How to kill a Mac and raise it from the dead – all in under 4 hours. Or the Monkey Vs Kernel Panic..

 

Welcome back, sorry for the lack of posts, but its not like anyone expected anything else, is it, I mean really?

So after owning my Mac for about 8 months I managed to kill it, completely, no saving it and I got my first introduction to Kernel Panic (just remember to salute as he is not to be messed with!).

First I need to explain how I broke the Mac and had my first introduction to the Kernel.  All *Nix (Uniix, Linux, Mac etc) are all based on an index, and much like the Yellow Pages if you want to look for the Photography section you will look at the index page and go “oh its on Page 230”.  This index means the OS can find anything quickly from your latest guilty purchase on iTunes (I know you bough groove is in the Heart – go on admit it) to the photos from your best friends wedding,  but without this index it has less chance of finding what it is look for then trying to find clean socks in an all Male university halls of residence.

Now imagine the scene, i am sat here trying to rid a stubborn file from the Trash (the OS X equivalent of the Windows Recycle Bin) and after some serious Google-Foo I found a set of commands that I had to enter that would rid me of these pesky files, only thing was I had to be running as an Administrator on the effected account.  My normal practise is to run as a non privileged user so no rights to install anything and less chance of breaking things, so to make the changes I logged out of my Bad_Monkey account and instead switched over to my admin account and made the relevant permission changes, while I was there I thought I would change the name of the  account from Bad_Monkey to just plain simple Monkey.  This was all well and good, and I logged into the freshly renamed and empowered Monkey account, ran the commands I had found and…… Nothing, nada. Well that was unexpected, perhaps the permissions didn’t apply properly I thought so back to the admin account I went only to meet Kernel Panic.  For those of you unfamiliar with this Gentlemen let me introduce him:

 

  So yep this is what you get, a nice splash screen saying reboot, the equivalent of the Blue Screen of Death, so I treated it the same, Reboot log back in. Fine I thought I deal with this in Windows, this is just the same. Oh how wrong I was The Kernel will not be so easily deterred.  Over the next 10 minutes I logged into both accounts only to be foiled from making changes by the Kernel.

At this point My good lady dragged me away from the Mac for a walk along the canal (and no that is not a euphemism – get your mind out of the gutter!).  While we were out walking i have to admit I was not relaxing and enjoying the walk instead I was concocting my plan of attack.  I got to wondering, what would i do if this was a windows box, well i would ask these questions:

1. Is the data backed up?
2. Are the system and software disks available?
3. Will blanking the system be a worse cure then the problem?

The answers to this questions came back as Yes, Yes and No, so now I have a plan of attack: Reinstall OS X, restore the data from the Time Machine drive and then reinstall the programs as necessary.  The Kernel doesn’t stand a chance.

I returned from the walk happy that I had a plan and immediately went to engage in battle with the Kernel again.  I dug out the system disks and dropped the first DVD in, selected wipe and reinstall and then left it for 40 minutes or so to do its thing, checking in occasionally to see how it was going and swap DVD1 for DVD2 at the appropriate point and then doing the restart as necessary.  With a chime the mac sprang back to life and then started to play the OS X intro video and then came a surprising screen, one that turned the tide in my favour, this screen asks a simple question and gives you some options as shown here:

So I selected from time machine, it asked me which drive (the Time machine one) and what I wanted to restore (everything) and then I left it running, popping in occasionally till I was I given the logon screen I was used to.  With some trepidation I logged into the Bad_Monkey account and………..

 

Nothing, it was fine just sitting at the desktop waiting for me. I had vanquished Kernel Panic.  There were a couple of things I had to reinstall including the NTFS driver I use to write data to my other 500gb drive.  I plugged this drive in and BAM! the Kernel returns in a surprise ambush.  I restarted the Mac and the same thing happened again, now at log on.  By this point I am thoroughly confused until I remembered that Mac’s are indexed machines, during the restore the OS will have rebuilt the index but as the NTFS drive wasn’t connected at the time It will not have had the opportunity to rebuild the index. Now that I have worked that out the problem became how to solve it, and this is where my Mac was saved by my work laptop which runs little old XP. 

When the Mac indexes a location it stores the resulting information in the .Spotlight V100 file in the root of the drive, i deleted that out of the NTFS drive, disconnected it from the XP machine, plugged it back into the mac and all was well.

So I suppose the moral of the story is if you decide to make large sweeping changes to the Mac’s file system – give it time to reindex everything or Kernel Panic will visit you as well.

