All according to plan?

Much as I would have liked to have said everything went exactly to plan with the swap over to the Macintosh way of life, I did have a few ‘teething troubles’.

After making ‘suitably impressed’ noises at the first switch on of OS X Leopard, I dutifully typed in my details, and let the Macbook get on with the business of setting itself up – which it did with the minimum of fuss, I might add – and then got down to the business of starting to set it up how I wanted it.

I hadn’t transferred much info or any pictures across to it yet (it found my Wireless Network straight off though, and even found my HP all in one networked printer / scanner and asked if I’d like to use it? ) but just wanted to get used to the feel of Leopard and OS X.

After an couple of days of enjoying the macbook, I left it in the home office (read – converted spare room…) to charge overnight, as I had done before and went to bed a Happy Switcher.

Not so happy the next morning though, as the macbook wouldn’t turn on when I opened the screen – it turns out I had not plugged the charger in to a live extension cable as I thought I had, so I plugged the power in, and turned on the macbook… to be greeted by the ‘set up your macbook’ screen again. Hmmm.

I assumed this was because the battery had drained overnight, so I filled in all the info, and after saying ‘Thanks’ the macbook screen went blank…. and came back with the ‘set up your macbook’ screen again!

This wasn’t in the plan surely? A mac misbehaving? Well, I went through the procedure a couple of times, then decided a call to Apple Support was in order.

I have to say, I wasn’t terribly impressed – maybe I had the ‘new guy’ or someone filling in for someone off ill, but I got the impression he was a bit out of his depth. Now if it had been a Windows Laptop, I’d have know a few things to try before falling back on ‘reloading the OS’ – but we seemed to arrive at that point pretty quickly.

Having been advised that I would lose any info / settings that I had on the macbook, I said I agreed, and we went ahead and re-installed Leopard as a clean install – seeing as I hadn’t started to swap info across to the macbook, I wasn’t too concerned

le="font-family:verdana;">It worked ! (well, pretty much, as you’ll see) and I was once again a happy Switcher. A few days later, I had some spare time on my hands (quite a rarity these days!) so I set about trying all the Apps that came with the macbook – well, the main ones anyhow… iPhoto, iCal, iTunes etc – you get the idea. Well, I loaded up Garageband and noticed the ‘Magic Band’ option – something I would normally not use, having had some computer recording experience on the Windows machines I had, but it looked fun, so I gave it a try… and froze the macbook !

Well, I was stunned! after a couple of attempts, and the associated ‘force quits’ I gave up, and resigned myself to not being able to play with that part of the App – the rest was fine by the way, just the Magic Band’ section… curious… and continued on my journey around the macsphere, only to be dumped on my rear again by iDVD ! It just would not load at all.

After a consult with the friendly guys in my (fairly) local Apple Authorised Reseller, they examined log files and repeated the lock ups, and came to the conclusion it’s probaby something to do with the Quartz animation routines – as problems with these were evident in the log files for both incidents…

Now I have to admit, most of that went over my head, but I’m starting to realise that macs DO have their share of problems – it just seems that because they don’t have as many as Windows computers, they can make up for it in ‘Quality’ – albeit of a negative nature!

Anyhow, the macbook has been behaving impeccably of late – I think I cheered it up when I installed 4Gig of Ram, and treated it to a wireless Keyboard & Mighty Mouse :0) 

But the problem Apps still remain a problem (despite me probably never needing to use them! It’s the principle!) So I may follow the advice dispensed from my AAR (Apple Authorized Reseller – keep up!) and call Apple Support again… but this time asking for a Level 1 Tech.

I’ll let you know what happens.