I have had an Apple high a few times in my life (the day my PowerBook 520, PowerMac 6500, B&W G3, G4 Cube, 2 Mac Minis, and a MacBook Pro arrived at my door) and I remember each one of them very vividly. Today - I had an unexpected Apple high…I had been having problems with my iPhone (bottom part of the screen was dead) for about a week and finally decided to make an appointment with the Apple Store Genius. I showed up, showed them the problem (with my out of warranty iPhone) - and just like that, I got a new iPhone at no cost. I fully expected to pay for a new one when I showed up and was more than thrilled when I walked away from the store with a brand new iPhone. Great customer service Apple!

Wow. How many times will Apple release a new version of iMovie and completely change the interface and how it works? I cannot tell you how many versions now I have used of iMovie that were completely different than the previous. Each time I have to either waste an hour or so to figure out how to work with my media or read the manual. Good thing I am not afraid to do both - but I feel bad for people who are not as patient as I am.

Amy recently took a grad class on technology in the classroom and the instructor on the last day was going to show everyone how to use iMovie, but unfortunately, the computer they provided to him was new and had the new version of iMovie (iMovie 7) and he was used to iMovie 6…and so he could not do anything. Seriously Apple…

PS - Happy birthday Salsa and the iMac!

Apple saves the day for me:
Hello Jennifer, I’m sorry to hear the titles you purchased from the iTunes Store with account “xxx@xxx.com” were lost. I can certainly see how this would be upsetting and I would like to help. iTunes Store Customer Support has decided to let you download (at no charge) all the titles you purchased on this account that are still available.

Thank you Apple!

Recently I had my backup drive die which doubled as my music drive (dumb). I also in the past few weeks - cleaned out my off site backups which included my music (dumb). After not being very excited with what happened - I decided to do some research on some of my options to get my music back. With my fingers crossed - I submitted a form to Apple asking them if I could get my purchased music back: http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/store/lostmusic/. Let’s hope this works!

I love the day of big Apple keynotes given by Steve Jobs. While rummaging around for a disk utility last week - I found my copy of the Macworld 1999 keynote where the Blue and White G3s and multi-flavored iMacs were announced. I had a smile - I eventually owned both and thought they were the best thing ever! Anyway - my friend Ken asked me if I still got as excited as I used to - and the answer is definitely yes. I love everything about the keynotes…but I especially enjoy the post keynote reactions from the people I know. People get so excited - there is even a Keynote bingo!

My predictions:

I will keep my fingers crossed that the new announcement(s) will increase the value of the stock
Ken will be underwhelmed regardless of the announcements and let me know what the x should have had ;). (This would be true even if Apple released the coolest thing ever - he would find some “fault”.
Ben will be the most likely to compulsively buy the most expensive x. He will justify it somehow and I will be excited to hear about his experience … [more]

My preferred browser is Safari but when I need to do any serious debugging, I use Firefox because of the web developer, firebug, and yslow (for firebug) addons.
In the most recent update of Safari (Safari 3.1), we now have the option to show a “Developer” menu (without any hacks) when using the browser.

There are all kinds of goodies in the “Developer menu - one which I will end up using quite a bit: Web Inspector which is helpful for a number of things (viewing code for errors, optimization, even CSS editing if you want in the snippet editor).

There are other nice options as well such as a quick and easy way to “Disable Cache”, Disable Images, etc. If you do any web development and are a Mac user - make sure you check this out.

Great work on the update!

If you know me…and have seen me work with hardware, you know my style of troubleshooting. First - read to see if others are having issues. Second, make sure all the connections are working. Third, look for the dumb reasons why something would not work (electrical, buttons). Fourth - use force to beat the hardware. At first step four was out of frustration. Then, Apple made it an official option with my old displays. I quote: …you can most often break the adhesion between the grid wires by using the heel of your hand to moderately impact the side of your display under the Apple logo on the right, then left side. Using moderate force does not damage your display.

Today I ran into some hardware trouble in my car - my super finicky - already been replaced “CD Error” prone CD changer in my Volvo. Last time I got the “CD Error” my Volvo dealer had to send the changer to Sweden so they could send my back my CDs. Since I no longer have the luxury of a warranty, I had to take matters into my own hands. … [more]