Related link: http://www.apple.com/support/ibook/faq/

Update: I’ve an email into one of the PR people at Apple for hardware, and when I called Apple Canada this morning they had just learned about the program 10 minutes before I called. I’ll hang loose until Apple responds to my enquiry.

—-

Apple has announced that it will be looking after those faulty logic boards afterall. Yeah. More importantly, for me anyway, is that they’ve acknowledged what we’ve all known.

I’ve had seven of these boards (If you haven’t heard you’d be the only one). What makes them short out? I’ll call and try to find out & update ya later.

“What is the iBook Logic Board Repair Extension Program?

The iBook Logic Board Repair Extension Program is a worldwide program covering repair or replacement of the logic board in specific iBook models manufactured between May 2002 and April 2003 that are experiencing specific component failures.

Does this make you happy?

Related link: http://news.osdir.com/article434.html

I’m one of those poor saps who got the iBook with the craptacular logic board problems. While I was bitter about the whole thing I’ve instead taken the Zen path of bending like the willow… I’m going to use Linux full-time on it and kiss hardware vendor lock-in forever and unfortunately OS X.

The replacement iBook comes back today with its fourth logic board (the first iBook had three) and a new hard drive. Here’s the plan: Having Bitten the Forbidden Fruit, it Bit Me Back. Six Times.

Related link: http://news.oreillynet.com/pub/n/VirginiaTechG5Upgrade

Just in from O’Reilly Developer News.. Virginia Tech is upgrading its supercomputer to G5s.

In case you missed it, here’s a video that was shown at MacWorld earlier this year about Virginia Tech’s Mac cluster.

Yeah, I want one too.

Related link: http://osdir.com/PNphpBB2-viewtopic-t13-.phtml

After opening up the OSDir user forums, boy they’re fun too, some of the folks who’ve come by to volunteer and help answer Q’s, and talk amongst ourselves, have been musing on those things that we wish we had known when we first started using, and learning Linux.

There are some interesting answers so far. Throw yours into the ring. I know there are tons of hints ‘n’ tricks out there, and they never seem to make it into the books & manuals.

Here’s five things Apple could put in the next update to the iPod’s software that would make it a music power tool (in order of how much I want them):

1. Line-in recording

iPod hackers have shown that the iPod is capable of recording a few seconds of audio through it’s headphone port. Being able to record through this port as actual line in would enable you to record pure audio whenever you could get a line. No, the current voice recorder doesn’t count.

2. Multi-band on-the-go EQ

A ‘Manual’ item in the EQ menu would bring up a interface that had a few (say, five) vertical bars that could be chosen with the scroll wheel, selected, then adjusted with the scroll wheel.

3. On-The-Go playlist reordering

The On-The-Go playlist is great, but I’d like to be able to reorder the songs in it. You could choose a song by holding down the Select button (which is how songs are put in the On-The-Go playlist in the first place). Then once the song was selected the scroll would be used to move it up and down in the playlist, pressing the Select button again would set it.

4. Playlist resorting

When a playlist was selected, holding down certain buttons (the Forward and Backward buttons, for example) would bring up a menu the would allow sorting according to various criteria, like Artist, Song Name, My Rating, etc.

5. Playlist Folders

This would allow all related playlists (Soft Rock, Metal Rock, etc.) to be put in a single folder (Rock). Browsing through dozens of playlists would then be a breeze instead of a pain.

A great thing about all these changes is that they don’t complicate or clutter the interface for those who don’t want to use them.
Here’s to iPod software version 3.0!

What would you like to see in the next iPod software?

Related link: http://osdir.com/PNphpBB2-index–.phtml

With the inevitable barrage of PR that’s about to come out of LinuxWorld I’d like to remind everyone that there is no one vendor that can attract and retain Linux users. Just like SCO can’t scare normal everyday people off of using Linux.. the Redhats, SuSEs, Mandrakes, Debians, et al. can’t retain users simply by providing Linux to them. Linux’s second greatest asset is the people around it.

One good reason that Windows is so insanely popular (among many bad reasons) is that everyone knows someone, a neighbor, who can help them with problems. We need and require the same kind of folks who use Linux. Once someone installs Linux there are inevitably questions upon questions that they will either want or need answered. They need a place to come and get those questions answered.

One thing that I’ve tried doing with OSDir.com is to provide some feedback on applications so new users can determine which might be best suited to what they need and help get them up to speed using open source applications as painlessly as possible.

Up until now this has been fine, but info and data are only a first step. The next is inevitable. Being that neighbor who can help out in a pinch. We all have pinching moments. Even the best of us, among which I won’t count mys1elf.

Visitors to OSDir are often coming from a Windows world. First they might ask me which applications do such and such, and predictably the next question is for help with it. Often I don’t actually use the app and try to find help for them.

As much as we might like to think that Google and HowTos can handle this, forget it. Only a good neighbor will really keep a lot of new Linux users happy. And really, isn’t this our next best asset? A community.

