Some Lion users plagued by black-screen bug

A number of early adopters of the OS X 10.7 Lion upgrade are running into a fairly severe bug. What happens is that Macs will crash with a black screen, which requires a forced shutdown. Some systems may show kernel panic messages on-screen, but the majority of them just have a black screen. The issue seems to happen specifically when certain graphics events are happening such as manipulating images in applications, or triggering interface elements when graphics events are occurring. In addition, it happens when systems are woken from sleep.

Most systems that appear to be affected are 2010 MacBook Pros running a Core i5 or Core i7 processor and with Nvidia 330M graphics, but some iMac systems have also been affected. The problem appears to be an issue with the handling of the Nvidia graphics card, either in the drivers or in the firmware of the card, and may be rooted in how the systems are handling the switch between the onboard and discrete graphics chips in these dua-GPU systems. Affected users have found that if they force their systems to run on the integrated graphics chip then the prevalence of the crashes lessens, if they happen at all.

After a lengthy thread in the Apple discussions surfaced regarding this issue, Apple has claimed to be looking into it, and has asked people for crash reports and other details of the problem. We hope an active investigation will yield a quick fix, but for now the following suggestions may help:

1. Run on either integrated or discrete graphics
   Unfortunately Apple's system preferences have the option to either enable GPU switching or run on the discrete GPU at all times. While doing the latter may be beneficial for some people , if you install the GPU management tool gfxCardStatus, you can force the system to run on the integrated graphics at all times, which should force the system to avoid using the Nvidia drivers. While a few people have still reported crashes when doing this, others have mentioned this has seemed to fix the problem for them.
   
   
   Do keep in mind that gfxCardStatus may not always prevent the system from triggering a GPU switch, especially during start-up or sleep events, so even with using it to manage your GPU usage you may still experience the black-screen bug, but it should hopefully lessen the prevalence of this problem.
   
   
2. Disable Sleep modes
   Since the problem happens for some people when waking from sleep, for now try turning off sleep modes for your system. Go to the Energy Saver system preferences and disable both the display sleep and system sleep to keep the system running in a more consistent state and hopefully avoid any GPU-switching behavior.
   
   

If the problem happens to you, pressing the power button to restart the system may seem like the initial and only approach. While this is the case for a true crash where a kernel panic occurs, if the system is just in a prolonged hung state then some other options may also work. These include to wait it out for a few minutes to see if the system starts responding again, but in addition you can try triggering some display activity by pressing the Shift-Control-Eject key combination on your keyboard. If you have an external monitor available, then try attaching that to your system (or detaching it if you are already using it), which should spur a configuration change.

A final option is to enable screen sharing in the Sharing system preferences, and then use a second computer (if available) to attempt to share the affected Mac's screen. If you are able to share the system's screen, then you can safely shut down or restart the Mac.

MacBook Air coming next week with socketed 128GB SSDs

If you’re like me, you’re probably getting tired of the constant ping-ping of MacBook Air launch dates. It’s coming this week, it’s coming nextweek, I just want the darned things to ship already.

There’s been rumblings that the next-generation MacBook Air would arrive this week (alongside Lion) but hopes were dashed when Tuesday and Thursday came and went without the telltale “We’ll Be Right Back” post-it note appearing on store.apple.com.

AllThingsD’s John Paczkowski now reports that the third-generation (3G?) MacBook Air will indeed arrive next week on either Thursday (7/21) or Friday (7/22). The new Airs are expected to rock new Intel Sandy Bridge processors, high-speed Thunderbolt ports, backlit keyboards and128GB and 256GB SSDs.

Yes, I said 128GB SSDs. Even in the 11-inch model.

In addition to dropping the previous 64GB SSD configuration, Concord Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo (via Electronista) believes that Apple has configured the new Air with a minimum of 4GB RAM “to improve Lion’s performance.” Kuo also writes that the Air SSDs will still come on socketed micro SATA modules (like the current model) noting that they won’t be soldered on the motherboard as was previously rumored.

Some pundits have suggested that Apple might be waiting until after its Q3 2011 earnings announcement — which happens on Tuesday, July 19 – to launch Lion and the 3G Airs. The rationale is that Apple would push the announcement until after the earnings call just in case something went wrong with the launches. If true, this would be unfortunate because it would mean that Apple didn’t have much faith in its new products.

Image: iPad-site.net

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New Apple MacBook Airs Next Week?

Are you waiting on a new MacBook Air? You might have to wait a little bit longer. According to AllThingsD an announcement won't come until next Thursday or Friday.