The Big Switch to Mac part 3 – What the Mac does wrong

 

So part 3 of this ongoing discussion – I have to apologise that this has been quite a long drawn out process and by god it has been busy at work, but that is another post.

So where do Apple go wrong? Well mainly its in these areas:

1. Price
2. Focus on the consumer market.
3. Wanting to go its own way

Lets take them in that order shall we?   Without a doubt any Mac, or indeed Apple product in general, are monumentally expensive, to give you an idea of how expensive that Macbook I am typing this on including the software and Apple Care (Apple’s extended warranty) came to just shy of 1400 of my Great British Pounds.

I Just winced as I typed that, in most peoples books that is a stupid amount of money to spend on a laptop, and with the recent hardware refreshes announced last week the entry level iMac (the desktop that looks like its only a screen) is now close to 800 notes!  800 for something not as powerful as this Macbook but with a bigger screen.  So why do Apple do this to themselves, surely they would attract more customers with a lower price point so why do it?

The answer is actually found in the car market generally and with the Volkswagen group specifically.  Volkswagen own Skoda and indeed many of the parts from the Passat are found in the Octavia but the Passat costs nearly 10K more! In this case there is 70% – 80% of the parts are held in common, are the remaining parts the dogs dangly bits? maybe but I doubt it mostly it is to do with the name, the prestige of owning a premium product in Apples view they are the Rolls Royce of the consumer electronics market.  Partly they are correct (have a look at the previous entries for my view on this) however they are not that correct.

Simply but the kit is impressive but it simply can’t cost them that much to make so most of that high price is “Apple Tax” for owning their product.

 

Mistake 2: Apple is regarded as a consumer electronics company – would you regard HP in the same light?  No even though they compete in many of the same areas and are seen as a premium product.  HP’s main focus is the business market in all its guises from laptops and desktops up to their servers (I do like their servers) they do release consumer products but that is not where they concentrate.  I have been asked on many occasions about recommendations for home machines and time and time again I advise HP as they are reliable, well made, well supported products that I have had positive experiences with in a work environment.

Secondly to this point where do you think most computer spending is sourced from businesses or individuals?  Businesses clearly, you all use one at work, everyone does (and I thank you as it keeps me in a job) but Apple with its consumer focus and lack of serious provision for businesses keeps them out of the arena.  Now I know people do use them in work, especially in the coloured pencil department (read anything to do with graphics or design) but this is very much a niche market, and the really serious business kit of servers for instance there is almost no provision, in fact in my IT career I have seen only 1 business run on Apple servers and even they had their reservations about how developed as product it was.

Until Apple develop a better business strategy they will only ever slowly grow their consumer base.

 

Mistake 3: Apple make their own way. This is less of a mistake and more or a two edged sword as it is also one of Apples greatest positives as well but what it can mean is that Apple make a gamble and adopt a technology that makes it difficult to use their equipment with non Apple kit, or a technology of which they are the only major proponent.  As some examples I give you Firewire and the Display Port.  Firewire was Apples version of USB but has always been faster, the first version was about 40 times quicker then USB 1 (400 mb/s vs 10 mb/s) and the second version, called Firewire 800, is roughly twice as fast as USB 2 (800 mb/s vs 440 mb/s).  It also had all the benefits of USB, daisy chaining and being Hot Swappable, so where did it all go wrong.  Well it just never really “hit” it was being found on many high end consumer digital items like camcorders and some digital cameras but the cost of having these ports on computers was a lot higher then USB and as USB gained dominance so Firewire is slowly being doused even by Apple with USB ports now out numbering the Firewire ones for the first time when taken across the product range. 

Then there is the display port.  The Display port is a proprietary display adapter that Apple uses on its monitors and as the output from their laptops.  I really cannot make my mind up on this as it is either Apple being contrary or a good marketing idea as you cannot use your new laptop with any non Apple branded monitor unless you buy the Adaptor, and god help you if you want to attach to either a VGA or DVI monitors, its now two adaptors, Oh you want to connect to your HDTV well that’s another adaptor to turn your DVI output to a HDMI one.  See what I mean, these adaptors must cost Apple the square root of naff all to make and yet I have had to purchase 3 all three to achieve what I want to.

