It had surprised me when Lion came out that the installation was done by an "app", not as a bootable image. This is an unnecessary complication for those of us that need to maintain machines. Earlier, when updating a different machine, I had learned how painful this could be when the installation app destroyed the boot sector and I needed to reinstall Snow Leopard from DVD, and then upgrade that to a version of the system recent enough to run the Lion installer app. As will become apparent, had Lion come as a bootable image things might have gone more smoothly.
Lion and Mountain Lion installers contain images which can easily be converted to ISO:
I think the point isn't that is impossible to be able to do a clean install of an OS and apps (Time Machine included) you have already paid (premium!) for but the fact that it is non-trivial and very much involved - all the things for which the Apple system stood against. Most of the newer Apple products are a black box which cannot be fixed unless even the technically competent users take extra efforts(^).
And this is coming from Rob Pike[1].
edit: (^)Or you take it to the Apple Genius people, who just have the correct tools.
Yeah. I remember going through Snow L -> Lion. I wanted a clean system so had to make an ISO. Process reminded me a linux install from USB from 10 years back.
And I lost iPhoto. Because suddenly my Macbook Air stopped being eligible for free iPhoto.
Also, Lion did actually come on an installable USB drive (which is more expensive than the App store Installer app). Not Mountain Lion though. Creating bootable disks (USB or DVD) from the installer app is trivial.
Also his other point about losing all installers is actually a point in favor of the app store distribution model. They're always there unlike a physical disk which can go bad on you.
Time machine and Migration Assistant errors he rightly cribs about though. It is imperative that they work right.
All in all it's strange that one of the people who did seminal work in the early days of UNIX and C comes off looking like lost layperson. You'd expect him to be able to be able to deal with this way better.
(This does not in any way excuse anything he encountered. That is and will always remain inexcusable.)
Apple is aware of those problems and hard at work fixing them. All current Macs, for example, now come with Internet Recovery, meaning it is possible to boot them into the recovery manager (and from there it’s possible to run Disk Utility, the Terminal or the installer), even with a completely empty HDD. All the iLife apps you get with your Mac (and all apps you buy in the App Store) are automatically tied to your Apple ID, meaning you can download them as often as you want. You cannot even buy any software on CDs from Apple anymore (the lone exception to that is Logic Studio).
I assume (hope!) that all Time Machine bugs have been fixed, but do not know. It seems weird that even the latest version of OS X Lion would come with those bugs, so I’m not sure what’s going on there. At any rate, the experience he had is unacceptable.
I have a "non current" macbook air that I've been wanting to do a security clean install on forever but it doesn't qualify for internet recovery for some reason. Its a 2010 Macbook Air. How do I do a secure wipe of the drive and reinstall ML on this thing?
The reality is that Disk Utility lies. There is a recovery partition it hides from you. What you're describing is impossible without a relatively huge EFI partition, or net boot.
I think there's one thing he didn't try that would've saved him some work. The path he took was (skipping some early steps):
1. Backup under Snow Leopard via Time Machine
2. Replace drive
3. Install fresh copy of Snow Leopard
4. Upgrade to Lion
5. Attempt to use Migration Assistant to restore from the Time Machine backup taken in step (1).
This failed at step (5) and he ended up having to do lots of manual work to copy his data and apps out of the TM backup.
I think if he restored from the the Time Machine backup after replacing the drive, then attempted the Lion upgrade, he'd have been successful. Minimally, it would've been a combination of well tested scenarios. I'll bet not as much testing went into using Migration Assistant under Lion against Snow Leopard TM backups.
I'm not a fan of Time Machine. I just use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable version on a USB drive. If things go wrong I boot from it and clone it back to the internal drive.
I find it funny that he works for Google but doesn't know how to use it... half of those items he complained about could have been solved by a quick Google.
IMHO not having install media as the default option is a problem. It doesn't matter if all the media does is boot up a network stack and FTP it from somewhere and then run it but recovery scenarios aren't something you should have to twist yourself into a loop to solve.
