Listening to music for me has always been about exploration and discovering historical resonance in "new music". It's akin to Bach's Goldberg Variations; each variation contributes its own identity in an entirely unique way. I find that I gravitate to music with this quality; music that unabashedly is influence by the music of my youth.

Unfortunately, traditional means of discovery have been increasingly tainted by commercialism. Thankfully, the Net is a big place with lots of great alternatives. One podcast that I'd like to recommend is NPR's All Songs Considered with Bob Boilen. I can't say I agree with all of his choices, but a few have been bang on. As a tribute to this new find, I'm finally updating my current listening list:

• Asobe Seksu - Transparence
• Alistar Blaik Bundale - The Day
• The Gaslight Anthem - The '59 Sound
• Mesmer - Teenage Dreams
• White Lies - Taxidermy
• Gooseflesh - Still Wild
• Bad Lieutenant - Sink or Swim
• 5 Cent Theatre - Shifting Sands
• Mumm-Ra - She's Got You High
• Chambers - Sea Mistress
• Kurt Vile - Overnite Religion
• The Coast - Nueva York
• Kanute - Not Sleeping
• The Love X Nowhere - Northern Time
• Phantogram - Mouthful of Diamonds
• Beat Radio - Memoir of Lightening
• Land of Talk - May You Never
• The Exploding Boy - London
• New Found Land - Leave It Behind
• Goyte - learnalilgivinanlovin
• Brite Lite Brite - I Just Want U 2 Myself
• Miracle Fortress - Hold Your Secrets to Your Heart
• The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Higher than the Stars
• Bye Bye Bicycle - Haby Baby
• Evan Voytas - Getting Higher
• Ou Est Le Swimming Pool - Dance the Way I Feel
• Red Wire Black Wire - Compass
• Downtown Union - Bright Idea
• Wild Beasts - Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants
• The XX - Blood Red Moon
• The Ties and the Lies - August is for City Lovers
• Choir of Young Believers - Action Reaction
• Gossip - Music for Men
• The Swell Season - Strict Joy
• Oliver Schroer - Camino

Added to my regular rotation of Muse and Kings of Leon, these tracks ensure that I don't suffer from listening fatigue.

OS X 10.6 has been out for quite a while now and in true form, I was quick to upgrade my systems to the latest version in the hopes that it would finally support the full 4GB of memory on my Merom Core2Duo based MacBook Pro. Alas, unless Apple feels particularly beneficent and releases an EFI update which circumvents this limitation, I'm stuck with a 32-bit EFI which also does not address my memory issue. I was aware of this when I purchased the machine almost 3 years ago, but unlike PCs which support firmware updates to work around issues like this, it seems that Apple's strategy of planned obsolescence will have finally caught me in it's clutches. To bad; this issue seems completely contrary to Apple's environmental initiatives if it essentially cripples older machines and relegates them to the scrap heap simply because it refuses to support older architectures. Instead of simply making greener computers, shouldn't they also consider the impact of existing systems they've sold and at the very least keep them out of the landfill for as long as humanly possible? This too can be considered environmental.

Another case in point; the iMac I bought around the same time as my Macbook Pro began to exhibit extreme instability due to the faulty cooling design of the GPU in the enclosure. I only found out about this when I attempted to replace the GPU itself. While I can appreciate the design chops that it takes to design increasingly thinner computers, what about actual engineering chops to ensure that the thermal envelope of the enclosure does not lead to premature component death? At the heart of the problem was a single measly cooling fan responsible for the passively relocated heat generated from the CPU and GPU. Active cooling should have been applied separately to the CPU and GPU to ensure adequate cooling. At the very least, the GPU heat sink should have been placed before the CPU heat sink in terms of fan proximity; after all, the CPU is not always busy, but the system cannot function without a working video card. At first, I thought that this problem could have been attributed to faulty capacitors in the NVidia 7300 GT GPU; an issue that has already been addressed in the Mac Pro versions of these cards. But a quick look in the Apple forums revealed that this is a problem endemic in ALL Merom based iMacs (the 20"/24" white plastic varieties manufactured around 2006/2007).

After spending 4 hours disassembling the iMac, I came to the realization : these machines are DESIGNED FOR OBSOLESCENCE. From the obscure torx screws, to the insanely difficult access to components, I got the message loud and clear. These machines do not have field replaceable components. Without this fundamental capability to recycle existing functioning components, what I was left with was a two and a half year old computer that I'd paid a huge premium for that was designed to be rendered unusable by simple hardware failure that is easily remedied in your run-of-the-mill PC.

