I bought my Macbook Air in Feb 2008 and for the last 11 months I’ve always been frustrated with the restrictive screen angle. It didn’t seem to go much past vertical (roughly 120°) so there were certain situations when I had it on my lap where I could not get the screen back far enough to view comfortably.

Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) my Macbook Air hinge broke/snapped the other day and this has resulted in the screen folding almost completely flat (roughly 160°).

There were no suspicious “circumstances” when the hinge broke, it had been sat on my desk from the previous day with the lid shut and I simply opened the lid whilst the MBA was on my desk and when the screen reached the usual point of resistance (roughly 120°) there was a momentary feel of resistance followed by a snapping/popping sound and the screen then went completely flat.

The screen was still working perfectly normally, no loss in general resistance of the hinge, the backlight was functioning ok, the picture was perfect and there were no nasty noises when opening and closing the screen.

The hinges appeared to be in tact when inspected just above the keyboard so I closed the lid and lifted it up to inspect the underside of the hinges. It was then that I noticed two tiny (and I mean tiny) specs of metal/plastic sitting on my desk roughly where the hinge was. On inspection they appear to be some kind of light weight alloy metal and look like they have sheared off at one end.

I kept hold of them both and tried to get some photos of them with my digital camera but they were too small too get a decent macro focus on, so instead I resorted to my Veho USB Microscope (handy Christmas present) to take some photos and have included a pencil tip, pin tip and ruler for scale purposes just so you can get an idea of just how small these pieces are. [see the gallery at the end of the post for all the photos]

I’m guessing that these two small parts were integrated into the hinge as “stops” to prevent the screen from opening too far. If that is the case then making them just over 1mm wide seems a little daft to me and I’m not surprised they have snapped.

I don’t really mind too much that the screen now opens to around 160° but I’m taking it in for repair this week just incase the excessive opening angle is causing any ribbon cables or similar connecting the screen to the motherboard to rub and wear through. There do appear to be numerous cases of this mentioned across the web, many seem to just have the screen open flat like me but a few others have cracked hinges and completely broken hinges.

I shall update once I’ve heard back from Apple Service.

UPDATE (4th Feb 2009):  I’ve now picked my MBA back up from repair and I’ve got a brand new lcd screen, surround, lid and hinge, basically the upper half has been completely replaced and from what I’ve researched that always seems to be the case, replacing the whole screen assembly rather than just the hinges. I have noticed that the new screen seems to suffer from the dreaded horizontal grey lines syndrome I’ve been reading about, I guess it’s a screen from the new Rev-B models, it’s certainly not as crisp as my old screen but I’m going to spend some time with it first before I decide if I’ll complain about it. Also, because of a problem with the date and time being lost every time the battery ran low I’ve also got a brand new battery, which was nice.

There are two model/spec options for the newer Macbook Air:

So it’s an extra £500 to upgrade the processor from 1.6GHz to 1.86GHz and 120GB SATA drive to 128GB SSD drive. However, if you click to configure the cheaper £1,299 machine and take it to the same spec as the £1,799 machine it actually works out CHEAPER!

You can see from the screen shot above that to upgrade from the 1.6GhHz to the 1.86GHz costs an additional £140. To upgrade from the 120GB SATA to the 128GB SSD costs an additional £350. So when you add them both (£140+£350) you pay an extra £490 which is £10 cheaper than buying the pre-configured machine with exactly the same specifiation.

Starting with the cheaper model and upgrading the processor and hard drive takes you from £1,299 to £1,789:

But many people assume that a pre-configured bundle must be cheaper, otherwise what’s the point in having it as an alternative option, but it looks like you are paying Apple £10 to click the upgrade buttons for you because it costs £10 more:

This only seems to apply to the UK version of the Apple online store, I just checked on the US online store 

which shows the model with the faster processor and SSD as $700 more than the base model. If you configure the cheaper version to the same spec as the more expensive version:

You end up paying $200 for the processor upgrade and $500 for the upgrade to SSD so a total of $700, the same as the higher spec pre-configured model.

Just connect up your iPhone and iTunes should announce that there’s an update ready and waiting.

I don’t really care what other bugs it fixes so long as my contacts will syncronise with my BMW iDrive via bluetooth…soon find out.

