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I got a new iMac just over a month ago now, and guess what? Its hard disk decided to go to disk heaven or hell much sooner than I expected or then was planned by the Creator.

Basically, I had problems which were looking very much like hard disk failures - my Mac suddenly started freezing when doing spotlight indexes and TimeMachine backups, and after a few reboots, I couldn't make it work for over 10 minutes without freezing at all. Again, it looked very like a hardware failure, but you never know without tests, and I didn't have time to run surface scans that time, so just restored everything from TimeMachine (it rocks!), reformatted my hard disk on "slow" zero-writing mode (hoping that bad sectors will be detected and filtered out).

Well.. probably they did get filtered out, but in just under a week after the first failure, I had another, very similar one. Just this time my Mac stopped booting at all. Well this time I ran surface tests, and both TechTool and Drive Ganius stopped just at the beginning of the disk, unable to proceed, seemingly unable to block bad sectors even..

So, I decided to bring my iMac to my local Apple store, which is Apple Store in Nagoya, Japan. Even though the store is "local", it is still 20km by car (or just above one hour - yeah.. traffic). I thought - "well, its just a little hard disk - Apple Store geniuses should be able to fix stuff like that pretty fast). Man was I wrong..

Apple Store geniuses are actually pretty nice guys - they replaced my first iPhone which had one dead pixel, and almost replaced my second iPhone which I bricked during jailbraking (sorry! just don't tell anyone).

So yeah.. they helpfully offered me to replace my hard drive to free. With a catch - it'll take them 4-5 days, on a fastest scenario. Wha..?! 4-5 days to replace a goddamn harddrive? Probably the next easiest service operation after adding memory? Well yeah, sorry, but we have other customers waiting for their repairs.

Well, that's all cool, by I have several deadlines coming my way and really-really need the goddamn computer working ASAP, which means TODAY. Oh sure, there's one option which can actually shorten waiting time - I was told - just sign up for Apple's ProCare service, and you'll get priority service (no waiting time). Yeah.. very good, I have to get $100 package to get my Mac repaired fast, even though it broke just after 2 week from purchase! (and no, they can't replace the machine, as it was built-to-order - wtf? I just added memory and a hard drive to a stock configuration.. oh well).

So, well, no problems, I won't be happy but I can shell out $100 for ProCare. But wait, they said, we have to check if we have any hard disks for replacement in stock! Oh sorry, we don't have any - we'll order then from "center", and THEN you'll get your ProCare priority service. So.. hard disk should arrive tomorrow, or probably the day after tomorrow. No longer.

Well by that time I was pretty much annoyed and unhappy, so even though I decided to replace the goddamn drive myself (I hold an Apple Service Engineer certificate, though I got it back in the year 2000) - I ordered the drive from Apple Store as well. I dunno.. just in case.

So, without knowing anything about how to replace hard drive in the newer iMacs (early 2008, glass-aluminum model), I got back home at a little past noon, and by 5pm I already had new hard disk churning inside my Mac. I don't think they even can find out that I broke warranty, except for the hard drive I have installed, is not Apple Certified.

That was on Monday. I was happily running after my deadlines for a week, and honestly, sort of forgot about all this nuisance (I called Apple on Tuesday to cancel my hard drive order). Now guess what? On Saturday, almost a WEEK after I ordered the hard drive, I am getting a call from a genius, letting me know that (drumroll!!) my hard drive finally arrived! (thank-you-very-much-but-i-dont-remember-you).

Well.. the morale is.. Apple Store is a mess. When they don't have any replacement, you can wait forever for a basic repairs to be done for you. I mean.. almost a week for a replacement hard drive to just arrive from some "center" (Martian customs didn't give it green light? importing them from Brazilia? I dunno… a WEEK!). And if you're not on Pro Care, good luck waiting for several more days in line, with as unlucky chups as yourself.

I hear here and there that Apple support is top-notch et al.. but you just try and ask them a little more difficult question (did that) and they'll stuck and will only babble that they don't have anything on the topic in their database… Have a hardware failure - and get ready to wait and wait. And wait. Unless you pay for Pro Care. But get ready to wait even then..

Oh well. I'll post my experience replacing early 2008 iMac hard drive as soon as I have some more time. It was actually pretty easy, once I got all the required tools.

Hey what's in those boxes?!

Apple Goodies!!!

AppleTV is a very nice device. Got it to be able to show my daugther downloaded Russian movies, but the device actually way better than I initially thought - synchronizing photos and then showing them to our friends on our 46" HD TV should be a very satisfying experience :) (Thanks Paul for shipping it my way!)

And AirPort Extreme is pretty fast. I thought the speed will be faster - I'm getting about 3.5MBytes/s between my Mac and AppleTV in 812.11n-only 5GHz mode, though Internet download speeds are maxing at around 5MBytes/sec, so 3.5 is definitely not the device's limit, but probably AppleTV's one. And the configuration utility is best of its kinds! I was getting mighty sick of web-based config utility of my old wireless router.

And the new Mac, which is by the way the top-of-current-line model with maxed-out RAM (24-inch Core2Duo 3.06MHz iMac, NVidia 8800GT 512MB, 4GB RAM) - its a screamer! Bye-bye frustrating swapping and overall slowness of my old iMac (though it was a screamer in its time of course :)

Yesterday, I have noticed one little unpleasant detail in my otherwise perfect iPhone 3G. One bad pixel in top left area of the screen. Just one black dot that never changes its color and just stays the same black pixel forever.

