Posts Tagged ‘Macintosh’
Apple Mac Blues
September 9th, 2010
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
Tags: Apple, iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro, Macintosh, OS 10.6, printing, problems, Snow Leopard
Geek stuff here: yesterday we bought a new 21.5″ iMac from the Apple Store in Regent Street.
It won’t print.
This morning we gave up and called Apple Care. We spent 2 hours and 10 minutes on the phone with them without any solution. The guy admitted he was completely baffled. We still cannot print from the iMac.
We have a Konica Minolta Magicolor 2450 and a Toshiba e-Studio 16s networked in our London office through AirPort Extreme. We have no problems printing wirelessly to these printers using a MacBook Pro on 10.5.8 and a MacBook on 10.5.8.
We copied data and settings from the MacBook to the iMac using Migration Assistant. The PPDs were not copied across.
We downloaded new PPDs from Konica and Toshiba and installed them.
The iMac will not see either of the printers which are on an AppleTalk Local Zone. The Add Printer option on the 10.6 iMac has “Default | Fax | IP | Windows” while the 10.5 MacBook Pro has “Default | Fax | IP | Windows | Bluetooth | AppleTalk | More Printers” and the two wirelessly networked printers appear under the AppleTalk window.
We connected each printer directly to the iMac using an ethernet cable. It still wouldn’t see them.
What are we doing wrong?
Apple’s Tech Support guy said that Apple only supported USB printing. From the great pioneers and advocates of WiFi (I bought an Apple AirPort 10 years ago) that comes a little hard.
We figured out a convoluted workaround. By checking Sharing Printers on the iMac, MacBook and MacBook Pro, we can finally see the printers, but this means we must have two computers running in order to print. Not a satisfactory solution.
Anybody got any bright ideas?
We’re taking it back to the store this afternoon, because of the multi-coloured stripes across the screen. Apparently the graphics card has collapsed. Not an auspicious start.
fotoLibra 2009 Pro Blog Index
January 7th, 2010
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
Tags: Aaron's Apps, Aaron's Time Machine, Adobe, Amazon, Apple, BAPLA, book publishing, books, CS3, CS4, drag and drop, easy upload, ebook, ebooks, Encyclopedia of Fonts, fotoLibra, Google, heritage, iphone, iphone apps, Macintosh, marketing photographs, Microsoft, Model releases, photography, Photoshop, picture library, picture sales, Prices, property releases, rights, selling photographs, selling pictures, stock agency, territories, upload checker, user experience
Here’s an index to the fotoLibra Pro Blog for the whole of 2009.
As I complained 6 months ago, it takes a surprising amount of time to compile, so if there are any WordPress experts out there who know how to automate this process, we’d love to hear from you.
If you’re new to fotoLibra, welcome, and may we suggest you read through the HINTS & TIPS section, and if nothing else read Great Expectations. If you enjoy a bit of controversy, read BAPLA Shock Horror.
Comments are welcome, even on old posts, and will be read and often responded to.
HINTS & TIPS
- Three hundred pixels per inch
- Shots of Redemption
- How To Take Aerial Photographs When You Haven’t Got An Aeroplane
- Compression
- Great Expectations
- RSVP
ABOUT FOTOLIBRA
- New fotoLibra
- BOMBSHELL
- Most Popular Searches
- White Labelling
- A Third of a Million
- Picture Calls
- fotoLibra DND & Checker 2.1 Released
- Drag ‘n’ Drop Upload Checker
- The New Picture Call Tab
- SPQR
- Search Engines and fotoLibra
- Yahoo Blocks Our Emails
- It’s got to be today
- 300,000 up!
ADOBE
BAPLA
CUSTOMERS
E-BOOKS & PUBLISHING
- Free iPhone App: Aaron’s Time Machine: London Lyte!
