I haven’t completely stopped my Macbook Pro from freezing, but I have all but (least it has happened only once since I worked out what might be happening.)

Write this on all over the Apple forums: it was Safari that did it.

Well, I fib a bit, because I suspect that it’s not Safari alone but multitasking full stop, but it’s clear that Safari causes the most issues.

If I have Firefox and Safari open at the same time (which I usually do), the computer freezes. If I have Safari open alone the computer freezes (but not as quickly), if I have Firefox open alone….nothing happens (although it did freeze once in maybe 2-3 hours.

The key indicator is that when Safari is open, the computer starts to heat up, and by that I mean from 38 to over 60 C in the space of minutes (and with fans at various settings, I’ve tried them all.) Firefox doesn’t cause the heat spike.

Go figure. Either way: Apple, please hurry up and fix this.

I’d seen the new flat key Mac keyboards before, but after 25 years of typing I liked having raised keys. However I wasn’t impressed by the non-Apple keyboards at StreetWise (a great Apple reseller in Hawthorn) so I purchased one of the flat keyboards instead.

Not the wireless one, because bizarrely Apple did away with the numeric keypad on that, and I need a numeric keypad, 2 years at Bankers Trust in 94-95 where I spent a couple of hours a day data entering numbers into Excel means today I can enter numbers with 99% accuracy blindfolded using the numeric keypad. Hence I also rarely enter numbers using the numbers on the Qwerty side.

First let me say a couple of days in: best keyboard I’ve ever owned. The flat keys make typing easier. I’m not sure if it’s the angle, the need to press them less, what ever it is….but I’m typing more quickly and my fingers are taking less stress.

But there was a catch: the F9 and F11 keys weren’t working.

F11 is Expose and F9 clears the Windows off the screen. Combined they are two of my favorite features of a Mac, and I use both constantly.

Stranger still, unlike my Macbook Pro, the new keyboard doesn’t have a function key, so that wasn’t the trick.

Hit Google, and here’s the answer if you ever get caught: F11 is now F3, and F9 is Command+F3. There’s even a little Expose graphic drawn on F3.

I went down the street today (Burke Road, Camberwell, VIC) for some lunch with the family and some time in Borders, and I kept seeing the above poster. Someone had come along and plastered it at the various places posters are frequently posted (construction site boarding mostly). But that’s it: An Apple and Pirates cross bones, the Apple Pirate poster with nothing more than the picture above. Does anyone know what it is suppose to mean? a statement about the iPhone perhaps (I’m presuming the timing isn’t a coincidence, and they weren’t posted last week).