Roger L. Simon: Okay, now I'm <em>really</em> in the "Apple Cult"

After literally decades of resistance because PCs were more business-like, had more software and (okay, I admit it) were cheaper, I finally succumbed to the Cult of Macs. This coincided with the beginning of Pajamas. Our tech folks were Macaholics and wanted the company on the system.

I resisted for about ten minutes. Sheryl had always been on Macs and wanted our household on them. She made the usual arguments - they're simpler to use, they're more attractive (undeniable), they don't get viruses (usually) and they don't break down.

Exactly four days before I am supposed to go to Washington DC for an important week of business, my MacBook went stone, cold dead. Actually not completely dead, but more than dead enough. All I could get was a white screen. This had never happened to me on a PC. (Well it sort of happened, but never quite this suddenly, without warning.) With the aid of my Mac Guru (yes, unlike my doctor, he does house calls), I was able to get some diagnostics, but that was about it. I probably have a hard drive failure and, according to my guru, the info on it is not easily retrievable. Fortunately it is mostly backed up. I'm typing this on an iMac with much of the same data and, yes, I'm a good boy with a firewire drive who (mostly) remembers to use it. Of course, there are several things I didn't back up, but tant pis pour moi.

But speaking of French, via the Apple "concierge" (do they think they're running Ritz Carltons?) I was able to obtain an appointment with one of the"geniuses" at the Apple Store at the Grove. I will know more at 10:15, but do not hope for the best.

So, am I angry at Apple for causing me mucho inconvenience and wrecking a good part of the rest of my work week? Not much. I love my Macs. And I covet all the new ones. I am now officially a member of the cult, waiting for Lord Steve to reveal the next great product with its immaculate design, even if it breaks down in six months - the age of my MacBook.

Comments

Comments require registration through TypeKey. Abusive remarks may be deleted. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of Roger Simon.

Computers break down. No matter what. They are like cars...no matter how fine an automobile you have, it has moving parts that will eventually fail.

It sounds like Apple treated you right when the thing broke...no call to some guy in India who can barely speak English, but an appointment with a real person you can talk to face to face in your own city.

I have been a member of the Apple cult for over eight years. Steve Jobs is a god and must be prayed to each and every morning. There is also considerable evidence that Bill Gates is the anti-Christ.

I am sorry, but you cannot learn the secret handshake for at least another five years. One must earn this privilege.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who have suffered a hard drive failure, and those who are going to...

By coincidence, I had the hard drive on my power book fail last week (exactly the same symptoms you experienced) during the very moment I was transferring its data to the MacBook Pro 2.33 GHz machine I'm writing you on. I had backed up all data just before the transfer (I do a complete backup every week; I have had numerous hard drive failures), and so nothing, thank G_d, was lost.

You have almost certainly had a hard drive failure. There is a fine outfit in Marin I can direct you to who may be able (if anyone can) to save some or all of your data.

And speaking of the iPhone, go here, run through the whole demo, and tell me you're not going to want one!

Blaming Apple for your hard drive is sort of like blaming GM for your tire blowout. Yes, it did come with the purchase, so they have something to do with it, but still, Goodyear is the real culprit...

Back up, back up, back up some more. Back up onsite, back up offsite, back up out of your house in case it burns down, back up out of the same city in case al-Qaeda nukes it.

If your novel's on your hard drive, burn it onto a disc and give it to your wife to stick in a drawer at her office, and email what you've worked on each night to your Google Mail account.

If you're taking digital pictures and that's the only record of your child's childhood, burn them to a disc and send them to Grandma out of state with instructions to keep them all in a drawer somewhere.

Back up, back up, back up, and disperse. Film history teaches that a fairly good way to ensure something survives is to protect it, but an excellent way to ensure it does is to stash copies in attics and obscure film exchanges all over the world.

Oh, and speaking of old saws, what's the joke about an engineer from Microsoft and an engineer from GM? The guy from Microsoft says, "If the computer industry made cars, by now they'd go a million miles an hour and cost $500." And the auto engineer says, "Yes, and once a year the hard drive would crash, killing everyone."

you have a free backup program from Apple in your Applications folder. It's called, 'Backup' (catchy, no?). Run it and have it copy your entire Home folder to your firewire backup drive on a daily basis. It runs in the background and you can set it to run at 4 am or whenever.

Backup will do a full backup the first time it copies your Home folder, and thereafter an incremental backup (just the stuff that changed or is new).

If your computer ever crashes again, you do a 'restore' using the Backup program.

As Mgmax says, backup, backup, backup, and backup some more. The more important the file is (e.g., your new Moses Wines novel -- and you are

The first time I visited the darkside was 1980, I voted for Reagan and my lifelong Dem friends thought I had lost my mind.

