Mac Frustrations and Thoughts on Apple

Two months ago I was asked to install Windows on my girlfriend's MacBookAir4,1 (11-inch, Mid 2011). This is a long overdue post on what a nightmare it was.

Before going into anything, I have to say [1] it's a huge pain in the ass trying to find useful support information on Apple website. Just like their products, the website is a piece of shit. There is no way to specify the model and find all relevant resources for the model you own. All the following procedures were done by following Apple's knowledge base and other articles online thanks to Google.

The MBA comes with EFI support. At the time the latest EFI firmware was from years ago and clearly outdated. Despite the countless threads out there complaining about audio issues. I decided to try it myself anyway. As expected, [2] installing Windows 8.1 in native EFI mode resulted in no sound, for which there was absolutely no fix. (Now there is a new firmware out, a "security" update. I don't believe that it solves any real issue.)

Apart from malfunction of audio chips, [3] the display wasn't working, either. After installation was finished, the Windows desktop turned into a completely black screen upon logon. The solution is to go into safe mode, manually delete the display driver, and restart. This will only get the desktop back.

Since EFI = no sound, and BootCamp = sound on MBA, there is only one alternative I could try - BootCamp. [4] When you create an installation USB media with BootCamp, the progress bar never indicates the real progress. It's simply stuck at the same place forever. Well, not forever, until the creation completes.

What sucks about BootCamp is that it imposes a minimum partition size requirement when you create a secondary partition for Windows. [5] The free space reserve for the primary OSX partition must be at least 8GB. That's 8GB space downright wasted out of 64GB total, the stock SSD capacity. I would not accept a 12.5% drive space loss.

How about adjusting partition sizes after BootCamp installation? I installed Windows 8.1 via BootCamp following all requirements, and shrank the primary partition using GParted Live without actually moving any data. [6] But OSX couldn't even load - displaying nothing but a question mark in a folder. There are some instructions on how one can try to fix the boot problem; I didn't get it working. (Update: seems to be a widely known problem with a fix.)

When downloading OS recovery via Wi-Fi, I closed the lid to do other things. When I re-opened it, the screen stayed black. [7] Apparently the MBA froze or went into sleep and couldn't wake up. Forced shutdown and had to start over.

When reinstalling OSX, I tried making the primary partition as small as possible, in order to leave maximal space available for Windows. At 13.01 GB the installation allowed me to proceed. However, [8] after a restart it said not enough disk space, additional 60MB needed. Bet you didn't know - OSX requires different partition sizes as you go through different stages during installation; the installation fails in a later stage even though it has confirmed enough free space in an earlier stage.

What a fucking stupid piece of shit. Above numbered are the issues encountered in the entire process in the order they occurred. A total of 8 simple things went wrong when one simply wants to recover OSX, adjust partitions, or install Windows.

The series of frustrations is extremely consistent with my prior experiences with Apple products. For example, the iPod 5th generation which saw its buttons break repeatedly after numerous repairs and died all of a sudden and never turned on again thereafter.

In the last decade I fail to recognise any merit in Apple's hardware or software. It always pains me to watch a world of ignorant trend chasers constantly fall for their smartass marketing and substanceless novelty only to get the some of the shittiest products out there. To me, Apple represents the worst performance, cost-effectiveness, workmanship, customisability, design philosophy, and business practices among major manufacturers. The closed ideology has persisted throughout its lifetime and meanwhile utterly disgusted me over all these years (and I'm sure the open source, overclocking, and gaming communities).

Well, fuck the hippies that worship Apple and the root of evil and closedness.

Terrible Experience with Comcast

The "terrible experience" posts may well turn into a series...

I've had Comcast since 2011 in TN and MA except for one year. The overall experience is consistently terrible. Here are some reasons for never choosing Comcast as your ISP (or provider for any other service).