Many Apple-watching blogs said that the new machines would be announced this week, but according to an AllThingsD source, "the rumor sites are off by a week."

9to5Mac reported earlier this week that there are four new MacBook Airs in the works, two with 11-inch screens and two with 13-inch screens. Apple will allegedly release a base model and an upgraded version of both sizes. According to AppleInsider, the laptops will come standard with 4GB of RAM.

Other specs rumored to be included in the new MacBook Airs are Sandy Bridge processors, new high-speed Thunderbolt ports, backlit keyboards, and memory configuration of 128GB or 256GB. AppleInsider also claims these laptops will ship with Apple's new operating system, Mac OS X Lion.

It's also been rumored that an upgraded white MacBook and a new line of Mac minis will debut soon. 9to5Mac claimed a few days ago that there will be three new Mac minis: a standard model, a server model, and a third version with a faster processor that can be custom built in Apple's online store.

Four new Mac Pros could be coming soon, too. 9to5Mac maintains that Apple will launch these devices toward the end of July or the beginning of August. There will reportedly be a new server model and the 16-core version of the machine will supposedly get a revamped enclosure.

Apple has not commented on the rumors.

New MacBook Air with OS X Lion roars in the distance, but many questions remain

A MacBook Air equipped with OS X Lion is definitely on the way. When the Air gets here, however, is anyone's guess.

Apple has long promised that OS X Lion, the latest in the long line of OS X operating systemoverhauls, will arrive in July. Now comes word that a new line of Lion-powered MacBook Air laptops is set to follow close behind. According to John Paczkowski of All Things D, the third-generation Airs will hit shelves sometime late next week, and come equipped with a range of niceties, including the new high-speed Thunderbolt port.

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At the same time, Paczkowski writes, Apple will "winnow down" its configuration options to 128GB and 256GB of flash storage. Over at 9 to 5 Mac, Mark Gurman saysconsumers should expect four models altogether – two 11-inch MacBook Airs, and two versions with 13-inch screens. Each one of the laptops should ship with Sandy Bridge chips, giving the new Air models a performance boost over the others.

RELATED: Amazon tablets mix best of Kindle and iPad: report

Waiting for a cosmetic overhaul? Don't hold your breath. (What? You wanted it to get even skinnier?) No "noticeable exterior changes" are in the works, Gurman says.

So what's great about Lion, anyway? Quite a lot, actually, including FaceTime functionality, full-screen apps, AirDrop – which will let users wireless transfer files over Wi-Fi, from one Lion-enabled computer to another – and best of all, improved Multi-Touch performance. If you've got an iPhone, you probably have a pretty good idea of how Multi-Touch works: move your fingers across the interface in different ways; watch the machine respond.

But Lion, Apple says, includes "more fluid and realistic gesture responses, including rubber-band scrolling, page and image zoom, and full-screen swiping." There's an interesting little run-downover on the Apple site, and it's well worth watching – especially if you have not yet mastered the "two-finger scroll." That should go nicely with the new MacBook Air – whenever it gets here.

Not a Mac guy? No worries. Windows 8 is looking pretty slick, too.

Electronic Calendars: It's not the technology, It's the interop and UI

Electronic calendaring systems have transformed our busy lives. But like many other advancements in technology, they are missing interoperability as well as the important human element.

Sunday’s New York Times had an interesting article by writer Pamela Paul about a particular group of people that refuse to part with an outdated, inflexible technology in favor of more modern equivalents.

I’m talking about the paper organizer.

Call it the Filofax, or the Day Runner, the Moleskine or any of these old-fashioned “little black books” that are used to store appointments and business contacts, there still exists a large bunch of folks that utterly swear by these things.

I am not one of these people. I’ve never had to use one, and have embraced electronic organization and appointments management as long as I have been professionally employed. But I know quite a few people that are stuck on Day Runners and Filofaxes. And I wouldn’t daretell them to switch to something like Outlook, iCal or Google Calendar because I know exactly what the answer will be.

Ex-Engadgeteer Joshua Topolsky has pointed out a number of things which effectively debunk a number of these excuses, most of which I agree with. But as a heavy electronic calendaring/scheduling user myself, I still think there are areas for improvement in electronic calendaring and personal data organization systems.

Many of the reasons why I think people stay with outdated technologies such as Day Runners and Filofaxes for organization is that the experience is tactile and/or tangible. People like the feeling of holding the object in their hand and having the ability to use a pen or a pencil and quickly write/erase entries and flip through pages.

