Professional Documents
Culture Documents
AUSOM
AUSOM Supports Users of
Apple Products
April 2012 Volume 33, No. 03
Recommended retail price $9.00
Print Post Publication No. 339944/00003 ISSN 1329-2641
Reg. No. A0005646X
AUSOM News is a publication of
AUSOM Incorporated www.ausom.net.au
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AUSOM Main Meeting April 14th NOT April 7th
AUSOM & AUSOM News on the Internet 46 AUSOM News April 2012
The Deranged System Tinkerer: mmpark@unimelb.edu.au
Gun-shy Mac users
Feeling luckv, punk? Go ahead, make mv dav' Update vour Windows software'
Paraphrase oI Dirty` Harry (Callaghan), played by Clint Eastwood,
Irom the movie Magnum Force, 1973
. like the man who set out to carrv the cat home bv the tail he is going to acquire experience that will
be of great value to him and never grow dim or doubtful.
Author unknown; attributed to Mark Twain
We should be careful to get out of an experience onlv the wisdom that is in it and stop there, lest we be
like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again and that is
well, but she also will never sit down on a cold one anvmore.
An authentic Mark Twain quotation Irom
Puddnhead Wilsons New Calendar, 1897
A recent contribution oI mine in AUSOM News described
my recent upgrade to OS X Lion and the subsequent
downgrade back to Snow Leopard: page 44 (October,
2011). Omitted Irom that item was the Iear that an
upgrade engenders in some Mac users and the Ioundation
Ior such Iears. I am oI the view that such Iears are
misguided and misplaced.
For example, a one-time colleague using an early 2008
MacBook (sold with OS 10.5.1 'Leopard installed and
updated by him to 10.5.8) declined my oIIer oI the 'Snow
Leopard OS 10.6.3 install disk and the 10.6.8 'combo
update. Similarly, my kid sister has one oI the Iirst 21.5-
inch iMacs (sold with OS 10.6.1 installed) and has not
upgraded the OS since her purchase in late 2009. Another
colleague
*
with a recent MacBook Air running 'Snow
Leopard has also declined my oIIer oI the OS X Lion
installation.
Why is that? In my lil` sis`s case she tells me that she is
holding oII any upgrade until it has been established as
bug-Iree. This is quite a common approach. Let the brave
(or Ioolhardy?) early adopters test the water Iirst and,
iI they survive unscathed, we`ll dive in. Alternatively
the Iool learns by his own mistakes while the wise
man learns by the mistakes oI others. |This writer
unashamedly declines to deny being a Iool.|
While not an early adopter I have never Ieared the Iuture
and have as a consequence 'blown up quite a Iew Mac
systems in my time and heard the discordant Twilight
Zone theme (or the 'Chimes oI Death) and seen the
Sad Mac icon most disconcerting and, perhaps, almost
heart-stoppingly scary!
My expensive and hard-earned Macintosh education
includes the consequences oI attempting to use a version
oI Norton Disk Doctor earlier than version 3.5 on a
Mac OS 8.1 installation. Similarly, aIter successIully
destroying my Svstem 7.1 installation, it was the late (and
aIIectionately remembered by the AUSOM community)
Leo Parker who saved my bacon by providing a set oI
800k installation Iloppies to restore my SE FDHD to
robust good health. In turn he learnt that the FDHD
model was equipped with a 'Super Drive capable oI
reading and writing to the then new 1.4 MB HD Iloppies.
OI course, with the wisdom oI youth, back then my
backup strategy was 'what backup? Nowadays, hard
drive storage is cheap and the various backup programs
leave no excuse Ior Iailing to backup.
It is my belieI, not supported bv diligent investigation,
that my MacBook and MacBook Air colleagues and my
iMac sis are 'switchers, that is, they are reIugees Irom
the World oI Windows. It has been my observation over
the years that when a Windows user Ialls victim to a
major system crash there is nothing they can do but await
the arrival oI a technical guru a high priest who is the
only authorized gatekeeper to the esoteric Ioundations oI
a religious cult complete with arcane rituals.
That may be several days away beIore the much-in-
demand priest can minister to the parishioner in need.
The demands oI his Ilock are many and onerous. And
usually the response Irom the guru, when he/she arrives,
is to re-Iormat the hard drive and re-install the soItware
(the Windows operating system and the various other
Windows programs). This is accompanied by such
incantations as 'OI course you`ve kept a backup oI your
work?, 'Why haven`t you kept a backup?, and 'Well,
you will in Iuture, won`t you?