One of the advantages of the App Store model is that software is (AFAIK) easily redownloaded and reinstalled, so much so that I know people who have re-bought Aperture (for $80) on the App Store just for the convenience (plus then it can go on multiple Macs).
Why Rob Pike wouldn't fork over $80 for Aperture and save himself the hassle is beyond me. You can say "it's the principle of the thing; I've already paid for it!" but really? What is your time worth?
iWork can be had on the App Store too. Photoshop obviously can't but Photoshop should be recoverable somehow (right?).
These days I have a box with the few disks I need (Win7, MS Office), I store my personal files on Dropbox and any media gets stored on a hard disk. If my Macbook Air got stolen or just died I'd be up and running within 2 hours of getting a new one.
The only real annoyance for me is changing what computer your iDevices sync to. THAT is a major PITA. If you are migrating machines it's not so bad (but harder than it should be). But otherwise you need to backup, wipe it and reinstall everything and even then you lose all your iOS folders and so forth.
I don't like the iMacs because they're not built for replacing hard disks (amongst other things). The Mac Mini however is. If this had happened to me I would've been shelling out money to avoid the hassle and the whole thing would've been over in a day or two.
The moral I get from this post isn't how Apple is making things harder than they need to be (which they clearly are): it's that you shouldn't get caught up on the small shit that doesn't matter.
>>>> Why Rob Pike wouldn't fork over $80 for Aperture and save himself the hassle is beyond me. You can say "it's the principle of the thing; I've already paid for it!" but really? What is your time worth?
Well, the trouble with that approach is that money votes.
When you pay this extra $80 you reinforce the behavior.
Less than my self-respect? The iterated prisoner's dilemma cautions us against letting someone profit by screwing us over. And the very idea of Rob friggin' Pike embracing learned helplessness is very depressing. Of course, so is the idea of him not having the source to his system, when he wrote quite a bit of it.
Newer Macs have Internet Recovery, which connects to Wi-Fi from EFI firmware and downloads a recovery image. So you can do exactly that, except without the install media...
I mentioned in another post - you can't always redownload. They don't keep older versions so you're screwed if you can't upgrade (I have an older machine stuck with Snow L).
When I had issues doing an install of Lion (I wanted Lion on an external HD before I upgraded to ML), I just drove out to an Apple Store and booted off one of their network images.
What Apple should really do is ship an app with OSX that lets you create recovery boot media (either on DVD, a thumb drive or a full on external HD). That would make things so much easier for everyone.
My Mac Pro running 10.8 has some issues such as applications with blank icons, pixelated icons, etc. I was told to boot into safe mode (which I tried about 5x) and it hangs at about 1/4 into it.
It seems pretty silly to include a "safe mode" that won't even allow someone to use it. I always end up holding the power switch in for a few seconds until I reboot into normal mode, which apparently includes having blank/pixelated icons :-/
Disk utility's repair disk and repair disk permissions functions, which are run as part of a safe boot, can take quite some time to complete their job.
I would just wait.
However, if you would really like to know where your boot is getting stuck, do a verbose boot, which is the same thing as a safe boot, except it replaces the gray Apple screen fairly (and usefully) verbosely.
It took weeks to get everything working again properly.
Because I could prove that I had paid for the software, Apple agreed to send me fresh installation disks for everything of theirs but Aperture, but that would take time. In fact, it took almost a month for the iWork DVD to arrive, which is unacceptably long. I even needed to call twice to remind them before the disks were shipped.
I'm also having one of those days ... I just updated Ubuntu on a newish machine and now have no sound and snow on the screen where video had been. Some days I hate computers and hope they're just a passing fad.
