I think the camel's back just broke...

[Katalog]

DISCLAIMER: This is not intended to be a Mac bashing thread, just trying to convey (at least to me) a somewhat amusing story.

My wife has been a long time Mac user (literally almost 20 years), and within the last 6 months or so has also adopted an Eee PC 901 running UNR to take with her when she doesn't feel like lugging the MacBook. Tonight, she just had all of her playlists wiped out on her iPod Touch for the umpteenth time after one update or another. I've also watched her fume while trying to get her contacts and calendars resynced after having them suddenly disappear a few times as well. She's generally a pretty even tempered person, but to put it mildly, she pretty much just lost it tonight. She's talked to Apple support about this same problem on two previous occasions (that I know of) and gotten no help, just apologies, and just finished sending them a "tastefully" worded nasty-gram. As I type this she is busy cursing and burning all her iTunes purchased music to CDs so she can rip the music back to an external hard drive minus the DRM, and has also asked me a few sheepish questions about how well my Sansa Fuze works with Rhythmbox. She is not a happy girl at all, but she did calm down long enough for me to casually mention that she must be feeling the same burn that I experienced a few years ago when I finally dumped proprietary operating systems altogether on all of my computers. She's not stupid at all when it comes to computers and Macs in particular, but she is so angry and disillusioned right now that she's not even interested in considering any fixes or workarounds. I'm not brave enough to tell her "I told you so", but I've been preaching to her for quite a while that locking herself into dependency on a closed ecosystem is always risky, and I don't think I need to right now as the realization has seemingly dawned on her already without any help from me.

Anyway, she hasn't said she's going to ditch it in so many words yet, but I think there is a very good chance that there will be a white MacBook going up for sale on eBay or craigslist very soon.

[Bachstelze]

DISCLAIMER: This is not intended to be a Mac bashing thread

It looks like one, smells like one, but it is not. Yeah, right.

[hanzomon4]

No offense... but that kind of problem could happen on an Open System. Nothing about foss makes it less buggy then closed software.

That said, I'm trying to migrate my data over to my Ubuntu partition so I can make it bigger. I spend most of my time in Ubuntu for audio and general computing so why not. I only use OSX for photo/video and my iphone. The iphone is going to be replaced with an android phone(Droid I think) and my video/photo apps don't need such a large amount of space.

The only thing holding me up is the fact that I don't have an external harddrive to back up my data to... This is not to say that OSX is bad, it's rock solid and smooth. But I was running Ubuntu before I got my mac and it's so nice now on my laptop.

[HappinessNow]

Anyway, she hasn't said she's going to ditch it in so many words yet, but I think there is a very good chance that there will be a white MacBook going up for sale on eBay or craigslist very soon.

Why not just install Ubuntu on the MacBook?

[Katalog]

It looks like one, smells like one, but it is not. Yeah, right.

Seriously, I just found it kind of funny that she has been so hard core all these years and now it's kind of biting her in the rear. I realize that anyone can have a problem with any operating system, but the fact that it's not open, the support forums have been of no help, and all Apple has done is shrugged their shoulders when she has turned to them for help after throwing money at them for almost two decades is honestly somewhat amusing to me.

I really, truly don't care what operating system people use, that's their business. I just give my opinion once in a while and then move on. I just put that little disclaimer tag up there at the top to try and keep Mac users from piling on when all I was sincerely trying to do was tell what I though was kind of a funny story while trying to keep the inflammatory speech to a minimum. I was simply trying to throw a little irony in there, that's all.

[Katalog]

Why not just install Ubuntu on the MacBook?

She's pretty P.O.'ed right now, and not too fond of things with an Apple logo on them at the moment. We'll see how she feels tomorrow.

[Bachstelze]

Seriously, I just found it kind of funny that she has been so hard core all these years and now it's kind of biting her in the rear.

So basically you find it funny that your wife lost her data because it gives you an occasion to bash Apple? Okaaaaaay...

[hanzomon4]

Seriously, I just found it kind of funny that she has been so hard core all these years and now it's kind of biting her in the rear. I realize that anyone can have a problem with any operating system, but the fact that it's not open, the support forums have been of no help, and all Apple has done is shrugged their shoulders when she has turned to them for help after throwing money at them for almost two decades is honestly somewhat amusing to me.

I really, truly don't care what operating system people use, that's their business. I just give my opinion once in a while and then move on. I just put that little disclaimer tag up there at the top to try and keep Mac users from piling on when all I was sincerely trying to do was tell what I though was kind of a funny story while trying to keep the inflammatory speech to a minimum. I was simply trying to throw a little irony in there, that's all.

What update destroyed her playlists?

[hanzomon4]

Oh and humor me for second, try this...

Happened to me too during recent s/w update. Was not willing to accept loss of all libraries so called Apple tech support. Apparently it happens to many 'customers' during s/w update. Anyhow, by not taking 'it can't be done' for an answer they escalated my call to the application specialist in Texas. He had a simple fix. Go to your user/music/itunes/previous iTunes Libraries folder. The s/w update tucked a copy the various indexes there. You can copy the 'iTunes 4 Music Library (old)' file up one level to the iTunes folder and rename to get rid of the '(old)'. Should fix the problem. Caveat: i did this a month ago and above is by memory, i didn't think to write down the steps at the time. Good luck.

And then this

go to your iTunes Prefs and make sure Manual update is selected, rather than Auto Update

[Katalog]

What update destroyed her playlists?

Don't know if it was an iTunes update or a firmware update (didn't ask), just knew this wasn't the first time in the past year that I happened to walk into the living room when she was yelling at her iPod about her playlists getting wiped. I'll have to ask her what happened when she wakes up tomorrow.