Something did indeed turn up in my search. Apparently this is quite a well known issue. So much so that there is an article in Apple’s Support knowledge base: Some computers may unexpectedly go to sleep when stacked.

My MacBook Pro had not hanged. It had gone to sleep. It was stacked on top of my old MacBook, and the magnet of the bottom MacBook had probably activated the magnetic switch of the MacBook Pro on top, causing it to think the lid is closed and hence going to sleep. In office, I didn’t have enough desk space, so at some point, I stacked the notebooks on top of each other. It isn’t much different at home too.

I hadn’t expected that, and the hanging was getting on my nerves. I would hard reset, see Mac OS X booting up, reach the login screen, then the screen is blanked and it appears the notebook had hung again. I suppose after boot up, it is at that point when the login window is presented that Mac OS X begins to notice or check the lid status and decides it needs to sleep.

It’s funny that now when you know it, the reason just seems so obvious. I told several people about it in office, and we all had a good laugh. Couldn’t Apple have done something so that the magnetism doesn’t go across the notebook? Now it seems dangerous to leave magnetic media near the MacBook or MacBook Pros.

The resolution to this problem provided in Apple’s article? Do not stack your computers.

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What happens is that I move around a lot and use my MacBook in many places, not just my office and home. I thought that it might be a little disruptive to have a dual monitor setup in some places, but not others. When I settle down to get some serious work done, I like a familiar consistent “environment”. I wouldn’t mind drastic changes to this environment if I only needed to do something quick, simple, or just an infrequent activity. The trouble is when I want to settle down in some other place without secondary monitor to get some serious work done, and when I’ve gotten used to dual monitor, what do I do?

I’ve found what I could do with the extra screen space that might not always be guaranteed to be available. Throw non-essential windows, windows that are nice to have but not crucial to the task at hand, to the secondary screen. For example, it is nice to have Adium’s window opened, so you can keep the contact list open or a chat window open. These can go to the secondary screen. iTunes would be another good candidate.

When I return back to single screen mode, I wouldn’t find it so disruptive that all these application windows are consolidated back. They would usually end up being hidden in the back, or minimized, anyway. So that’s how I can lessen the disruptiveness of a secondary screen not always being present.

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The upgraded MacBook sells for the same price (US$999, or S$1588). The unibody design makes it feel sturdier than before, with zero flex when you pick it up from a corner as Engadget describes (they have an unboxing preview posted). There’s no firewire and no SD slot though. I think, overall, this upgrade isn’t too much to shout about. Apple has made little changes that they have already done for the rest of their MacBook Pros, bringing the features of the MacBook more in line with all of its bigger brothers.

There are a few other product updates, from the iMac, Mac Mini, Time Capsule, Airport, etc.

The one thing that caught my attention was the new Magic Mouse. Yes, no more Mighty Mouse (perhaps due to a law suit bring brought against Apple by Man and Machine over the name). This new Magic Mouse is flatter, and its surface is even more sleek than ever before. That’s because… it now has no visible buttons! It’s surface is now a big multitouch sensor which will, of course, support gestures to pan, scroll, swipe, etc. I thought the new flatter design doesn’t so nice as the previous Mighty Mouse, but perhaps it needs to be such so that the multitouch experience will be better. (Imagine if your trackpad was too high and too curved, it might feel difficult to use.) The new Magic Mouse will be available at the end of October, and at S$98, it’s cheaper than the Mighty Mouse (S$108) it replaces.

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Apple’s WWDC event is happening right now, and there are plenty of news to talk about. The iPhone is one of them, but there are plenty of hardware refreshes throughout the MacBook and MacBook product lines.

First off, there are the new 15″ MacBook Pros, and updates to the 17″ MacBook Pros. The 13″ models were all known as MacBooks previously, but the 13″ aluminum unibodies have now been “upgraded” into the MacBook Pro line. So now, the MacBook line has just that single white polycarbonate body version left. All the aluminum unibodies are MacBook Pros, except for the ultra-thin MacBook Air which remains as the MacBook Air. There is also some price drops. For example, the entry level 13″ MacBook Pro (which is the previous middle 13″ MacBook model, or the lower of the two previous aluminum unibody 13″ MacBook models) now sells for US$100 less, although it seems to work out to be only S$100 less in the Apple Singapore store.