You seem like a smart guy, but heres an FYI: the Lion installation app, as well as ML installer, is just a wrapper application with preflight functions for the installer. This app wrapper contains the disk image of the Lion installer that functions just like any other disk image of OS X. To find the disk image for lion in the "Install Lion.app" app wrapper, you right click on the app and click show contents, find a resources folder and bam, there it is. The disk image can be burned to DVD or restored to a flash drive using disk utility. No excuses now, they didn't fail anyone. Time machine has never failed me. The only time things get dicey is when you encrypt, using vault or etc, large file sets or systems. All you needed to do from the first go is 1) back up to time machine, 2) install new drive, 3) restore the time machine backup with option at boot (snow leopard install disc might be required, but you scratched your disc, not apples fault), if disc is scratched for DVD install, there's a good chance you could have still restored a usable copy of it to a flash drive or a new DMG on your desktop using disk utility. 4) restore the disk image of lion from the install lion.app, the DMG you were unaware of and bitched so much about, to the flash drive and 5) upgrade your SL to lion using option at boot. Also, before backing up a dying drive, make sure to repair permissions using disk utility. Also, if you kept your old drive, you can buy an enclosure for 30$ and turn the drive into an external disk and restore your original installation. And not the time machine backup. Works every time even with dying unrepairable drives.. Cheers.
I have to laugh at hose of you who fault Rob for following anything but the most mainstream recourse in resolving his crisis as proof that he's to blame, didn't do his homework, etc. Consider this: despite the (somewhat strange, in my mind) phenomenon of various Plan 9 alumni (and Google employees in general) using Macbooks for daily use, the fact that these folks are proven experts at bringing up ports of their own research operating systems on new machines from just their hardware documentation should key you into the fact that these Apple products were purchased with all the expectations of an appliance! I.e., not things to be mucked around with, but the result of a commercial transaction that ought to be judged on its capacity to perform as advertised and supported if necessary.
Getting a closed, commercial product (with a baroque unix base) to bend over backwards to perform basic functions like backup and installation is not a Plan 9 user's of fun. I would hazard a guess that the greatest reason Rob got burned could have been the naive expectation that programs will perform their designated task simply and correctly?
Considering Apple's user-base, on the other hand, idiot proofing the system seems to be a much higher priority. Which is the main reason why I still don't understand why Plan 9 people can stand to use Macs.
After witnessing my dad's troubles with TimeMachine, I bought a copy of SuperDuper!.
It's amazing software, and it saved me once now, it's been only a year since I've been using it. Hard-drive fails? Plug in external one, and use your computer as if nothing happened.
I wanted to blog about something similar myself, but currently lack a blog. Apple's rejection of physical media is, I would argue, extremely harmful.
I have an old, 2008 Macbook (not Pro) 4,1. The old white plastic kind. Lion performs atrociously (at best) on it, so around half a year ago I installed Linux on it. Recently, I got around to buying a new laptop (a Lenovo), and wanted to restore OSX on the old Macbook in order to give it to family.
I figured off the bat I'd do a clean install of Mountain Lion. I have old Leopard installation media, but that's a dead upgrade path: you can't buy Snow Leopard media anymore, so you cannot upgrade it. Apple don't sell physical media for Mountain Lion either, so I went to a friend's house, logged into the Mac App store, purchased and downloaded Mountain Lion.
When I got home, the installer (which took an hour or so to image onto a USB stick) didn't work. I figured it might be balking on the HDD being Linux, so dd'd it. Nope. It turns out Mountain Lion is incompatible with my hardware.
This is where the vortex begins. I returned to my friend, and tried to get the Lion installer off the App Store (on my account), which I had previously purchased. No dice. Apple have removed Lion now that Mountain Lion is out.
I tried to install the copy of Snow Leopard my friend had. Not possible. As OEM media, it's got (very basic, admittedly) DRM onboard which restricts the installation to his hardware.
I tried to get the copy of Snow Leopard I had originally installed, when my previous employer had (kindly) purchased a stack of us personal copies alongside upgrades for work machines. Nope; they'd stopped using Macs and those were gone.
Being frustrated, I figured I'd install Leopard on the laptop and be done with it. Nope. The disc, it turns out, is scratched.
