A Mac-Apple Christmas
This year was a “Mac-Apple” Christmas not to be seen on this scale again.
While delivered several weeks before Christmas, I bought my wife a refurbished 17 inch G5 iMac. We’ve had no problems with the machine, and its stable performance allowed us to give my wife’s older 800 Mhz G4 flat panel iMac to my sister. Both iMacs continue to perform well, and the delivery of a Mac to my sister’s household permitted her to give her Windows powered PC to one of her boys. The Smiths are now exploring a new “Mac” world of computing, and so far my sister seems to like it. Her boys seemed to be skeptical and resist it at first, but they are slowly succumbing to the iMac’s coolness and its ease of use.
I had given my wife a new iPod for her birthday in late October, and she decided to repay me the favor at Christmas. She gave me a new 20GB iPod to replace my old 5GB model. Unfortunately, the new replacement did not like its new home.
When I tried to synchronize the new iPod with iTunes, I found it would only load about 120 or so of the 644 songs loaded on my hard drive. iTunes detected the new iPod, correctly initialized its routines, and would begin loading the songs onto the machine only to bog down and stop somewhere around the “120” number. And do it time after time, no matter how I came at it. I spent HOURS reloading iPod and iTunes’ software and troubleshooting the iPod trying to solve the problem. Finally, as I began feeling what I’ve felt too often while solving some Windows installation error, I used my old iPod to update its songs. When it worked like a champ, I knew I had a hardware problem with the new iPod. OK, so maybe I was a bit slow on the uptake (or is that stubborn?), but it was a good thing that hadn’t been my first experience with Apple or I might have fled right back to the Windows platform from which I came. Because I knew this was atypical, I quit troubleshooting and chose to swap the unit for a new one the next day at the Apple Store. Once again, Apple’s customer service (vice its quality control) paid off!
My second new iPod worked like it was supposed to. iTunes recognized it as soon as it hooked up, ran its initialization routines, and promptly and quickly loaded my whole song library onto the iPod. I have a new click-wheel iPod and really like it, and I‘ve shipped my old 5GB iPod to my stepson and his wife for them to enjoy.
Meanwhile, my sister in law has decided to get high-speed Internet access. She has an even older 400MHz G3 CRT iMac at her home along with her grandson’s 800MHz G3 iBook (all donated from us). They haven’t been using the iMac that much; but when I heard this, I realized there was an opportunity to press it into service. I had a copy of OS 10.1 lying around and knew the old iMac could run it. The grandson’s iBook is equipped with an Airport card. If they hooked up their new Internet access via a wireless router, they could not only protect themselves with the router’s firewall but could use both machines to access the Internet at any time and simultaneously. I bought a Belkin 802.11G wireless router and sent it and OS 10.1 with my wife to Missouri.
More and more, we’re introducing my family on both sides of the wedding line to Macs.
It’s nice to have a purpose in life, isn’t it?
While delivered several weeks before Christmas, I bought my wife a refurbished 17 inch G5 iMac. We’ve had no problems with the machine, and its stable performance allowed us to give my wife’s older 800 Mhz G4 flat panel iMac to my sister. Both iMacs continue to perform well, and the delivery of a Mac to my sister’s household permitted her to give her Windows powered PC to one of her boys. The Smiths are now exploring a new “Mac” world of computing, and so far my sister seems to like it. Her boys seemed to be skeptical and resist it at first, but they are slowly succumbing to the iMac’s coolness and its ease of use.
I had given my wife a new iPod for her birthday in late October, and she decided to repay me the favor at Christmas. She gave me a new 20GB iPod to replace my old 5GB model. Unfortunately, the new replacement did not like its new home.
When I tried to synchronize the new iPod with iTunes, I found it would only load about 120 or so of the 644 songs loaded on my hard drive. iTunes detected the new iPod, correctly initialized its routines, and would begin loading the songs onto the machine only to bog down and stop somewhere around the “120” number. And do it time after time, no matter how I came at it. I spent HOURS reloading iPod and iTunes’ software and troubleshooting the iPod trying to solve the problem. Finally, as I began feeling what I’ve felt too often while solving some Windows installation error, I used my old iPod to update its songs. When it worked like a champ, I knew I had a hardware problem with the new iPod. OK, so maybe I was a bit slow on the uptake (or is that stubborn?), but it was a good thing that hadn’t been my first experience with Apple or I might have fled right back to the Windows platform from which I came. Because I knew this was atypical, I quit troubleshooting and chose to swap the unit for a new one the next day at the Apple Store. Once again, Apple’s customer service (vice its quality control) paid off!
My second new iPod worked like it was supposed to. iTunes recognized it as soon as it hooked up, ran its initialization routines, and promptly and quickly loaded my whole song library onto the iPod. I have a new click-wheel iPod and really like it, and I‘ve shipped my old 5GB iPod to my stepson and his wife for them to enjoy.
Meanwhile, my sister in law has decided to get high-speed Internet access. She has an even older 400MHz G3 CRT iMac at her home along with her grandson’s 800MHz G3 iBook (all donated from us). They haven’t been using the iMac that much; but when I heard this, I realized there was an opportunity to press it into service. I had a copy of OS 10.1 lying around and knew the old iMac could run it. The grandson’s iBook is equipped with an Airport card. If they hooked up their new Internet access via a wireless router, they could not only protect themselves with the router’s firewall but could use both machines to access the Internet at any time and simultaneously. I bought a Belkin 802.11G wireless router and sent it and OS 10.1 with my wife to Missouri.
More and more, we’re introducing my family on both sides of the wedding line to Macs.
It’s nice to have a purpose in life, isn’t it?
posted by Andy Foster at
3:03 PM
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