, retrospectively viewed as a saint and revealing too few human moments to bring better understanding from his personal life to his own actions. So while time is set aside for Penn to distinguish gay rights as being about people’s lives, rather than the more trivial issues faced by the Board of Supervisors such as dog faeces in the streets. This rubs off as the eventual letdown of the film, which comes across as just a touch too preachy in its repressive, holier-than-thou aura that leaves little room for the central role to live and breathe.

Milk remains watchable thanks to excellent performances, but the material’s presentation lacks depth. Ultimately, Milk will only tide us over until the next big gay rights film, which is an injustice to the importance of the man’s contribution and sacrifices.

Mario Kart Love Song

December 5th, 2008

A bizarre yet strangely brilliant Nintendo-inspired love song.

Measure for Measure

December 4th, 2008

Suzanne Vega’s latest contribution to the New York Times’ Measure for Measure blog is an interesting look at self-perception. In it, she recalls events from her youth in New York City and the tensions that arise with greater awareness — of self and our differences with people. As ever, she makes an interesting read.

Liam Finn at The Scala

December 3rd, 2008

I just got back from a concert that left me nothing short of one-hundred per cent impressed and feeling wholly inadequate. Bloody hell, Liam Finn’s musicianship is extraordinary. His songwriting and guitar skills are well polished, but his drumming skills are breathtaking.

I originally intended to purchase his solo debut album, I’ll Be Lightning, when it was released in his homeland last year, based on previous samples of his work in Betchadupa, but it wasn’t until the UK release this summer that I got snagged on its infectious melodies, arrangements and delicately balanced vocals. Done live, the songs take on a rush of energy that draws you in, and a humble Finn and his fellow musicians are all charming in banter with the audience.

This is one performance that I will not forget due to the charged atmosphere. There’s one more date in Manchester before touring is wrapped up for this year, but I strongly urge you to get tickets for it. They’re still available from See Tickets but the date is Wednesday 3rd… that’s today. See Tickets prices entry at £7 per person plus small booking and transaction fees, but I’d gladly pay three or four times that amount if Finn returns to the UK next year.

Who’s a clever boy, then?

September 24th, 2008

Visitors that have read the bio on this blog may remember mention of a time at the start of the century when hominids awoke to not quite monolithic silver and white slabs, around which I declared to a friend that there was no need to carry around 5GB of music. Who on earth needed to carry hundreds of tracks, never mind thousands. Oh, how foolish was I?

That error in thinking was corrected within months, but now I’ve stepped it up to another level of obsession. Thanks to a quest for musical rediscovery spurred on by iTunes’ Genius feature, I recently succumbed to the acquisition of a 120GB iPod classic. Beneath its charcoal exterior (Apple calls it black, but its surface isn’t as deep and shiny as Agent Cooper’s damn fine coffee) is enough capacity that finally carries my entire iTunes library, at least after converting it from Apple Lossless to MP3. That’s, umm, over 12,000 tracks, though some are duplicates due to my obsessive tendencies towards more than a handful of artists. You can never have enough bags, shoes and mixes of Can’t Get You Out Of My Head.

Before anyone gets the wrong idea, I use Apple Lossless as a backup measure rather than being swollen with aspirations of ever belonging to the group of people called audiophiles. Last year I discovered a double album that had succumbed to some kind of icky effect that made the data side of the discs look like magnified snowflake patterns. Ignoring that they were material goods, this was a rather alarming event.

Anyway, back to the iPod. Lovely shiny iPod. If only Apple has been able to introduce a 320GB or higher capacity iPod, or at least allow models other than the shuffle to transcode songs upon transfer, then I wouldn’t need to maintain two libraries. Even better, though the vast majority need only to keep their library at one quality, why not package high and low quality versions up into one file. That would also benefit HD and SD video (buy a TV show in HD and you get both by default – one for your big screen, the other for your iPod). iTunes treats their separate files as different episodes, so you have to manually indicate the SD version is not new even after watching the show in HD.

What’s up with the classic’s wheel and, on a related note, why the unpredictable alphabetical shortcuts that seems to crop up when you’re not expecting it, and not when you really want to nip to the end of the alphabet? It’s like someone invented the physical wheel, decided it was good for a few years, then thought that society could cope with a downgrade to straight planks of wood, rather than carve a well-formed arc to get travellers from A to Z within their lifetime. If the shortcut fails to kick in, try scrolling through a list of hundreds of artists. Takes a while, doesn’t it?

Bitching aside, it’s nice to have all of my music in one tiny box as my musical moods change faster than Samantha Jones’ boyfriends. I was tired of picking and choosing favourite tracks from albums to squish onto an old 30GB model only to find that I’d rather listen to the tracks that were discarded. Of course they’re long forgotten by the time I arrive home, and I’m buggered if I’ll rely on a Smart Playlist to fill her up. Otherwise I was heading for a disk full of hideous PWL-era Kylie remixes with a side order of Paula Abdul to really get me dancing in the street.

