If You Can’t Beat Em…
I don’t know how legit this is, but Matt Maher tweeted an interesting article today stating that Apple might be planning to create a software that disables your phone’s camera when you try to video live events like concerts. Really Apple? The company that created the serving-size record? Now you want to crack down on ‘sharing’?
Here’s the thing. The Music Industry can continue pointing fingers at technology for the loss of their revenue or they can simply embrace that this is a different age and there’s nothing they can do about it. People are going to share music. There’s no way around it. People are going to record your concerts with their phones. It can’t be stopped. And if I were an artist, instead of focussing on what needs to stop, I’d spend a little time making sure that my show was the absolute best experience that it could be so when folks see a crappy phone video version of it online, they’ll do anything they can to be at the show the next time I’m in town.
The folks that built horse carriages were probably pretty upset about things when the car came along, but at some point they needed to realize that technology had passed them up and if they were going to keep things going, they needed to adapt. This is no different. Apple won’t save the music industry (that they helped alter) because their camera’s magically stop working at shows.
My advice to artists? Put on a better show. Blow people’s minds and let them share how awesome you are and see what happens.
That’s Why They Call Them Genius’s
…Or is it “Genui?
So after sending my computer away for three to five days, had the logic board replaces, sat on the phone with Apple for what seemed like three to five days, to explain to them the problem again, to be told that I no longer had phone support, but that they would send me a new battery for my laptop to see if that was the problem. It wasn’t. Another long phone wait, and another long explanation of the problem an appointment with a genius was set up. A real live genius. One who officially has a title that could be put on a resume. Genius.
So, today at 10:45 am I was standing at the counter with my scalding hot laptop. I waited until my name was called. I opened my laptop and explained the problem to the genius, or genui. He listened intently, nodded occasionally, then opened my Utilities folder. From there he went to the Activity Monitor and selected “All Processes”. This showed a big list of things that my computer was apparently working on. The main one being a “printer job”.
“See that there.”, the genuis said, “Your computer is trying to figure out what it’s trying to print.”
“Okay”, I said.
“It’s trying to print something on a PC and can’t figure out how, and it’s using 99.4% of your computer to figure it out.”
“That’s a lot of my computer isn’t it?”
“Yep.”
The genuis clicked on the printer job, then clicked the “quit” button. Instantly the fan stopped and the temperature dropped from eighty-six degrees Celsius to fifty-two. Apparently for the last several weeks my computer was working really hard at trying to communicate with a PC. See there’s the problem. A PC. I walked away from the genius bar at 10:51 am. Six minutes. Six minutes!
At least I got a new logic board and battery out of the deal.
Still Around Eighty
I know I haven’t been the strongest advocate for Apple products the last few weeks, and I’m sure that my computer has now been “flagged” as one being used for ill purposes toward the entire Apple organization. Here’s the thing. It’s not like I will ever use anything but Apple computers, but I would like to have a quick sit down with Mr. Jobs and ask him why no one, and I mean no one, within his organization knows what the average running temperature of a Black MacBook is.
I have sent my computer in for three to five days, which ended up being five, then I needed to call and ask and was told that someone had already left me a message and I must have just not gotten it. When I went to pick my computer up they told me that they had replaced the $900 logic board, and ran all the tests they could and everything was good to go. They wiped it with a cloth to make it look pretty and I was on my way. About five minutes after turning it on and checking my email, the fan started running louder and louder. I checked the temperature on my fancy meter thing again, and it was floating around eighty-three. Eighty-Three?! It wasn’t that hot when I brought it in.
So after an entire morning on the phone with Apple, and questioning why no one in the company knows exactly how hot my computer is supposed to be running, they are sending me a new battery to see if that is the problem. If not I will need to mail my computer in and let them take a look at it, for yes, another three to five days.