[30 minutes later]…Bad news for BMW drivers, iPhone 2.01 still doesn’t sync address book contacts with iDrive. When Apple mention numerous bug fixes with this version I’m not too sure which “bugs” they’ve fixed but immiediately the phone does seem to be more responsive. The horrible lag when you click on contacts before you could scroll through all your contacts has not gone but it is much shorter now, and after sending a few SMS, the keyboard lag seems to be gone now too.

I’m sure there will be many other fixes “under the hood” but to me and 1000’s of other BMW, Chrysler, Mercedes, Jeep, etc drivers out there, not fixing bluetooth connectivity issues with 2.01 was a big mistake.

There are only 3 official sources for the iPhone 3G in the UK:

1 – Apple
2 – Carphone Warehouse (CPW)
3 – O2

If you are an existing iPhone owner and wish to upgrade you cannot go to an Apple store! All upgrades for current iPhone users have to be done through Carphone Warehouse or O2.

The problem is, Apple have so far not given any stock of the White iPhone 3G to either O2 or CPW. This effectively means that existing iPhone users cannot upgrade to the White iPhone 3G and must, for now at least, settle for the black version.

I’ve made near daily visits and several phone calls to both O2 and Carphone Warehouse trying to confirm a date that they’ll be receiving stock of the White iPhone 3G so that I can upgrade and some of the responses I’ve been getting are shocking:

“oh no sir, there’s no white iPhone only black, you must be confusing it with the iPods?”

“the White iPhone is going to be exclusive to the Carphone Warehouse, O2 won’t have any”

“the White iPhone is going to be for Pay As You Go customers only”

“The White iPhone will launch between October and December along with the PAYG version”

For Pay As You Go customers only!! Don’t talk rubbish, why would a PAYG customer (who’s going to be paying well over the odds for the phone in the first place) be restricted to getting the White one, which is 16GB only? Christmas time? Really? The Apple store has plenty of them in right now.

There have been a few people who decided they didn’t want to wait and purchased a White iPhone 3G in the Apple stores (who have plenty) and signed up to a new O2 contract in store. When they got home they just called O2 and played *dumb* pretending they thought that was the way they were supposed to upgrade and had their original contract moved over and the new contract just signed in store cancelled. This is risky though, if O2 don’t take pity on you or think you’re trying to pull a fast one they could leave you stuck with 2 simultaneous iPhone contracts!

I’m the kind of person who would have normally tried doing the above *playing dumb* trick by now but unfortunately it’s not that straight forward for me. I need to simultaneously upgrade my existing iPhone and migrate from a personal to the newly available business tarriffs. I also need to do the same for one of my employees and migrate us both to the same shared business plan and then migrate two current O2 Nokia users to the same shared iPhone tariff but using the two superseeded original iPhones…and as luck would have it, all this is possible but only at an O2 store who don’t have White iPhones.

If you happen to know of any O2 stores that have White iPhones in stock please do leave a comment below and put me out of my misery.

UPDATE (23rd August 2008): Good news, existing iPhone owners can now officially upgrade to the white iPhone 3G at any Carphone Warhouse or O2 store (stock levels permitting). I walked by both CPW and O2 stores today and saw signs advertising white iPhones now in stock. Half an hour later and I’m walking out the door with a white iPhone 3G. I asked when they had stock of the white ones and they said yesterday (22nd August) so if you’ve been waiting, go get one, the white is DEFINITELY better than the black in my opinion as it doesn’t show up any finger marks or scratches on the back!

Simultaneously press the Home and Power buttons (i.e. – press and hold the home button and briefly press the power button whilst the home button is held). The screen will flash white to indicate the screen capture has been done and you will find the screen shot in your camera roll in the Photos section, ready to be downloaded into iPhoto, etc When iPhoto loads the camera roll ready for importing, you’ll notice the screen shots do not have an associated thumbnail, just an blank empty thumbnail. Clicking the blank thumbs and hitting import selected still works though and they appear fine as PNG’s in the main Library.

Home screen right now:

My page for Apps:

My Web shortcuts page:

You’re not restricted to screen grabbing just the home pages either, you can do a screen shot whenever you want in ANY application, so you could screen grab your high score in SuperMonkey Ball and email the screen grab to your friends instantly, here’s a few examples:

NOTE – Do not press and hold the Home button and Power button for more than a few seconds, hold them too long and you will end up hard-rebooting your iPhone. No damage done or data lost but you need to know these things.