The price reductions are great. For some time, I’ve begun to think that the Mac hardware have been overpriced. The reduction is “not enough” in my opinion, but it is certainly a first step in the right direction.

The new Safari 4 browser is finally launched too, and available immediately for download. I hope the various bugs that made me “give up” and go back to Safari 3 has been fixed.

I will be looking forward to Snow Leopard. I hope they have a bundle for iLife ’09 and Snow Leopard upgrade. Here’s a snippet about Snow Leopard from Apple’s press release:

“We’ve built on the success of Leopard and created an even better experience for our users from installation to shutdown,� said Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “Apple engineers have made hundreds of improvements so with Snow Leopard your system is going to feel faster, more responsive and even more reliable than before.�

Yeah, each new version is always faster, more responsive and more reliable. Although no specific date in September was announced for the release of Snow Leopard, if Apple does make the release on time, they would be weeks ahead of Windows 7. They better be weeks ahead of Windows 7, otherwise all the media attention would too quickly be turned to the launch of Windows 7 instead.

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So, I located the Safari 4 Beta Uninstaller and ran it. The uninstaller program was supposed to allow users to revert to Safari 3 if they decided to want to go back. That’s exactly what I wanted to do. I was in for a surprise. The uninstaller program did not work as simple as that. Perhaps just bad luck for me.

The uninstaller ran, and in an instant everything on my screen disappeared. Just the plain desktop background image. Nothing too much to worry about. Sometimes, installation programs seem to do things like this too while they updated various system configuration. I waited. Blank desktop remained. I wanted more. Nothing seems to be happening. A problem I find with Mac hardware is the lack of status indicators: Like a LED to tell if the hard disk was being accessed. The disk is too quiet, so I can’t hear it. I don’t know what was happening.

After waiting an eternity (which means more than long enough, in my opinion), I gave up and decided to hard reboot my MacBook. I turned it back on. Uh oh. Gray screen came on, followed by the spinning beach ball. It got stuck there. I waited another eternity, rebooted to try again, same problem. Removed battery and power supply. Put back in, reboot, same problem.

I was getting upset and annoyed. Luckily for Time Machine I didn’t panic too much.

Luckily I had another computer available, so I surfed the web to quickly look up the procedure for resetting the MacBook’s NVRAM. Basically: Command-Option-P-R. Press all 4 keys and hold, after turning on the MacBook, until you hear the second boot up tone. (Only one for me, because my MacBook was muted before that.)

Finally, Mac OS X booted up.

Sigh. The Mac is beginning to slightly shake my confidence in its reliability.

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I’m now using VirtualBox on my MacBook. It’s a really great virtualization software similar to VMware and Parallels (both of which can run on a Mac OS X host computer). What’s even greater about VirtualBox is that it’s free, and opensource. VMware’s free editions, VMware Player and VMware Server, do not support Mac OS X hosts. At any rate, VMware Player is “crippled”, and VMware Server isn’t quite so suitable to run on a desktop/notebook environment. That makes VirtualBox about the only decent free virtualization software available on Mac OS X.

In fact, VirtualBox is a lot more than merely “decent”. It has all the features of Parallels and VMware, including Guest OS additions which provide enhancements such as mouse pointer integration, accelerated graphics performance and arbitrary screen resolutions. This is a lot better than other opensource virtualization software.

VirtualBox is not new. In fact, I first heard about it last year, but was not impressed when at that time hardware virtualization support was not available on Mac OS X hosts. Since then, the Mac OS X version has been brought up on par with the other host OSes supported (which include Windows, Linux and Solaris). VirtualBox is backed by Sun Microsystems, which could explain the high quality and usability and polished interfaces.

Back to my Windows XP installation. It’s been something I’ve been wanting to get done for a long time. Most of the time I can survive entirely on Mac OS X, since just about everything I need can be done natively in Mac OS X. But our world is so entrenched with Microsoft Windows that there are still a bunch of things that are unavoidable. Like our dear IRAS tax portal, which absolutely requires Internet Explorer (I tried unsuccessfully with Safari and Firefox). Or the Nokia Software Update application used to upgrade firmware on Nokia phones. So just for these few rare occasions, I would need Windows XP around.

As mentioned, my Windows XP booted in 20 seconds. That was with SP2. After upgrading to SP3, and installing all the security updates, my Windows XP now boots in 26 seconds. This is from the time the VM has been initialized and just about the begin loading the OS, to the time that the Windows XP desktop is ready to be used. It’s fast, but that could be because the host OS has cached lots of the disk reads.