Luckily, my local Mac dealer was willing to get me a replacement GPU and with a little elbow grease, I was able revived my machine. Consider what would have happened if someone else without a technical background was affected. The cost of the replacement card was +$200. Once labour and taxes have been factored in, it would have cost $600 to fix the iMac with a video card that is laughable by today's performance standards. Whether you are discouraged by Apple through the inability to repair your machine with FRUs or the exorbitant cost of an out of warranty repair which makes buying a new machine a "feasible" alternative, the result is the same : electronic waste with a huge environmental impact. My only recommendation going forward for all Apple purchasers is to buy the extended warranty. It is cheaper than a single out of warranty repair, but still seems like an unnecessary cost considering the price premium we initially pay which should equate to "a more reliable" machine.

With any luck, the iMac issue will be addressed in a class action suit or a public acknowledgment and an out of warranty replacement/reimbursement. At the time this article was written, Apple still has not acknowledged any culpability with regards to this issue. If you too are facing this issue, add your voice here at PetitionSpot.

Shame on you Apple; the greenwashing of environmental issues is a blight on your record. If this is the cost of your current popularity, I smell a worm.

Missing User

After upgrading to Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6), I noticed that the PostgreSQL user I created for development using dscl had suddenly disappeared. Apparently any users that are not created through System Preferences -> User Accounts are excluded during the upgrade process. Strangely, the group associated with this PostgreSQL admin user was still present after the upgrade. It was trivial to restore functionality, but a bit irritating. At least I wasn't stung by the Guest user fiasco that has been finally fixed in 10.6.2.

Now that's out of the way, why is my subversion launchd entry being ignored? Hrmmm ...

IR/EyeTV Oddities

Another thing I noticed was the complete miscommunication between the IR Remote that came standard with older Macs and EyeTV. IR controls were either mismapped (resulting in strange interactions with EyeTV) or completely non-functional. Thankfully, this was resolved easily with the installation of Candalair - an alternative driver for internal Apple IR Receivers. By enabling Leopard Compatibility Mode, things were back to normal. This is obviously a known problem given the very existence of a compatibility mode, but why won't Apple actually fix the problem?

Printing?

One of the primary reasons for me considering OS X a few years ago was the tight integration of device drivers (for things such as printers) with the OS. I was tired of trying to configure PS emulation for standard photo printers in Linux. Printer configuration was by far the biggest PITA under free *nix varieties. Being able to install a printer painlessly was, for me, a true measure of usability.

Boy, have times changed. Where as my initial experience with 10.4 was the pleasant surprise of "wow that worked the first time", Snow Leopard has changed this process into an all too familiar experience of disappointment. Broken driver support for a slew of existing printers formerly supported by Leopard (10.5) was painful, to say the least. The process of upgrading the drivers with Apple's driver fix failed to notify users that existing print queues would NOT function until they had been recreated was completely obtuse in a way reminiscent of Windows. Oh well, so much for the usability advantage.

To see just how badly this process has devolved, try setting up a Canon Pixma 420 for wireless network printing. A friend of my got one of these with his new iMac, and nothing short of a herculean effort got this printer to work with OS X. Can you say "obscure"?

Quicktime X Black Screen

A new and improved Quicktime was supposed to be a boon to Snow Leopard. Unfortunately, right out of the gate, Quicktime X support in Front Row was broken for almost all files. Attempting to play any media files in Front Row resulted in a black screen with no audio or video. 10.6.1 at least restored the ability to play .avi files, but I had to wait until the recent 10.6.2 update to finally have support restored for .mkv's. What happened to releasing a functional product? Given legacy Quicktime support is available in Snow Leopard, wouldn't it have been prudent to wait until this version of Quicktime was ready for prime time before releasing it for public use? At the very least, it shouldn't have broken existing functionality. Where are the QA regression tests?

At What Cost?

I understand the primary motivation behind any public company is profit and Apple is no exception. But what is the cost of relentless push for greater market share if they start to diverge from their core philosophy of "just works"? From a consumer standpoint, there are increasingly compelling reasons to question Apple's current strategies, specially if it comes at the cost of keeping existing customers satisfied. I purchased Apple products because I did not want to contribute to the cycle of "disposable" electronics. Little did I know that by design, this is exactly what I've ended up with.

Hackintoshes are looking better every day ...