Carter: Yeah Sir, we can’t call it the Enterprise.
O’Neill: Why not?
Carter: The project codename is Prometheus. What’s wrong with that?
O’Neill: It’s a Greek tragedy. Who wants that? — Stargate SG1

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Archive for February, 2011

A Mac’s downside

No responses yet – published on Feb, 18 2011 at 13:53 under Computer.

I really love my MacBook Pro Unibody 15” even if it is now 1 1/2 years old. It’s still looking and – most importantly – working great, and I had never any problem with it. Nevertheless there are some downsides you only realize when you are using it for some time.

Numeric Keypad, because Numbers count

One thing I sometimes miss is the numeric keypad. That’s a drawback most laptops have, but my 15” MacBook Pro would have enough space to fit a numeric keypad in IF the speakers would be placed somewhere else. I understand that it might look a bit too “crowded” (something Apple would never let happen) but even the 17” MacBook Pro doesn’t have a numeric keypad and to be honest: there is tones of space.

The MacBook Pro Unibody/Logitech VX Revolution mystery

Another thing I noticed the day I bought my MacBook Pro still makes me very sad. I am not sure if it even is a problem with the MacBook, its unibody aluminum case or my wireless mouse (Logitech VX Revolution), but somehow there is an interference between the mouse’s USB plug on the left and the mouse itself on the right side of the MacBook so that I have to use a USB extension cable for the mouse’s plug, otherwise the plug and the mouse always lose their connection. First I suspected it might be that WiFi and mouse had the same frequency but the problem also occurred while using ethernet. That really sucks and I haven’t found another solution but to use a USB cable or to buy a bluetooth mouse,… or hey, I could use a cabled mouse that would make no difference. It feels very 1990′s either way!

Hit the road, (Audio-)Jack!

Last but not least I am annoyed about the fact that the MacBook Pro has no microphone jack (anymore). I just realized this some days ago when I finally bought a headset – I always have used my iPhone headset and that worked fine, but it had some problems lately. My euphoria about my Philips headset was short. I plugged the microphone into the audio-in jack believing it is a microphone jack, and  SURPRISE it didn’t work.

That was the moment I checked what jacks my MacBook really has: it has a audio-in and a combined jack for audio-out and microphone that allows to use the iPhone headset! It reads like this on apple.com:

  • Audio line in minijack (digital/analog)
  • Audio line out/headphone minijack (digital/analog)
  • Support for Apple iPhone headset with microphone

Guess I should learn to read before buying things… Well, there were models that had a microphone jack instead of the audio-in.

So here I was, I had a new headset, one that I don’t want to give away because it’s so comfortable, and I was using an external USB sound card (lucky me my boyfriend had one at home). But I didn’t want to use ANOTHER external device to “pimp” my MacBook. Is a USB cable to be able to use my mouse not enough?

But there was one thing I first forgot: the iPhone headset with microphone was working! And that makes perfectly sense. Compared to a standard 3.5mm headphone plug it has one additional pin, obviously for the mic. And so it wasn’t surprising that there already existed adopters that allow to use a headset with microphone plug and audio-out plug on a MacBook Pro, or iPhone/iPad/iPod.

A homebrew version of such an adapter requires:

  • 1x 4-pin 3.5mm plug connector (TRRS)
  • 1x 3-pin 3.5mm jack socket  - for the stereo audio-out
  • 1x 2-pin 3.5mm jack socket  - for the microphone
  • microphone mono and stereo cable

You could also use a stereo jack and cable for the microphone even if the microphone is not stereo.

IMPORTANT: The most important thing to know is the pinout of the original Apple headset with microphone that is working with the audio-out on the MacBook. As it is always the case with Apple there is of course a difference to the standard pinout of such 4-pin 3.5mm plugs. The following picture will give you the pinout of the plug [source].

I am very happy with my adapter. It works perfectly, doesn’t need an additional USB port or space, and I can also use it on my iPhone.

Happy Valentine’s Day

No responses yet – published on Feb, 15 2011 at 00:21 under Site.

I hope you all are fine especially as it is Valentine’s Day! *woohoo* For my part I am quite well. I have a lot of work to do nowadays and so it sometimes happens that I completely forget about my blog… maybe because blogs seem a bit outdated. With all these other things as Twitter and Facebook a blog may be no longer required. At least I have the feeling that writing long texts – something with more content than “I am now eating” or “Had a bad day” – is becoming very rare. I also have a kind of blockade. I can’t remember how many times I logged in to my blog, started a new post, and then… yes then I had no idea what I possibly could write. That’s really sad as I was always loving to write (even if all that I achieved was gibberish). ;) But don’t let’s be sad, today everyone should be happy. Happy to be loved, happy to have friends! And we should give the same love we receive every day back!