odzer's blog

Oh well it had to happen sometime. I purchased my laptop way back in May of 2006. The computer has been running smoothly as far as the software is concerned and I have had no major problems except that I was beginning to run out of Hard disk space. So unlike installing the other popular operating system, the reinstall of the Mac was straightforward. Please click on the images for larger versions in case you have difficulty reading any of the text in them.

Step 1
Pop in the OS X disc.

Installing Mac OS

Step 2.
Go away and do something engaging like read a book or something.

Step 3
Adjust some settings, for some strange reason my Mac thought that I was in Thimphu, Bhutan instead of New Delhi, India as far as the Time zone goes.

Glitz and Glamour

Now came the more challenging parts. Backing up all the data that my previous installation had. Now Macs come with this software called “Time Machine” that allow you periodically back up your computer’s drive to an external Hard disk. I had been diligently backing up my former installation of Mac OS but when I connected the hard disk to the laptop after reinstalling the computer was stuck at a dialog box and would not budge from it. After some research I discovered that the reason for this is because both the Time Machine backup as well as the new installation have the same hard drive name, i.e. Macintosh HD.
So I simply canceled the back up, restarted the Mac and renamed the HDD of the new install and ran the “Migration Assistant” utility and backed up the computer from there. However after the migration was over to my utter surprise, all of my emails, music and pictures were still missing from the computer.

Select your country

Now I do not know how you would feel about losing around 7500 emails, about an equal number of photos and around 800 songs but I was not very pleased about it.

Yes yes I do!

Just as I was about to write a really annoying email to steve@apple.com, I had an idea. I opened my old Time Machine external disc and did the following to restore my email. This is a course of action I would suggest to anyone who is in a similar position that I found myself after a fresh install of Mac OS.

1) Navigate down in finder to Username>Library>Mail
2) Rename the Mail folder by selecting and pressing the Enter key, lets say name it Mail (Default)
3) Open Time Machine from the Dock and select the option that allows you to use “Browse other time machine disks”
4) Select the most recent back up from your Time Machine Finder Windows
5) Simply navigate down to Username>Library>Mail
6) Select the mail folder and click “Restore”
7) Now Navigate down to Library>Preferences>com.apple.mail.plist file in your time machine back and restore that as well.
After the restore is complete, simply open your Mail from the dock and you will find an import dialog box and all your email as it was in pristine condition.

Ummmm

Restoring Music and Photos was a simple enough process for me. I simply had to navigate to the respective folders in the Time Machine back up and restore them. One more thing that I noticed that could be trouble some after a restore when it comes to certain Microsoft Office Documents is that they become “read only” this is a very simple process just select the folder in which they rest and: -

1) Right click on the folder.
2) Click on “Get Info”
3) Scroll down and at the very end on the right hand side you will find a small lock icon, click on it and enter your computers administrator password.
4) Now you can edit the permissions for this folder that rest just above the lock. For your own username you can assign “Read and Write”, for Everyone “Read Only” and Unknown “Read Only”. This should be sufficient. Just lock back before you close the dialog box.

Over all I have installed many different operating systems and I must say Mac OS is quite easy as long as you have a good back up. So if you do own a Mac there is a lot of merit in doing periodic Time Machine back ups.

I find coconut battery to be a useful tool for mac users.

I have had my laptop since around 2006 and it has always performed quite well. Last week I started facing this really curious problem. The computer would just shut itself off instead of going to sleep mode when the battery got exhausted. It would turn itself off around 2 minutes before the battery was due to be finished.Now one of the most annoying parts of this was that I would lose any work that was unsaved. I did a bit of research online and soon found out a problem that might have been the cause of this issue. A call to my local Apple dealer soon confirmed the problem. My battery needed to be calibrated.

The apple dealer explained to me that when the battery ages the computer often loses track of how much charge is stored in it. The way to fix it is actually quite simple and I will detail it below but it is rather time consuming. The good news is that it only needs to be done around once in six months or even longer. In fact since 2006 I had never ever calibrated my  macbook battery and it had no ill effects at all. So here is what you need to do:

Plug in the adapter and wait for the magsafe battery indicator to turn green from orange.

Disconnect the power adapter and wait till the battery is completely empty. In case your computer turns itself off as in my case before it goes to sleep just close the lid of the laptop before it happens. If if enters sleep mode its well and good.

Leave it alone for at least 5 hours without the adapter or overnight is even better.

Recharge the battery without removing the adapter and fully charge the battery again.

Your battery should be fully calibrated now. A good tool I have found is Coconut battery that can be downloaded from here. It gives detailed and useful information regarding the status of Apple portable batteries. Now my computer goes peacefully to sleep instead of turning off abruptly and I am happy again.

Ever tried owning a white laptop in India? Its a pain. Now I am not really a clean freak and I can make a mess out of my computer before I decide to clean it up but every now and then I decide to give it a nice clean. I have tried various things when it comes to cleaning my laptop but the one thing that I have decided that works for me is, get ready for it…..

A Pencil Eraser

Yep! The kind that engineering drawing students use, not made of rubber but plastic. It gets even the worst grease and hand oil stains out of the computer. Although I would not recommend that anyone who is reading this try it on their laptop but it works fine for my Apple Macbook. I usually just clean the keyboard first with a moist cloth and dry it with another soft cloth. Then I get going at it with my pencil eraser and Voila! Macbook owners often complain about discolouring of the panel besides the touchpad and in 2006 when I had purchased this computer I had Apple actually change the whole panel once. I have since discovered that it can be quite efficently cleaned this way. I do not think though that people who use coloured computers especially silver or black coloured ones should give this a try. I have heard recently that Apple has redesigned the Macbook and they will be launching them soon, the plastic body is on its way out. I am thinking that is basically a good move.

I guess I was still a bit mad about the whole Apple iPhone thing. So I took sometime out and wrote an email to the good people at Apple. I just wanted to let them know my opinion on their pricing in India. I did not really even expect a reply. So here is what I wrote to them.

Click here to read

Surprisingly they wrote a reply back to me very quickly, within hours really. Someone called Sheila from Apple customer care sent me this message.

Click here to read

What is clear for me after this email from Apple is that they really are blaming Indian duties, taxes and other costs for the price of iPhone in India. So now I have some really very interesting questions :

1) Why is the iPod relatively cheaper in India? It is almost a similar product.
2) How come other manufacturers who import phones into India can give their products at a far more reasonable price?
3) If the costs are indeed this high why are the operators not absorbing some costs considering they are not giving away an unlocked product?

So in the end I am impressed that they do answer their customers e-mails but I do not think in the end they really care about their flagship phone product and its sales in India. I am going to wait till the next year before I pick up my iPhone or some other smart phone product.

Note : Click here to read the previous post related to this one.