- Orphan Books
- The Killer eBook Is Nearly Here
- UK Politicians Not Entranced by eBooks
- Primary School Books
- Getting ready for e-books and Graphics
- Kindle 2
- More Kindling
- The Killer Book for e-books
IT
LAW
MISCELLANY
- Winterval
- Reunited
- Prophecies & Prophets
- Unpleasant Comments & Spam
- Proto-foto-Libra
- Cancelled Air Show
- Giving It Away For Free
- A heritage in photography
- Farewell Kodachrome
- The perils of publishing
- Happy New Year
NETWORKING
NEWS
PICTURE CALLS
SECURITY
TRADE FAIRS
Fried Green Hard Disks
February 27th, 2009
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
Tags: Apple, Fujitsu, MacBook Pro, Macintosh, PowerBook G4, Time Machine, Western Digital
The MacBook Pro I use day to day is the least successful Apple Macintosh I’ve had. It’s been back to the shop four times, most recently for a replacement battery (battery life was down to 2 minutes, after 96 cycles). Luckily I kept my PowerBook G4 (battery life over 3 hours, cycle count 318) so until normal service is resumed I’m using that. It is noticeably slower and the screen is dimmer, but otherwise it’s a match for the newer MacBook Pro — and far more reliable.
Have you heard the noise a dying hard disk makes? It’s awful; in its portent more than its sound. You know there will be inevitable expense and your life will be disrupted. The disk that died on Wednesday morning was a Fujitsu. As Neil Smith says, you must allow for one in five hard disks failing every year.
We’ve replaced the 120 GB Fujitsu with a 320 GB 7200 rpm Western Digital. That was done by Thursday lunchtime. Using Apple’s Time Machine, the MacBook Pro is backed up every hour, so when the Fujitsu started making dying duck in a thunderstorm noises, I stopped using it. So no data lost — I hope.
We set Time Machine to restore my data to the MacBook Pro at around 2pm yesterday. As I write this (10:45 am Friday) it has 4 hours 32 minutes to go. It is not a speedy procedure. But what I get back (I’ve done this before) is my computer with all my data, settings and passwords valid and intact as they were on Wednesday morning.
And a faster 320 GB hard disk.
There are mutters in the office that I should not have been running a 120 GB hard drive with an average of 640 K spare space. But hey, pictures take up a lot of room.
I wonder how long it will take me to fill up 320 GB?
MacBook Pro Battery
January 23rd, 2009I bought a new MacBook Pro in May 2007. By August 2008, after I had taken it back to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store in Regent Street three times for various problems, I noticed the battery life was down to about an hour.
In September it developed an irritating little quirk. After about 10 minutes with the battery still in the 80th percentile it shut down without warning. This became more than irritating, but I didn’t really have the time or inclination to schlep down to Regent Street again so soon.
I put up with it, leaving it plugged in all the time, and when I needed a portable computer I used the old PowerBook G4, which was a very fine machine.
Finally I could stand it no longer, and on Monday I went online to the Apple store to see about a replacement battery.
First shock was the price — £97. That’s $135. That’s a lot of money. Then I noticed the reviews. 102 reviewers had given this battery one star out of five. There was a chorus of protest about the quality and durability of the MacBook Pro battery. Clearly Apple had bogged this one, and from the chatter on the site they had stuck their corporate fingers in their ears and were going La-La-La very loudly.
I rang the Apple Store. A very nice chap whose accent I could barely understand tried valiantly to help me for about 20 minutes, before giving up and suggesting I took it to the Apple Store in Regent Street.
So I booked an appointment with the Genius Bar for Thursday, the earliest available time from Monday. I told the Genius I had a battery problem, and that he may already have heard about it. He grimaced. I opened up the machine and it ran for just over a minute before shutting down without warning.
He carried out a few diagnostic tests, shrugged, and gave me a brand new replacement battery. No charge.
The computer was nine months past its warranty.
The battery (made by Sony) may be crap, but the Apple service was absolutely superb. No fuss, no quibble, just a new battery.
Nearly full marks to Apple. If only it hadn’t happened in the first place.