Category: MacBook

MacBook and MacBook Pro related posts

Repair extension program for MacBook Pros

Apple have announced a repair extension program for the following MacBook Pro models to fix video issues:

  • MacBook Pro (15-inch Early 2011)
  • MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2011)
  • MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2012)
  • MacBook Pro (17-inch Early 2011)
  • MacBook Pro (17-inch Late 2011)
  • MacBook Pro (Retina, 15 inch, Early 2013)

The program starts in Australia and most of the world on 27th of February, but is being tested on Americans and and Canadians from the 20th.

Issues addressed include

  • Distorted or scrambled video on the computer screen
  • No video on the computer screen (or external display) even though the computer is on
  • Computer restarts unexpectedly

You can enter your Mac’s serial number here to check your model, purchase date and warranty coverage.

Apple introduces i5 and i7 MacBook Pros

Apple has introduced i5 and i7 MacBook Pros.

Gizmodo has some benchmarks. Here are some Core 2 Duo v i5 v i7 benchmarks [Tom’s Hardware] from the PC world.

Aside from the obvious performance improvements other differences seem to be

New 17 inch MacBook Pros soon?

With Intel’s new processor announcements slated for the International Solid-State Circuits Conference starting February 7th, it would seem that it’s about time for Apple to release a new top of the line MacBook Pro as the announcements usually seem to coincide (and it also coincides with MacWorldl Expo. The MacBook Pro is 242 days since the last release, somewhat over the average of 200 days.

iTablet iPhone iThingy roundup

Aside from the usual random speculation about Steve Jobs worldchanging release in a few hours time, there have been a few interesting articles recently, namely

I also wonder what the cool feature will be… Mesh networking? Biofeedback? Merging with other nearby devices to form a larger device? Inbuilt projector?
It will also be interesting to see if Apple launches any updates to their 17 inch MacBook Pro as they would probably always have done if they were attending MacWorld this year. Also, I predict an iPhone software update, an iTunes update and a Mac OS X update.
Now, lets sit back and see how wrong we all are…

New Macs imminent

It seems that Daring Fireball and Fake Steve Jobs are expecting new product announcements in the next 3 hours, probably a new Macbook, Mac Minis with Snow Leopard Server, iMacs, and probably not a tablet. Reports from Apple’s financial update indicate the channel is being filled with some product, but they won’t say what. Macjournals opines that any updates would need to be announced within the next 21 days to be sufficiently available before the festive season.

Apple admits beep, click and pause in MacBook Pro 500Gb 7200RPM drives

According to CNET News, Apple is working on a software fix for a bug in MacBook Pros with 7200RPM 500Gb drives which causes a beep sound, clicking, then the machine pausing temporarily. I know of at least one instance where a new machine was replaced under warranty for this problem, so it will be interesting to see if there’s a software fix.

WWDC 2009 keynote releases

  • New 15″ MacBook Pro has built in battery lasts up to 7 hours, 1000 charges, approx. 5 years. 60% better colour gamut, 3.06 Dual Core CPU, 8Gb RAM max, 500Gbx7200RPM drive, or 256Gb SSD. Starts at US$1699 through US$2229
  • SD card slots added to models except 17″
  • 13″ Macbook is now a MacBook Pro
  • MacBook Air updated to up to 2.13GHz CPU

Snow Leopard 10.6:

  • Mail, iCal and Address book now support Exchange, with auto-discovery of Exchange Servers
  • QuickLook can preview Microsoft Office documents in Mail without MS Office being installed
  • Preview 2x faster, better PDF text selection
  • Exposé integration with Dock (“Dock Exposé”) for displaying an App’s windows
  • Chinese character input on trackpad
  • Mail up to 2.3x faster
  • Final version of Safari 4 released for Leopard, Tiger and Windows
  • Safari now sandboxes plugins to prevent them crashing the browser (IMHO this means you, Google 🙂
  • Stacks now have scrolling
  • Page through, magnify PDF thumbnails and movies
  • QuickTime X focuses on the content, overlays controls, lets you select from a visual timeline more easily and share it on YouTube, MobileMe or iTunes.
  • All Snow Leopard applications are 64-bit
  • Grand Central Dispatch supports multicore across all of Snow Leopard
  • Open CL (Computing Language) has been open sourced and allows for hardware abstraction of the video hardware for use in processing or display
  • Upgrade cost US$29 or US$49 for upgrading the Leopard family pack

There were some 16593 viewers watching the ustream live stream.

17 inch Unibody MacBook Pro now shipping in 5-7 days

As of last Friday apparently the Australian Apple Store is now listing the 17 inch Unibody MacBook Pro as shipping within 5-7 days.

A reminder also that students, teachers and educational professionals are also able to get $176 rebate if they purchase an iPod with an iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro or MacBook Air.