Maybe -Don't Buy The Apple Magic Mouse!

Okay.... you can read my rant below. The $%^%$ Magic Mouse I bought a month ago was maddening. Today is Black Friday (I'm writing this the day after I posed this original posting). You will note that Flo suggested I take the thing back before throwing it against the wall, stomping up and down upon its carcass, then setting fire to the remaining pieces.

Black Friday is NOT a good time to go to the Apple Store. It couldn't be returned without talking to a genius. I had to wait 90 minutes since both a salesman and a manager failed to find a computer which would recognize my mouse (not their fault really ...you can imagine how many mice are in a store). As always, they were very courteous and supportive and put my name on the genius schedule.

After the wait (I browsed the bustling mall), the genius listened to my story, explained that neither he nor his friends had comparable problem with the Magic Mouse, and offered to replace it. Actually, that was the only offer. I accepted - with the understanding that if the replacement failed to work correctly it could be returned either for credit or for some other company's mouse. They also noted that the price had been reduced on the Magic Mouse, re. the Holiday sale, so they gave me a $9 rebate along with the replacement (sale price $60).

Okay, I'm home now... the thing's hooked up and I'm going to give this new thing a try. So far so good. BTW, I bought my first Magic Mouse on the first day it was in stock at the Mac store. I did not do that on purpose, actually the old Mighty Mouse had gone down and I went to the store to replace. it. However, maybe that first batch had a bug or two?

Soooo.... go ahead... read the rant below. And I shall post something next week as a comment on whether all is forgiven. K?



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GRUMBLE! My mouse broke. So I bought the Apple Magic Mouse. Yeah... it's magic if what you want is to reach into the hat and come out with a snake instead of a rabbit. AAARGH!

(1) It is pretty
(2) It fits the hand well
(3) It is a piece of crap!

The "buttons" simply cannot be controlled. You right click, it left clicks. Whimsically. There's no order to it. I have reprogrammed this junky bluetooth thing a bunch of times. And of course the definition of madness is repeating the same action in hopes of different results. Well, it has driven me mad.

Moreover the programable options are stupidly limited compared to virtually every third party mouse on the market. How could this have happened? Worse yet, the speed ... when set at max ... tracks more slowly than a muskrat tethered to a fifty kilo dumbbell! If you can imagine a software design flaw... the Apple people have beaten you to it and incorporated it into this pretty (and expensive) paperweight.

I am going to have to buy a new mouse and flush away this fraudulently impersonator. Don't buy it. Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't!!!!!!!!

Semi-Bummed

Got my MacBookPro back from Apple repair today. Yeah, it was yet another Seagate drive that crashed destroying all data upon it. When I bought the first machine the Seagate drive was 120 G, the second time that drive was replaced after spectacular crashes Apple gave me a new MacBookPro with 150G hard drive. That's the one that crashed this week and the replacement drive is NOT a Seagate!!! It is a 200G Hitachi (Yea!). The new 200G drives are no longer maed by Seagate. Looking at the results when I Google (Seagate +MacBook Pro +malfunction) well the evidence is grim. The Seagate drive seems to have a design fault.

But even so, I must be the unluckiest user in the world having three of those things crash on me since last October. Of course I lost all of my data including two graphic files that you can see here... one of the Pigeon Point lighthouse and the other of the way-cool Muscle Worker. Sigh... These jpgs are all that remain. I work in a very large space at 270dpi. It is not unusual when a finished file approaches a gig in size. I do that so I can eventually have the option of printing the image VERY LARGE. That will never happen now with those files. No way I will try to recreate them. Sigh.

Apple has been very supportive during all of these problems. Their repairs have taken two or three days at most (except for the new machine they swapped me for the old one... that had to come from China and took about a week). The biggest problem is in rebuilding all of the data. I hope I can do it over the course of this weekend.

So, while I am less bummed now that I have the machine back with a new and larger drive, I remain semi-bummed by the work I have to do, the data I lost, and the fact that I cannot really ever trust this machine again.

Your thoughts?

Bummer

Early last year I bought a 17" MacBook Pro. In October while in Italy, the Hard Drive spontaneously crashed and destroyed all of my stored data of that trip. Apple replaced the hard drive. In February that hard drive crashed, destroying all un-backed up data. Apple replaced the MacBook Pro. Last Tuesday the new machine's hard drive (All Seagates) crashed destroying all un-backed up data including all files pertaining to my last posting of Pigeon Point Lighthouse. These .jpgs then are the only remaining examples of this image. I am very bummed. Apple has the machine, they are apparently replacing the hard drive. Sigh. Thanks for your interest in these images, I like them, but they will never be printed. Darn.

A small footnote: According to the internet reports (simply Google +MacBook Pro +Seagate for a lot of examples of the crashes), when these Seagate drives crash they tear through the disks making data recovery impossible. I am now three for three, a terrible set of coincidences I guess.

I'M OFF SAILING THIS WEEKEND! Going out onto Chesapeake Bay for a couple of days. Hope the images will be cool and the days warm. We'll see next week, eh?

