Category: News

I buy a lot of Mac hardware. A lot. I do make a lot of use out of my machines. They’re in operation probably 18 hours a day. They’re not left in conditions that would cause overheating (hard to imagine something overheating in Ireland anyway).

Okay, maybe not a lot compared to a Mac-based university department, but a lot of Macs nonetheless. (Something to do with owning a Mac-based company or two) I’ve had a mixed bag of hardware recently. A top of the range 1 GHz Titanium PowerBook with a bad superdrive and logic board. A top of the range 1.25 GHz Aluminium PowerBook that had three replacement logic boards, one hard drive and an optical drive. A top of the range 1.67 GHz Aluminium PowerBook which has had a logic board and optical drive and keyboard assembly replaced so far and the logic board has just failed again. A top of the range Macbook Pro which had to be replaced almost immediately due a problem where it would die upon “waking” from sleep and the new Macbook Pro has had a logic board replacement already.

Back in December, I wrote a letter to Apple to highlight the continued problems with my Powerbooks. A very nice man called back and reassured me about the efficacy of Apple hardware. I declined the offer of some free software and said I’d call him directly WHEN the unit failed again. This was a bit of a change – thinking about hardware failure as “when” and not “if”. I ended up calling him when Apple were a bit slow off the mark with my brand new top of the range MacBook Pro had serious difficulties. It’s relevant to note at this point that this MacBook Pro is not being used by me. It runs too hot and so I was using the PowerBook full time.

And then two days ago, it refused to wake from sleep. And upon being shut off, then wouldn’t boot. Diagnosis shows that the logic board has failed. Power is getting through fine. It’s just undead. And yes, it’s STILL within it’s first year warranty.

Apple says they will replace it. With a bottom of the range MacBook Pro. Lower end processor. Lower end graphics card. Lower end hard drive. Lower end RAM. With no trimmings. Nevermind that I’ll have to replace my PCMCIA hardware, and that the extra battery I have is now useless. Same goes for my extra gig of RAM and seeing as the MacBook Pro doesn’t have a FireWire 800 port, my FW800 stuff as well. I’d have to wait for an ExpressCard FW800 adapter.

As I mentioned I already have a previous top of the range MacBook Pro. And I’m not particularly happy with it either. The better wireless range is barely satisfactory when your hands suffer from heat fatigue just from typing on it. And the whining from the processors? I’m inspired to point you at Daniel Jalkut’s MacBook Pro Complaints page which is always good for a laugh. Mine has never been THIS bad, but it’s close.

So the PowerBook goes back in for repair. Again. And can you guess on whether I’m going to buy AppleCare for it?

You betcha.

Addendum: I reckon I’d have accepted a low end MacBook Pro if they’d offered one with a glossy screen and a modem

Mac-Sys now have a blog. It’s just getting started and not linked from the main page as they build up some content but it’s certainly there.

Mac-Sys Ltd was started 3 years ago (this week) by yours truly and is currently the only Apple Authorised Service Provider in Northern Ireland. The team there are some of the best guys I’ve ever worked with. You can’t buy enthusiasm like that.

Their blog will cover tips and tricks, how to deal with a dropped iPod or Powerbook, what to do if your Mac is crashing continuously and other useful tidbits. It’ll hopefully usher in a few more business blogs too as there are several PC companies who use Mac-Sys for Mac servicing (put it like this – any company in NI that says they can fix Macs or iPods? They bring them up to Mallusk to see Mac-Sys!)

Mac-Sys also had a preview of SyncBridge yesterday and they were really pleased with it. “Really really nice” was one of the comments made. As they’re a beta site, it’s nice to hear that kind of feedback. Mac-Sys is a heavy user of iCal for group scheduling via WebDAV and they know how primitive a solution that is so SyncBridge has been something they’ve been waiting for.

While we’re talking about anniversaries, this summer will be the 8th birthday of NiMUG, the Northern Ireland Mac User Group.

When I was writing RPGs, it was my opinion that we should always have one book “in production”, one about to “launch”, one “in research” and one “winding down” in sales. This, I thought, would ensure that we always had plenty to work on while, at the same time, making sure there was enough money coming into cover costs. As it happened some of the books sold really well, some sold poorly and some sold like hot cakes (in chronological order) and I could have made it a career, if I’d wanted. It didn’t work out that way but it was my first taste of sales, resource planning, production and demand. It was also my first taste of “Real Artists Ship” which is something that I’ll always remember.

Last night in the wee small hours, we debated the release schedule and also the finished products we would release. I’d like to take a moment to ask you, the reader, what you think we should finish first. These are still just “codenames” so bear with us.

• SyncBridge
• SyncBridge GE
• SyncBridge 30

Enticing?

Technorati Tags: syncbridge

SyncBridge is the flagship product. The application that will enable you to share and edit the calendars of family, friends and colleagues all using iCal. It’s the biggest product of the three, with the most complexity and obviously the most features! I’m using it at the moment and the flexibility over iCal/WebDAV is simply amazing! I know it’s been “nearly done” for a while now but we want to make sure it’s rock solid for deployment!

SyncBridge GE is the edition of SyncBridge that will allow you to view and edit your Google Calendar from the relative safety of iCal. Progress on this has been very quick and we reckon we could release very soon.