I’m delighted that now I have easy access to a Windows XP desktop at any time.

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Actually, there was a sixth notebook. It was not a Mac, and it was in the outdoor seating area. The PC user probably felt uncomfortable being outnumbered by all the Mac users inside the air-conditioned seating area.

Of course, this observation is not really indicative of the true state of affairs. The sample size is too small. It is only an observation at a specific instance in time at a particular venue. But still, it is an interesting observation to find in a neighbourhood shopping centre.

Apple’s MacBooks have been extremely successful. Many people are switching to Macs. Some are doing so because of the total Apple experience (i.e. not just the hardware, but also the operating system and applications). Others are swoon over by the hardware, but still prefer to live in their comfort zone with Windows. Yes, I was watching one of the MacBooks booting up at Coffee Bean this evening into Windows XP. Of course, nothing wrong with that. MacBooks are extremely price competitive too, so even if you had wanted a Windows notebook, the MacBook would still be a strong contender.

At my workplace, I’m seeing more people being converted. Many years ago, when I attended LISA (Large Installation System Administration), I had also noted how a very significant percentage of the conference attendees carried a Mac notebook or some sort. I believe many LISA attendees love the UNIX foundations on which Mac OS X is built on. These are the people who are on the Mac because of its features and functionalities.

But how many people are toting around MacBooks simply because they look more cool? For example, I think for some people carrying the MacBook Air is like a status symbol. There are other notebooks similarly thin and light, but the MacBook Air is sexy. The ThinkPad X300 is not.

Apple’s marketing is definitely trying to drum home the Mac’s appeal on all fronts. Features and functionalities are good logical and rationale things to consider when selecting your operating platform. But they are also trying to tell you that, all other things aside, you’d look more cool with a Mac.

Oh, the Asus Eee PC and some of the other subnotebooks are pretty nice too. They are cool because they are tiny and light, and still work almost like a full-featured notebook. But they’re lacking in fashion sense.

Notice how Apple isn’t worried about being small and tiny. The MacBook Air is thin and light, but it is not small and tiny. Apple apparently doesn’t have any plans to launch subnotebook models at this time.

I wonder, why can’t anyone else design a really cool notebook? Surely there must be other talent in the world.

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The notebooks all come with new Nvidia chipsets. The top end MacBook Pro sports dedicated Nvidia graphics chips while the rest settle for integrated Nvidea graphics. This should be good news for gamers who need more graphics horsepower.

The trackpad is all glass, so that it feels like using the iPhone or Ipod Touch. The glass on the screen extends to the bezel around the screen too, so you have one nice and clean looking finish. The funny thing about it is I hear comments from some people on the web about how they want a screen and not a mirror (yeah, it turns out the glass is too reflective).

The notebooks all now come with LED backlit displays, just like the ones on the MacBook Air. LED backlighting consumes less power and produces more even and “instant-on” lighting than the traditional display backlighting.

Since what I have now is a MacBook, I’m more interested to spot the improvements in the new MacBook. The new MacBook is slightly thinner (0.95″ vs 1.08″), slightly lighter (2.04kg vs 2.27kg), and squeezes slightly more power out of its batteries (5hrs vs 4.5hrs) probably thanks to the more energy efficient LED display backlighting. The new MacBook does not have any firewire ports though.

The lowest end of the old MacBook line is still on sale. It is now known as the MacBook White, and retails for US$100 less (S$100 less too… doesn’t seem right hor).

The new MacBook starts at S$2088. The downside with the new MacBook is that you get a 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, whereas the old S$1988 MacBook comes with a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. Pay more, get a slower CPU.

So is the “upgrade” worth the additional money it will cost?

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This will be something totally revolutionary. As you might know, most notebook shells (or if fact the shells of most products in general) are usually made up of multiple pieces of plastic or metal parts that are screwed together. While plastic parts can be moulded into the right shape from the start, metal parts are often bent to achieve the desired shape.

9 to 5 Mac reports that he new “Brick” from Apple will involve the use of 3D lasers and water jets to carve out the entire notebook shell from a block of aluminum. This means no seams, no screws, no bending. The final product will be stronger and lighter.