This is the second stage for OSDir.com. The site started out as a horribly ugly homemade job pumping out of my little DSL line three years ago. We got slashdotted when we had 70 or so apps and was built on top of the code that was running sourceforge at the time. I’ve killed the site and restarted from scratch a couple of times to try to give people what they thought was helpful knowing that you don’t really know what will work to get people excited until you try something new.

OSDir.com is now published by O’Reilly, but I still want to try new things to give people a head start in our community. And so here we go…

I’m looking to recruit some folks who naturally enjoy helping others with problems and inquiries people will have with Linux on our new bulletin board. I’ve contacted some folks to help out already who I thought would be interested, but I certainly don’t know a 100th of you all.

Let me be straight. The gathering crowd mulling about at LinuxWorld are soon to be a rampaging mob. You can’t beat the press Linux is getting and people are only starting to become interested. Even SCO with its antics probably sends more people to Linux than if it didn’t exist. The neighborhood is about to start expanding and the newbies are gonna want to know the direction of the parks, when they can mow the lawn, where the movie theater is, and what the best schools are. Some of them are going to be rash, some nice, some impatient, some good drinking buddies. It’s important for us to be here for them and to be good neighbors if we expect people to at least give Linux the good try we’ve been encouraging people to give it.

I wish there were a more magical answer, but being helpful is simply it.

Right now the forum is in beta so you can get comfortable first and to give the forum a bit of a chance to gather some helpful neighbors. There are only a basic amount of topics right now as I’d like the forums to grow organically with demand. So, please move in. The land is cheap, but the landscape is fine.

Up for some good neighboring?

I recently needed to do some upgrading and cleaning of my tower computer.
The chassis comes from a well known and respected manufacturer, and it had claimed to have a removable dust filter. I contacted the company about how to clean this and was told to remove the bezel and I would be able to access the filter. Only problem was that this required removing the drives, which was entirely impractical.
I decided just to use my air compressor to try and clean the filter along with blowing out the rest of the components.
Finishing that, I put the PC on my workbench to do my upgrades and (behold!) saw the filter’s clips near the bottom of the bezel. A simple pinch and tug and the filter was out.

This companies lack of “support” had me thinking that the product wasn’t so well designed after all, and that its engineers had done a poor job, which turned out not to be the case.
Unfortunately, this is a problem I have also encountered in OSS. Those who aren’t savvy enough to ‘just figure it out’ (and these types will arrive en masse as Linux moves onto the desktop) will inevitably be turned off by a lack of simple documentation or the indifference of some developers.
Better supported software stands a good chance of succeding over ‘better’ software.

Share your thoughts on the article above.

Not wishing to subject myself to trying to watch Steve Job’s keynote over the net I’ve been catching up with MacWorld news from the blogosphere.

Aside from the minis one thing that struck me hard is the meme that formed out of the KeyNote: Apple computers are for people who produce.

I can’t tell if that came out of Job’s mouth or from commentators, but that simple statement is catching on like a brushfire.

I saw it first from Daring Fireball, and now that Doc’s nailed it.. she’s gonna blow.

The implication here is that while folks have bemoaned Apple’s market share, it is irrelevant to their business strategy. Niches are all about having a your own piece of a market, not the whole thing. So let’s divide up the market in this new meme: Producers, Delivery, and Comsumption.

Reality certainly isn’t as clean as i’m about to suggest, but isn’t [Production -> Delivery -> Comsumption] a neat parallel to [Mac -> Linux -> Windows]?

I wonder what Apple’s marketshare of people who produce consumable goods is?

I know life’s not totally like that, but do you have any further thoughts on my generalization?

Related link: http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/facts/default.asp

Microsoft has launched a “Get the Facts” media campaign. Ads are to direct folks to the Get the Facts website here. Give it the smell test.

This should be interesting as MS has a history of funding independent studies and industry case studies. Frankly, if you want to find the truth, ignore all biased opinion, including mine, and go find someone who has actually used or is using both and try to find just one person that tells you “I love Microsoft products”. I’ll concede that gamers will might tell you that, 50/50. But other than that…. It’s not going to happen.

Really, when anything has to rely solely on marketing for good word of mouth it’s not a good sign. Yes, those Linux commercials from IBM are kinda cool, but those are really marketing for IBM not Linux. You can’t get most linux people to shutup about it.

I wonder if this would be GhandiCon 3 1/2. Fighting, but feebly.

Smell ya later.

Related link: http://emergentreport.com/archives/000070.html

My look back on emerging tech in 2003 and some predictions for 2004.

To whet your appetite…
“Going forward in 2004…
* Howard Dean loses, but not by much, to Bush. Campaigning for 2008 started by blogsphere immediately by the voters! Bloggers realize they are the power & fork their first candidate after scandal rocks support. Next day entire blogosphere is behind another candidate. O’Reilly launches new Hacks book: Politics Online Hacks (just kidding).
* Legislation is versioned via CVS.”

I know predictions are a dime a dozen, but they’re still fun since a lot of folks aren’t back to work yet from the holidays. What are yours?