The last section of this mistake comes from its stubborn non adaption of Industry standard kit, as by now I think it is fairly safe to say that Bluray has won the Hi Def format war and yet Steve Jobs (The Apple CEO) has categorically started that your Mac will never have Bluray support as he views it as a dead format already in that he believes that digital distribution is the way forward.  That in and of itself is a valid belief but saying that Apple will not support one of the major video formats surely has to be short sighted, doesn’t it?

 

So there you go there are some of the mistakes that I think Apple make, and it is purely my layman’s perspective on the issues, but hey it’s my blog so I can get away with it.

Let me know if you think I have hit the nail on the  head with these of if you think I have missed the point by so much I nearly hit myself.

So I am now an MCP

Well I got the fist exam of the year out of the way last Monday with a solid 80% so I am now, finally, a Microsoft Certified Professional.

Looks like the next one will be less studying but more exams due to changes at the training provider I use, of which I will post more on when the situation clears up.

In the meantime back to the hang over.

The Big Switch to Mac part 2 – Apple Software and Mac vs PC

For those of you just joining us here is the summary so far – I have bought a Mac and spent the last post giving a brief history of why I think there is an Apple resurgence and what I believe the two defining Apple design concepts are: a simple to use interface and the need to make a well designed desirable object.  Obviously one of these will transfer over easier then the other, so how do you go about making software desirable?

At the very base of it all what do all operating systems have in common be it on your phone, laptop, set top box, watch or microwave?  They all provide the structure for you the user to interact with the device.  How they go about this is a very different matter and indeed causes many an argument over which operating system is better on many Geek forums across the land.  The argument has three sides and goes something like this:

• PC: We are the everyman solution, everyone uses windows and because everyone has one the computers are very cheap.  We are the defacto choice for business and our office suite is again the industry standard.
• Mac: Windows is just a rip off of Mac OS and always has been.  Name one thing the PC can do that the Mac can’t.  Oh yeah and our hard ware is better to!
• Linux: will everyone keep it down I am to busy typing in commands to deal with all of you, and oh yeah my OS is free!

Do they have a point? well they all do in some cases.  Ignoring the Linux issue for now (and to be honest that is likely to continue) and concentrate on the Mac vs PC debate.

Taking a look the stats it is hard to argue about who is winning with Microsoft having between a 96% and 98% market share, with Apple coming in second and other OS’s making up the remaining decimal places.  That right there is a tough figure to argue with, do you know any other industry where one corporation holds such sway over a market sector?  Windows is the industry standard with nearly every computer sold coming with it in one form or another and when most people think of computers they don’t think of the typically boring beige box but the interface that comes with it.  Microsoft really spearheaded the movement of computer strictly for business to the idea that it is something that can be found in most homes in the world. 

However if you look at the evolution of Windows against that of Mac OS you seem some disturbing trends in which Microsoft lags behind the Mac OS and implements an idea that Apple had, and normally that is done badly.  Examples? sure taking Windows Vista and Windows 7 and comparing it against OS X you have:

The Aero interface.  included in Vista was the much touted Aero interface.  This graphical overhaul included translucent windows and a “Rolodex” style rotational system for switching between applications with active previews of each app as it goes.  Also included in Aero was the preview of programs on the start bar.  These are al ideas borrowed from OS X, firstly the translucent display came with OS X and wowed users with it’s smooth implementation and lack of system over head to use.

 

(The Aero Interface)

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Expose)

 

 

 

 

The “Expose” system allows users with a single key or button press to arrange all of their active windows so they can all be viewed at once, these windows are all live and displaying current data with the user just having to click on the app they want as opposed to scrolling through.  The dock in OS X (the bar at the bottom of the screen) doubles as both an application launcher and a preview of minimised apps.  The MS implementation of this has been taken forward with Windows 7 in which they have done away with the application tittles in the start bar and have taken to an icon based system just the same as the OS X one.

Active Corner.  In Windows 7 if you move your cursor to the lower right corner of the screen it will minimise the current application, this is very similar to an option in OSX called Active Corners.  Active Corners allows you to assign an action to each corner of the screen should you so choose, for example I have the upper right hand corner set to activate the screensaver, but all four corners of the screen are customisable for what ever action you like.