It’s official, you can now use Time Machine with a USB drive attached to your Airport Extreme, don’t rush out and buy a Time Capsule just yet! You can even have multiple USB drives connected to a USB hub and use a different drive for different computers.

Apple have released several updates for the Airport Utility, Time Machine and Airport Disks.

Apple annoyed a large number of Airport Extreme owners when they released the final version of Leopard with Time Machine. Beta versions of the operating system allowed Time Machine to select a USB hard drive connected to the Airport Extreme Base (AEB) station as its target drive. By the time the final release of Leopard hit the streets, this functionality had been stripped out and you could only use Time Machine with a USB hard drive connected directly to your machine or with the up-coming new Time Capsules, which in essence are just an Airport Extreme with a SATA hard drive strapped into the unit.

Many people came up with “fixes” or “tweaks” to get Time Machine working with their AEB but I decided I’d fork out for a new Time Capsule. Fortunately for me my local Apple reseller still hasn’t had any Time Capsules delivered, and with the latest firmware update for my AEB I’ll be saving my pennies for something else as I have all the Time Capsule features with my Airport Extreme now.

First thing is to run the software update utility and download all the updates, which will then require a restart. It’s quite important that you restart at this stage.

After restarting, go to Applications->Utilities and open up the Airport Utility. This should then show a list of all available Base stations and then alert you that updates are available for selected devices:

By default it should select all the relevant devices, but if you have any devices in the list that aren’t currently powered on, tick all the other boxes just to download the firmware for the future. It should then begin to download the selected firmware:

Once the download is complete it will inform you that it’s ready to update your device:

You are then prompted to enter the Airport Extreme Base station’s password:

The update should then start, ensure you do not power off your computer or base station during the update:

You get a progress bar showing the status of the upgrade:

Once the upgrade is complete your AEB will restart itelf so have some patience:

You are then taken back to the main Airport Utility screen where your AEB should now be showing up as version 7.3.1:

That’s it done. Prior to updating the Airport Firmware to 7.3.1, the screen to select the Time Machine disk looked like this:

After the update, I connected a small 40GB USB disk to my Airport Extreme and the list now looks like (ignore the orange 80GB drive that’s another drive connected directly to my Mac Pro):

See the bottom entry….Untitled (Scoopz Airport Extreme). Thanks Apple!

I decided to check everything works ok and let it try and Time Machine my MacPro to the tiny 40GB hard drive even though I need 600GB minimum. Sure enough it started to backup before presenting me with an error stating my disk is full:

All I need to do now is buy a large USB drive and I’m all set.

I have just dug out an old USB hub and connected that to the USB port on the Airport Extreme. I then connected the 40GB drive and a 280GB drive and when choosing a Time Machine location you can choose from either of the connected drives. This is ideal for me as I can now use up all the smaller drives I have lying around and have a dedicated wireless TimeMachine drive for my MacBook Air, one for my MacBook Pro and I’ll need to get a bigger one for  my Mac Pro.

After 9 days with my Macbook Air I’ve returned to the shop to ask for a replacement.

I noticed a few dark pencil thin marks appearing on the trackpad button and just wiped them away with my thumb. But they kept reappearing in the same place and getting more and more visible and also creeping onto the palm rest area too.

The marks are being caused by the top edge of the screen surround / bezel scratching the lower trackpad and palm rest areas when the case is closed and there appears to be a noticeable mark appearing on the edge of the bezel too.

I have also noticed that my trackpad button isn’t level in the case, the left edge sits lower than the right edge and consequently the right edge is getting more damage from the screen than the left.

My local Apple reseller have asked me to return the unit with box and all the bits on Monday when the area manager is around, I hope for a complete replacement considering the machine is 9 days old today.

I’ve had a quick search on the web and there doesn’t seem to be anybody else reporting this fault so hopefully its just a one off faulty unit and not a design fault across the Macbook Air range.

UPDATE (3rd March 2008):
I have just had my Macbook Air replaced without any questions. Becuase it was less than 2weeks old they were able to return it to Apple as DOA (Dead on Arrival) and issued me with a new MBA on the spot. I’ve not opened the new one yet but will be sure to report back here if the same thing happens with the replacement.

