It’s Christmas and Father Christmas has really been very kind to me this year. I can announce a new arrival (no, not the baby…that is later in January) - my first ever Mac. It’s an iMac, 24 ins, 2.4Ghz, Core duo with the RAM upgrade.
I am really pleased with it. I mean really, really pleased with it.
But it hasn’t quite been all plain sailing…I am sat here now, typing away, happily importing CDs to iTunes, nonchalantly switching between apps and generally wondering why I have put up with PCs for so long. I can hear the mutter of those hard-nosed Mac users in the background offering words of “I told you so”…and of course you are right. You did tell me… and I just didn’t listen, I didn’t want to stump up the extra cash at the time, or I argued that there wasn’t enough software out there to satisfy my needs.
Well, I tell you - I was wrong!
Apple have got this thing absolutely right. Even the bit they got wrong was put right by those nice people over at Apple Care. Through these rose tinted glasses everything is great. Yes siree Bob.
But it didn’t really start all that well at all. There was me, on Boxing Day, waxing lyrical to my partner, Abi, in partial justification that this was something we needed ‘as a family’, ”This is the real deal. It is so intuitive, I mean look at the packaging, even the box has an opening at the top…”.
But then again this ‘late 2007 model’ does ship with Leopard.
I eagerly unpacked the box, removed the [heavy] plastic packaging and set the iMac up on the desk. I sat in awe as the splash screen played, welcoming me in several different languages. “Wow, a multiligual computer, what will they think of next?” I followed the set up assistant, and eventually we were ready to go.
But no. We weren’t.
I entered my final registration details and was then prompted for my username and password. “Oooh, I thought, this is just like setting up Debian or Ubuntu, it will of course require a log in”. So I entered my username and password details previously and meticulously given to set up assistant and guess what. I must have mistyped them.
So I enter them again.And Again. And again…and again.
I must have locked myself out, I thought.
I texted a friend, also a Mac user. He suggested I use the utility disk to unlock myself. Of course I thought. That will work. So I set about unlocking myself. However, I thought, I had better check this out on the web. So I got out the trusty laptop (WinXP - meh!) and having read about Leopard’s infamous launch I thought should find out if I am the only person to run in to this problem. Sure enough, there were others who had had similar issues. One of the suggested solutions was to make an “Archive and Install”.
I got this process underway and went out to a friend’s house trying not to feel like that moment at the end of a hard day’s programming when a bug beats you for time.
On my return I realised this had not worked out and I had to leave it until the next morning.
The next day I rang Apple. I went through a few things with the really helpful Elenor. After a while she conferred with her supervisor and suggested I will have to carry out a complete “Erase and Install”.
The problem, as I had seen for myself, once in single user mode, was while I was setting up accounts with the ’set up assistant’, they were not getting written to disk. The /Users directory was completely empty.
A bemused Elenor advised me this course of action would solve all my problem. So I happily set about the installation. We parted with her reminding me, “don’t forget to back-up, sir.”
I set the process off, it all went smoothly and hey presto, it worked and here we are doing the Mac thang…*cough* as a family.
It’s great. I really can see a time when we will be ditching the TV, downgrading our HiFi to just an amplifier with speakers and streaming content all over the house.
My current favourite features so far are Front Row and the remote control. It is how users and technology should interact. It all just makes sense. I am now already behind on Podcasts - BBC Radio 4’s ‘From our own correspondent’ was particularly interesting this week. The simplicity of stuff being there and easy to get to is so refreshing.
Why oh why as it taken me till the brink of 2008 to do this!
Posted on December 31st, 2007 at 12:42 am by Alan Newman