David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

I had a meeting rescheduled today, so I had some time to deal with the sick Mac. First I called Apple, where (after the first call was cut off just as the operator answered, grr) I got a knowledgeable and companiable tech who walked me through all the potential software solutions until she agreed with me that it looked like a hardware problem. So then I used my local Apple store’s web page to schedule a slot at the Genius Bar — which it promptly gave me for ten minutes hence (the store’s about half an hour away). Fortunately, by the time I got there my name was just coming to the top of the list. About 15 minutes later I was walking out with a brand new Mac. All was wonderful when I got it home, until I tried to connect it to my Wi-Fi network, which not only failed but I managed to knock the whole network off the air trying to fix it. I was terribly distracted while we went off to our neighborhood SF book group (this month’s book: The Year of Our War, which we all thought was a bit shallow and the main character unsympathetic), but when we got back I used the DSL modem’s setup disk to reinstall it from scratch and all is now cool. Spent the rest of the evening installing Tiger. Now I’m back to where I was Sunday when the DVD drive failed. At the moment the new Mac is downloading software updates, and I’m going to let it have fun by itself, for I must sleep now.

So I went down to the Apple Store today and I dropped a couple thousand bucks on a new iBook and a new iPod and all the associated software and accessories, including AppleCare for both because I know a lot of people who’ve had problems with their iBooks. Got it home, started it up, installed Tiger (which came in the box, but not preinstalled), got it talking to my Windows Wi-Fi network. Most impressive when it printed a test document. Tried playing a CD and a DVD. Way cool. Stopped, had dinner. Lovely carrot curry. After dinner, looked for compiler. Ah, it’s not installed by default. Inserted the Tiger startup disk, clicked on the “About XTools.pdf”. Disk whirred and ground for a few minutes and finally bombed out with error -36. Ejected disk, inspected, reinserted. This time it whirred and ground for a few minutes, then simply ejected the disk. Tried a couple more times and never got it to accept the disk, except for the time it whirred and ground and then decided to keep the disk without it appearing on the desktop — nor would pressing the eject key convince it to let go. Restarted and held down the trackpad button, which made it spit out the disk, but it still won’t mount. Same behavior seen with three different factory-fresh disks — Tiger, Office, and the diagnostic disk from the AppleCare package. Naturally, it waited until after 8pm Central time to do this. And I’m not going to be able to take it in for service tomorrow. Grr.