Suggestion: clear its little head

I saw this one day, while I was working away using my Mac. (The menu at the top was not for the application that I was running!)

My Mac was just not a happy camper.

So yes, a reboot cleared its little head of all the woes it was pondering.

Another idea came to me from Macworld. If you are a Mac owner, go to Library > Caches. Select the entire contents of that folder and trash it. Restart.

Before doing this, I'd quit every program that is running. I have done it several times without any problems. However... Warning: Don't try this suggestion at home. (In other words, don't blame me if you have any resulting problems!) I'd recommend that you try it after doing a complete backup with a bootable external disk. For the technically-inclined, that means using a tool like SuperDuper with a Firewire drive.

New MacBook Review

Yes, new MacBooks and MacBook Pros are out.

They look pretty cool. My favorite feature is the smooth edge-to-edge screen.

On the face of it, there aren't that many huge advances over the just-obsolete line. The entry price point has been dropped to $999 for the base model (which is an old one - faster than the cheapest new one, curiously). But if you want a new one, you must ante up $1299. The screens are now LED - using less power than the old LCDs.

Forums seem focused on the loss of firewire for the MacBook non-pro line. That means no bootable external hard drive. But I see that as a minor loss - kind of like how Apple first rejected the floppy drive. In time, everyone followed suit. (My analogy breaks down in that firewire was never part of most computers.)

One thing I haven't heard anywhere is that I think it was a strange decision on Apple's part to blur the lines between their pro line and their consumer line. Both now look and act very similarly. For $500 difference, you get a larger screen, firewire 800, a slot to fit a wireless cell phone connector and not much else.

Apple has released a great little video in which the design team discusses the new MacBook. If you're into design at all, it's worth a watch. (The photo shows Jonathan Ive, the head of the design team.)

So if you've got $1299 burning a hole in your pocket, go for it! Better yet, hit the refurbs store and for the same money, get a faster just-obsolete MacBook Pro, for the same money.

You have to be a REAL geek

Playing Tetris in Terminal? (The TUAW story is here.)

I don't like to play games on my computer anyhow. It's one of those doors that if I opened up, it would be hard to close. So I just avoid it.

But if you're going to play a computer game, why not go for one with a decent interface that's built-in?!