SyncBridge 30 is the edition of SyncBridge that will allow you to use iCal to view and edit your 30Boxes calendars. We’ve needed to feed back some changes to the 30Boxes team at 83Degrees and we’re getting good results from them.

I guess I’m asking you, the readers, what you use. Which has the greatest urgency for you? Do you want SyncBridge immediately so that you can get sharig those calendars with friends and family? Do you want to get jiggy with Google Calendar and be able to edit it and view it offline froma rich desktop client? Are you a big fan of 30 Boxes and can’t consider any other online calendaring solution? Is there another online calendar that you simply cannot do without? We will listen.

After that, we’ll be wanting to talk to you again about other itches that need scratched. Would you care to suggest any? If you poke us, we’ll likely leak some future product ideas in the comments 🙂

We upgraded Typo to the ‘trunk’ from subversion, pretty much without any issues. As a result, we now have a few improved services (e.g. comment RSS feed now works, as do trackbacks in general, improved anti-spam for comments). We’ve also tweaked the CSS slightly to make it a bit more readable. Apologies for any fun and games with your feed reader.

Business cards are tricky things. You meet people, exchange cards and wonder if it will be responded to.

The conventional wisdom is also to put as much information as possible onto the card so that the individual has no excuse not to be able to get in contact including but not limited to telephone number (with or without international dialling codes), fax number, pager number, web site, email address, street address, their name, their company name, their position in the corporate hierarchy, some blurb about what the company does, a logo. How about a small thumbnail of the holder? How about a pithy joke witty remark on the reverse. And all in colour.

That’s an awful lot of data to cram onto a small card. In today’s digital world, how many people will use a pager? How many people will write a letter? How much of the writing on these cards could be replaced with “whitespace”?

We’re a small company. I mean, there’s only two of us at the moment. We’re also “Bedouin” by necessity (as well as by plan). We don’t have anyone available to answer telephone queries. In fact, with the exception of some official paperwork, we’re entirely virtual. You want to speak to me? Email me and ask for my VOIP line. Or we can meet in person. Even if we grow much larger, I don’t see much point in greatly increasing the amount of data on the card.

Distilling the essence of a business card is what we did. At the end of the day, Infurious is a brand and we want to get the name out there. Hence our business cards reflect that. It should provide you with just enough “data” to find out some “information”.

That’s not to say that the approach wasn’t met with some resistance especially from our friends. But the first public test was certainly interesting and the search referrals in the website log files were just as interesting. Provide people with the most basic of information and they will find you. Google is your friend.

Anyway, I’ve waxed on long enough without actually showing anyone the card. You can see it here:

 

The reverse is plain white (because you may want to scribble a note on it). We’ve had some very good reactions (Wow, very minimalist and avant-garde!) as well as some not entirely positive ones (But what if I want to phone you?) What do you think? Do you think that’s entirely enough information for a startup to provide on their business card?

A new game,Tremulous has released some binaries and source for Windows and Linux. Is it just me but does it actually feel weird that it’s not available as a DMG for Mac OS X? I guess I’ve been used to recent developments being available Mac-first or Mac-early.

Tremulous is a free, open source game that blends a team based FPS with elements of an RTS. Players can choose from 2 unique races, aliens and humans. Players on both teams are able to build working structures in-game like an RTS. These structures provide many functions, the most important being spawning. The designated builders must ensure there are spawn structures or other players will not be able to rejoin the game after death. Other structures provide automated base defense (to some degree), healing functions and much more…

To their credit, in the FAQ they answer the question:
In order to get a Mac version you need to do one of three things: 1) buy us a Mac. 2) fix Mac ioq3. 3) find somebody else to fix ioq3.

Someone on their forums has managed to get it working though.

Maybe it’s the whole alpha geek thing but I just assume that “cool new stuff” will be available on the Mac.

I’ve been looking at houses. Totally depressing experience. Back when I bought my first house, it cost me ???79K – for a two bedroom converted church in a rural area in the middle of a field bounced by rivers on two sides. These days I’m finding it hard to find anything under ???130K that isn’t in a ghetto. What happened to the market?

Being in the market for houses is incredibly distracting. I’m looking for somewhere in a rural area, ideally near the coast. Obviously it needs to be in a broadband-enabled area (which thankfully is just about everywhere).

Turns out we’re in the middle of a housing boom in Northern Ireland. A building society revealed that prices in the province rose significantly in the first quarter of 2006, jumping by 17.6 per cent, three and a half times greater than the British average increase for the period. Northern Ireland had been the cheapest part of Britain to buy property, but it is now more expensive than Scotland and the north of England, seeing average house prices of ???129,321.
This conflicts with another report which reports that overall average price of residential property for Northern Ireland for the fourth quarter of 2005 is ???145,987. That’s even more depressing. A mortgage of 130K (at 4%) means payments of ???700 a month for 25 years. No wonder I know some first time buyers who are taking 100% mortgages over 40 years rather than 25. A friend of mine can’t buy near her parents because their house cost them 6K but the house three doors down now costs a whopping ???195,000.

BUGGER

 

On other news, we may be about to hit a bit of a slowdown in development which we hope will not cause a release slip. Just kidding

So what’s the current status of SyncBridge? Barring any major issues, we’ll be conducting another round of testing of a release candidate within the next two weeks. If you’re interested in participating, please mail me and we’ll contact you when we’re ready to go.

Once that round has been completed and we’ve incorporated relevant feedback, we’ll be ready to launch.