The Leopard ate my computer

I thought I didn’t have a horror story for this Halloween. Turns out I do; it’s called Leopard.

More specifically, it’s called Apple Macintosh OS 10.5 “Leopard.” Give me Microsoft Vista any day. I’ll even take Windows ME over this piece of…

(WARNING: LONG RAMBLE AHEAD. If you’re not into the vagaries of tech support, skip this post.)

Of course, I should have known better than to tempt fate by installing a new operating system on All Hallows’ Eve, but hey… The hype on Leopard was that all us Windows geeks would drop our jaws in amazement at the ease of installation and wondrous new features.

Well, my jaw is dropping, alright, but not exactly in amazement.

Leopard was sitting on my porch this evening when I got home from my candy trek. I made sure my back-up was intact, figured out how to open the Leopard package (Apple continually proves that elegant packaging is not necessarily easy to open), slipped the Leopard DVD into Freddie Mac’s driveslot, and let ‘er rip.

Hmmm. Maybe I shouldn’t use the word “rip.” It’s uncomfortably accurate.

Leopard went through the obligatory EULA screens, ascertained the desired language, and asked me to choose an installation drive from the list. Problem was, there wasn’t a list–the page was blank.

I was pretty sure I had a hard drive in there, so I read the instructions. They said, “When the installation is finished your computer will restart.” Not incredibly helpful.

I reasoned that the problem might be an overfull hard drive, so I checked available storage space–Leopard needed 11 gigs; I had 16. I verified and repaired the disk, just in case…and this time the hard drive appeared on the list. I clicked it, and the installation began.

Twenty or thirty minutes later the computer rebooted…and the screen turned blue. And stayed blue. FREDDIE HAD A BSD? (Blue Screen of Death)

Uhm…there are a lot of Microsoft conventions worth adopting, Apple, but BSDs ain’t one of ‘em.

I hit the restart button. Nothing. I could hear drive whirrs…maybe I shouldn’t mess with it in case it’s finishing the install. Waited 15 minutes. Still nothing. Turned off the computer, restarted. BSD. BSD. BSD.

I paid a small fortune for extended AppleCare Support, and obviously now was the time to call. “You have reached AppleCare after hours. Please call back during our regularly scheduled hours.” WHAT?? It’s only 8pm. Guys….?

I quickly called our local Apple Store, which doesn’t close until 9:00. “For technical support, please press 2….You have reached AppleCare after hours. Please call back during our regularly scheduled hours.”

This time I called the store proper, explained the issue, and after a lot of arguing got an “Apple Genius” (I’m not being sarcastic, that’s what they actually call their support people. During this call I actually found another name for him.) on the phone. “Oh yes,” he assured me, “That’s a common problem caused by certain third-party applications.”

“Which ones?”

“Well, I don’t know which ones you have on your computer, ma’am.”

“I meant, which ones most commonly cause the install to hang?”

“Well, I don’t know which ones exactly, but I know there are some. They’re usually the ones that make some kind of change to the system. (Uhm, I thought, doesn’t MOST software make some kind of change to the system during install?) You should have selected the “archive and install” option instead of just install. This is a very common problem and that’s how you solve it.”

“Huh? The instructions don’t say to choose ‘archive and install,’ and the button just said ‘Install.’ Where did it say that? How am I supposed to know when to choose it?”

“Well, you get the blue screen, and that’s pretty much when you know.”

“Right. So what do I do now?”

“Well, hold down the C key and reboot your computer with the DVD in the drive. That’ll restart the installation. Then just click the options button…”

“What options button? I don’t see one…”

“Well, it’s several screens along. I can’t stay on the phone any longer but I’m sure you’ll find it. Thank you.”

Click

I finally found the options button, chose “archive with install…” and Leopard roared a resounding “No.” He apparently filled up the hard drive on that last attempt, so that there isn’t enough space for an installation. (yeah, yeah, if I’d been on a Windows system I would have known better than to upgrade the OS with less than 2X the available space requirements). The old OS is gone, the new one won’t run.

In other words, I’m hosed. And I am not thinking friendly thoughts about Apple right now.

So…I’m running the disk repair utility, figuring out how to connect to .MAC to grab the backup disk image (which I probably should have thought of when I chose an online backup system), setting up a minimal reinstall until I can get Freddie back on her feet (i.e., the install will leave out goodies like printer drivers), and doing the geek thing. I’ve no doubt that within a few hours (or days) Freddie will be happily running with Leopards and this experience will be but a mere chortle.

But fair warning, Mr. Jobs: First you overpriced the iPhone. Then you caused 300-page phone bills. Then you bricked iPhones running 3rd-party software.

All that I can live with (mostly because I don’t own an iPhone). But now you’re screwing around with my laptop, and that’s a lot harder to forgive. At least with Windows you expect this kinda stuff and come prepared to fix it.

