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Fix a Troubled Mac
This is the only book that I'm aware of that gives you troubleshooting assistance like it should be. I've never encountered a chapter in any book that is dedicated to helping one create an emergency firewire drive, or a bootable Mac CD-ROM that will boot essentially any modern Macintosh, let alone, explain which software troubleshooting tools to use, or how to set up system software for quick reinstalls. In addition to this, the writer takes you on a guided course on how to approach the command line (for brave Mac OS X users) to fix start-up problems and corrupted user logins.
Fix a Troubled Mac is densely packed with information presented in a light, easy-to-read way. It accelerates you through basic information towards in-depth and advanced topics -- even if you get left behind, what remains in your head are relevant and well-formed concepts and frameworks. As the author mentions at intervals, this book approaches running a Mac studio in a holistic manner. Having said that, the therapy of the individual computer user is not overlooked. Even a computer-literate person with two or three Macs in a SOHO setting will benefit.
The first chapter of the book, "Be Your Own IT Support" covers concepts on how to approach problems. Starting with the basics like the Cardinal Rules (Ask yourself, "what has changed lately?"). From there it's a nice, easy, sometimes humorous introduction to how networks work. After a few pages, much of the bafflement that is computer-related pain begins to ease, furrows recede, clock speed returns to normal. Such simple ideas, such profound effects. Perhaps this book could be subtitled 'The Tao of Mac.'
This book does indeed read like a distillation of 6 years of a Mac technician's life, filled with numerous methods to efficiently and effectively diagnose and repair troubled Macs. From paper-bag solutions for a beige box with the hiccups, to rolling out a customized OS X laboratory in less than a day, this book will walk you through the higher realms of careful planning and execution.
Very little information in this book is dedicated to the beginner. If that is my only criticism of the book then let that stand. Like any good thriller, at times you will find yourself with heart beating and sweat on your brow (when did I last back up?). Even hardened professionals will find themselves taking unhealthy interest in particular chapters.
A whole chapter of the book is dedicated to the creation of an emergency firewire drive, which is referred to again and again throughout the book and although creating one may seem arduous, you quickly learn how to use these tools to repair, recover and restore after disasters, as well as install new systems and software updates quickly. The author makes extensive references to some software essentials like Carbon Copy Cloner and NetRestore by bombich software.
There are a lot of recommendations of various software tools and their uses. Many of these tools are inexpensive, but of course there are the usual heavyweights like Retrospect and Disk Warrior. Helpfully, each tool's precious place in your toolbox is analyzed and explained, along with the situation and manner in which to use it.
Reading this book cover to cover, one of the things I found confusing was the order in which topics were presented. Of course, such a book isn't generally used in this way, and given its electronic and search/click nature, it doesn't cause any real difficulty. It may be off-putting to some, to each his own.
In keeping with its holistic backbone, the book doesn't make assumptions about the flavor of your studio's environment. Just as much coverage is given to Mac OS 9 based Macintoshes as to the Mac OS X side. There is a large section devoted to running a Mac Studio with Mac OS X Server, including hardware, software and configuration tips and guidelines.
Much of the technical knowledge contained in these pages is freely (as in free, sans-cost) available on the internet. Some of the information is quoted (and attributed) directly from such sources. However, finding this information online yourself can be very time consuming and this book addresses that problem, with well researched links that extend on the information presented, should you need it. Having all these weblinks in one document also has its benefits. This is a integrated guide and a distillation of core issues and key tips earned through (someone else's) blood, sweat and tears (not yours). And of course, in the event of system failure, even Google stops working.
There are many Macintosh books out there, so this book finds itself in a very competitive arena. However, it has several advantages over many of these books. Firstly, its in electronic format, and is therefore quickly searchable. The author recommends at the beginning of every chapter how to mine the book's information. Secondly, all references to other sections of the book are hyper-linked for quick access and all external references are hyper-linked as well. Thirdly, the book is available on a subscription basis. This may seem an expensive option, but a subscription means the information will be kept up to date and expanded as new techniques and technologies become available. Perhaps one of the few disadvantages is that in the event of emergency, the book may be stuck on your machine. (It's certainly one of those precious items to be stored on your USB stick, iPod or emergency CD-ROM .)
With a guide like this, you can quit moonlighting as fixit guy and go back to your day job.
You can download or subscribe to the electronic-only Fix a Troubled Mac through the book's official site. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
This comment might be slightly off topic, as I don't usually work with Macs and I've never read this book. However, I spend the majority of my days in front of a windows or linux machine, of various flavors (come on, as much as we like to joke, different versions of windows have different functionality).
The problem with writing tech support books, to be honest, is that google is faster. We have tech support books in the lab (research lab), but they're just not as quick as google. Google-ing error messages almost always pops up with exactly what you need to do to fix it or a related "problem" page. Googling specific keywords for problems without error messages almost always comes up with solutions. I've almost never found a computer problem that google couldn't fix.
Does this make me less of a "techie"? Not really. I mean, I know how to fix an awful lot of silly computer problems. But we all know that "Error 1278754874928375: No useful error message." comes up every once in a while, and we've got to find out how to fix it. Google seems to be the thing to use.
For those who don't find google useful, some tips: Use quotes. Quote phrases that should be together. Use "-" signs to negate words you don't need, or common words that are associated with terms in your query but aren't related to your problem (drive -car). Just seems like tech support books have been outdated by the web.
Can somebody point out the insightful part of the parent post?
