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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.
Anyhow, I used to mess with the innards of the computer quite a bit, and ended up breaking one of the pins off of the Motorla 608040 chip. I Proceded to fix it with a piece of copper speaker wire.
Try doing that today with one of these new fangled *ntium chips.
I'm getting tired of playing engineer all the time for all the laptops I buy, running linux (usually XP Pro and BSD under vmware). Someone told me this when I mentioned about getting a Mac laptop: "They Just Work out of the box and all the time!". Is this really true?
This concept is new to me, but I am looking into it more. If nothing else, they look awfully perty...Glowing apples are kinda cool.
Since I have years behind me in both the mac and PC world, I can honestly say that while Mac's have fewer problems, their problems are more serious, cryptic, and otherwise annoying. I am glad to see a book that compiles the often hard-to-find information... the big question: does it come with a paper clip for that disk drive button? :)
stuff |
With Macs, you tend to run into a relatively small number of predictable problems. This book sounds like it lays the groundwork for preparing for problems -- and then when they come up, you fix them.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
which I've mostly updated to OSX native apps
Bet just that took longer than ~5 hours. Remember, for a graphic design company, upgrading, fixing, etc. will count toward their IS support budget. $10k for suppporting 20 computers in a professional environment is not bad.
I am living proof of the Peter Principle
That about sums up fixing Macs for me. At least with windows and linux you're already in constant state of things going wrong.
From the introduction about a lab of 20 machines:
>this can easily balloon your IT support budget
>to over $10K a year.
In the late 90's Gartner published a study pegging the support costs of a Windows corporate network at $5k to $10k per year *per seat*.
Even with a simple Windows based network the cost easily could be $30k to $40k per year just for a sysape to keep things running and deal with viruses etc. Macs *are* less expensive to run.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
This book basically covers what I do at my job. You easily can get this info via Google if you know the search terms. The issue here is people don't want to have to think about it, they would rather just have someone take care of it. Come on, I get support calls regarding aliases missing from the desktop. The real market for this book is tiny, although a number of people will buy it to collect dust.
Crushing my karma one post at a time.
... I come across this article.
Honestly, after supporting a group of about 20 graphics folks with Macs for the past six months (along with about 90 Wintel boxen), I'm just sick of seeing the same thing over and over again: 99% of all Mac problems have to do with FONTS. Corrupt fonts, missing fonts, bad font activation, etc. (That last 1% is reserved for Quark's profound suckedness.)
I can't tell you how many fcsking times I've told these people not to remove their system fonts. Invariably, someone will come to me complaing that Outlook doesn't work, and I end up solving the problem by reinstalling their system fonts. And repeating the lecture, again.
Sure. There's a LOT less hardware calls, but when there's one, there are bound to be many of the same type.
I have about 200 Macs under my responsibility, and since November I've not had to fix ONE hardware issue with a desktop (excepting two dead keyboards). I've sent a few iBooks in, but those have been abused for almost three years by fourth-graders.
When I notice one iBook drive go, though, I know there are six more waiting to die, so I tested them all and sent the dying ones back.
The PC-support guy has about twice as many computers to handle, but he easily does five times as many hardware repairs as I do.
As for software, if you really know *NIX, you can keep users pretty happy while limiting their destructive whims to their own home folders, which is a joy.
We don't have popups, adware, spyware, worms, or viruses on our side of the fence, so there's a LOT fewer support calls. You do, however, have to keep users up-to-date withtheir software, and that means registering each machine in ARD so you can push packages. I spend a decent part of my day in front of ARD getting reports on OS versions to track down any update-stragglers.
Active-Directory integration lets me give some users temporary admin rights to their machines if I trust them, which is way cool. You can run roaming profiles via SMB and AD as well if you like, so non-admin users can't write a damn thing to local drives.
Imaging is painless, as there's netboot; and you NEVER have to make separate images for different breeds of hardware, the image for the G5 works fine on the bondi-blue iMac.
ARD lets me remote into people's machines and SHOW them how to do attachments in email, etc. Saves me the walk across campus.
There is a big learning curve though, not to USE a Mac, but to admin them. You've got to learn the whole 'vibe' and get a feel for the types of problems these strange machines can exhibit. And don't forget to memorize your startup keystrokes, command-option-p-r can save you quite a bit of time.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Being an eBook I wasn't aware of this book's existence at all. I have to say that I'm both intrigued and put off by this. A physical book has a long production time and is read and commented on by experts and non-users heavily. Is there any editing to this electronic version? From the review it sounds like it could be a bit disorganized or even contradictory if there was only limited editing/review by others.
