31 December 2014

Today's topic: The Righteous Clique of Apple: Chapter 3

The story so far...

Bill apologized for fudging on the title of this series of blog entries, promised to actually share some of his experiences with Apple right clicks, began to tell the story of his most recent iMac misadventure, reminded us through his experiences the importance of backing up your data in lieu of owning or at the very least having access to a time machine and shocked us with the news that our computing devices may be more alike than we ever thought or dreamed.

Last time out Bill sounded-off about prejudice, the herd mentality and naysaying while cautioning us to carefully consider the opinions of others before making them our own and that the opportunity to share our opinion means more when we 'wait for it' instead of getting caught up with 'just saying'...

We believe what we want to believe and tend to hold fast to our opinion, sometimes long after learning that it's based on incomplete or inaccurate information. 'Perception is reality' springs to mind. You may have ( or think you have ) the best solution to a particular problem but until it's put to the test your solution is little more than an idea, an opinion.

You can sing the praises of _____________ ( fill in the blank ) all day long but without an audience you may as well sing in the shower. That's how's it's been for Apple fans until the last decade or so...

In 2005 Apple began using Intel processors. Read that last sentence again. Let it sink in. The running joke was, 'What's an Intel chip doing in a Mac? More than it ever did in a PC.' Okay, a cheap shot but fair is fair... for too long 'the cult of Apple' has been perceived as exclusive, above it all. The reality is, my reality is, because PCs and Macs are made of the same stuff, neither 'brand' is immune to failure.

After repeated crashes with less and less run time in between it was on Black Friday 2014 that my iMac returned to the Apple Store in Towson, Maryland. Black Friday! Expecting the worst wasn't unrealistic given that Apple's onboard diagnostic, Disk Utility, had confirmed my drive was failing.

The good news is that I had backed up my data on two separate external hard drives with Time Machine. Two drives? Drives fail. That's how this series of blog entries got started. But before I tell how the story ends, one last side trip.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket. That wasn't the precise comment made by my friend Louis Trapani on Facebook, but what he said got me to thinking about how there wasn't much wisdom in having just a single back up copy of critical data... what if the drive that contained my backed up data failed? Wouldn't that be the same as being without a back up? You bet.

These days the usefulness or 'service life' of computer hardware like hard drives is more about design and production standards than platform or brand. With technology advancing as quickly as it does a drive will likely become obsolete before it ceases to function due to some sort of mechanical failure, or so one would think.

Obsolesce matters only where compatibility is an issue. In other words, as long as my ( closed or self-contained ) system remains intact and functioning it doesn't matter that external storage devices have been reinvented multiple times. Remember floppy disks? They still work. My computer may be out of date but that doesn't matter as long as it works.

The point is that we can get a false sense of security with the 'brand' and / or 'newness' of our stuff. Look at it this way, a 1957 Chevy can roll on the same highways and byways as 2015 Chevy, but odds are if both were to break down at the same time and for the same reason fixing the '57 Chevy will be more of a challenge IF the repair requires replacing a part... not just patching it up with duct tape, etc.

In the next and final chapter of 'The Righteous Clique of Apple'... it's time for credit where credit is due.

Until next time...

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The Righteous Clique of Apple 4 >
A happy ending and a new beginning... onward into 2015!

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