In 2002, after 15 years of Apple dedication, starting with the Apple 2e and then Macs, I bought a Dell PC. Now, not only was I shunned by the Donks but also by the San Diego Mac Users Group.

I was so pissed off at blowing out two Powerbooks (the well known logic board issue)within four years and collectively worth %8,000, that I cussed Steve Jobs and have never regretted leaving the Mac monastery. I have been computer disease free ever since.

Wrong on both counts. There are no (as of yet) viruses in the wild for OS X. And all computers are vulnerable to breaking down. Macs too. Now, they're pretty high-quality in how they are made, but bullet-proof? Nope.

There are still zero viruses/worms for OSX, only a couple purely theoretical exploits.

And of course Macs will fail, sometimes more than average. But while PC users like their computers, Mac users *love* their computers. You have caught that disease now. ;-)

Good luck getting it repaired. Should be no problem, you will get it back in about a week.

Only thing I would recommend it find another place to take it then an Apple Store. I don't think they do a very good job with there diagnostic checks, at least the one in the Brea Mall didn't.

I took a G5 iMac to them and after a quick look they said the Logic Board needed to be replaced. No big deal as I have the extended Apple Care (which is a Must with Apple computers I've found, having two iMac go down on me). When I went to picked it up it still didn't boot when I asked to check it. Thank goodness I asked, as they didn't want to at first. I Left it with them and it turned out that the Hard drive failed as well. Oh and they replaced the HD before contacting me so I had to demand the give me the old one back so I could see if data recovery was feasible (it wasn't but I wanted to check). Nothing important lost, just the kids already turned in homework.

Less than a month later the DVD failed. Now it's possible that the DVD may not have been easy to catch but a HD failing right after they replaced the Logic Card tells me they may have replaced the wrong component the first time, or at the very least the didn't do a full diagnostic check. I'm just glad it cost me anything except the time.

Still, I'll buy another Mac.... I've been drinking the Kool-Aid for over 12 years and I ain't gonna stop now :D

While I agree with Jamie Irons that Bill Gates is probably the ant-christ, I traded in my Mac for Windows a while back with no regrets. Apple is too proprietary and if I were ever going to once again paint myself into a PC (or laptop) corner I would probably go with Linux on a standard operating system (my familiarity with UNIX type Systems would make it tolerable) but Windows has made it so easy so I doubt I ever will as the older I get the less sway my geek meter has over me.

I'll add that there is no reason to knock any system (not that anyone has) because they all easily do what we need them too.

Joseph writes the closer in his last sentence. I just add that my first computer was a Mac, circa 1994 (no idea what model, but not inexpensive.) Tried it for three weeks and took it back. Counterintuitive. Things have changed I suppose. I don't care for S. Jobs. Irrational, but so what.

Jamie: re the iPhone. I'll tell you that I, for one, do not one want. Sir Steve of Jobs made it a Cingular-only phone. I do not do business with Cingular. Their customer service is lower than the bottom end of a beached whale. They cheated me out of $78 in Free-2-Go time.

What is proprietary about apple...these days they use standard PC hardware, with standard Intel processors, standard SATA hard drives and optical drives, and standard video cards...basically, the only thing that makes a Mac a Mac hardware wise is the unique design of the cases.

The operating system is proprietary, but only to the same degree that Windows is. You can run Windows on Apple hardware without any problems, and you can run MacOS in non-Apple hardware as well (although this is technically illegal).

I'm knew to the Mac environment and figured I need to back up my MacBook, however there's no program in my Applications folder (or the Utilities subfolder) called "Backup". Nor can I find such a program on Apple's download page.

Backup is not a free program, as far as I can tell. It's available to .Mac members, and the minimal cost seems to be $99/year. The membership gives you 1GB of storage on the internet, although you may be able to back up to other locations using the program.

By "knew" I meant "new", of course. My fat little fingers got ahead of me again.

Regarding backups, it appears that one can create a "burn folder" and then drag files and folders into it, but the folder seems to exist on the same hard drive as the OS, which sort of defeats the purpose. I guess one is supposed to use the image to burn CDs, but that's sort of klunky. And paying $100 per annum to used the Backup program, and to get 1GB of proprietary storage on the internet seems like a bit of a ripoff to me.

I'm becoming disillusioned about Macs. The only real reason I bought the MacBook is that outlining programs NoteTaker don't seem to be available yet in the Windows world, and they're quite useful. The backup program in Windows seems a lot less circuitous in its operation and application. And, it's actually free rather than just purportedly free (once the OS is purchased, of course).

It might be that the only way to easily backup a MacBook is to install Linux on the same drive, and then just use that to backup the Mac domain.

March 14, 2007: Okay, now I'm really in the "Apple Cult"

Comments

Post a comment

Email This Post