You can download the new updated version for the low, low, price of FREE! Click the image in the sidebar to the right or click this Link.

If you would like to donate to the development please feel free to do so.

http://www.knoxware.org/donate/

Enjoy!

Video after the jump.

Following up with parts 3, 2, and 1 - I finally received my replacement TruePower battery from FastMac.  I can honestly say I probably wouldn’t have this battery by now if it hadn’t been for me E-mailing the utter crap out FastMac.  Let me recap just in case you missed something, or if you’d rather not read all 3 parts.  Back in June of 2009 I had an issue with a MacBook Pro battery from FastMac. The battery lost all of it’s cycles, dropped it’s charge, and then came back to life. When the battery came back to life, several cells died, they became swollen and dead. This resulted in an unbelievable amount of power loss.  I contacted FastMac to get a replacement since I was under warranty.  This was in the last two weeks of June.  They told me there would be a back-order until the beginning of July 2009, roughly three weeks, FastMac informed me. This was fine with me. I was out of town, so two weeks went by. I shipped the package out, they received the package one week after I had shipped it.  This was the cap of the three week waiting period.  So I expected a quick turn around and to have my battery replaced shortly.

Things did not go as planned. I was informed that the batteries were on back-order yet again. The date got pushed back to the middle of July, so I waited.  Middle of July rolls around, nothing, no word, no updates, nothing at all. I inquired about the battery. I was told I shouldn’t expect the battery until the end of July.  To make a long story short, FastMac kept pushing the date back further and further.  I was told the same thing in August. “Batteries will be here at the middle of August”, “The batteries will be here at the end of August”, and then I was told I should expect the batteries within the first week of September 2009.  Guess what.  The date was pushed back, yet again.  This time they left the middle of September out of their charade, they skipped right to the end of September.

By this time, I have had enough.  I sent a very nasty E-mail on September 9th 2009.  I demanded a refund and an answer as to why my E-mails went unanswered and as to why I have been waiting since June / July for a replacement battery.  I received no answer, so a week later I re-sent the E-mail. I sent it a couple times just to make sure FastMac received it.

On September 11th I received a reply to my E-Mail.  Here is the reply.

I have 10 batteries set aside for ‘emergency use’.  Let’s deem you an emergency!

Wow! That answered a lot!  – Within minutes I received another E-mail. This time from Fedex stating that a package had been shipped. That package was shipped by FastMac. I should expect the package on September 15th.   September 15th rolled around, I received the package.  The packaged contained a brand new sealed 2009 FastMac TruePower battery for a 15” MacBook Pro! – I was undoubtedly surprised and excited at the same time.

The thorn in my side was finally out! – I put the battery in the MacBook Pro. The battery had a full charge. I calibrated the battery and all has been good so far. I have noticed I don’t seem to get as much life as I did with the previous FastMac TruePower batteries, but it’s better than no battery at all.  I get about 3 hours and 45 minutes with the brightness at 4 bars, when the brightness is down to 1 bar I get around 4 hours and 25 minutes.  This is pretty good to me.  You can easily get through a movie or two, especially if you don’t have anything else running in the background.

How long with this battery last? I have no clue. I am not holding my breath. No one can truly say how long this battery will last and how long it will be before I have to send this one in for a replacement. I am crossing my fingers in hopes that I won’t have to send this one back.

Moral of the story: Bug the shit out of them until you get service you deserve.  You have all the right in the world to complain about poor service and shoddy replacement programs. Sorry for the profanity, but damn. FastMac has lost one customer. I will not be buying any more of their products.  I would have bailed the 2nd time that I had to replace my batter, but I didn’t feel that I should have to spend more money on an OEM Apple battery when FastMac claims their batteries are better. You know?

I have nothing more to say really.  I have 6 cycles on the battery right now and it seems to be holding a good charge, so we’ll see how things go.  I hope that all of you out there get your replacements. You deserve them!

Also, remember. Sometimes you really do get what you paid for. Next time, you better just pony up the cash and buy an official battery from the manufacturer of your computer.  Don’t cut corners because you’ll just end up with an avalanche of sawdust.

More images after the jump.

Click the images to enlarge.

iPod Touch preferences – OS 3.

iPod Touch – OS 3.1 App Management

http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

^ here’s an ugly image for a ugly situation.