DAY THREE: Computo Reviso

Sigh... Spent lots of last night reading a book on .Mac and getting fuzzy headed. Why was I reading it? Well aside from getting a rush from being fuzzy headed, the new machine and my current .Mac settings appeared incompatible. So I now know lots of things about .Mac that I will never need again, but that part of my repair and reload is finished but more remain. I hope that by the weekend this will all end and that this new MacBookPro will be vastly more efficient for me than the old one. However... once again I have not had enough brain power left to focus upon my image making.

Sorry... Hope that by Saturday... hope hope hope... I shall yet again feel and be graphically creative.

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Did you ever wander around in a florist shop at the very end of Valentine's Day? Just before closing when the setting sun bathed the remaining corpses?

DAY TWO: ComputoReviso

As explained yesterday, Apple replaced my defective 14 month old MacBookPro with a brand new, top of the line, machine. It arrived yesterday and during my non-working hours I am teaching it to dance, sing, and think. In most ways one can sense it is very similar to my old machine (which must be sent back to Apple in 29 days or else one of my credit cards takes a humongous hit) so while it's exciting to have brand new machine (fresh off the assembly line in Shanghai) there isn't quite the same rush you get when you unbox a toy that's stuffed full-up with new geegaws, flashies, and thunder thingees.

This is NOT a complaint. The thing is faster (2.16 to 2.4), it's got a bigger hard drive(120G to 160G), and twice the RAM (1Gig to 2 Gig). The old machine's memory maxed out at 2gig, this one will accept up to 4, and given my graphic needs, this should also reduce rendering time. While the improvements are marginal, they're nice. Oh yeah, it also comes with Mac's new OS: Leopard. What's most important is that I shall be able to trust that the disk drive won't go defective losing everything on it and necessitating yet another trip to Macintosh and the time it takes to rebuild everything.

Of course that's what I am doing now, rebuilding the new laptop from the old. Which consumed last night and will probably consume tonight. It also means that I'll probably need to buy a book on Leopard since no manuals come with op systems today. And that means yet an additional learning curve.

Hope to be back uploading images tomorrow, but I'm a tad worried that life is intruding on my photography. Darn. Stop back for the latest news.... K?

New Computer Came!

If you will recall my rant back on January 25th over my MacBook Pro's capricious tendencies to break? You might recall my whining about Apple's reluctance to replace the machine even after two disk drive replacements by them in 90 days (click on the keyword "Apple" below)? Well again this month the thing began crashing and this time Mac agreed to replace it with the new, top of the line 17" MacBook Pro. Yippee. They didn't have to do that. I offered to pay for the difference between the value of my defective one year old machine and the new model. They insisted, and of course I reluctantly accepted a faster processor and a larger disk drive plus double the ram all running on Mac's new OS, Leopard. I'm easy.

So, while the process took a while, I'm pleased to say that my twenty some years of using MacIntosh machines exclusively will continue into the future. And now I'm pricing a new MacPro to replace this massive G4 I'm typing on now. Thats a couple of months of though (and hopefully some of my photography sales will subsidize that purchase).

But tonight and tomorrow I'm going to be working on the new machine that's just arrived today from Shanghai. So, I suspect I shall not post again until Thursday. It's too much fun to play with the new laptop and... and.... WHEEEEEEEEE!

Evidence?

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Bogan peered at the fading image from the box and again tasted the stink of cigarette smoke and spilt beer. He recalled that Yosarian in his white shirt and apron muttered something in a spitting language and jerked from the camera with a movement so quick it was no movement at all. Yet that woman didn’t seem any more bothered by the lens than a stone by a creek.

“Yeah,” Bogan muttered recalling that while she wasn’t beautiful, not even pretty, that she looked as if things would happen anywhere she was. And where she was that night twenty years back was Pulaski’s Saloon. He remembered she shook his hand. “Clammy hands,” he frowned and recalled thinking “clammy hands and people who own them make me edgy.”

And while he scanned it for fresh clues, seeing the picture again brought Bogan back there to that spot instants before Pulaski’s got leveled by the bomb.

DAMN!!!

I have just discovered something disconcerting. Last week my MacBook Pro crashed for the second time in ninety days. Apple placed yet another hard drive into it (even though I offered to pay the difference between the second hand value of this 1 year old machine and the present model) and in all of the time it took to get it reconfigured (or once again configured) I prepared the image above on that machine. OOOOPS. I only just discovered how terribly out of calibration the reconditioned MacBook is.

The image I now see is nowhere near what I intended. I guess I should take it down. I lack the time or energy to begin it again from scratch (since minor tinkering won't fix it) and I apologize to everyone for posting it in this shape. In the past I frequently composed images on that machine which has a 17" monitor capable of high quality graphics. I have just recalibrated it and can understand how far this... and the image I posted of Grand Central Station last night are from my standards. AAAARGH!

Pity.... Lemme think upon removing it. If it disappears, you will know why... OK?

