A Strange Thing

Some time ago, my MacBook decided it couldn't connect to the WiFi router two metres away. My old PC laptop can connect to it, and so can my phone and MamaDuck's netbook and laptop. Not having a WiFi connection didn't bother me too much, apart from the blue cable crawling across the floor, until yesterday when I was in a Skype call with Offspring and wanted to show him something in the kitchen. This required every cable to be disconnected from the MacBook, and so of course we lost the connection.

Anyhoo, I just searched Google for the solution to the problem, and it's so utterly unlikely that I just had to share it with you. Are you ready? Perched eagerly on the edge of your seat? Okay, you have to reset Safari.

'Do what?'

'Reset Safari. That's all. It does the job.'

Apparently, what happens is, well, I can't really explain what happens, but it's something to do with Safari wanting to go through all the bookmarks and stuff in its cache to... no, sorry, doesn't make any sense at all.

So when you reset Safari, it deletes all the history and remembered stuff, and that then enables your WiFi to work. I hate to say this, because I adore my MacBook, and love the way the hardware and OS are integrated, but this Safari thing (Safari is the web browser written by Apple) is complete and utter crap. I don't even use Safari except for testing websites occasionally, and it quite happily went ahead and busted my MacBook.

An Early Christmas Present

I've been using this MacBook for a bit over a year now. I think it's probably the best thing I ever bought, but the one thing I missed after making the transition from frustrated PC user to almost-evangelical Mac-user was the Google Chrome browser. This had been released a few months before I moved to Mac, and I loved it. No worries, though, a Mac version was in the works, and would be released 'shortly'. I've never done any Mac-specific programming, so I don't know how hard or easy it is. I kept checking with the website to see how they were getting on, but it was mostly Geek to me. I signed up to get an email telling me if they ever managed to complete the task.

Yesterday, I got my email: Chrome for Mac has arrived! Like a maniac, I rushed to download it. Easy-peasy, no problem.

Ah.

But there is a problem on this machine. It's only ever been able to run Firefox: it has Opera and Safari installed, but they can never manage to connect to any websites. That never bothered me too much, but now I have Chrome, I really want to be able to use it. Intensive scouring of Teh Interwebz failed 2 giv me haz cheezburger. But I Percy-Vered (good ol' Percy, never lets you down), and came across a reference to having proxy servers set up. Oh my Gawdz: I know all about Poxy Servers as part of the amoral morality police in Dubai. Hmm.

So, I managed to track it down: yes indeed, this machine was set up to use the poxy server of its previous owner at his Uni. Goddam. So I deleted the poxy (the power!), and now all my browsers work, including Chrome. Yeehah!

New Toy!

Well, the MacBook finally arrived, at 1pm today, and I have to say it was worth the wait (I didn't know DHL had a donkey-cart option, but they do). It is the gorgeousest, sexifullest, perfectest bit of kit I've ever had my hands on (apart from the missus, of course). Absolutely wonderful! And the bloody wi-fi works too!

It amazes me that Microsoft, for all their vast buckets of money, could never write an operating system that's even a quarter as good as OS X. And the Apple hardware is just stunningly beautiful: this keyboard feels so great that I think I might be inspired to write a bit more of Tybalt and Theo!

I know I'm half preaching to the converted here, but if you haven't left the Dark Side yet, you have no excuses at all (except financial!). Since Macs moved onto Dual Core Intel chips, you can run Windoze inside OS X (if you have the Parallels software), so the old excuse of having to replace all your old software with Mac versions no longer applies.

Just go for it: you might even start to enjoy using computers again!