At this stage, I called Apple. I asked what I could do. I was advised I could purchase a physical copy of Lion off them, if I paid full price -- despite already having purchased it on the App Store. Frustrated, but at this stage just wanting to be rid of the device, I agreed. It turns out this was also not possible. Apple's support is in Australia, and NZ can't get the physical media (at least, I believe this to be the case; I may have conflated the issue on the phone with needing to get the media within a week).
The next day, I took the laptop to a Yoobee store (our Apple store equivalent). They told me they'd have to ship the laptop to the support centre to fix it.
So, to recap: I can't install Mountain Lion, because my hardware is too old. I can't get physical media for Snow Leopard or Lion, because Apple no longer sell it. I can't retrieve a copy of Lion from the app store and create my own, because Apple has removed it. I can't install Leopard, because my media is damaged (not Apple's fault) -- but even if I could, it's unsupported and with no physical media, there's no upgrade path. The only solution was to pay to ship the laptop off to a support centre. Ultimately, I was very lucky to find another friend on IRC who still had a Lion USB stick he'd imaged earlier, but the fact I needed to do this is... well, awful.
This is a _terrible_ customer support situation. I'll admit it's compounded by the fact I'm in New Zealand, and we have no Apple stores (fair enough: our entire population is less than several US cities), so support is harder to come by. I'll admit that, having installed Linux, I'm probably in somewhat of a minority. However, Apple's forced hardware deprecation, and removal of physical media, have made it almost literally impossible to restore a working copy of OSX on their own hardware.
Apple didn’t remove Lion from the App Store for me. I can download it without a problem. (It’s in my purchase tab, as is Mountain Lion. I’m running Mountain Lion.)
A bit of toothpaste diluted with water, and a gentle fingertip, may take that scratch out of your Leopard disc. Do less than you think is necessary, then stop and assess.
In part, it seems some people "have the touch" for such work. I've fixed up a few abused (by others) music CD's this way.
Eh, you bought a working Leopard system, you messed with it (removed the OS and installed an unsupported alternative), you broke the original media sometime over the next 4 years, and you didn't make a backup, and chose not to use any other backup copy, of which there are many millions floating around the world. It's not all Apple's fault here.
So I may come off as a grumpy old man, and I do sympathize with the op ... but in this day in age, it's only that much more important to keep manual backups of serial numbers, passwords, installers ...
I trust Apple, Windows and Linux enough to not ruin my life, but not enough to keep me 100% safe.
Passwords: Personal & Business kept in LastPass and a copy in KeePass (synced in dropbox to 3 devices). Client passwords stored in Keepass + manual copies on digital client folders (secured files) + notes in a locked safe.
Games + apps: Digital downloads loaded into Raid 5 array, backed up on server, backed up onto DVD. serials/usernames/download links saved in cloud mail server + keypass
Documents: Saved to external HD, saved to raid 5, rsynced to private VPS, rysynced to downstairs server.
There is absolutely no excuse for losing passwords and misplacing things like that. That part of the story I believe it all the ops fault.
All he needed to do, with an Internet connection, was power on holding Command+R and the Mac does the rest (formats the new drive and creates a recovery partition, then, boots to it, and one of the options there is to restore the entire computer from a Time Machine backup).
Done.
He made this needlessly complicated, and really should have just called AppleCare back, as they could have easily walked him through these steps.
This post is riveting. No really. Bewildering to say the least. As the post drags on and on the reoccurring "Thank you Apple" takes on an increasingly sarcastic tone.
Regardless of the author's fluency with computers (who really cares?) one can only marvel at the sheer absurdity in squandering the better part of a day (or was that several days?) mucking around with OS updates. Really? What a colossal waste of time.
He is not merely "fluent with computers." He co-created three operating systems and at least one programming language, including the OS Apple managed to hinder him from installing. If your process is beyond him, your process is very, very broken.