CRAAASH!

Earlier this week I wrote about my MacBook Pro crashing for the second time in about 90 days. Once again the internal Seagate HD experienced a catastrophic crash. The first time this happened I was in Florence, Italy - but I'd backed everything up meticulously. Still it was messy and took endless hours first working through diagnostics with Apple on the phone (it's a fairly new machine and under full warranty), then I sent it in, got it back and spent the best part of a day reconfiguring everything.

When it happened again this week I was unhappy... very very very .... unhappy. On the phone with Apple, I first requested a new machine. They refused. I then offered to pay the difference between the used price of my machine (a 17" MacBook Pro - BTW) and the latest model. After all, I could have received that used machine price if it had not crashed as a result of their problem.

They refused and wanted to begin the telephone diagnostics again. I refused. They then asked that I schedule an appointment at a distant Apple Store with a 'genius'. I refused and demanded they send out a box. They did. They also promised that they would replace the entire machine if it went down again.

It was gone from Monday until Wednesday while they once again discovered the toasted HD and put in another Seagate. But I cannot put aside the necessary hours until tomorrow to retro fit everything on it.

Oh... this time I had NOT backed up key data. I lost two folders. One involved interview notes for an article which I cannot reschedule (I am a writer and a magazine editor). The article is lost. The other involved an equally important set of notes for a marketing program I am constructing. It is also lost.

I have first to copy all of my key info from my home MacPro to the laptop. That puts both machines out of service until the procedure is finished. It took several hours last time. I've started that process, but I suspect that I shall have no useful computers when I arrive home, nor will they be usable tonight. So.... NO POST here today. Damn!

I'm doing this post on my Mac Mini here at my business office. Hopefully all will be fixed in time to do a post here at ImageFiction tomorrow (Saturday).

Still, the whole thing has me spooked about trusting my laptop again. Apple apparently has a quality control problem. Others have complained about this Seagate drive but neither Seagate nor Apple will admit to a problem.

Warning, if you want top-of-the-line cutting-edge performance... buy a Dell or an HP... you'll save a lot of money and gain confidence if you avoid Apple's best laptop machine.

Ted

Fabulous Fotos - NOT!

To Everyone Whose Sites I Normally Visit: My MacBook Pro has crashed and will be gone for a week to the Macintosh repair shop. I do my site visits on that machine while I am near to wife/friends/people. I do my images up here alone on my "good" machine. So.. I hope until the laptop returns, you will forgive my absence from popping around?

And now for the rant-of-the-day...

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HATE IT! HATE IT! HATE IT! HATE IT! HATE IT! HATE IT! - when I do this. See this perfectly exposed night time shot? See that it's perfectly framed? Perfectly colored? See the perfect reflection shimmering across the Tiber in down-town Rome? See how the composition is a textbook square? With textbook inner framing of the leaves? See how the mass of the boat in the lower left just balances what I think is Hadrian's tomb lit against the night-time sky? See how controlled, how .... how... perfect, perfect, perfect every little detail, including the color palette is?

And now see that it adds absolutely nothing to our package of ideas? The feeling's been captured a zillion times by anyone passing this point with an Instimatic. GRUMBLE!!!!

So why the hell did I waste my time taking this thing? And I've got dozens and dozens of images like this on my Italian discs. Why do we feel a compulsion to repeat what others have done at least as well? I could have walked forty feet to a tourist store and bought dozens of postcards with this view. Why is it that our own imagination becomes stunted at moments like this? All that I saw was what others saw more times than your Hollywood star goes to rehab.

I'll tell you why... Because our imagination leaves us at these moments. It's as if a mass of photographic ghosts suddenly SCREEEECH all together with such din that they overwhelm our own ideas and feelings. It makes me want to cover my ears and scream...

Instead... I take their picture rather than my own, and come home and grumble.....

The moral: When it isn't your idea in the viewfinder - Don't trigger the shutter.

Tractor Beam

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Pittsburgh has two Apple Stores! There is only one in the entire eastern part of Pennsylvania. Hmmmm.... And since we were visiting Pittsburgh, well, HEY! Unless they tie me to the mast and pour wax in my ears, I am going to throw myself up against the place. This one is in Shadyside, a chi-chi spot where medical people vie with Univeristy of Pittsburgh students to buy latté, Lord & Taylor, and posh art. I'm guessing the shells around the shops are remains of mid-nineteenth century brick and shutter buildings. Lancaster could look like Shadyside... and any twelve women off the street could look like Gwyneth Paltrow with a zillion bucks worth of fashion, cosmetic and surgical enhancement. Hell, it takes Gwyneth Paltrow a zillion bucks worth of cosmetic, fashion, and surgical enhancement to look like Gwyneth Paltrow.
But anyway... here's an image of the money-magnet store looking all sexy and alluring. Yeah, I went in. Yeah, I came out with a portable HD and a new graphic application. It was like shooting up... right into a vein. It rocks! Thank God there's no Apple Store in Lancaster.