The interface on a paper organizer is also familiar and comforting, much like paper books are. Sure, e-books are more efficient, are instantaneously available if you want to buy one, and you can hold a massive amount of data on an e-reader device like a Kindle or a tablet computer like an iPad, but as anyone will tell you, the reading experience on a device versus a real book is not the same.

And it’s not necessarily superior.

Many people have easily transitioned into reading electronic books, and they’ve embraced the convenience of them. But for people who are used to paper calendars and organizers, it’s a much harder sell.

Day Runners, Filofaxes and similar products allow people to organize data in a free-form way that makes the most sense to them, whereas electronic calendars require that you adapt to a particular calendaring and contact management system’s user interface, specific quirks and behavior.

And let’s not forget to mention that transitioning from one calendaring/contacts management system to a new one can be a bit of a jolt and something of a serious learning curve. I know this because I’ve observed first-hand when people go kicking and screaming from old-school Palm Pilots and ACT! to something else.

And God forbid if you are actually forced to use more than one.

In my particular case, I have to use two different calendaring/contact management systems. One is my personal Google Calendar, which I can access via GCal’s web interface, or I can link it to any number of my computers and devices, such as via Google’s naive Android application on my Droid smartphone and XOOM tablet device, or iCal on OS X Lion or the iPad using CalDAV or Google Exchange Emulationsynchronization.

I can also use any number of 3rd-party programs that try to make the experience more “Native” on the iPad, such as CalenGoo, since iCal’s Google Calendar implementation on iOS is pretty weak.

The second calendar I have to use is IBM Lotus Notes. This one is managed by my corporate email/contacts/calendaring software that runs on my work PC and periodically replicates itself so that it can work offline.

The Domino server it connects to sits behind my corporate VPN, and it has absolutely no knowledge of my Google Calendar and vice-versa. I also can get to it via iNotes, a web interface on my tablets and smartphone, but it requires network connectivity in order to function.

I used to have a corporate BlackBerry which allowed me to use Google Sync to populate across calendars, but since I’ve been Berry-free for about two years, activities and contacts across my personal life and my business life have been completely segregated.

This is a bit of a problem because I’ve delegated my Google Calendar to my wife, who books things like dinner arrangements and weekend/family activities on my behalf. However, when she does this, there’s no way for her to determine if I have time blocked off in Lotus Notes, because she doesn’t have access to it.

Instead, we have to do this the old fashioned way. She hollers at me via email or IM to see if I have the time blocked off. Of course, even if I’ve told her the time is free, there’s no guarantee it’s going to stay free, and I may not be diligent enough to tell her my schedule has changed. It’s a mess because Notes can’t automatically populate a change in Google Calendar.

And then if I want to organize other sorts of unstructured data I have to use other programs like Evernote, which I haven’t had the discipline to fully exploit, although the software seems compelling.

However, I shudder to think what would happen if Evernote ever went out of business and I have all these personal clippings sitting out there in the Cloud which will just plain vanish unless some larger entity ends up owning them.

I’d much rather Google provide me this sort of functionality — which it doesn’t, and Google Docs is no Evernote.

But even as healthy Google is, there’s still no guarantee of permanence of this data. In all fairness to Google, you can “Liberate” your data at any time, and you’ll get it in neat VCF (vCard) and ICS (iCalendar) files, but good luck transitioning this data to something else in an easy fashion.

The import won’t necessarily be as clean as you want or think it will be.

One could certainly argue that you could lose or destroy a Day Runner with all your yellow stickies and scribbles just as easily, and the data loss would be catastrophic, but I’ll posit that you can photocopy your Day Runner and yellow stickies if you really wanted to, and understanding the structure of that data if you had to transcribe it to a new Day Runner or even another electronic organization system would be a lot easier.

The bottom line is I have to learn multiple UIs to do all of this calendar and personal data management across my devices which use Google Calendar and/or Lotus Notes, which aren’t consistent, and don’t necessarily have all the same features across all platforms.

So while I do think the Day Runner/Filofax folks who resist moving to electronic calendaring systems are at a disadvantage and are throwing all of their eggs into one basket, I certainly understand their desire to keep life simple and having settled into a routine that has continued to work for them for a long time.

Electronic calendaring and personal organization, while a powerful tool, is absolutely not simple, and I think it can still be improved. A Lot. Maybe there’s something that can be learned from the Day Runner and Filofax luddites.

Do you still use a Day Runner/Filofax or wish your electronic Calendaring/Organizational tools were better? Talk Back and Let Me Know.

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