There is no attempt to repair the damaged system with
minimal disruption the solution oI re-Iormatting and
re-installing is as crude as pulling out the power plug on
a computer that has crashed. The length oI time awaiting
the arrival oI the priest-repairman and the duration oI the
re-Iormat & re-installation coupled with replacing the
lost Iiles is seared into the brains oI the Windows users
www.ausom.net.au AUSOM News April 2012 47
who have suIIered such a system crash. And oI course
anv Windows system crash is a mafor system crash - a
minor Windows system crash is an oxymoron and has as
much credibility as the tooth Iairy, Santa Claus, a truthIul
politician, an honest lawyer, or an enjoyable Windows
experience. Additionally, the high priest can demand
a large tithe (or contribution) Irom the parishioner in
desperate need. Thus Windows users are suIIering Irom a
speciIic variation oI PTS Syndrome: the Post Traumatic
Windows Crash Stress (PTWCS) Syndrome.
There exists a short movie where in busy room oI tech
support staII, one is idle and casually leaning back while
his colleagues are Irantically working the phones.
Eventually, his (until then silent) phone rings and he
answers with 'Mac support here, how can I help? and,
aIter listening to the caller, passes the handset to one oI
his over-worked colleagues with the words, 'This is Ior
you guys.
Thus the experience oI the Windows user is not a
happy one. My oIIers to my Windows-using Iriends
to lend them my Canvas or Photoshop Elements or
KidPix installation disks (with both Mac and Windows
installations) is politely declined. They are not at all
interested in acquiring such soItware because they`re
spooked. Their experience being that any additional
soItware installation will be too much bother and Iraught
with almost certain peril and will end in tears. Any
system tinkering, Irom their bitter experience, no matter
how trivial, always ends in tears.
Conversely, iI I were to be oIIered such a soItware
installation, the acceptance would be instantaneous. My
experience being that I can always recover Irom any
crash suIIered by my Mac. And WKLVLVLPSRUWDQW I
Iully understand that the sole cause oI the crash suIIered
by my Mac has been my own Iooling around with it.
Compare the Windows crash victim despite having
done nothing to contribute to the systems crash the
heartless computer gods, aided and abetted by those
nameless geeks in Redmond, have capriciously inIlicted
on that benighted innocent an incomprehensible and
undeserved system crash: liIe just wasn`t meant to be
easy and it would seem that it wasn`t meant to be fair to
Windows users either.
Consequently Windows users are 'gun shy. And
this Iear engendered by their Windows experience
accompanies those who emigrate to Macintosh the
'switchers or reIugees/asylum seekers so that they are
just as IearIul oI upgrading or installing Mac soItware
as they previously were oI Windows soItware. These
switchers are like Mark Twain`s cat: having been burnt on
a hot Windows stove-lid, they are IearIul oI being burnt
on a cold Mac stove-lid.
|Authors note: the world is replete with sneering
Macintosh users disdainIul oI the dark side` or Windows.
In all Iairness to the current Windows OS, this writer
acknowledges that the current version includes Ieatures
allowing Ior users to repair and maintain their own
Windows OS without the reliance upon a high priest-tech
guru. It must be rare these days that a Windows crash
requires a re-Iormatting oI the hard drive Iollowed by a
re-installation oI the soItware. Sadly, users previously
burnt by their Windows experience do not appreciate
these newer innovations in Windows and it could be
suggested that, like Mark Twain`s cat (again!): having
been burnt on an early (red hot) Windows stove-lid,
they are IearIul oI being burnt on the current (less hot)
Windows stove-lid. Even more sadly, the high priest-tech
gurus do not Iully appreciate these newer innovations
in their Iaith and continue perIorming their ancient
sacramental rituals oI re-Iormatting and re-installing the
Windows OS and other soItware.|
* Coincidentally, several days aIter settling on the title
Ior this item, my MacBook Air using colleague described
herselI as becoming 'Mac shy aIter a particularly
Irustrating Mac dummy spit. It does seem a bit rich to
have reIugees Irom the Windows world complaining oI
wholly unexpected (and Irustrating) Mac misbehaviour.
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Cover from March as it should
have looked
My apologies to Peter Mackinlay. I read with
interest, the details of steps taken to produce the
cover. Unfortunately I took his final sentences about
flattening the image before sending to me to be what
he really wanted.
I have done my best to select the same areas of 'yellow'
as Peter may have done and reproduced the result of
providing two images to our printer as reproduce here
(I hope correctly).
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