Installed three new software packages:

coconutBattery
coconutIdentityCard
coconutWiFi

I can tell you now that coconutIdentityCard is pretty much useless, as it doesn't really do much. It'll tell you if your Mac is possibly stolen and also your unit's build date (estimated). coconutBattery will also tell you how old your machine is, amongst other things. coconutWiFi is also useful, as it will tell you how many WAPs it sees and will make a sound everytime it detects a new WAP.

coconutBattery and coconutWiFi will stay installed, but coconutIdentityCard will be removed.

You can get these three apps at http://www.coconut-flavour.com

Apple to start addressing white Mac Book discoloration issues

Apple has reportedly attributed the discoloration on and around the palm rest of some MacBook models to a manufacturing defect. See the link below. You can also read many, many complaints at http://www.forums.macrumors.com and http://www.forums.macnn.com:

http://www.macnn.com/articles/06/06/30/macbook.discoloration/

I have to mention that I've owned my Mac Book for a bit over 2 weeks and I haven't seen any discoloration (yet ). I'm hoping this is an isolated issue with certain lots of Mac Books.

Ran Into My First Issue

I've a problem viewing encrypted web pages using Safari (v 2.0.4). I need to view one of my company's web portals and can't get in, as the webpage complains that I'm not using a 128-bit browser.

Yes, I know that Safari is 128-bit capable. Yes, I know I'm using an older version. I've installed Safari Enhancer (per an archived MacRumors.com post), hoping the issue would be resolved. Safari Enhancer supposedly lets you change the user-agent of an HTTP browser, yet I've changed the user-agent from Safari to IE 6 to Firefox to no avail.

I'll work on this further either tomorrow or Friday. It's very late here and I've 6 hours of driving ahead of me tomorrow.

Received My New Mac Book 13"

YES!

I've been dying to get a Mac for about a year. Everytime I saved, something came up to where I had to spend the money. Finally, though, I got one.

Let me tell you that it was very hard to pick which I wanted. Last year, I was going to get a 17" G4 Powerbook, then changed my mind and was interested in a friend's 12" G4 Powerbook. Then I became interested in the Mac Minis. THEN Apple went crazy with their new Intel-based products. At that time, I was still interested in the Intel Mac Minis, but soon after, I got a glimpse of the Mac Book Pros (15"). A friend gave me a presentation of his...VERY nice. He told me to hold off until the "iBooks" were released...I almost didn't. I'm glad I did. I read the Apple pages on it then the whole family visited the Tyson Corner Apple Store. I got a look at them all and fell in love with the Mac Book.

I really wanted the black Mac Book but couldn't justify the price difference between the 2.0GHz white and black, so what I did was build a machine to order, upsizing the drive from 60GB to 80GB. With the military discount (my wife is in the US Army), and the fact that an extra 20GB was only $40 USD, I was very happy. Even with the Apple Care Plan, this laptop was the cheapest I've ever spent on a new notebook.

I'm not going to spew out the specs of this machine, as it is advertised at http://www.apple.com and is all over the 'net. I shall take pics soon and post them.