Following up with part 2 of the battery fiasco.  I have not had any luck contacting FastMac by e-mail.  There have not been any updates about the whereabouts of the replacement battery  since my last post. FastMac hasn’t contacted me since writing part 2.  I called FastMac today to see what’s going on.  They actually answered!  FastMac told me they are expecting a shipment in the first week(s) of September.  The fellow that I spoke with said it could be as early as this week. I, for one, highly doubt it.  We’ll give them the benifit of the doubt though. I know this post really is not anything more than a status update.  I thought I would let you all know the status of the battery as of today.

Apple decided to share the matte goodness with the 15-inch MacBook Pro unibody. Before today the anti-glare matte finish was only available on the 17-inch MacBook Pro.  The matte finish will cost you an extra $50 bones, to me it’s worth it.

I am finding it hard to resist a new unibody MacBook Pro now. My pre-unibody is still serving me well though, so I guess I shouldn’t jump on the uni right now. This is still good news to know, just in case that glossy finish was scaring you off. I know it scared me off!

Technically there’s not really a pt.1 to this post. For the sake of discussion we’ll refer to the review I posted on December 20th 2008 as part 1. I am having yet another issue with the FastMac batteries. In my review I praised FastMac for being very punctual and generally on the ball with everything.

After writing the review, some folks left comments expressing some concern about FastMac’s service. I defended FastMac at first. Sometimes one or two bad transactions happen. Now that I have done more research, my views have changed. The stories from the comments are starting to hit pretty close to home.

If you recall back in December 2008 when I wrote the review I just had a MacBook Pro battery replaced by FastMac because the one I had purchased in October of 2008 mysteriously died after only having it for two weeks. I thought at first the issue was due to me neglecting the battery while it sat on my desk with a 36% charge.  Now I think that was not the case at all. I firmly believe it is due to the batteries being cheaply made.  The reason I have changed my views are because I am currently in the process of replacing yet another FastMac Truepower battery.

After using the newly replaced battery for about 3 and a 1/2 months, things started to go sour again. Capacity started dwindling. I was no longer getting 4-5 hours of  battery life. My running time was around 2.5 hours, if I got lucky.  This was very concerning.  Such a large drop in capacity in such a short time shouldn’t happen with brand new batteries like this! I became a little concerned that maybe I would have to replace the battery soon.   Boy was I right!  Fast forward to June 2009. Two months after I started losing capacity.  The battery completely died on me one night. The battery would not respond to power or even pushing the charge indicator. There seemed to be no hope in bringing the thing back to life. The battery was completely dead for at least two straight days.  I let the battery sit in my MacBook Pro for a day while being plugged in.  The battery finally took charge after about 16 + hours in the MacBook Pro.

I was thoroughly excited! I have a working battery again, I thought. It’s ALIVE!!! ~ I was excited. Then things took yet another turn for the worst. The battery started swelling shortly after coming back to life. One of the cells died. Battery life dropped even more, by this time I was getting 45 – 20 minutes on the battery.  Great, I thought. Another FastMac battery gave it up to the ghost.

Bloated FastMac Battery.

Just like our commenter Neopium stated :

The battery health started to decline very rapidly (I lost 10% per week during a month). I’m now at 48% of battery life. The aluminum cover starts to unstick and the battery seems to inflate a little.

Everything Neopium said in his / her comment is exactly what has happened to my battery.  Great, another dead battery.  What’s the next step? Contact FastMac of course. Since these batteries have a 1 year warranty, I figured it’d be a breeze like last time. Wrong I was, very wrong indeed.  I shot off an e-mail to FastMac on June 20th 09.  I received a reply three days later. Not very fast, especially considering the last time I had an issue I received a response almost immediately.

FastMac told me their batteries were out of stock because they are moving their manufacturing facility from China to the US, they said it would take about three weeks before they recieved a shipment and could ship out my replacement.  I was fine with this information, I was out of town at the time anyways. I told them I would have the battery shipped out in a week.  On July 9th 2009, I shipped the defunct battery to FastMac. I notified them the battery had been shipped.  I didn’t receive any confirmation. After two weeks I contacted FastMac to see if they had received the battery and to see if there were and updates to the repair. I finally received a reply on the 25th of July.  FastMac told me I wouldn’t get my replacement until the end of August! This is of course after they told me 3 weeks wait time, 4 weeks beforehand.