The Search and Lunch bar.  Vista brought in an integrated search that would allow you to type the name of a file and executable and run it with a few simple presses.  Windows 7 builds on this by allowing you to use the name of programs.  For instance in Vista if you wanted to launch Word you would have to type winword.exe and not just Word as you can now in Windows 7.  This is a very basic implementation of the OS X feature named Spotlight  However spotlight does much more then just index files, instead it integrates a calculator, a dictionary, it searches all your contacts, calendar entries, emails, “to do” items and Web favourites and allows you to bring any of them up with a “natural” word search that begins as soon as you start typing and with each additional key press is further refines the results.  These results are categorised into top hit and then by the category each result would fall into and are selectable with a mouse click or enter.  The reason the search is so quick is because all the items are indexed, which is nothing new but for an out of the box feature Spotlight is very well implemented and integrated will all OS X apps.

There are others but after the first few examples it starts to get tedious.  So just what is it about the Mac os that is so good?  well for a start it runs incredibly well, mainly because there are so few hard ware combinations out there that Apple can really focus on the important bits.  It is very user friendly in that it isn’t obtuse in the way it asks you to interact (Shutting down the computer by clicking on start?) and not everything is nested in layers upon layers of menus.

As an example of it’s simplicity I will take one of Leopard’s (the latest version of OS X) apps :Time  Machine.  At its heart Time Machine is incredibly boring in the fact that it’s a backup system and I know how we all find that dull.  So what makes Time Machine Special? the fact that I don’t have to think about it, or do anything with it at all in fact, ah I see you are slightly more interested now, allow me to expand on this.  Before you first activate Time Machine (ok going to refer to it as TM now) and you connect an external hard drive Leopard ask would you like to use it as a TM drive? If you select yes it brings you to the time machine menu where you move a big switch from “off” to “on” and that’s it, the end of your interaction.

 

The Mac will now take a complete backup of everything on there (this one took a while) and after that it backs up like this:

• Hourly backups for 24 hours
• Daily backups (takes the last backup of the day) for a week.
• Weekly backups (last backup of the week) for a month
• Monthly backup (Last backup of the month) for as long as you have disk space.

Now while this is certainly impressive its by no means more impressive then some of the third party apps out there for windows so what is so impressive about it?  Well remember I said that spotlight indexes everything? well it keeps that record for your backup files.  So say you lost some files for work and you had searched for them using spotlight but with no avail, you activate TM and while keeping what you have searched for in mind shows you loads of windows going back for each time it took a backup of your file allowing you to preview the file select the one you want and restore it easily.  

 

 

 

 

Very impressive I hear you say but what about laptops, they have a tendency to move round don’t they? well yes they do and I was somewhat concerned by this until I found out that even if you disconnect the TM drive and go about your business when you reconnect the drive it compares the last backup with what is now there and backs up all the changes without any user input. Magic.

At the start of this, much longer then expected, post I asked how do you make software desirable?  It turns out the the answer is very simple, make it powerful, make it user friendly and make it attractive.  I think that Apple have got this down to a fine art now but they are not without there problems, but that is another post.

2009 eh? Well I must get something done..

So New year, new start and all that?  Well not in an attempt to sound cliched but managing it all the same so what do I want out of this year? Money, women, an Adonis like physique, oh you expect me to be serious and grown up about this?  Really? fine if you want to play like that I will even split them into work and personal.

Work

I need to pass 4 Microsoft Professional exams this year they are

• 70-271 Supporting Windows XP users and computers. Deadline: December 2008
• 70-271 Supporting Windows Desktop Applications Deadline: 31st March
• 70-270 – Windows XP Professional Deadline: 30th June
• 70-290 – Server 2003 Deadline 30th September

i also need to pass a personal communications course, as apparently I don’t play well with others.  Now shockingly I know but I don’t believe this is the case, people get the messages I send out, it just happens that the majority of the messages are, “no you are doing it wrong” and “Why yes you are a cock, please go to the head of the class”.  My boss tells me that this doesn’t go down well.

However in all seriousness he gave me some feedback which I did find interesting in that I used “closed” language a lot.  For example I will write “you will” instead of “you should” and because of this I come across as dictatorial and aggressive when this is not necessarily the case.

Personal

Well my personal goals are slightly less well defined and mostly fitness related

• Run a mile by the end of feb
• Enter and complete a 2K – 5K run by the end if the year.
• Swim a mile by Easter
• Get my purple belt at Jitsu.
• Make up my mind on if I am going to Marry my girlfriend.

Oh well the objectives are set – lets see if I make them.

The Origin of the Bad Monkey

Some of you may be wondering why I am posting in a blog called TheBadMonkey when I have already introduced myself as Dave and have revealed my hair colour to the more observant of you…

well the answer can be found here at the Security Monkey Blog as told by my supervisor “Graycat”

Enjoy