News for Wednesday, 17 May 2006

Last night Apple made available for download an update of their System Management Control (SMC) firmwares for iMac (early 2006), MacBook Pro (15") and Mac Mini (early 2006).
According to the information from the Apple support, those updates aim at fixing bugs related to the boot.
Please refer to the installation advice in the respective page of your machine to know more.

As reported by many websites, the HD of the MacBook can be easily changed by an end-user, as it is already the case for the RAM modules. It is indeed the case as shown by those photos:
First, remove the battery:

Then, the metal part covering the access to both RAM slots and HD:

You can now see the HD and a white strip with which you can easily pull out the HD:

Here is the HD:

You need to ensure that replacement HD does not void the warranty (which is unlikely). Replacing the HD is quite easy to perform. The MacBook, as its brother the MBPro, uses 2.5" SATA HD.
Other photos of a MacBook disassembly are available from our friends: Kodawarisan.

JCJ

X. sent us this info concerning the future Apple Store in Montréal.

...just to let you know, talks began at the beginning of May and will continue until June. Apple is using a recruitment company (as they did for the Europe AppleCare in Cork), and in addition there will be a test on Apple. The test used a few years ago for entering AppleCare was a simple test with multiple choice questions about Apple, for example: Who is the boss at Apple or How many buttons are there on a Mac mouse, etc...
The Montréal Apple Store will open in the Carrefour Laval, which is a large commercial centre in the northwest of Montréal. Here is the website of the centre: www.carrefourlaval.ca
According to the floor plan of the shows that you can find on the site, there does not seem to be a large site available, the large sites being occupied by established retailers... Apple will either dislodge a retailer or a new larger site will be set up, or Apple will not open a large store as they intend to do in Toronto in the Eaton Centre...