It would seem like the Mac is still a fine selling proposition for the typical computer user. In the days of OS 9 and Windows ubiquity, Apple Macintosh systems were the odd-one out, the Betamax of computers, the also-ran. Legions of Apple evangelists notwithstanding, the handwriting on the wall seemed to be saying the Mac would be doomed to irrelevance in a world of Windows boxes.
Well, here we are in 2012, and a funny thing happened on the way to the marketplace. Unlike the Betamax video player, the Mac is a general use, programmable, all purpose computer. It’s not the technology people are especially fond of under the hood, it’s the things we do with it. Mac seem to be world class media generators, word processors, and social media hotrods and all in a user friendly context that supports the user without bludgeoning them with anti virus alerts and questionable user interface practices.
While I may not be especially fond of the walled garden that Apple is designing for the future of the Mac OS, at the moment, the water is fine, come on in.
No, this isn’t my last post. I mean, the last post I put up here. i was contacted by a disk recovery business who wanted to put a post on my blog. Free content, just include a link back to them. Devil’s contract? Not really. I was curious what the end result would be, so I agreed.
Bottom line: okay content, nothing to write home about, and not Mac-oriented, so really kind of a failure in terms of serving readers to this blog. But, I haven’t been blogging much lately, so thought I’d let it happen.
Losing data can be at best an inconvenience and at worst absolutely disastrous. The ability to recover lost data is best started before anything happens in the first place and to back up essential data and other files regularly. Having a bootable backup of the system files is one way to recover but these are sometime less than reliable and data can still be lost when a system crashes or is infected with a virus, Trojan or worm. Scheduling a regular back at a convenient time is worthwhile, if the Macintosh is left on (best not connected to the internet unless a secure WPS is in place) then the best time is late in the evening when user activity will be low and the system can use valuable resources to do a thorough back up. But what happens when the OS back up system fails to restore or repair damage caused by malicious software? The answer is sometimes to try a data recovery service.
Data recovery services are there for one thing only, to get at data that has been corrupted, lost or even damaged. The ability of data recovery is no stranger to many Apple users and companies offer many services that can recover data from a variety of storage devices. Accidental deletion is the most often cited reason for using data recovery services and this is a relatively straightforward process. The best way to avoid accidental deletion is to always have a back up. Many people use USB sticks and these are great ways to transport files from the office to home securely, especially if they hold sensitive data that cannot be electronically sent. Saving this data on a hard drive is one way to secure that data is not lost from the USB stick but what happens to the hard drive if the office PC is damaged by fire, flood or worse, an electronic attack? Again, this is where the services of a data recovery agency can be used.
What happens when data is recovered? Data is never `lost`. The directory or index that the drive uses to identify the location is removed which means that the data is still present but the computer will assume, as there is no index, that the data is useless and can be overwritten. Providing data has not been overwritten and can be accessed by a technician this will then determine the level and quality of data that can be recovered. Usually data recovery services will asses the level of quality and quote based on what is recoverable.
With this in mind the best practice to back up data is almost certainly to save data on a remote hard drive (some users now pay for remote storage) and this back up process needs to be set up as a regular occurrence and if all can not be backed up and is lost then use a company that specialises in data recovery, has one of the highest rates of data corruption of data and in the city, the access to wi-fi puts the security of business users at more risk from data hackers, so a good protection system is essential as well as a good back up protocol.
I don't mean to rant but the Finder in OS X really does not work well. I'm an Apple fan, and I appreciate the technology but sometimes you see the lame engineering hiding in fancy eye candy and think, so what? It's not enough to rest on your laurels, Apple. The Finder is busted, plain and simple.
Far from being the elegant, sophisticated filing system that gets work done, it consistently presents barriers to moving data around. It does this by nature of the GUI, the way your locational awareness must transit multiple levels in a mechanical and time consuming fashion to move information around.
Certainly you can do this by opening two windows and dragging them back and forth. Or you could get in the terminal and type something out that a few mouse gestures should accomplish. It's more than frustrating, it's a barrier to being productive because your spending too much time focusing your way through endless levels of directories when you just want to see two at once to copy things between them.
Or move seamlessly between levels or on the same level.
Let's take a Finder window and do this. Put it in column view and try to scroll all the way to the left.
It looks like this:
I mean look at this big blue thing? What's it there for, I don't know. Some kind of blue beastie that gives no clues where the objects on it live. And worse, the root directory is cut off from the file system.
Duh! Not really. Apple just wants to confuse the heck out of you so you'll buy more of their product. A slight sense of confusion in the consumer promotes a sense of identity loss, of an empty hollow place inside that comes from technology with senseless interface tweaks.
Yes, this is weird. Here's some more weird stuff. I can't click down on the white spaces and simply mouse-drag the whole shebang sideways.
I can't create a dual view so I can move stuff back and forth between directories.
I can't easily see two places at once to copy between them.
I have to traverse the file system level by level by double clicking on folders that make me have to keep track of where I am in the hierarchy all the time, so I can then traverse back down it again, level by level, or open a new window and do it again.
Even worse, most of the time my applications don't remember where I was just working, or worse where they just saved a file, what place in the hierarchy.
Now, I'd be first to admit that technology can lots of effort to develop and fine tune. But, the Finder's interface development has been notably short-sighted in Apple's case. They've focused on the eye candy, and on specific tactical advantages in media, production, creativity and a stable platform to produce all kinds of cool stuff. And all the action takes place in the applications. The Finder is like a dead zone where mouse clicks go to die. The shortest way between me and my destination is the best way.
Finder, you really don't get it.
I've been helping people move to Mac for quite some time. It's part of the process of consulting. I've rarely found anyone who regretted it or felt they wanted to return to the Dark Side. As a Mac consultant of course I'm biased towards Macintosh. I recognize the value in PC's and the utility they hold on many levels. As a technician, I simply prefer technology that behaves in ways I find predictable, understandable, and rewarding to use. For me, that's a Mac. Your mileage may vary.
Helping people remotely to solve problems on their systems is part of most if not all computer consultants' toolkit these days. It's simply too convenient to pass up. Rather than drive your fossil fuel burning contraption down the freeway, or pedal your bike if you are feeling a lot of gumption, you fire up one of many remote control applications and run the remote Mac or PC from your desktop. It's remarkably easy to do and there are many fine tools to accomplish this.
One of my favorites is Teamviewer.
So, for today's adventure, I assisted a client to move from their PC laptop to their new Mac laptop and did all this on the phone and via remote control using Teamviewer. First we set up the Mac to her liking. Installed Open Office and Virtual Box (virtual computer software), configured preferences and she learned some tricks and tips about her new machine.
We set up the virtual PC inside of Virtual Box so she could run Quickbooks, which meant installing Windows XP with antivirus and updates in the virtual machine environment with file sharing to OS X.
Overnight she installed Quickbooks in the virtual Windows XP.
Then we got logged into her PC and copied her data onto an external HD. Plug it into the Mac and 'pop' there is the disk. Copy her Quickbooks files over into virtual XP and Quickbooks was happy to unpack them and open them.
Copy her iTunes library from the PC into the Music folder and 'pop', iTunes was happy to recognize all the music and playlists.
Copy her photos into iPhoto.
Tweak things a bit. Format two volumes on the external drive for Mac OS X native GUID boot format, set up Carbon Copy Cloner for duplicates to one volume, and Time Machine for archiving backup to the other volume.
All in all one of the most productive sessions I can remember and completely done from my home with a client some 500 miles away. If that isn't cool, I don't know what is.
