Across Weirdish Wild Space

I probably should have realized htere was a serious problem when the macbook crashed a few times. Let’s face it, macs rarely do that. Anyhow, the machine froze and would not reboot. It just kept spinning looking for something to boot up into. I tired safe mode booting, shell, Disk utlity repair from a Install CD boot… hell, even target mode thinking I could maybe just get all the data off and be a happy puppy. Kind of had a bit of a freak when the repair gyu said the drive was a total loss. They couldn’t get anything from it.

I’m a bit annoyed I have to admit. Quality control definitely seems to have gone down at Apple and you realy notice it in the consumer line. When I bought the macbook to replace my 12” G4 Powerbook I knew I’d had problems with the iBooks but seriously, a DVD failure and a full on HD failure in the first year ? Ok, I’m not Joe Normal user, but still.

It’s also very sobering after holding onto a Macbook Air last week for testing purposes (this comes to you courtesy of an IBM X300 laptop we have in for testing running Ubuntu 8.04 which is a sweet piece of hardware though had to compile sound drivers for it and mic in still isn’t working properly making Skype not so useful… still, though… ). Guess I probably should be sticking to the pro hardware.

It has made me realize how heavily dependent I’ve become on OSX and some of the applications it has for doing things. Not having Quicksilver or its integration with things like addressbook, mail and calendaring has been driving me a bit nuts actually. I really do feel half to a third as produtive. And the whole idea of my work and personal life being integrated on this machine, as nice as it is, seems strange without the effortless apps that make that possible.

It looks like my backups are all ok. Things like photos and writing and mail appear to be in place though since I hadn’t been backing up my music collection I’ll have to re-get all those files from the iPod I’ve got and the database which lists all the songs.

Cross your fingers. Should have the macbook back on Monday if all goes well.