American Butifarra » Mac

Is My Mac’s SuperDrive Dead?

Claude — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 03:50:04 +0000

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been unable to burn DVDs on my MacBook Pro. I insert a blank disc whenever the SuperDrive prompts for one, it then checks and checks for about a minute before ejecting the disc. At first I thought this was related to the type of disc I was using, TDK DVD-R 1-16x 4.7GB, but they burned just fine on my wife’s slightly older iMac.

Have you reset your PRAM and NVRAM lately?

After a bit of Googling for a fairly recent and verifiable solution I decided to reset the machine’s parameter random access memory (PRAM) and nonvolatile RAM (NVRAM) as suggested by some folks and Apple’s technical support site. It works!

Try this before you declare your SuperDrive dead and go out and buy a new one.

iTunes Crashes During Sync Post 2.2.1 Upgrade – FIX

Claude — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 06:27:37 +0000

ITunes began crashing on Super Bowl Sunday after I upgraded my iPod Touch to the latest firmware, version 2.2.1 — Since then I have reinstalled iTunes, did a factory restore of the iPod to no avail.

A few minutes ago I was looking through the Apple discussion groups and came across this fix by Jeff McCord. It is a simple one when you think about it:

Deauthorize your computer
Authorize it again
Visit the App Store and “Buy” a free app
Sync up

I am a happy camper again. All my music, movies, videos and audio books are back!

Is it Time to Backup your Mac?

Claude — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 01:54:52 +0000

I recently made the move to all Apple Macs at home and I am concerned that I do not have a backup plan and it may come back to haunt me. Last week I visited the Apple store in hopes of buying one of those time capsules but instead purchased an Apple TV, which is very nice and my kids love, but didn’t get anything yet for the all important backups.

Today, I came across this post by Aliza Sherman where she describes the results of ten months of procrastination.

I brag constantly about how I’ve never had a major crash on any Mac I’ve ever owned over the last 15 years – and I keep each one for at least 3-5 years which is eons for laptops. My Macs have been virtually bullet-proof.
But last week, my 10-month old MacBook crashed. And died. And now I’m slowly uncovering the depth and breadth of my arrogance. Because, my dear readers, I had not backed up my computer for 10 months. And the only reason I had a 10-month old backup of my data is because it occurred as I was getting my files from my old G4 laptop to my MacBook last Fall.
This is a cautionary tale for anyone out there who is still finding every excuse in the book not to back up their computer.

Does anyone out there think that the bulletproof quality for which Macs have been known is at risk since the guys at Cupertino outsourced their manufacturing to China? And should I trust another Chinese made product (designed in California, of course) with my most critical data?

Do you have a software backup strategy? What do you use?