The reviewer mentions "The Tao of Macintosh" as an appropos subtitle, but this was already used by a book in the System 6 / System 7 days. I had that book at one time and found it to be all philosophy and very, very little usable advice. A good subway read, but definitely not a "useful" or "must have" book. I'm a bit concerned by the extensive philosophy the author says is focused on in early chapters. Is it readable? Is it obvious? Does it draw too many metaphors to other things and leave you to apply the lesson to your job?
I'm also a little disturbed that the advice that was taken from the internet sources hasn't been digested and distilled by the author and instead simply reprinted directly. One advantage of many books versus scanning the internet is getting the voice and perspective of one author. Besides just tone and readability, as you read a book author you set your own perspective of what this person thinks is "too risky" or what procedures are a "useless waste of time". You don't get that perspective on the internet and it would be nice for the author to have tried to digest the information and filter it through his own experience and mindset.
As far as some of the technial issues, I'm a bit concerned it tries to cover everything and by being too broad, lets things escape in the cracks. I used to know a cornucopia of Mac OS 9 troubleshooting tips and tricks ("Hold the command and option keys down while opening the latest memory control panel and you'll see an advanced config screen"). Now I don't even bother. Apple isn't going to update Mac OS 9 so it's just easier to refresh the disk from an image than try to troubleshoot quirky problems. Additionally, the mindset for dealing with OS 9 problems is much different from OS X ones. I quickly find I wind up with privilege problems or corrupt resource forks if I mistakenly apply tricks from one OS to the other.
The cross-referencing in an ebook sounds great. I'd love to have this in real books. But good cross-references take time to build. You say that many chapters refer to the "building a firewire rescue drive". But if I have iBooks that have no Firewire ports, then I'll find these cross-references more of a bother than a help.
I hope my comments don't sound overly harsh. It does sound like there's some good information in this tome. I'm glad that this review brought it to my attention, but I'm still a bit wary of whether it'll be applicable for my needs.
From the man himself...
I wrote an ad for Apple Computer: "Macintosh - We might not get everything right, but at least we knew the century was going to end."
The Macintosh may only have 10% of the market, but it is clearly the top 10%.
hehe. Enjoy.
First, find all files that end in .dfont on the Mac and get rid of them. I usually move them to /Shared/unused_fonts or something like that.
Some of those dfonts are crucial, like Helvetica. Google for a minute and you'll find a list of them somewhere, I'm feeling lazy right now. Put ordinary Postscript versions of the crucial fonts where the dfonts were. Some of these actions require the use of sudo in the Terminal.
After that, things will be much improved. You should also get a decent font management app. I usually recommend Suitcase. I had a couple clients try Font Reserve, and it gave them way too many problems. Plus Extensis now owns both Suitcase and Font Reserve, and based on the frequency of updates it's pretty clear that Font Reserve is getting short shrift and is probably living on borrowed time.
Anyway, once you get your font management app installed, be sure to configure it to manage your system fonts for you.
Once you do the above, you should have far fewer problems (but Quark still sucks, especially when it's version 4.x running in Classic).
~Philly
"If you run a busy creative design business, you've encountered your fair share of Mac problems"
Assertion: It is only possible to run a 'creative design business' with a shed load of Macs.
With all due respect, this is clearly bs, and it is the kind of attitude that really, really pisses off non-Apple users. It is perfectly possible to run a web design/publishing/graphic design/3D rendering/printing business using Windows machines, without any extra effort. There is hardware and software available for the Windows environment that is at least as good, and arguably better, than the current crop of Apple products.
Dreamweaver, Photoshop, InDesign, etc. etc. all sell well on PC, and indeed there are rumours that Adobe is strategically scaling back its investment in Apple due to low demand and poor return-on-investment in developing products for the OS9/X platforms. In other words: they make more money out of Windows sales of their software, including Photoshop, than they do from the Mac sales.
I'm not trying to take part in the holy wars here, it's just that the opening line was such a typical Apple fanboy cliche that I feel compelled to respond. Please, get over yourselves. You choose Apple. Others choose other tools. Not all graphic designers use Macs, and Apple products are not a prerequisite for running a successful design business.
Read Pynchon.