Using 3D laser and water jet cutting will give Apple great flexibility in producing complex notebook shells. It means Apple can also get a lot more creative with their product design, and give themselves a strategic advantage their competitors will take a while to catch up on. Imagine, a revolutionary shell for a notebook that others cannot copy for some time.

We have a little more over a week till 14 October to hear what Apple has to announce.

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I cannot possibly cover all kinds of notebooks and all sorts of batteries. So let’s just limit our scope to the most common configurations.  Most notebooks nowadays use Lithium-Ion (or Li-Ion) batteries, and that’s just what we’re going to focus on.

Li-Ion batteries generally provide about 300-500 charge/discharge cycles. What counts as a “cycle”? If you start off with 100% capacity, then discharge till 0%, then recharge back to 100%, that counts as 1 cycle. If you start off at 100% capacity, discharge down to 80% then you recharge again to 100%, you can repeat this 4 more times before it counts as 1 cycle. Yes, that’s 1 cycle and not 5 cycles.

Li-Ion batteries have a life-span of about 2 to 3 years. It does not matter whether or not the batteries are actually being used. The aging results in permanent storage capacity loss. The speed at which Li-Ion batteries age is determined by temperature and stored charge level. The worst condition is to keep a fully charged battery at elevated temperatures, which is what happens when you leave a battery in a running notebook that is mostly connected to a power adapter.

If you need to store your battery for a long time, the ideal condition is to keep it at 40% charge level and at close to 0 degrees celsius. (Of course if you find it awkward to keep your batteries in a refrigerator, then just store them in a nice cool place. Never store batteries in a freezer.) Li-Ion batteries continue to age even if they are not in use. So, unless you actually plan on using them, don’t buy multiple batteries at one go.

With Li-Ion batteries, you do not need to discharge the battery fully before you recharge it. You can recharge it any time you want. It is actually more stressful for the battery to be fully discharged and then recharged.

You may have heard of the term “memory effect”. This is a condition that affects Nickel-Cadmium batteries. These batteries tend to remember the amount of energy drawn on preceding discharges, and subsequently they think that’s the maximum capacity they have and rapidly drop the voltage when discharged beyond that capacity. In simple terms, it means if you discharge a Nickel-Cadmium battery partially and recharge them again, the battery appears to run shorter and shorter. Li-Ion batteries do not have this problem, so you don’t have to worry about it, nor do you need to be concerned about when you should or shouldn’t recharge your Li-Ion batteries.

The only reason why you might want to fully discharge your Li-Ion battery may be to do with battery calibration. Calibrating the battery helps your notebook accurately determine the charge level and run time remaining when on battery mode.

This Apple’s official information for calibrating all models of MacBooks:

1. Start off by charging your notebook battery until it is fully charged.
2. Keep the battery fully charged for at least two hours. You can still use the notebook, just make sure that the power adapter is plugged in.
3. Disconnect the power adapter and let the battery discharge. You can use the notebook during this time. When the battery gets low, you will get the usual battery low warning.
4. Just keep using your computer until the notebook forcibly goes to sleep. Of course, you might want to save your important work first before the battery gets terribly low.
5. Leave the notebook in sleep state for at least five hours.
6. Reconnect the power adapter and charge the battery until it is full again.

Calibration does not increase the battery life (be it run time or cycle count). However, you should not calibrate your battery too often. The recommendation seems to be about once every 30 discharge cycles.

There is actually a little caveat with the charge-anytime recommendation. Although it is fine to charge Li-Ion batteries any time without having to fully discharge them, it is actually not good to charge them when they are nearly full. In fact, some batteries (such as in the MacBooks and MacBook Pros) already have built-in circuitry to prevent charging when they are almost full. You need to discharge a battery from 100% down to 95% or thereabouts before they will charge again.

In summary, these are the battery usage guidelines you should follow:

1. Use the battery normally. If you can charge it, then charge it.
2. If you plan to connect your notebook to the power adapter for long periods of time, remove the battery.
3. Once a while, like maybe every 30 cycles, do a full discharge/recharge.

There are also some don’ts to take note of:

1. Don’t leave batteries at elevated temperatures, such as in a car under hot sun.
2. Check the manufacturing date when you buy batteries. Don’t buy old stock. (That could be why some batteries are offered at a discount.) Don’t buy batteries for later use.
3. There is no need to prime batteries the first time you use them.

That’s all. Hope this will help you keep your batteries in optimum condition.

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