I tried to ask why they  were delayed  and why it was going to be such a long wait. They never responded. I also asked them if I could just get a refund, a used battery, back stock battery, or something, anything at all…. Guess what? You guessed it, no response.  I explained that this was a real inconvenience and that I was told 4.5 weeks prior that I would have to wait for 3 weeks only.  I completely understand delays due to moving facilities, that’s understandable. To be honest though,  I am not buying it. Given their recent track record for screwing their customers over. I firmly believe that this is not an isolated case. The comments on my review speak for themselves, a quick google turns up many more issues with customer support, delays, back orders, etc. Their batteries are always out of stock. Now they won’t reply to e-mails during regular business hours. What gives?  This will be my fourth Truepower battery from FastMac. I am not a happy camper.  The last three have all died, lost cells, and life, shortly after receiving them. Did I mention the battery that I just sent only had 25 cycles on it?

I doubt I will be buying any more products from FastMac.  The batteries are flawed, they live a short life and they do not seem to be as structurally sound as Apples OEM battery. I have had better experience with stock batteries.  I don’t really know why I originally opted to get a battery from FastMac. I guess because they were $29.00 cheaper.  In the long run though, I guess you get what you pay for.

Aside from crap-tastic batteries. These t-shirts do look tempting.

FastMac, if you are reading this. I wear a L or XL – depending on brand of course.

My new rating for this experience is:

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

I will update as things go from here on out. Comment about your experience if you’d like.

MacBook Transforms Into Mini Jet – Watch more Funny Videos

For full detail check out the source site

• Copy and Paste : I think we’ll see copy and paste this time around. Everyone who owns an iPhone has been down that beaten path of having no way to copy snippets of text and pasting them in another application. I think Apple will finally make it happen.

• Live search : I think we might see some type of Spotlight integration. This would allow us to search all around the iPhone OS for contacts and the like. This would give Apple some definite fire power over the Palm Pre search functions.

• Push Notification : Mobile Me is running quite a bit better now. I think Apple will at least mention push notification. They haven’t mentioned it in quite some time. I think now is the time to announce the push notification fixes

What I’d like to see.

• Multi Tasking : I don’t see it happening right now. I would like to see the ability to run multiple applications. Just think, you could double tap the home button and it would bring up a menu that allows you to scroll through the open applications and select them, close them, etc. This would be nice for when you’re e-mailing and you need to jump back to the browser, or maybe if you’re sending IM’s and you need to refer to documentation without closing your chat session.

• Artist Artwork in iTunes / iPod : There is one thing that bugs me about the iPhone. The iPod management. I dislike how the content is arranged. I would like the ability to set album artwork to artists, much like in iTunes 8. I would like the ability to set album artwork per artist and have that said artwork displayed in the artist view. If you go to the albums view in the iPhone now, you’ll see what I mean. I think this would help the overall appearance whilst browsing for media. I would also like to see other view options available in iTunes. I want to be able to use the browse pane. Why can we not have that on the iPhone?

• MMS : There is allot of hubub going on about MMS. I don’t think Apple is going to roll the announcement out quite yet. I think it’d be nice, but I’m not sure if they will right now. I think they should though.

• Off line Mapping : I would love the ability to view my maps and directions off line. I think this one leans more toward the iPod Touch. I would like to be able to store different maps, not just directions, but I’d like the ability to view maps in offline mode. Right now you can only save maps that are in temporary memory. I would like the ability to download said maps and directions for offline viewing. The data isn’t too big to store offline, so I don’t see what the problem would be. I know this won’t happen, ever. I can dream though, right?

• Turn By Turn Navigation : The iPhone has GPS, Maps, and internet. Why can’t we have turn by turn? There are 3rd party developers creating turn by turn. I think we should be able to get this at a low cost. Who knows. I love the form factor of the iPhone, GPS works great. I’ve had my butt by the Maps application, turn by turn would really cut the cake for me.

• Better app management : As we install more and more applications the screen gets cluttered, we need a way to better organize our applications.

• iTunes app store queue : I don’t know how many times I will be searching for an application or two and I find several that I would like to download. I would love the ability to put downloads into a queue and download them all at once. JailBroken iPhones can do it, so why can’t we have a download queue natively?

I think that’s all for right now. I am off to read the liveblogs.

UPDATE

The keynote is over and the web has been flooded with iPhone 3.0 news. Now it’s my time to see how right predictions were.

What I got right

• Copy and Paste

• Spotlight Search

• Push Notification

What I got Wrong

• MMS

• Turn by Turn Navigation – Apple didn’t release any turn by turn, but we are now able to use it in 3rd party applications

I was able to get quite a few predictions right. I was rather surprised at some of the announcements. Apple really delivered in this update. I still wish there was better iTunes management on the phone. I would love to see an app queue , artwork of artists, and a few other things. I can’t complain too much though. Apple has addressed pretty much everything else that people were wanting.

You can catch the keynote here.

http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/0903lajkszg/event/index.html