That’s one, Mr. Jobs. Don’t make it two.

Grrrrr.

P.S. OK. It worked, and after a 45-minute reinstall (minus printer drivers and Gujarati language support), Freddie’s got this black and quinacridone deep space starburst thing happening with lots of music and some dude talking about how happy he is to see me.

I’m happier, but this better be a helluva good upgrade. We have NOT gotten off to a good start, Mr. Jobs.

Update 11:02PM: I can actually see the Finder now…and it’s empty. “Archive and Install” apparently means clean install, i.e., “blitz all settings and stick anything remotely resembling updated data somewhere very hard to find and even harder to recover from.” Applications are still there, but they’re asking for serial numbers. Mail accounts are disappeared, my files are gone. They’re in a folder called “Previous System,” but I’m not sure what to drag and what not to drag to get things back to normal. Apple warns me not to drag everything over because I’ll go right back to the BSD…but doesn’t tell me how to determine what NOT to drag.

Surely there’s a utility to stick everything back, right? Can’t find anything in the documentation, and Apple’s closed until morning. –sigh–

Rather disappointing, that. At this point I can pretty definitely say that I wouldn’t install this thing again. I don’t see how it could possibly be worth this much trouble.

Update 9:35 AM 11/1:On the phone with Apple this morning for 80 minutes and 15 seconds (including a 17-minute hold at the beginning due to “heavy call volume” (I can just imagine)). Here’s what they came up with:

• They’re not entirely sure what happened but I’m not the only one (apparently by a longshot).
• I need to reimage the drive onto my desktop (when we began that little exercise I asked how we could do that when the Leopard nonsense has left me with 2.5GB on a 120GB hard drive–did they have a remarkably efficient compression algorithm? The Genius didn’t know.) Astonishingly, this attempt failed.
• After 60 minutes of investigation, the Genius discovered that I didn’t need to reimage the drive, I simply needed to drag stuff out of the “Previous System” folder and it would work just fine. Since I’d discovered this by 11pm last night, his explanation wasn’t all that helpful. “What I need,” I reminded him, “is to know which things to drag…like where the heck do you keep the e-mail files and my mail rules and my junk lists and my…?”
• Since I’m using Microsoft Office 2004 for my e-mail, one of the most popular applications sold for Macs, the Apple Genius can’t possibly be expected to help me on that.
• Apple really hasn’t worked out that whole rollback thing for people who don’t have Leopards. “We’re asked this a lot,” said the Genius, “so I can tell you we’re working on it.”
• Geniuses aren’t really supposed to stay on the phone very long. “I can get you started,” he said, “but then I’ll have to hang up. I can give you a number and create a trouble ticket so that if something goes wrong you can call back and the next guy will know as much as I do.” I refrained from the obvious “well, that’ll be a very short trouble ticket, won’t it?” Instead, I suggested that, as I had paid a lot of money for extended support, and I’d already been wrestling the Leopard for 8 hours, Apple could waste an extra hour on the problem. He stayed.

Once I was pretty sure that the Genius had hit his limit and there was no magic “make everything work” fix, I headed over to the Microsoft Knowledgebase, where information is no less precious but a lot more available. I did what I should have done last night and asked it where to find my files. Took all of five minutes and I had my e-mail stuff back (although not my passwords for all my mail accounts).

Now for the next problem: Freddie can no longer see (or be seen) in my network workgroups. The online docs say all I have to do is select “Windows Sharing” in the Service column of the Sharing controls. Unfortunately, that option appears to be missing from my installation.

–sigh–

Dare I call the Genius again?

Update 11/4/07: I did call the Geniuses again, about the network problem. After about an hour on the phone, the Genius confessed himself stumped. “Can you hold for a second?” he asked, “I’ll get one of our network experts on the phone with us.” Waited for 15-20 minutes, and an e-mail arrived in my inbox.

Hello from Apple!
Casey at Apple Service & Support thought that you might find this article useful. We hope that it helps resolve your technical issue.

It was a link to Apple help screens on “Sharing with Windows computers.” (which, by the way, Apple, can only be viewed on a Mac. If your Mac is, say, dead, and all you have is a Windows machine, they’re not going to be much help).

Didn’t help much, and since nobody ever came back on the line I concluded that I’d been forgotten, and finally hung up.

So, after tinkering a bit, I’ve gotten to the point that Freddie can see my Windows machines. The Windows machines can see Freddie’s “Public” folder but nothing else, no matter how much I tell Freddie to play nicely and share.

I’m torn between stomping down to the Apple store, dumping Freddie on the counter and saying, “Fix it. Now,” or simply futzing around until I get her working again, on my own. Given the help I’ve gotten from these Geniuses so far, the latter sounds more effective.

–sigh–

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