Hey, Straight Up is pure, enjoyable late ’80s tat. Don’t try to publicly shame me as I’m quite capable myself. Besides, I bet there’s far worse in your library. What’s that CD with the blue and pink spine? Betty Boo’s Boomania? Well, okay, I have that one too. Shush, and pay attention.

You’re probably questioning the need to carry around so much music. It’s over a month’s worth of listening… even accounting for delays on the Tube, the battery expire after just over a day.

All of these tracks are tied into Genius, and after some recent forays into Genius and Party Shuffle in iTunes, I felt it was time to rediscover rarely heard tracks. Genius came up with some excellent suggestions on the way into work earlier this week; David Byrne’s Lazy was followed by Björk’s Play Dead and Goldfrapp’s Felt Mountain. Even Opus III’s It’s A Fine Day was a welcome departure considering the seed, but Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Murder on the Dancefloor was a step too far.

If your Genius feature remains switched off, I beg of you to turn it on. That way we can all look forward to better playlist generation and, unless you’re even more musically unstable than I am, maybe we can avoids these little hiccups. Quickly, now. Before my iPod uncovers that What Is Love? lurking in all 10.5mm of its depths.

iTunes and App Store search now working [UPDATED]

September 14th, 2008

Update
All of the items discussed below can now be found from the search box.

Tetris is available in the UK. It's just a little awkward to reach.

Tetris is available in the UK. It's just a little awkward to reach.

(Originally posted 10 September, updated 14 September)
Spore Origins isn’t the only EA game that appeared on the UK’s App Store this week. Tetris is there, but you won’t find it through the search box.

Search for Electronic Arts and the only application returned is Spore Origins. Try Tetris and you’ll get Spore and a few other puzzle games, but not the one that you want.

I found it by fluke. Visit the Spore page and click the link to see all apps from Electronic Arts — I know, you’ll be expecting to only see Spore, but Tetris will mysteriously appear as well. Alternatively, here’s a shortcut.

Bizarre. What the hell causes this? I wonder what else has slipped under the radar.

Anyway, one less reason to carry my DS around. Bring on SimCity. Hopefully someone will release a game in the style of Advance Wars, too.

Update
This affects other content too. Search for Star Trigon. using the search box or a Power Search and there are no results. Search for Namco in the search box and you get Pac-man and Ms. Pac-man.

Do a Power Search for the same and the right group shows the same two games even if you click to see all results. In the left pane that lists matching publishers, click Namco and you’ll see Star Trigon in addition to them.

A direct search for Tetris reveals it in the US store, but the issue with finding Namco’s game is present there. Good luck finding Laminar’s X-Plane, too.

All is not well.

Direct link: Star Trigon
Direct link: X-Plane 9

Eureka! New music, at last

September 10th, 2008

Actually some that’s a couple of years old already, and some that dates back much further to 1973! Discovery of the newer stuff is all thanks to iTunes 8, which plucked an overlooked gem from my library and led to further refreshment.

Almost without fail I pick up The Word, partly because it’s cover CDs are an excellent way to discover new music, much like the Playlist discs that HMV used to give away with select purchases.

Just like thousands of other people I’ve just updated to iTunes 8 and swiftly sent data about my music to Apple to make use of the new Genius features. I can’t remember the track I used to seed an early playlist that lifted Midlake’s Roscoe from my library, where it languished on a Word album from a couple of years ago, but I’m already glad of Genius playlists. The end result probably isn’t what Apple hoped for, though.

The financially unhealthy combination of sample tracks on the band’s website, my previous whinge about needing new music and a steadfast love of shiny 12cm discs stirred me to make an impulse purchase of 2006 album, The Trials of Van Occupanther. It’s a lovely album that ought to keep my ears busy for at least a couple of weeks. They’ll also get some work from other recent purchases: Dennis Wilson’s Pacific Ocean Blue and Emiliana Torrini’s Me and Armini, and a John Cale compilation that, bar two or three songs, has also been neglected until Paris 1919 came up on shuffle a few days ago.

It turns out that Midlake are on Bella Union, the same label as the marvellous Laura Veirs. I fell in love with her music after an even more reckless purchase a couple of years back that was based entirely on the librarian-esque looks of Year of Meteors and vague recollection of a website posting that compared her to Suzanne Vega, but with observations of city life replaced with oceanic imagery. Just a little, I can see where that comment came from.

Since discovering Veirs, I’ve done further investigation of the label’s signed acts before but never got around to buying more of its albums. I have a feeling that’s about to change.

So here’s to aurally fruitful spending. If you haven’t already heard Year of Meteors then it’s worth checking out for the worrisome Spelunking. Veirs’ most recent full album, Saltbreakers, is softer and an easier route into her material with gentle harmonies and vocal contributions from her band. I saw her touring for this album twice last year, first with the band and a second time, building magnificent live samples with a Loop Station to retain the harmonies despite being on her own. She’s already toured the UK once this summer, but I recommend catching a performance if she returns any time soon.