Emergency Exit

It took a while but finally Apple has released an Update to fix the keyboard issue I have written about.

I am happy wih my Mac after the phase of being really annoyed with it. The USB issue is not really a probem for me and I know it will be fixed fast and reliable as soon as I hand in my computer for a few days.

14th December 2007 - letter box finally contains a small packet. This game will deflect me from all my Mac OS X trouble.

I am really annoyed by Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) and thinking about going back to Tiger. Can you here it Steve, I will probably downgrade my MacBook Pro!
I always loved my Mac but at the moment, I am really unhappy. The USB malfunction is not that critical for me, because I rarely use it. All the problems with Leopard give me some lousy feeling when using my Mac.
Instead of wasting so much time for implement completly useless Cover Flow in the new Finder, Apple should focus on removing bugs, because Leopard is full of smaller and bigger bugs.
When the keyboard has the hiccups and working become impossible I begin to really unhappy with my Mac. There are a lot of blogs, threads and news about Leopard problems. Additionally there are no new killer features like Expose in 10.3 and Spotlight in 10.4. In my opinion Spaces is the best new gadget in Leopard and except the keyboard problem I can accept the problems but this issue makes me think about downgrade to Tiger. Sad but true …

13th December 2007 - letter box emtpy

My wonderful, beloved MacBook Pro has some bad problems. Well Leopard has some strange minor bugs, especially in the new features. But new Xcode and improved Interface Builder excuse a lot. I waited a long time for improved versions of those programs and the weak Xcode compared to Visual Studio is one of the reasons, why I cannot completly switch to Mac OS X.
Sadly I have a really annoying software bug since a few days and after some research I am not alone with this. On some MacBook Pros with Leopard (10.5.0 and 10.5.1) the keyboard stops working properly after putting the system to sleep once. The input is not processed all time, it exposes for a few seconds once or twice a minute and make working impossible. The only solution to this is a reboot or plug in an external keyboard.
When I attached my normal keyboard to the notebook, it also did not response. It was the first time I tried to use an USB device on this MacBook Pro and my external HDDs or the PSP are also not working. I guess my USB controller is faulty.
My only hope is that I have very good experince with the Apple support. But I need my notebook and cannot give it away for a long time :(

12th December 2007 - letter box empty

Currently I am working on an intro for the TUM Demoparty. Keep code small and portable seems to be tricky. I know there are issues in code between platforms like Windows and Mac OS X. But I always expected the shader language to be portable. But I never had such problems with the OpenGL Shading Language.There are two usable versions of GLSL: implicit version 1.10 and version 1.20.Both specifications have in common that no cast operator is defined. Instead the constructor is used to convert types.
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One week until the newest WipeOut release for the PSP: Wipeout Pulse.
The game Wipeout Pure was the first game I had for psp. And I still think it is one of the best game, if not the best. Easy to learn, hard to master singleplayer mode and pretty nice multiplayer combined with awesome graphics. New downloadable tracks kept the game exciting And now the successor will be released soon.
Today I preordered the UMD. Even if I am not a game, I am really looking forward to get my hand on the little silver disk. This is one of the games that has the potential prevent me from studies and coding :)
When I understand the news about the game correctly there will a multiplayer mode over the internet. This would offer some nice racing sessions. Downloadable content will ensure the long term fun but if StudioLiverpool is clever they will release a track editor or exporter, because this would make the game immortal.

I am often in the discussion why I prefer NVIDIA graphics cards. After posting about my new MacBook Pro a guy came to the chat and told me, that I am an idiot, because I talked so negative about ATI cards and those cards where much better.
Well I grow up with NVIDIA cards. When I was in my gaming age, I began with a Riva TNT until the Geforce 4 series and I was always happy with the performance and stability. So there was no reason to switch.
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