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In Praise of Apple's "Time Travel" Technologies

I am pleased to say that last week's fiasco with a crashed (less than one year old) MacBook hard drive has been resolved successfully and amicably. 

Resloved "successfully" due to the realized promise of Apple Mac OSX "Leopard's" Time Machine backup utility and its companion hardware component, Time Capsule.

Resolved amicably due to the enlightened counsel of one Apple store manager (Nicole) and the very capable aid of one "Mac Genius" (Josh).

Nicole's contribution, as noted in a previous post, was to diffuse the very unpleasant confrontation that erupted when I first took the machine to the Genius Bar last week and a technician named "Ben" expressed infinitely more fealty to Apple's replacement policy than he did to this particular customer's concerns about data loss and security.  I'm sure Ben knows all there is to know about computers, but he needs to work on his people skills.

Nicole is the manager I spoke to on Saturday.  She understood perfectly my reticence about walking out of the store with a blank hard drive and leaving behind the one that had all my data on it, even if it was unreadable.  Granted, by the time I spoke to Nicole, I'd checked my backups and determined that I was pretty well covered, but Nicole's contribution was really allowing for whatever arrangements would be required to a) fix my computer and be) comply with Apple's "if we take it out and replace it, it's ours" policy.

Nicole said it would be OK to come back to the store on Monday with my backups and spend as much time in the store as it would require to restore my data to a new hard drive.  That way, when I walked out of the store, the machine would be back in the condition it was before the crash.  And, once I was satisfied with the restoration, only THEN would I have to leave the old drive behind AND measures would be taken to assure the security of its contents.

So I arrived in the store at 11 AM on Monday (after Nicole had checked the inventory to make sure there was a replacement drive on the shelf) and a technician named Josh took over.  Josh did the R&R on the hard drive, and then set me up to install the OS and begin the restoration of my data to the new drive.

And here is where Time Machine/Capsule showed its colors. 

OK, So... Just How Bad...

...is it going to get before it starts getting better? Washington Post correspondent asks the Treasury spokesman:

Sometimes, the train stops just when everybody says it's going off the cliff. Sometimes... inertia and momentum rule the day.

Gas For Sex?

Or is it Sex for Gas?  Another twist in the final days of the Bush economy:

Whether they hear about it on the playground or in the soda shop after school, your kids are going to learn about people who have sex in exchange for gasoline and/or pre-paid gas cards. They're bound to be curious about sex-for-gas activity, and maybe they'll even feel peer pressure to have gas-sex before they might be ready. No matter how hard you try you just can't protect your kids from the gas crisis. The best thing to do is talk to them about it. Here's how:

NOW They Tell Me...

...that I can cross post my blog entries to Facebook. OK, let's see if this works.... Hey gang, read all about my Apple Crashed Hard Drive Woes below....

Apple's Replacement Policy SUCKS - Part 3

OK, the POLICY sucks... but the PEOPLE can be reasonable IF you can talk to the right person.

I called the store back and asked to speak to a manager. Somebody named Nicole came on the phone. I explained the dilemma. And unlike Big Ben The Enforcer, Nicole was ENTIRELY reasonable. She said I could come in to the store Monday morning, they'd swap out the hard drive, and then they will wait while I go to the side somewhere where and perform the restoration from my Time Capsule. It will probably take several hours, but when I'm done I should be leaving the store with a) a restored computer and b) once the computer is restored, somebody will destroy the old hard drive, erasing whatever data is on it so that I don't have to worry about somebody purloining my account numbers and passwords.

Now... THAT all sounds reasonable.

Stay tuned for a final report come Monday.

Apple's Replacement Policy SUCKS - Part 2

So, this morning I'm thinking: if security is an issue, then I really should bite the bullet and get a new hard drive from the MacAuthority. Then I have a new hard drive, AND I can keep my old one.

But wait: I just called Apple and asked: "what happens to my extended warranty if I replace the hard drive with a drive from a third party?" Answer: the warrant is voided.

So, unless I'm willing to let Apple walk away with hard drive and all its data (even if it's unreadable), the net cost of this fiasco is: $250 down the tubes for a voided warranty + $150 out of pocket for a new hard drive = $400.