The firmware is supposed to address some of the “bugs” introduced with 1.1.3 such as the SMS sorting bug and wifi connectivity problems. 1.1.4 is also rumoured to contain the framework to allow 3rd party application to be installed without the need to hack/jailbreak your iPhone. Some of these 3rd party apps and games will be made available for download from the iTunes store in due course.I am currently updating my iPhone to 1.1.4 as I type and shall hopefully report back with some good news on bug fixes……

…..140MB download and 5 minutes install time later….

1.1.4 has successfully downloaded and been installed on my iPhone. I didn’t encounter any errors, warnings, or weirdness (using iTunes 7.6.1(9) under OS X 10.5.2)

Unlike 1.1.3 there aren’t any NEW features  for those of you who are looking, but I have checked on the SMS sorting bug by sending myself a series of SMS in a short period of time and I’m happy to report it works as expected now.  I didn’t have any SMS conversations saved that were in a mess from 1.1.3 so if anybody reading this has a conversation that was in the wrong order could you please have a look at it after updating to 1.1.4 and report back in the comments section below?

There haven’t been any immediate issues with wifi connectivity either which is promising. If you’ve read my post about wifi problems with 1.1.3 you’ll be aware that there were problems as soon as the phone had finished updating to 1.1.3. One person has so far reported that under 1.1.4 his wifi issues are almost resolved but the widgets (stocks/weather) are unable to update when connected to wifi. I have just done some thorough testing of stocks and weather running under 1.1.4 connected to my Airport Extreme and can report I have no problems.

Summary

• SMS Sorting Bug = FIXED
• Wifi connectivity = FIXED (no problems for me at least)

BMW has released an official snap-in adapter for most of it’s model range. Costing £60 (~$130) it allows the iPhone to remain on charge whilst also connecting it to the car’s external antenna for a stronger boosted signal.

UPDATE (14th July 2008) - There has now been a software update for all iPhones taking them to iPhone 2.0 which seems to cause lots of problems with iDrive integration. Read more about that and other issues with iPhone 2.0 and iPhone 3G here: iPhone 2.0 and 3G break BMW iDrive address book synchronising

I picked up the cradle this morning, BMW part number 84-10-9-182-792 costing £59.99 in UK money which was the same price I paid for the Nokia 6230i snap-in I previously bought. Installation is…well I wouldn’t even call it installation, press down on the snap-in eject button, the old Nokia 6230i cradle pops out, snap-in the the new one…I’d say 10 seconds at most!

NOTE – it seems all UK spec cars have the snap in holder (eject box) as standard, those in the USA may have a money tray here instead, in which case you need to buy two other parts to replace the money tray and other users have reported a 30 min installation time for those, see this thread, but the extra parts needed are 84 21 6 946 075 [snap in adapter / Eject box] and 51 16 7 060 175 [Eject box frame]

First impressions are good, feels heavy, solid and robust, the pop up spring mechanism when you eject also feels sturdy yet smooth. You position the lower edge of the phone in the adapter and then press on the top edge of the screen to lower the phone down until it locks in place. There is a small plastic lip that then pops out to lock the top of the phone down. To remove the iPhone simply press the eject button and the top lip slides back and the phone lifts up at an angle for easy access. At first I had to press several times and with some force to get the eject mechanism to work but it’s much easier now once it’s been used a couple of times and things have “freed up”.


The snap-in charges the phone and connects it to the external antenna of the car. I’ve NEVER noticed any signal difference on any of the phones I’ve ever owned with BMW/Nokia car kits using external aerials but this is more likely due to strong signal everywhere I go. There aren’t any areas I can think of where i’d normally have little to no reception to test if there is any gain using the external antenna.

NOTE – the snap-in does nothing other than listed above [charge and aerial], it does NOT offer a hard-wired connection to the iDrive, the connection between phone and iDrive has been and always will be bluetooth. Several people have also wandered if this would allow you to access the iPod features on the iPhone through the stereo but it DOESNT.

