iPod Battery FAQ
All you iPod owners out there should read this page.
It has a good bit of information on the iPod's battery and how to care for it and get it replaced when the time comes.
I feel that I should mention something in the wake of all the ruckus that's been going on about the iPod's battery life. Consumer electronics fail. No, really! Did you really expect your $2,000 surround sound system to last forever? How about your laptop or mobile phone battery? They will eventually get to the point where they no longer hold a charge and you will have to replace the battery.
The iPod is no different. There's no magic inside that makes the battery last forever (though I'll admit my iPod seems to have some sort of mystical control over me). Sure you spent $500 for the 40 Gb model. If you invested that much, maybe you should've bought an iPod Applecare plan. If you didn't, Apple will replace your iPod's battery for $99. If you're feeling adventurous, you can replace the battery yourself.
For a good discussion on how to properly charge your iPod's battery, hop on over to Slashdot.
A fix for slow 10.3.2 boot up times
Unless you live under a rock, use Windows, or are still using Mac OS 9 or even Jaguar, you've probably heard of some issues with the latest 10.3.2 update. In particular, the slow boot up times.
This is actually a week or so old, but I thought it'd be worth posting. Apparently, a file named BootCacheControl is called when you boot up your Mac to generate a cache of the boot up files needed to get the Mac up to the login window.
This file is called twice on boot up, and a third time with the following command:
/usr/sbin/BootCacheControl autostop 15
Since the file doesn't exist under /usr/sbin under 10.3.2, boot up is slowed considerably.
This first fix involves copying this file to /usr/sbin:
cp -p /System/Library/Extensions/BootCache.kext/Contents/Resources/BootCacheControl /usr/sbin
I would highly recommend against using this because the discussions on the Apple Discussions board claim it can screw up future updates. Instead uses ln -s to create a symlink:
ln -s /System/Library/Extensions/BootCache.kext/Contents/Resources/BootCacheControl /usr/sbin
After using the symlink method (don't forget -s for a soft link), I rebooted my Powerbook twice and noticed a substantial decrease in boot times. I'm running a Tibook 867, 768 MB RAM, yadda yadda...
Apple’s Steve Jobs about to relegate the Compact Disc to museum piece
"When Steve Jobs, the founder and head of Apple Computer, takes the stage at the start of the annual Macworld Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday wearing his trademark uniform of black jeans and sweater, look for a tell-tale white wire reaching from his ears to his waist. While his task under the lights will be to evangelise rather than to listen to music, chances are he will be sporting an iPod," The Independent reports. Saw that here.
Cringely: Macs scare IT departments
Macs aren't more popular in large mainstream organizations because they require less maintenance and that scares IT departments, Robert Cringely writes in "The Pulpit" column for PBS. "Whatever the gigahertz numbers say, Macintoshes are comparable in performance to Windows or Linux machines," he writes.
Apple releases ChangeIPAddress v.1.0 script
Apple has released ChangeIPAddress v.1.0 script, which lets you change the IP address of a computer using Mac OS X Server 10.2 to 10.2.6. It's a 50k downloadable file. If the "Permanent IP Address" option was selected during the Open Directory Setup portion of the Setup Assistant, the primary IP address isn't meant to be changed. However, you may need to change the IP address of the server at a later date.