Top 12 Signs Your Mac Needs Maintenance

"Maint Req" flashed on my car's dashboard last week.

It annoyed me because the first moment I saw it, I worried something major was wrong.  Then, my own internal light went on. 

"Ah!  It's just a reminder to change my oil.  Bah!  No rush there," he said with ominous procrastination and a surprising use of the word, ‘bah.’ 

That’s when it dawned on me what computers might be like with dashboard warning lights we could also choose to ignore.

So, in the interest of selfless, public service, our crack team here at Mick’s Macs has come up with:

    The top 12 early warning signs that maintenance is required on your Mac

12)  It's just not as zippy as it used to be in spite of the fact that your Canadian Pharmaceutical spam is as robust as ever.

11)  It won't turn on.

10)  You're seeing colorful spinning beach balls with regularity but you're nowhere near a large body of water or anyone named “Moondoggie.”

9)   You quit smoking decades ago and your Mac suddenly begins.

8)  It won't turn off.  Like an inebriated family member during the holidays, it just doesn't know when to quit.

7)  You recently dropped it.

6)  You're getting warning messages that seem awfully dire, but you ignore them because you don't know what they mean.

5)  Crazy lines are appearing on the screen and only a few of them are related to your 2 year old's breathtaking, "Early Explorations with Black Sharpie."

4)  It shuts down suddenly without permission.

3)  You have a young child or animal that recently walked across your keyboard and now all of the menus are in Hindi.

2)  Even in the cold of winter (otherwise known as ‘November’ in Santa Barbara), you don't use a heater because your Mac heats the room comfortably enough.

1)  And finally, you're seriously considering sending your new MacBook Air --- through the air.

Many of our clients are savvy folk.  They understand that Apple computers, like cars, need an oil change, lube job and tune-up once in awhile.  Consider it similar to your annual physical… you don't really want to go, nothing seems terribly wrong, but it’s good to check that all systems are working and finally find out what that rash is all about.

Clients who take care of their computers like their cars usually call us every 6 – 9 months saying: "Hi Mick. Nothing's horribly wrong.  It's just been a while and my iMac seems like it's getting slower.  Maybe it just needs a tune-up."    We usually have them drop it off at our shop where we'll clean it up (the physical computer as well as the data), run diagnostics on it, repair ("de-gunk") or upgrade the OS, check the hard drive, make sure there is enough RAM in there for optimal speed and basically give it a complete once over to make sure all is well.  We can make sure they're backing up, practicing good data storage (i.e. everything important to them is not sitting on their desktop), and even have a chat about how they're using their Mac these days, what's working for them, and what's not.  

Let us know when you’d like us to give your Mac a routine check-up or when you see any of the above "Maintenance Required" signs.  Word is that sanity levels tend to improve dramatically after a visit to the MacDoctor.

Happy Holidays!

Mick

P.S.  I learned how to turn off the warning light on my Toyota Highlander.  I'm sure it's nothing serious…

Off and On

People say I'm annoying. 

I'm coming to grips with that.  

I'm like the therapist you never invite to dinner because you're sure you'll be chatting away with a big piece of neurosis stuck in your teeth.  It's a lonely life, being a sometimes prophet of doom.  I don't get invited to parties as much as I used to.  And the hard part is I can't tell if it's because I'm annoying, or just amazingly boring when it comes to encouraging citizens to back up their computers.  Probably both.

I know there is resistance here. 

To some people it sounds like they're getting pitched by a fast talking used car salesman when I ask, "What is your backup plan?"  To others, its like saying, "So, how is your diet coming?”  Or, my personal favorite,  “Finish that novel yet?"    Guilt and shame, like dysfunctional familiar family members, rush in to crush any chance we’ll feel more motivated to actually do something about it.  For many people backup plans are an onerous "should" in their lives that they'll get around to “some day.”  Kind of like estate planning.  The latter was on our list of things to do for 4 years before my wife and I finally took care of it last year with a great local lawyer. 

And just like Estate Planning lawyers, we try to prepare people for death in our line of work too.  [My editor says I have to work on my segues, so….]  And the number one thing we see die in computers, is the hard drive.  There is virtually no rhyme or reason why they go.  They can be brand new, with that new drive smell, right out of the box and just die the minute you take them for a spin.  Or they can be 15 years old with dust bunnies and corrosion, screaming like a Dodge with a bad fan belt, hot enough to cook breakfast on, still doing their job.  In spite of that, in terms of hard drive death, it's not 'if,' but 'when.'  It continues to be very immature technology and much more delicate than the average user thinks.  

The vast majority of hard drives in use today have metal platters than spin very fast with a tiny head that flies micrometers above the surface sucking (reading) or spitting out (writing) magnetic bits of data, billions of zeroes and ones.  [...Now if I can only wake my wife from the coma that last sentence just put her in...]  It’s like we have this boozy, circus clown inside our computer spinning plates on a stick.  And we all know that eventually, those plates (as well as the clown) will fall.

So what do we do?

Steel yourself, I'm going annoying again--->  We back up.  

Okay.  I get that you get that.  But how much back up is enough?