I’ve taken far too many photos of the adapter, to see ALL the phone click here or click on the image above.

see more photos | digg story

Along with my local “Computer” speakers and Airport Express “Lounge” speakers that I used to have in iTunes

the AppleTV now appeared in the drop down list of available speakers to stream music to:

I hit play in iTunes and selected the AppleTV speakers from the selection box, after a few seconds pause to connect with the AppleTV, my song started streaming through the TV speakers and surround system in my lounge.

This is great news for me as I only purchased my Airport Express to stream music to the Lounge since the AppleTV didn’t have Airtunes functionality. Now I can remove the Airport Express and put that into the kitchen, and I was about to buy another Airport Express just for that so I’ve saved £70 thanks to Apple’s free update.

There is an new option page in the AppleTV settings for Airtunes allowing you to turn the feature on/off and also set an Airtunes password:

UPDATE:
If you have your TV turned on and showing the AppleTV source, when you change tracks on your computer/laptop and stream to the Apple TV Airtunes speakers the corresonding track name and album art are shown on the TV as if you were selecting and playing the music from the Apple TV.

It looks like there’s a bug with software version 1.1.3 that affects most people but only under a few certain conditions:

1. If you send short SMS to people and they reply very quickly
2. The clock on your iPhone is set slighlty off true “atomic” time (GMT) in my case.

I have taken a few photos to demonstrate this to you but to give an overview, the new software seems to sort outgoing SMS by the iPhone time it was sent but sorts incoming messages by the time on the SMS server of the 3rd party. If you’re iphone time happened to be 1 minute behind the time of the SMS server, then if your 3rd party replies and you send another message out in under 1 minute, initially the SMS will look ok on the screen, but exit to all SMS list and then re-view the thread and your messages will all be out of sync.

Trust me it’s much easier to visual in the photos and try replicating by sending yourself some SMS:

I then tried updating my iPhone clock to exact GMT but it doesn’t allow me to set seconds, although seconds may set to zero when hitting save. As you can see in the last two image, I must have set the phone a little ahead of GMT as the problem was reversed with my messages grouping after the replies!

1. Two finger text entry for capital letters. To get a single captial letter prior to 1.1.3 you had to press shift then press the letter you wanted. With 1.1.3 you can now press shift+letter simultaneaously and it gives the same result as a standard full sized keyboard.
2. SMS alert popup now rotates between portrait and landscape, pretty sure it didn’t do that in 1.1.2
3. You can tap white circles to jump to another home screen rather than swiping. This has always been the case in weather app, etc but there are still iPhone users out there who don’t know this.
4. Enhanced gmail access via IMAP now rather than POP, although I already have my gmail setup via IMAP using the “other” option pre-1.1.3
5. iTunes store gift voucher redemption from the phone, should any body give you an iTunes gift card and you need to buy some songs/movies whilst out and about.
6. Manually manage music/videothrough iTunes

….I did have lots more but they’re pretty much well known about know so I’ve left this post unfinished but feel free to post in the comments section.

Well having successfully updated my iPhone to 1.1.3 I have noticed that I am no longer able to join wi-fi networks, it says i’m connected to my Apple Airport but browsing web pages fails stating unable to connect to server.

I jumped into settings and turned wi-fi off then back on and let it join the network again. Same problem.

I then tried the advanced tab for the network and told it to forget the network and then find it again, same problem.

I tried force closing Safari (by holding down the home button) and then relaunched Safari, still not working.

Next was to reboot the airport express, didn’t solve it.

I tried my MacBook Pro on wi-fi, worked ok so it’s not an internet or airport problem.

Finally I noticed in the advanced tab of the wi-fi network that the phone was getting a self assigned IP address (169.xxx.xxx.xxx) not picking one up from Airport DHCP. Clicking renew lease didn’t work, still self assigned IP so this appeared to be the problem, the iPhone wasn’t being assigned an IP by my airport express. I tried my netgear (Sky) router and the same problem with that.

I finally turned the phone off and back on (with a forced reboot, holding down home button and power button for up to 10 seconds) and then checked the wi-fi advanced page, finally it picked up a DHCP assigned IP and all is well again.

Not sure what 1.1.3 did but I’d never had that problem before.

On a side note: a family member also has an iPhone and updated to 1.1.3 last night. He said it all went well, he was playing with the new features before he went to bed and then turned his phone off last night. On the way to work he powered his phone back on and it’s simply showing an icon saying connect the phone to iTunes, emergency calls only. So it looks like its gone back to the “virginal” or “as new” setting for some reason. So he’s without his phone and all his contacts until he gets back from work.