I recently had problems migrating to 10.8 so I just formatted my computer and reloaded the data parts. Still not fun having to reload apps but I'm at least glad that app reloading is simpler than what it used to be when I used Windows. I've tried to kee my computing as data-focused as possible...and hope that big commercial packages, like Photoshop, do their job in surviving OS upgrades
[+] [-] miles|13 years ago|reply
Lion and Mountain Lion installers contain images which can easily be converted to ISO:
http://tinyapps.org/blog/mac/201209130700_convert_dmg_to_iso...
and there are many more options and approaches:
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2628/install_os_x_from_dmg_fi...
http://0xced.blogspot.com/2009/08/booting-from-dmg.html
http://blogchampion.com/2011/03/12/how-to-create-a-bootable-...
[+] [-] 3am_hackernews|13 years ago|reply
And this is coming from Rob Pike[1].
edit: (^)Or you take it to the Apple Genius people, who just have the correct tools.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Pike
[+] [-] dchichkov|13 years ago|reply
And I lost iPhoto. Because suddenly my Macbook Air stopped being eligible for free iPhoto.
[+] [-] vvhn|13 years ago|reply
Also his other point about losing all installers is actually a point in favor of the app store distribution model. They're always there unlike a physical disk which can go bad on you.
Time machine and Migration Assistant errors he rightly cribs about though. It is imperative that they work right.
All in all it's strange that one of the people who did seminal work in the early days of UNIX and C comes off looking like lost layperson. You'd expect him to be able to be able to deal with this way better.
[+] [-] arrrg|13 years ago|reply
Apple is aware of those problems and hard at work fixing them. All current Macs, for example, now come with Internet Recovery, meaning it is possible to boot them into the recovery manager (and from there it’s possible to run Disk Utility, the Terminal or the installer), even with a completely empty HDD. All the iLife apps you get with your Mac (and all apps you buy in the App Store) are automatically tied to your Apple ID, meaning you can download them as often as you want. You cannot even buy any software on CDs from Apple anymore (the lone exception to that is Logic Studio).
I assume (hope!) that all Time Machine bugs have been fixed, but do not know. It seems weird that even the latest version of OS X Lion would come with those bugs, so I’m not sure what’s going on there. At any rate, the experience he had is unacceptable.
[+] [-] tolmasky|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drivebyacct2|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] js2|13 years ago|reply
1. Backup under Snow Leopard via Time Machine
2. Replace drive
3. Install fresh copy of Snow Leopard
4. Upgrade to Lion
5. Attempt to use Migration Assistant to restore from the Time Machine backup taken in step (1).
This failed at step (5) and he ended up having to do lots of manual work to copy his data and apps out of the TM backup.
I think if he restored from the the Time Machine backup after replacing the drive, then attempted the Lion upgrade, he'd have been successful. Minimally, it would've been a combination of well tested scenarios. I'll bet not as much testing went into using Migration Assistant under Lion against Snow Leopard TM backups.
[+] [-] johnpowell|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akshaym|13 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Pike
[+] [-] dubcanada|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Krylez|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cletus|13 years ago|reply
One of the advantages of the App Store model is that software is (AFAIK) easily redownloaded and reinstalled, so much so that I know people who have re-bought Aperture (for $80) on the App Store just for the convenience (plus then it can go on multiple Macs).
Why Rob Pike wouldn't fork over $80 for Aperture and save himself the hassle is beyond me. You can say "it's the principle of the thing; I've already paid for it!" but really? What is your time worth?
iWork can be had on the App Store too. Photoshop obviously can't but Photoshop should be recoverable somehow (right?).
These days I have a box with the few disks I need (Win7, MS Office), I store my personal files on Dropbox and any media gets stored on a hard disk. If my Macbook Air got stolen or just died I'd be up and running within 2 hours of getting a new one.
The only real annoyance for me is changing what computer your iDevices sync to. THAT is a major PITA. If you are migrating machines it's not so bad (but harder than it should be). But otherwise you need to backup, wipe it and reinstall everything and even then you lose all your iOS folders and so forth.
