Posts tagged ‘Apple’

One very nice feature the iPhone lacks is the ability to request a delivery report on text messages. I usually abuse these by sending a text message to family/friends while they’re on a plane. As soon as they land and switch on their phone, I get a delivery report. Which essentially tells me “for free” that the person has landed. (With Belgian carriers, receiving text messages is always free, even abroad, because you can’t refuse them).

Continue reading ‘SMS Delivery report on iPhone’ »

The internet is filled with guides and howto’s for getting video on you iPhone. The specs specify the iPhone to support h.264, baseline profile, level 3.0. Translated this means:

  • No B-frames
  • No CABAC
  • No weighted predictions
  • No 8×8 DCT
  • Max resolution around 640×640 (technically 1620 MacroBlocks, 16×16 each)
  • Max 25fps at that resolution (technically 40500 MacroBlocks per second)
  • Max 10Mbps

The iPhone imposes some extra limitations:

  • Max 640×480, 30fps
  • Max 2.5Mbps

Most guides on the internet additionally force the number of reference frames down to 1 (ffmpeg‘s -refs parameter), although I could no find any specsheet imposing this limit. So I decided to test this.

Continue reading ‘h264 limits for iPhone’ »

I’m again having problems with my new MacBook Pro (the late 2008 unibody one). The problem is most easily visible when BootCamping into Windows and running whatever 3D application (I use 3DMark06). Within 5 minutes, the machine crashes. After some trail-and-error, I found out that it appears to be a thermal problem.

Normally, when the load goes up, the fans kick in to keep the temperature down. Mine don’t… When stressing my CPU under MacOS, it happily goes up to 90ºC with the fans still idling at their standard 2000rpm. Needless to say, a bit of GPU-load increases the temperature beyond the safety-thresholds.

Resetting the SMC solves this problem only partially. On the first boot with a clean SMC, the same CPU-test brings the CPU to 70ºC with fans blazing at 4750rpm, as it should be. Once the machine goes through a sleep-wake cycle, the same test brings it straight up to 90ºC.

Just when I was about to call Apple Care, a software update pops in: SMC Firmware Update 1.2, looked promising, but the problem persisted… I’ll call Apple Care tomorrow.

Continue reading ‘Cooling problem with MacBook Pro’ »

Last Saturday, I got myself a new Unibody MacBook Pro. However it crashes once a day… By crashing I mean either a full freeze (mouse pointer unresponsive, closing the lid unresponsive, ambient-light sensor unresponsive) or a kernel panic. I didn’t find how to reproduce this issue, but in the last 4 days it has crashed once every single day.

Things I already tried:

  • Ran the Mac Diagnostics (Apple Hardware Test), both the standard and extended tests; it reports “everything OK”
  • Ran the Mac-ified memtest86+ for more than 9 hours; it reports “everything OK”
  • Erased the NVRAM and erased and reinstalled Leopard (and all software updates); the problem persists

Just for the record: The only software installed is Leopard, iStat Pro and Adium.

Needless to say, I’m not really happy with the Apple hardware. After trying the above steps myself, I called Apple Care with this issue. I must admit, the guy on the phone was very helpful and recognized that I tried pretty much everything I could to solve the problem. He gave me an incident number and told me to return the MacBook Pro to the store, since the laptop is only 4 days old…

Continue reading ‘MacBook Pro’ »