Thanks
SteveM
They shouldn't be pissed. 10k/year to keep 20 computers running is really quite a good deal and reflects well on Apple. 20 windows machines is about the threshold for needing an actual IT department, at which you're in for waaaay more that $10k.
The nice thing about OSX is that it's much easier to fix than XP. The archive and install process doesn't touch ANYTHING except the system folders and no personal information is there. It just disables them and moves them to a Previous Systems folder in case you need something.
Having worked in many service departments before, most sofwtare problems are solved with a clean OS but you have to back up all the data and sometimes dig things out from hidden folders - having worked in an Apple reseller service department, it's just a clean install and pick through the previous system folder a bit.
Reviews with a twist! http://www.sardonicbastard.com
> But that one girl saved Christmas with her Mac! If they put it on T.V., it must have been true.
Christmas? Jeff Goldblum saved the entire earth with a Mac.
The parent comment is one problem I have here with this review. It hypes the book as good but the book itself is obsoleted by more effective and up to date searching of the web. Books are too slow to troubleshoot problems these days.
The other problem I have is the comment that "Macs aren't as trouble free as one is led to believe." While no computer is perfect, Mac software and hardware have a far better reliability track record than Wintel PCs do. This is at least in my experience, but there are a lot of research reports and experts out there who agree with me.
This smacks of marketing hype. "oooooohhhh buy this book because you are going to have problems.... *scary clanking noises*" That coupled by the fact that instead of buying a reference manual you can get all this information for free online makes me think its just another attempt to make money on something not needed.
I mean cmon... will this book have information on the help viewer/safari security problem? It hit the presses and already it is out of date.
This is nothing new though, the same thing is true for windows and linux troubleshooting guides too.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
In one sense, it's always good when a decent book comes out that helps people do their own in-house maintenance. While there will always be a need for people of our (ie, the Slashdot community) talents, I can't tell you how helpful it is to have a client be able to do their own basic troubleshooting before calling us to ask how to plug in an ethernet cable.
On the other hand, a $10,000 a year support budget is a dream come true for most shops with 20 machines. Often, 20 machines of any type generally warrant at least one in-house support person to keep everything running smoothly, and even at part time, you could spend well over $10,000 on such an employee, as the parent pointed out.
bash-3.00$ uname -a
SunOS panda 5.10 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-2
Only if you're completely and totally incompetent. Seriously.
The Repair install of XP does the exact same thing. Its a clean re-install of the OS files but leaves all apps, user accounts & profiles untouched.
Now, you were saying?
Well, for what it's worth, a few days ago my 6-month old 17" Powerbook completely froze up on me and refused to boot. All I was doing was some light word processing at the time, so I have no idea what caused the problem.
I managed to restore the operating system and all my data (some of which hadn't gotten backed up as I'm lazy and I only perform backups once every few weeks), but it was a bit of a pain. I had to first create a bootable installation on an external firewire drive that I had *just* purchased, move some data files over to it that I was paranoid I was going to lose, and then reinstall the OS over the old operating system.
The biggest problem was that I had FileGuard turned on so I couldn't figure out where my home directory had gone off to. In fact, for a little while there I thought I'd taken a disk hit and had lost everything until I discovered where the encrypted FileGuard file actually was (it wasn't in my home directory because of the way the laptop had ceased to function unexpectedly).
The upshot is, no computing system is truly trouble free and you should always be prepared for some problems. If you're buying a mac just because you think it's always going to 'just work', you might be disappointed. OTOH, current flailings not withstanding, I find the effort I have to put into Mac maintenance is much much less than maintaining either a Windows or Linux installation.
- Anon
Imacs can run OSX. Are you looking for an OS9 solution? If so, please put that in your post. Otherwise, people tend to assume you run OSX these days, especially on Slashdot.
Put the required fonts in /System/Library/Fonts and make sure they only have read access to that directory. If you aren't on OS X yet, turn on filesharing (use appropriate permissions [1] )or use ARD to push the fonts so you can fix 'em remotely.
:-) I kid, I kid, buggy versions of Font Reserve are a hefty chunk of my support calls as well - as are studio managers who insist on 800MB font libraries with duplicate font names in 'em. FR isn't *supposed* to be stable with that going on, it'd be nice as it was but you can't design an idiot-proof general-purpose program to handle every explicitly stupid situation.
I do have to assume the OP is a newbie, Quark suckiness should be taking up way more than 1%
[1] Determining appropriate permissions is left as an exercise for the reader. Hint: nobody by the admin account should be able to get at the System Folder !
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
That they rarely have any problems... The single Mac that died was 6100 I had disassembled after installing MKLinux on it after it was basically worthless. I run an office and have been in charge of a dozen machines, routers, switches, and a couple of windows machines. I've configured Cisco switches and routers, set up their firewalls, rebuilt an entire office of Macs in a weekend with all of the software installed, and the only thing that has ever given me trouble, is connecting to the damn Windows machines, or having a shitty Dell hard disk fail a couple of times before they sent me a good one.
If this book included simple directions for getting everything to communicate, it would be worth its weight... But, there is always Google!
You can't get 20 PCs for 10k that are worth any further than you can throw them. Seriously, you can build PCs and buy crapbox PCs for cheap, but don't expect any vendor support and don't expect them to run for more than 5 minutes without you fixing them. I know Macs are not cheap, but if you price them out feature for feature with any other tier one vendor they are at least in the realm of being competitive.
Another way to look at it is that Macs don't have ENOUGH problems to warrant a full time tech! meaning that mac support is a highly paid "niche" service like copy machine repair rather than being everywhere like MCSEs.