1. 250GB/month data cap for Xfinity internet plans. For my household the data usage is around 1-3TB/month. I had to switch to business class to get rid of the data cap at my old residence back in TN. Luckily this nationwide data cap is suspended in MA. 
2. Switching service plan is never smooth . Xfinity and Business Class are two independent departments. Even though the service always comes through the same cable lines, I had various issues when switching from one to the other.
3. Moving is never smooth, either. If you move to another state, be prepared waste days and months for them to get the billing right, as a representative is only able to deal with things within the state, and is unable to manage or transfer your old account in a different state.
4. It is incredibly difficult to get the refund to which you are entitled from Comcast, especially when it involves your old account in a different state. Representatives are not helpful in locating the old account and checking final bills and balances. Any service centre you visit or rep you reach over the phone will tell you they are unable to do anything, and when they say there will be a follow-up, there won't.
5. Service reliability has always been an issue, regardless of location and service class. Service can be down for all kinds of reasons, from inclement weather to construction accident to "scheduled" maintenance.
6. Never any notice for downtime whatsoever. If maintenance is scheduled there is no reason not  to give prior notice to customers in the affected area. If you call the support line, occasionally the automated phone menu will tell you there is an known outage. You could, of course, call customer service to request a reimbursement for the downtime, but the reimbursement amount is only $2 or $3 which is not worth your time.
7. Cancelling the service? There is a 60-day prior notice policy. If you don't notify Comcast two months earlier, you have to pay for two extra months. This clause is not in the contract you signed, but in a 18-page ToS to which your contract links.
   
   This is the point where I came to the conclusion that Comcast is total bullshit, because I never had any issue cancelling my service with any utility, phone, or internet company. Even one of the busiest logistics/moving companies in the country scheduled my service in two weeks.
8. When a business class contract is about to expire, Comcast renews it automatically without ever asking you. If you signed up for Xfinity online and the OK rates lured you in, the rates automatically go up usually by 40% after the first year.

During the one year when I did not have Comcast, I had RCN instead. The service was more reliable, affordable, and speedy. The only problem was RCN's coverage, or in other words, Comcast's monopoly in Boston area. Most cities north to the Charles River have only one ISP that is Comcast. The Boston area is loaded with outdated infrastructure (cough, the T, cough). Lack of municipal-level fibre networks makes perfect soil for monopoly of evil cable companies. The pathetic thing is, we the residents have no other choice but to feed them.

So, support your regional ISP while you can, if they provide decent service and competitive price.

Things I Expect from a Quality Feed Reader

Essential features as a feed reader:

1. Instant data import from Google Reader
2. Auto-discovery of feeds by webpage URL
3. Compact UI, or at least an optional compact UI
4. Widescreen support and dimension-adaptive display
5. Inline excerpt display of arbitrary length in list view
6. CSS Optimization such that highlighting any text field such as entry title for copying is easy
7. Categorization of entries (manually star and label, or automatically filter incoming entries)
8. Actual unread count for each folder, label, and feed
9. Actual unread status for entries regardless of age
10. Favicons
11. Publish and fetch time of each entry
12. Alphabetical sorting of list items, and drag n' drop support
13. Keyboard shortcuts in agreement with the GR canonical definitions
14. Search capability for feed and articles within subscriptions
15. Complete subscription management (ability to easily add, delete, batch delete, label, rename, and reorder feeds and labels)
16. Unchanged list and focus position when switching between display modes
17. Load and search speed (server)
18. Navigation performance when quickly moving through items (client)
19. Auto-update of changes in fetch entries with a notice; avoid showing minimally different duplicates
20. Site-wide SSL encryption
21. Full cloud service with cross-platform compatibility on desktop
22. API and Instapaper button (or other types of Kindle support)
23. Personal and per-feed statistics

Social features:

1. Share/broadcast with comments to personal public profile; feed output
2. Send to friends via email
3. Share via twitter etc.
4. Attempt to unify internal "like" and external voting forms such as Google +1, Facebook like and Digg
5. Trending topics and classified recommendations generated from social data and user labels/tags

