It’s been quite a few years since I’ve purchased my MacBook.

MacBook 1,1
Model Version 1, Revision 1.

It’s been though hell and back, with a power adapter that lit on fire, a battery going dead, and a (still un-fixed) dead SuperDrive.

I recently realized that I also have the infamous failing hard drive that was shipped in some, but not all, first revision MacBooks. Yay for me!

This has been a known problem since a few weeks after the MacBooks were released, yet Apple still hasn’t issues any sort of official statement, or recall of its failing products.

I was lucky enough to get my power adapter and battery replaced, but that is only because they likely wanted to avoid any legal issues with A CABLE SMOKING AND SPARKING, CAUSING A FIRE IN A COLLEGE CLASSROOM!

I’ve been lucky enough to not have any major problems with this HDD yet, but I now know it’s only a matter of time before it grinds a hole through its top layer of the platter.

Alright…

Long story short.

I’ve got an original MacBook (white) with a broken CD/DVD drive, and I want to install Snow Leopard on Friday when it comes out.

I plan on buying a copy, but first I want to make sure I can upgrade somehow.

A co-worker of mine has a new uni-body MacBook, so I decided I should try putting my HDD into his MacBook and booting it today, just to make sure it goes without a hitch, and that way I could use his DVD drive to install the upgrade to Snow Leopard…

Well, here’s what happened when we tried booting.

Also note, there’s no Apple logo when it boots with this HDD?!?

The first time we tried it, it was stuck at “waiting for root device” and a reboot fixed it though, and it did the following.

Shutdown is weird too, also shown in the video.

Now if you ask me, my Documents folder should be for… well… documents. Not settings and user preferences, that belongs in ~/Library, for good reason.

If you want to hide the “Microsoft User Data” folder, you’re going to need the Developer Tools, and you can easily obtain them by inserting your OS X disk into your Mac, and just installing them

If you are unsure if you have them or not, open a Terminal and type

cd /Developer/Tools

If you get an “Error: No such file or directory.” then you’ll need to install them off the disk.

Once you’re sure you have the developer tools, then open Terminal, and type the following command.

/Developer/Tools/./SetFile -a V "/Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Documents/Microsoft User Data"

After that you might need to restart Finder for the effect to show. You can do this one of two ways… One way would be to restart your Mac, but we all know that’s not ideal, so back to Terminal we go… If you havn’t already noticed, terminal is one of the most powerful tools you have available to you in OS X. Anyhow, go to Terminal and type:

killall Finder

This command will kill any processes for Finder, and Finder will automatically restart itself.

After that, head to your documents folder/stack and you should see the changes.

It has also come to my attention that if you’re using a Documents stack, that you may need to drag an icon in/out of the stack for that to refresh as well, as it’s handled by Dock.app and not Finder.app

Enjoy your now clean documents folder.

As for GPS, I’d LOVE to have that, but do you know what else I love? The Maps application that is already on my current iPhone, especailly the fact that it can give directions… I really don’t NEED something to tell me to “turn right in 15 feet”… I’m perfectly content with looking at my phone and seeing the next step in my route.

Now, all that stuff is amazing for people who are just now buying an iPhone, but I feel there is absolutley no need to upgrade, if it was free, or very very cheap, I would upgrade, but I’m not spending all that money over again for features I won’t use that often, really.

Now, about iPhone firmware 2.0, that’s where the really exciting things happen, You’ll forget all about GPS and 3G speeds with these new apps. You can already see there’s going to be a Twitter app, which excites me, and Jake Marsh is working on a MySpace app already. The possibilites of apps for the iPhone are really endless when you think about how it can integrate into your contacts, calendar, photos, camera, maps, and just everything.

I’ll be excited to see how things roll out in early July with the App Store.

Considering the fact that my MacBook is NOT under the one year warranty, and that I opted NOT to buy the AppleCare plan, my original idea was to scam Apple, and bring in my girlfriends newer MacBook (still under warranty) with my power adapter, and just hope that they would switch it out… I never thought the power adapters would have serial numbers (turns out they do… but I just found this out today, and had no influence on my choices) But to make a long story short(er) I just decided to give AppleCare a call, and see if there was anything they could possibly do for me.

After spending some time speaking to some female in an outsourced call center (probably India) I finally got to talk to somebody local… What it took to do this, was to simply REMAIN CALM with the first person, even if we could barely understand her, I answered all of her questions, and she said that its not under warranty, but she’ll transfer me anyhow!

Next I got to speak to a male, who was just as upset as I was that this had happened! He put me on hold for a while, to try to get a hold of a specialist who could further assist me. We ended up getting disconnected somewhere through the hold-time… But he promptly called me back, and said that he just needs a few more minutes to have me on hold, and I was fine with that. He then came back, and told me the name of a female on the other line, and he was transferring me to her.

The female came on the phone, and explained to me that she’s very sorry, and asked me some simple questions about how I used the adapter, and if I was harmed in any way. I answered everything truthfully, even telling her that I sometimes yanked the adapter out of the MacBook, and she said that its “best” to just grab it and unplug it instead. She continued on to tell me that I’d be getting a free updated (to avoid this fault) power adapter in the mail, in about 7-14 business days, and it would be no charge to me, but they did need my old one back.

TWO DAYS LATER , I woke up and there was a box from Apple of California on my doorstep, with a return shipping label attached, and instructions to place my old adapter in the box, call DHL, and tell them a day and time they could come pick up the bod from my doorstep.

And that was it, it took about 30 minutes on the phone, and a two day wait to get a brand new power adapter in the mail.

Below are the comparison pictures between the old (charred) and new adapter, notice the increased length of the “guard” over the wire at the top. Click them for larger, more detailed images.