I don't like the iMacs because they're not built for replacing hard disks (amongst other things). The Mac Mini however is. If this had happened to me I would've been shelling out money to avoid the hassle and the whole thing would've been over in a day or two.
The moral I get from this post isn't how Apple is making things harder than they need to be (which they clearly are): it's that you shouldn't get caught up on the small shit that doesn't matter.
[+] [-] dchichkov|13 years ago|reply
Well, the trouble with that approach is that money votes. When you pay this extra $80 you reinforce the behavior.
[+] [-] prodigal_erik|13 years ago|reply
Less than my self-respect? The iterated prisoner's dilemma cautions us against letting someone profit by screwing us over. And the very idea of Rob friggin' Pike embracing learned helplessness is very depressing. Of course, so is the idea of him not having the source to his system, when he wrote quite a bit of it.
[+] [-] comex|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aidos|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhenr18|13 years ago|reply
What Apple should really do is ship an app with OSX that lets you create recovery boot media (either on DVD, a thumb drive or a full on external HD). That would make things so much easier for everyone.
[+] [-] millerized|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] 0xC3|13 years ago|reply
It seems pretty silly to include a "safe mode" that won't even allow someone to use it. I always end up holding the power switch in for a few seconds until I reboot into normal mode, which apparently includes having blank/pixelated icons :-/
[+] [-] rangibaby|13 years ago|reply
I would just wait.
However, if you would really like to know where your boot is getting stuck, do a verbose boot, which is the same thing as a safe boot, except it replaces the gray Apple screen fairly (and usefully) verbosely.
[+] [-] languagehacker|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aprescott|13 years ago|reply
Did you read the whole thing?
It took weeks to get everything working again properly.
Because I could prove that I had paid for the software, Apple agreed to send me fresh installation disks for everything of theirs but Aperture, but that would take time. In fact, it took almost a month for the iWork DVD to arrive, which is unacceptably long. I even needed to call twice to remind them before the disks were shipped.
[+] [-] jordanthoms|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smoyer|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] millerized|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nicklaforge|13 years ago|reply
Getting a closed, commercial product (with a baroque unix base) to bend over backwards to perform basic functions like backup and installation is not a Plan 9 user's of fun. I would hazard a guess that the greatest reason Rob got burned could have been the naive expectation that programs will perform their designated task simply and correctly?
Considering Apple's user-base, on the other hand, idiot proofing the system seems to be a much higher priority. Which is the main reason why I still don't understand why Plan 9 people can stand to use Macs.
[+] [-] chm|13 years ago|reply
It's amazing software, and it saved me once now, it's been only a year since I've been using it. Hard-drive fails? Plug in external one, and use your computer as if nothing happened.
Their "smart update" feature is very useful.
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription...
[+] [-] frio|13 years ago|reply
I have an old, 2008 Macbook (not Pro) 4,1. The old white plastic kind. Lion performs atrociously (at best) on it, so around half a year ago I installed Linux on it. Recently, I got around to buying a new laptop (a Lenovo), and wanted to restore OSX on the old Macbook in order to give it to family.
I figured off the bat I'd do a clean install of Mountain Lion. I have old Leopard installation media, but that's a dead upgrade path: you can't buy Snow Leopard media anymore, so you cannot upgrade it. Apple don't sell physical media for Mountain Lion either, so I went to a friend's house, logged into the Mac App store, purchased and downloaded Mountain Lion.
When I got home, the installer (which took an hour or so to image onto a USB stick) didn't work. I figured it might be balking on the HDD being Linux, so dd'd it. Nope. It turns out Mountain Lion is incompatible with my hardware.
This is where the vortex begins. I returned to my friend, and tried to get the Lion installer off the App Store (on my account), which I had previously purchased. No dice. Apple have removed Lion now that Mountain Lion is out.
I tried to install the copy of Snow Leopard my friend had. Not possible. As OEM media, it's got (very basic, admittedly) DRM onboard which restricts the installation to his hardware.