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Status Archive

Pierced from within
2015-11-20

Enslaved covariant
2013-08-17

Of What's to Come
2012-12-22 06:07:07

Back to path of the weakening
2011-12-10 02:31:10

奕秋
2011-10-04 13:47:29

The earth is a cold dead place.
2011-05-09 13:23:44

"愿得一人心 白首不相离"
2011-03-03 09:17:44

Chances are there's no chance at all.
2010-11-30 23:22:48

Sleepless moonbabies
2010-11-11 16:11:16

Massive conspiracy against all life
2010-09-12 03:09:51

现在的孩子 说什么好呢
2010-09-04 06:31:46

And I, should contemplate this change, to ease the pain.
2010-07-01 07:35:22

Such a lonely day, and it's mine. I'm glad i survived.
2010-06-20 12:16:30

忧长假期
2010-05-18 19:18:26

It would be unrealistic to expect the search for them to be successful.
2010-04-07 15:52:15

网评员们畅所欲言，真是“五毛加五毛——想到一块去了”
2010-03-03 05:41:14

你今天非法献花了吗？
2010-01-15 09:00:13

Second coming, retrospective haunting
2009-12-20 22:09:01

译言被封后又证实了一条真理 这年头办个网站 不被封你都不好意思
2009-12-04 19:52:15

“《蜗居》表明了三代人的关系，60后最爽，有钱有女人；70后也在房价上涨前买到房，80后没钱买房，女人也被60后抢了"
2009-12-03 14:47:19

相比起芬兰将“至少1Mb宽带连接”定义为基本人权，中国却将上网超过6小时定性为精神病
2009-11-22 04:43:11

"I am thine: save me: use me: thee will I serve, day and night, in great, in small, that I may be not virtuous, but virtue."
2009-10-12 04:53:53

All is absent, all is cracked.
2009-09-04 12:32:38

Sigh
2009-08-30 09:56:26

美国的橘子不甜 美国的订书钉不结实 美国的妞儿不耐人 哈哈哈
2009-08-28 03:38:32

“这堵高墙，起初你仇视它，反对它；然后你适应它；最后你就依附它，离不开它了，这就是制度化”
2009-08-23 22:38:47

不解风情万种
2009-07-23 16:06:12

以自己和一帮上了年纪的腐朽愚昧的小市民政见相同而为荣？
2009-07-23 12:09:44

就这么凑合着活吧 受着 待着 拖着 耗着 忍着
2009-07-09 03:10:11

七一罢网
2009-06-24 03:54:28

绝望其实是无限的美好
2009-05-11 21:38:53

Rhodes College ‘13, Memphis, Tennessee
2009-04-30 21:36:07

奥美的选拔赛 谁打？
2009-04-09 18:52:32

绝望其实是无限的美好
2008-12-15 00:38:03

Thank you for taking a moment to offer your sympathy to Shadow Gallery and Mike Baker's family at this time.
2008-12-07 16:15:48

黑箱监管集体诉讼原告指南 http://docs.google.com/View?id=dds68dz_11d9xw9dfh
2008-08-01 12:17:44

我真傻 真的
2008-07-27 00:06:50

一切早已失尽了艳色 只留下黑白
2008-05-20 01:05:44

XX + XY = ∞
2008-03-25 20:15:56

每每从异性身上感到更大威胁所在
2008-03-18 19:35:35

抽象意义上的不断肯定而具体实践上的不朽否定
2008-03-12 18:14:52

需要或者必定存在一个语境
2008-02-21 21:21:37

娇口陈赞
2008-02-15 20:40:00

Virgins are inexperienced sluts.
2008-02-05 20:43:52

不大纵使是不大 但也绝不是小啊
2007-12-31 00:26:43

Radiohead In Rainbows 2007.10.10
2007-10-13 17:11:03

原来The Cure不仅是治愈 也是制欲啊
2007-09-14 17:19:08

track3. after17
2007-08-21 20:29:53

Why call it anything?
2007-08-16 17:08:41

云淡风轻

Duan Yutong 2:32 AM (4 minutes ago) to laputajessie

I did not accompany you in the past two years; your numerous guys did. You are not my friend, ever.
Just be a bitch as you are and get lost.​

On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 11:05 PM, laputajessie wrote:
> Dear,
>
> It's great to know you, and I really want to thank you for your accompany in these years. No matter what
> have happened between us, you are always my friend.
>
> All the best,
>
> Jessica

时隔两年，毕业典礼后曾经熟悉的一个陌生女人的来信，以上作结。

Terrible Experience with US Airways

I was enjoying a book chapter on AdS/CFT correspondence in 5-dimensional brane models tonight on an aeroplane before departure. An aged attendant came along and asked me to "power off" my kindle 3rd. gen keyboard 3G while others were reading magazines and newspapers.