Called Softbank today (my mobile operator) - these guys are clueless! Told me they'll get in touch with me but it never happened. Also called Apple support line and was redirected to Softbank with all the exchange inquiries.

So during lunch I just decided why not have a little trip to Apple store here in Nagoya, because it never hurts to check (in America, people can get their iPhones exchanged right in Apple stores).

And oh miracle! My iPhone WAS exchanged right at the Genius bar counter! The guy over the counter had a look at the screen - "Ah.. yeah I see". Then told me that he has to check Apple's policy regarding bad pixels on iPhones - and there's zero-tolerance in this regard, so you can get your iPhone exchanged even for one dead pixel. Then he checked the inventory, and there was the same model I have! The iPhone came in plain brown box though, not the stylish Apple package - definitely a sign that these units are for replacements only.

I received the unit, asked if I can check the screen for bad pixels - and there were none! I few mins later I was going out of the store with my new, replaced iPhone.

I had my doubts if the same approach that works in the USA, will work in Japan - and I'm very happy to confirm that it does!

Thanks Apple!

..is mine!

and I'm Softbank's slave for next 2 years.. Well.. at least I didn't have to sell my soul ;)

(iPhone will be sold starting July 11, via Softbank. Pricing yet unknown)

Go Apple go! Show these Sharps and Toshibas how to create a really useful stuff, not the feature-ridden, hardly usable locked to death junk they're producing :D

I _finally_ got a new Mac at work today :) A nice 2.8MHz Code Duo 2 with 4Gigs of RAM! Now I can have Windows and OS X running at the same time without swearing at endless swapping (hopefully) :)

Good news, everyone (yeah, I'm in the middle of Futurama right now) - WebKit is at 100% on Acid3 test!

You can get the latest nightly build here and try it yourself!

This is great news, since WebKit is used not only on Macs, Windows, but is also the HTML rendering engine on millions of iPhones and iPod Touches (sure, since they use Safari as the web browser), as well as a web browse for Nokia S60 and last, but definitely not the least, it is the HTML rendering engine in Adobe's Air AND Google's Adnroid mobile platform.

I just wish my Sharp 920sh had a usable web browser…

It's been several years already since Apple have added ability to order prints directly from iPhoto application, but hm.. I just don't need to print anything in any decent quality, usually. However, our family friends had a wedding and we have decided to give them a personalized calendar as a little after-wedding present.

So, we (my wife, actually) fired up iPhoto, and created a little calendar for a year.

Press the Buy Calendar button, and we had a little package delivered to our doors in exactly 8 days.

It actually took that long because we're in Japan, and the order was printed and shipped from the USA.

A standard hanging wall calendar. There's only one variation, actually  - at least if you order from Japan.

The quality of both prints and paper are very nice.

And yeah, of course we have a little printed proof of Apple ego on the back ;)

Overall, I'm pretty satifsied with the calendar, though there are a couple of places where fonts went crazy (small calendars in empty calendar cells, not all of them, just a couple). That's because I guess Apple doesn't actually expect for months names to be written in Russian ;) Japanese stuff printed out just fine, as well as most of Russian letters, and of course English letters are the most perfect.

This will make a great gift, with very few time spent on it, and relatively cheap (around $30 USD including shipping) . I will definitely have this service on my gift radar in the future.

Excuse me for a completely non-technical post :) I'll come up with something soon I think.

I have faced a little problem today when I needed to merge two folders' contents, but with a little trick.

Basically, I usually work on projects using Subversion, so I always keep track of what's changed, but sometimes I have to give the files to third party for various  - usually design or content - enhancements. The problem is that I usually just don't have time/will/both to explain how Subversion (of version control systems, for that matter) works, and just handle exported files to the third party. This approach removes version control from files, but when I get the modified files back, I want them back into Subversion structure - this way I can see what exactly was changed, as well as have a ground to blame a specific person if some parts which should have not be touched, were actually touched and some part of the system broke in the result.

So, in order to that kind of trick, I need to merge "new" un-versioned directory structure into "old" versioned one, replacing all old files with new ones, but keeping my previous .svn directories.

You can't do folders merging using Mac OS X Finder, as well as I haven't found a good way to do that using FileMerge utility from Developer Tools. But there is actually an easy way to achieve the required result - and the tool for it is good old tar utility.

The way tar works during un-archiving is that is actually merges files and folders, and doesn't replace them. So, if directories on your hard drive and inside the .tar archive have the same name, the directories on your hard drive won't get erased and then replaced with stuff from .tar, but rather have their contents and contents of .tar directories merged. Just what I need.

Here's what you need to do to merge stuff.

We have two directories: project_trunk is a versioned directory, project_changed is the un-versioned directory we received from third-party. These directories are located on the same level so we can go between them with "cd ../project_trunk" or "cd ../project_changed" commands.

Open Terminal application and to the following:

cd /path/to/project_changed
tar cf  allfiles.tar *
mv allfiles.tar ../project_trunk
cd ../project_trunk
tar xvf allfiles.tar
rm allfiles.tar

You're done! The un-versioned directory structure was successfully merged into the versioned one.

Now just do svn status on the project_trunk directory and compare changes and commit. Very fast and easy :)

82%How Addicted to Apple Are You?Thought I'm just a little bit over 100 ;)