UPDATE: Two friends updated their iPhones to 1.1.3 and neither could then connect to wifi (Apple Airport or their Orange Livebox Router). Same problem with it not picking up an IP via DCHP. They gave me a call so I pointed towards this blog to follow the instructions. They both followed all the steps above and this worked for one of them only. The other iPhone still wouldn’t pick up an IP. In the end he fixed it by simply going into the settings menu and choosing

“Settings”->”General”->”Reset”->”Reset Network Settings”

so you might want to try that first as a quicker and easier fix?

Back to the iPhone update. Upon reading about the announcement I clicked the Apple logo in the top left of the desktop and ran a manual software update to obtain the latest iTunes, etc. Half way there…….After opening the new iTunes and connecting the iPhone I clicked “Check for Updates” only to be informed that Apple’s Software Server is Busy or unobtainable, check internet connection or try again later. Since my network was functioning correctly and all web site were accessible I assumed the server had reached its connection limit with everybody trying to get the update.

True enough, half an hour later iTunes asked me to agree to some new T&C’s before downloading the 1.1.3 software.

I thought it had already downloaded the update but a quick look at my network activity showed it downloaded at full speed (1MB/s) for a while:

Finally the update of my iPhone firmware began:

and I am pleased to say all went smoothly.

I eventually narrowed the sound down to the plastic housing for the speaker and microphone, applying gently pressure to the sides of the housing when holding the phone caused the plastic to flex and creak. As the microphone is housed in this area the small sound was greatly amplified down the line to my friends.

I took a trip back to the Carphone Warehouse the next morning, explained and demonstrated the problem and they instantly agreed it was a fault and would issue a replacement. The problem was none of the sales staff were able to talk me through the exchange procedure for the iPhone as I was the first to return a faulty iPhone. They seemed to be under the impression when I connected the replacement iPhone to iTunes I would have to start a new 18 months contract and ask for a refund and termination of the previous contract. This seemed ludicrous to me so after an hour wait in store whilst they called somebody for advice they finally gave me a new iPhone but removed the SIM from my old faulty phone and installed it in the new one.

That was it as far as they were concerned, it should just work! WTF of course it won’t, I powered it on in front of them to prove my point, and sure enough the phone was in Emergency Call only mode until I connected to iTunes.

Somebody then reassured me that iTunes would recognise the phone as a replacement and I’d simply have to enter my old number to migrate my account to the newer handset. This brought up a new problem, since I was migrating from Vodafone to O2 and was porting my number, I had been issued with a temporary O2 phone number for 7 days. Did I enter this temporary O2 number or my number being ported across if iTunes asked?….blank faces from all the staff again!

I left the store and decided to just try it and see what happened, and for the benefit of anybody else wandering how the replacement iPhone process differs from the new sign up procedure I took screen shots at each stage:

Step 1: First Screen shown when replacement iPhone connected.

Step 2: iTunes knows an iPhone is already registered to my account and asks for my existing mobile number. At this stage I decide to enter the temporary mobile number that I’ve been assigned until my number ports from my old network.

Step 3: It then asks me to confirm my Apple ID and password.

Step 4: A brief wait while it checks my Apple ID against the mobile number given.

Step 5: I am then asked to review the Bill name and change to mobile number. I notice that it’s defaulted to the 9991231234 phone number for some reason but I go with it and see what happens.

Step 6: I’m presented with an error saying the iTunes store may be busy!

Step 7: I’m then present with the same review your O2 account information page but this time it’s picked up my O2 username and external email address I signed up to O2 with along with the temporary phone number I previously entered.

Step 8: Another short wait while it processes my activation. You’ll notice that it didn’t ask me to agree to any T&C’s again, nor did it ask me to verify my tariff.

Step 9: Activation complete it now asks if I wish to restore a backup taken from my previously faulty iPhone.

Step 10: I chose the most recent backup and hit continue and it takes a few seconds to restore the backup. (note I didn’t have any music or photos in the backup simply contacts, calendar and email settings)

Step 11: All done. The replacement phone is now connected to my iTunes and O2 accounts, the old phone contents have been restored on the new iPhone and I’m all set to go.