So let me see if I can call the store and talk to a reasonable person....

4th of July Recommendations

And a "Happy Independence Day" to whoever reads this.

The 4th of July has always been my favorite national holiday. Probably because it has no religious implications and it's pretty hard to argue with "All men are created equal."

So, let me offer just a few items that might engage your patriotic spirit on this most auspicious occasion:

First, I encourage all my friends, family, fans, and/or enemies or detractors to avail themselves to the sage commentaries of The Thomas Jefferson Hour. This is a weekly radio show that is available on some NPR stations and as podcasts via iTunes. In each episode, author and humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson assumes the persona of Thomas Jefferson, offering us an 18th century perspective on 21st century issues (or vice-versa). Jenkinson's mastery of early American history, and the writings of Thomas Jefferson and his contemporaries, is encyclopedic, and he never fails to offer an interesting insight into the principles on which this nation was founded and how they are manifest today. Go now and download a few episodes, and listen to one today.

And while you're at it, you might avail yourselves to this morning's broadcast of NPR's "Morning Edition," where the entire cast of NPRs Washington Bureau gathers round the microphones for a reading of the Declaration of Independence. It doesn't hurt to be reminded of what really went into the day we are celebrating, and the unique historical turning point that was achieved that summer day in Philadelphia in 1776.

Apple's Replacement Policy SUCKS

OK, I had my first really unpleasant experience at the Apple Store today.

It pretty much started about 11:30 this morning when my not-quite-one-year-old black MacBook crashed and wouldn't reboot. There was nothing I could do to get it to start up again. I'd press the "on" button and all I got was a grey screen.

So I logged on to the Green Hills Apple Store website and snagged a 1:45 PM appointment at the "Genius Bar."

At the store, when my number came up I was greeted by the rather imposing figure of a "Genius" named Ben. It would only take a few minutes to learn why they like to put big gnarly guys behind the counter.

After performing a few simple diagnostics, Ben determined that the bad news was that the hard drive had died. Kaput. Finito. Finale. El Morte. Dead. Shit happens.

The GOOD news is: I am on the three year "Apple Care" plan for this MacBook. So the hard drive is covered.

The other GOOD news is that I'm pretty well backed up. I'm running the Leopard OS which has the Time Machine automated backup program and I've got an Apple Time Capsule dedicated backup drive in the basement, and the last backup was performed this morning about an hour before the crash. I've also got a three-week old stand alone back up on an external firewire drive. And another backup on a USB drive. So, one way or another... I've got everything.

But here's the REALLY BAD NEWS: Apple's policy regarding replacements under warranty states that once they have replaced your hardware, the old unit becomes "property of Apple Computer." So what they want to do is remove my hard drive and replace it with a brand spanking new one... and then they expect me to walk out of the store and LEAVE MY OLD DRIVE AND ALL THE DATA BEHIND!

Uh, excuse me? Say what? Just walk out with a blank drive and leave all my data behind? Seriously??

Sorry, I don't think that's gonna work.

Bush Tours America

And it's about time:

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

THIS is what...

....the next president is going to have to contend with:

There's also an interesting article in this week's Barron's. It's an interview with Peter Schiff, president and chief global strategist for Euro Pacific Capital. Following are a few paragraphs from the Barron's interview --

". . . we haven't been through anything like what we are going through now. The United States has really been living in a fool's paradise, or a phony economy, probably for more than twenty years. But our economy has been growing bigger and bigger. We have been able to convince the world to lend us money and to provide us with goods that we don't produce and that we can't afford to pay for with exports. And it has gotten to the point now where the problem is so big, especially since the real-estate bubble.

"We have borrowed so much money from abroad. Our trade deficits are now very big, and our industrial base and our infrastructure has been allowed to decay for so long, that we are now at a point that we can only survive as an economy thanks to the charity of the rest of the world. They have provided us with all the goods that we can no longer produce because we lack the industrial capacity. And they have to lend us the money because we don't have savings anymore."

Quotation from Richard Russell's Dow Theory Letters. Subscription required to read the whole posting.