At first I kindly explained to her why an E ink device in this case is equivalent to any paper-based media: it does not take any power to retain the grayscale display since E ink pearl screens only use power when the electrodes change the polarization of the charged ink particles, there is in fact no viable way to power off any E ink screen, and she will always see something on display. But she wouldn't listen and insisted that I "power off any electronic device", which eventually started to seriously piss me off. I almost wanted to question her: do you ask passengers to take the batteries out of their watches or pacemakers which are technically "electronic devices" as well?

I dislike those who are extremely difficult to communicate with, lack the necessary knowledge to to their job right, and show little respect to customers who do things beyond their comprehension. Also worth noting is that during the previous flight before the connection, they screwed up the cabin pressurization and I had a severe earache for 10 mins.

Conclusively, I discourage anyone from flying with US Airways unless you wanna risk blowing up your eardrums or being talked down to like an antisocial criminal by some ignorant attendant. — at Charlotte Douglas International Airport

很遗憾，莫言不够格，且丢人太甚

　　很遗憾，莫言不够格，且丢人太甚。

　　携带一个跳梁小丑般的以所谓“诗人兼好友”身份陪同的地级市官员已经令人作呕（令我想起读书后期大量由官员所作的滥竽充数的文章，以及王立军教授转型学术横跨数领域与李昌钰瞬间成为老友），到了瑞典不仅偏要装出硬气的做派，断然拒绝回答记者关于刘晓波的提问，居然还将新闻审查与污蔑诽谤混为一谈，极力为审查制度辩护。如此一个标榜自己“从来都喜欢独往独来”的人，却又在体制内屈从妥协十余年、与文化对口官员沆瀣一气，令人无法心生敬意。在法兰克福随队一同离场时他独往独来的风骨荡然何存呢。

　　没有完整读过他的长篇，但很怀疑他的一些作品是否真有那么经典。从读过的文字及其言行看来，我感觉此人怯懦窝囊又歇斯底里，出于现实考虑活得极其虚伪，不够真诚坦荡，生活与创作植根于物质，从未能够做到摆脱历史时期、个人经历、社会条件的禁锢，并且愧对一个作家应有的品格与良知。一言以蔽之——昧着良心苟活于世，缺乏崇高境界。与真正的世界一流作家无法相提并论，这只是一个会讲故事的体制内的storyteller罢了，正如其本人所自定义的。

　　很多人就天真地以为诺贝尔文学奖仅是且本应仅是纯粹的对于作家文学造诣的认可，挪威诺贝尔委员会从来没有任何其他政治经济文化方面的考虑。很多人就傻到确信只要文学作品出色便够格获奖，不该要求诺贝尔文学奖获得者具备任何政治立场或观念。

　　这个社会太糟糕了，人类文明尽管已经飞速发展到如此高深，但民众的普遍素质依然无比低劣，我现在根本想不出一个基本的世人会全部无条件认可的价值底线已经倒退至何处了。

　　不过在失望至极的同时，我想到一个虚构的类比。这整件事就好比德国纳粹时期有德国部队化学家合成了能与血红蛋白高效结合的气体，被希特勒用作毒气屠杀犹太人，发明者予以默许毫无异义，并继续在其手下进行生化研究。诺贝尔委员会为其授予化学奖并谴责希特勒暴行，发明者在一开始说过一次：“希望犹太人能健康地活下来，然后，我觉得犹太人完全可以做他们的生意，赚他们的钱嘛。”此后他拒绝再谈犹太人，面对记者的追问还大义凛然道：“我从来都喜欢独往独来，当别人胁迫我开发毒气的时候我从来不干，逼我表态支持犹太人的时候我从来不表态，这是我几十年来一贯的态度。”德国举国上下一片欢腾，庆祝在具有德国特色的纳粹主义路线领导下化学科研取得突破性成就。

　　鉴于对作者本人品性的一定了解，估计我后半辈子再也不会有兴趣拜读我们民族引以为豪的这些著作了，也算幸事一桩。