Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

As advanced as Mac's are, and "The power to save the world," marketing campaigns aside, they have not, as yet, acquired an anti-gravity feature; which would seem to be necessary to have precluded the difficulty you presently find yourself in.

I do extend my sympathies. It does suck when stuff that you need to get things done breaks .

Just a side note: Apple doesn't charge for its overnight shipping on repairs. That's all.

Ah, that's terrible. I heard that despite your hardware failure, you went to give a brilliant keynote at the conference.

This is the second time I've heard about a speaker dropping their laptop right before a keynote. The last one was Mena Trott at NTC Conference and she was using Mac. She even brought her MAC with a trashed screen along to show the audience.

Dear Side Note: Just a side note to your side note: IBM also doesn't charge shipping. I just want whoever tells me to "Get a Mac!" to have some skin in the game. ;)

OK, David, I'll guarantee the PowerBook AND shipping for three years.

My skin, your game.

Britt, you're not supposed to take me up on it! Don't you know how the snarkiness game is played :)

We'll talk...

After listening to David complain about his PCs and resist the suggestions that he switch. David's PS and Britt's response have me smiling. David, a follow-up post is mandatory :)

Though I have lovingly used Apple systems and software for over a decade, I wouldn't "personally warrantee" a Mac. There is no need to. For nearly 15 years I have been an Apple customer and have yet to be disappointed by either their systems, software or customer service. If asked to choose between a Thunkpad (which I've used) and a Powerbook (which I currently own), there is no contest, not just because the Mac's operating system is far more reliable and advanced than that of any PC, but also because it is such a pleasure, aesthetically speaking, to work on a Mac and such a misery to work on PCs which tend to be ugly by nature, but are made so much worse by the inefficient and sluggish 'Windows'.

I've stopped trying to convince PC users to switch to the Mac. If Thunkpads are what they really prefer, then who am I to suggest they need their head examined? ; )

Ah does that mean the PC version of Apple's 'Think Different' ad campaign is 'Thunk Different'

I'm writing this on a Thinkpad and have owned Macs from the 128K through a 15" Powerbook and I can tell you one thing David - drop the Powerbook and it'll break too...

It is going to be kind of a culture shock. And if you're thoroughly habituated to the Windows way of doing things, and don't have a certain curiosity or openness to how they might be done differently, then I suspect it's going to be a difficult transition for you.

Everything is _almost_ the same, but it's probably going to be different enough to get in your way at times when you least expect it. Be patient. I'm switching from bifocals to graduated lenses and I'm told I'm going to have a rough go of it for a few weeks. But one supposedly redeeming feature about homo sapiens is that they're rather adaptable.

Plus, you'll get plenty of help.

Hey Norm, if Intel chips can make Windows run at vaguely acceptable speeds, imagine what they're going do for the Mac.

I have dropped several Macs, so I have preflighted the experiment for you. iBooks, being made of plastic, just chip. I dropped one 5 ft onto concrete and it was OK. I did replace the hard disc afterwards as a precaution.
PowerBooks, being made of metal, tend to dent. I have seen badly warped ones where DVDs no longer went in.
Recent ones have an accelerometer built in that will park the heads if you drop them, so the disks should survive.
http://interconnected.org/home/2005/03/04/apples_powerbook
Rosie's PowerBook got dropped, and the case bent so the power plug didn't go in, but i managed to bend it back by pressing it on the desk gently.
What I do recommend for the Mac is a small external firewire drive, and a copy of SuperDuper to make a mirror of it. That way if it does get badly mangled, you can take the FW drive to another mac and boot from it.
Also DiskWarrior is the tool you want when your mac disk gets mangled, because unlike Norton, it doesn't ask you stupid CYA questions like 'shall I repair the sector count on node 11543?' for 2 hours that you have no basis to decide, it just fixes stuff and lets you decide at the end if it looks like your disk.
Any more Mac questions, just ask.

Until a couple of months ago, my main machine was an eight-year-old PC (Win 98 (upgraded from 3.1), 96 MHz processor, 32 MB RAM (upgraded from 16), 1 GB disc, replacement monitor, second replacement keyboard[1]). I also used an XP laptop when I had to, which was more and more of the time. When I realised I was favouring the laptop not only for blogging but for browsing generally - Firefox is resource-light, but it's not that light - I knew it was time to trade up.

So I traded up to an iMac. (Total previous Mac use: zero.) To begin with I needed a bit of help from Mac-savvy friends - there are a few things about the Mac keyboard, in particular, that I wouldn't have guessed in a hundred years - but overall the switch has been incredibly easy. In fact, I'm starting to miss the Mac[2] when I sign on to XP at work.

[1]...mmm, beer...
[2]...mmm, Kool-Aid...

Well done David - about time too. Forget everything you knew about Macs pre-OSX as they are totally different machines from OSX 10.2 onwards. You won't regret it!

Plus, of course, they do now at least have accelerometers that lock down the hard drive when you drop them - so at least your data might survive the fall next time.

Having seen you stage dive at Reboot earlier this year, I think you could do with one of these for your brain as well ;-)

Kevin, you recommend a firewire drive. I already have a USB HD. Is there a good reason to get a new FW one?

I haven't tried booting from a USB drive; it may work OK now Macs have USB2. FireWire is nicer that USB for various reasons, which I'll go into if you really care (USB time-slices between devices, but allows a very wide range of bitrates, so a 1.2Mbit/sec keyboard can draw a big chunk of bitrate out of your 480Mbit/sec disk), but the reason I say FireWire is that that is what I have used successfully across a broad range of Macs

G4 iMac 800 MHz LCD 1024x780
Display color has no high or lows - only blown out lights and darks - is this an aging problem (6 years of use) or a calibration problem or the display card? This condition hold for all applications and OSX
utilities.

Anyone seen this problem?

Terry