Ooops...

Weblog:		Why I am not a platform zealot
Subject:		Ooops...
Date:		2004-05-26 17:56:24
From:		F.J.

Hi ! First of all, I am sorry to hear that you have had these issues ! Just to let you know, Disk Utility should be able to take care of all permissions issues on your volume that might have been created by an installer. Indeed, it checks a file left by the installer itself to do its work and, unless this file has been manually removed, will find the necessary information. Permissions that you or a faulty application have altered for an uncommon specific file or folder are another issue but, up until now, it always repaired them on my various test Macs. The node issue seems to indicate that the problems you were having are more related to a low level hard drive glitch than a software problem. Just to let you know, Disk Utility should also have been able to take care of most catalog problems -- although you are right about the fact that some problems can require the use of specialized software. I have never run in to this myself, though. Your description made me wonder wether you used a special disk utility or "un erase" application ? Incompatible ones are likely to create hard drive catalog issues similar to what you experienced. Without having a look at the iBook, this is of course speculation on my part. However, even though issues can always happen with any operating system, as you point out in your very interesting blog, a software update is unlikely to cause such a "disaster" in itself... Something else seems to have been at work. F.J.

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Ooops...
2004-05-26 17:59:10 FJ de Kermadec | [Reply | View]

Sorry, I realized I have forgotten something...

Would you think that the service you got at the store wasn't appropriate, you can call Apple Customer Relations and describe the issue. Your comments will be taken into account and forwarded to the appropriate team. Their number can be found on the "Contact us" pages on Apple.com.

The "Geniuses" are normally extremely knowledgeable although, of course, nobody can have universal knowledge.

F.J.

Ooops...
2004-05-28 04:43:40 christiandupuis [Reply | View]

One of my colleagues just came back from two weeks vacation in California, went to the Apple store and "tried" the Genius Bar. He didn't get dazzled by the experience, so I guess Apple works it the same as most other retail outlets as far as service is concerned: you get someone who can handle working with the public for a full shift, but it's a coin toss whether you'll hit the person that has the answer to your problem. However, I'm a bit surprised about the "boot in verbose, fsck -y" fiasco; that's Repair 101, as far as OS X software problems are concerned.

I have a G4 that runs Panther and never crashes (it has Adobe, Macromedia, Apple and Microsoft apps on it). No third party system add-ons. My Powerbook 12 inch runs Panther as well, and the only flakyness I experienced was some weird behaviour on the dock after I'd installed a shareware dock utility. I removed the thing and I was back to full speed ahead. My XP Pro box committed "seppuku" after I installed some "XP Certified" DVD authoring software for my Pioneer A04 burner. I didn't have a Linux boot disk witn an NTFS mounter that could have let me get to my data, so I lost the work that was on the OS drive, but all the stuff I stored on the second internal drive was OK. All the usual tricks (consore repair, attempts to fix from OS CD, shaking a chicken over the monitor) didn't do squat to bring it back. I had to wipe that sucker and install a fresh XP Pro install.

I use them both, but I trust the Mac a bit more.

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