I tried to get the copy of Snow Leopard I had originally installed, when my previous employer had (kindly) purchased a stack of us personal copies alongside upgrades for work machines. Nope; they'd stopped using Macs and those were gone.
Being frustrated, I figured I'd install Leopard on the laptop and be done with it. Nope. The disc, it turns out, is scratched.
At this stage, I called Apple. I asked what I could do. I was advised I could purchase a physical copy of Lion off them, if I paid full price -- despite already having purchased it on the App Store. Frustrated, but at this stage just wanting to be rid of the device, I agreed. It turns out this was also not possible. Apple's support is in Australia, and NZ can't get the physical media (at least, I believe this to be the case; I may have conflated the issue on the phone with needing to get the media within a week).
The next day, I took the laptop to a Yoobee store (our Apple store equivalent). They told me they'd have to ship the laptop to the support centre to fix it.
So, to recap: I can't install Mountain Lion, because my hardware is too old. I can't get physical media for Snow Leopard or Lion, because Apple no longer sell it. I can't retrieve a copy of Lion from the app store and create my own, because Apple has removed it. I can't install Leopard, because my media is damaged (not Apple's fault) -- but even if I could, it's unsupported and with no physical media, there's no upgrade path. The only solution was to pay to ship the laptop off to a support centre. Ultimately, I was very lucky to find another friend on IRC who still had a Lion USB stick he'd imaged earlier, but the fact I needed to do this is... well, awful.
This is a _terrible_ customer support situation. I'll admit it's compounded by the fact I'm in New Zealand, and we have no Apple stores (fair enough: our entire population is less than several US cities), so support is harder to come by. I'll admit that, having installed Linux, I'm probably in somewhat of a minority. However, Apple's forced hardware deprecation, and removal of physical media, have made it almost literally impossible to restore a working copy of OSX on their own hardware.
[+] [-] kalleboo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arrrg|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pasbesoin|13 years ago|reply
In part, it seems some people "have the touch" for such work. I've fixed up a few abused (by others) music CD's this way.
[+] [-] thatjoshguy|13 years ago|reply
Yes you can, providing you call Apple.
[+] [-] lurker14|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] piotr_krzyzek|13 years ago|reply
I trust Apple, Windows and Linux enough to not ruin my life, but not enough to keep me 100% safe.
Passwords: Personal & Business kept in LastPass and a copy in KeePass (synced in dropbox to 3 devices). Client passwords stored in Keepass + manual copies on digital client folders (secured files) + notes in a locked safe.
Games + apps: Digital downloads loaded into Raid 5 array, backed up on server, backed up onto DVD. serials/usernames/download links saved in cloud mail server + keypass
Documents: Saved to external HD, saved to raid 5, rsynced to private VPS, rysynced to downstairs server.
There is absolutely no excuse for losing passwords and misplacing things like that. That part of the story I believe it all the ops fault.
[+] [-] Tmmrn|13 years ago|reply
http://www.linuxgenuineadvantage.org/
> Did you wake up this morning and say "I wish someone would figure out a way to let me do less with my computer"?
[+] [-] krrrh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] homosaur|13 years ago|reply
#2. You are wrong. http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac-core-2...
[+] [-] dmishe|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mproud|13 years ago|reply
All he needed to do, with an Internet connection, was power on holding Command+R and the Mac does the rest (formats the new drive and creates a recovery partition, then, boots to it, and one of the options there is to restore the entire computer from a Time Machine backup).
Done.
He made this needlessly complicated, and really should have just called AppleCare back, as they could have easily walked him through these steps.
[+] [-] Djonckheere|13 years ago|reply
Regardless of the author's fluency with computers (who really cares?) one can only marvel at the sheer absurdity in squandering the better part of a day (or was that several days?) mucking around with OS updates. Really? What a colossal waste of time.
[+] [-] prodigal_erik|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danso|13 years ago|reply