Since the dawn of home computing in the mid 80s TechSperts have always said you should have at least 2 backup copies of everything you cannot afford to lose.  That used to be a punishing practice.  Not anymore for Mac users with TimeMachine software and external hard drives. I think we all can agree that backing up is now easier, more automated, carefree and reliable than ever before.   Your in-home or in-office backup drive should be your first line of defense.  So is that enough? 

To quote Mr. Eastwood, the question should be:  How lucky do you feel?

In-home backups were certainly not enough for the victims of the last 3 major fires that roared across our mountains.  Some of those people lost everything, including their computers and backup hard drives.  All documents, pictures, movies, and music gone.  But even if you’re not in a fire zone, and as reliable as TimeMachine is for most people, there are still some who forget to plug in the drive or notice that it hasn’t backed up for a long time.

Oops.

So what should you do to prevent this from happening?  Glad you asked. :-)

You need an OFF-site backup plan.  There are a couple ways to accomplish this and the first is dramatically more tedious than the second. 

The old way we used to deal with this problem was to buy a second hard drive, make a second copy of all our data about once a week, and then cart that drive to a different location than your computer.  If you don't mind all the manual copying you have to do and remembering to bring the drive with you when you leave the home or office, this old school approach might work for you.  It was our only option until recently.

But there's a better, easier way:  Online (internet based) back up plans.  Off-Site and Online.

You never have to leave your home or office.  They work wherever you have an Internet connection so they’re great for travel too.  Online back up is only going to get bigger, better and faster and may one day (if you trust it) replace your onsite backup plans.  But not yet. 

Why not?

For starters, it’s much too slow.  It usually takes a few weeks to get all of your data backed up to the cloud and depending on what you need to restore, it can take nearly as long to do so.  It also doesn’t backup everything.  You can’t restore your OS, or applications, and sometimes email is particularly hard to restore because of the way it's buried in your system folder.  TimeMachine doesn’t have that problem and can restore everything in an hour or two.  Also, online backups are usually only kept for about 30 days.  Did you just realize today you deleted a file 3 months ago?  It will not be on your online backup. 

Here at Mick's Macs, a couple of techs and I tested 5 or 6 of the major services available about a year ago and didn't find any of them really satisfactory.  We tested [the appropriately named] Mozy, [the explosively named] Carbonite, [the ominously titled] CrashPlan, [the bizarrely named] JumpDisk from Amazon, Mobile Me [Apple is still mysteriously absent from this space] and DropBox.  Mobile Me and DropBox are not really backup services, but rather sync services with online storage options and no automated software to do this in the background.  The one we ultimately picked as our favorite was not even on the radar at that time.   

Without going into boring technical detail here, all of these plans we tested put a lot of stress on the computers.  Our MacBook Pros' CPUs (engines) would race on high for hours as they tried to push this data up onto the Internet.  The computer fans kicked on and our temperature gauges (compliments of iStat menus) showed raised temperatures we were uncomfortable with.  They made the computer miserably slow, were hard to quit out of, and sometimes crashed our laptops.  It was a surprisingly adversarial relationship to say the least.  We felt all of these issues would unnecessarily shorten the life of our computers and our sometimes tenuous grasp of inner calm. The bottom line was none of them really won us over.  Great concept, definitely the wave of the future, but nothing really ready for prime time.

Then we discovered BackBlaze .  

I kept seeing people rave about it in various tech forums so I wrote to the founders to check it out.  $5/month for unlimited data backup.  Seriously, unlimited.  If you pay for a year, it's $50, or a little over $4/month.  We have tested 3 different MacBook Pros running on it since last Spring or so.  

Here's what I like about them.

You hardly know BackBlaze is there.  The web interface (on the rare occasion when you need to use it) is amazingly simple and clean.  It's easy to sign up, easy to adjust your upload backup speeds with a throttle, and the control panel it installs is very unobtrusive.   Similar to the web interface, the control panel is also clean, easy to understand and use.  Very Mac-like.   But the best thing about it is that it does NOT take over your computer and throttle the CPU like most of the other programs we tested earlier in the year.  

There is a free trial and we've started referring our clients to it using the link below:

http://www.backblaze.com/partner/af0717

If you try them out, please write to me to tell us about your experience.  The greater the pool of experiences, the more we can judge how they do with different users and machines.

And if you're really, really happy, consider inviting your computer therapist over for dinner once in awhile?  Remember, it’s only your true friends who will tell you when you’ve got something stuck in your teeth.

All the best,

Mick

The Hot Apply Fry

Well, we got what we asked for.  

All those complaints about how “cold” the weather was this summer, how overcast and damp, finally paid off.  I think Monday was one of the hottest days I can recall in over 30 years of living in our fair town.

2 weeks prior, my wife had given up on any notion of Summer (Indian or otherwise), and had the Gas Company come out to check and light the furnace.  In doing so, they discovered our 52 year old classic was beyond repair.  So on Monday, like buying a snow plow in June, I was calling heating companies to replace our furnace.  A couple places laughed at me.  They thought it was a prank.  

This week we’ve also had a lot of calls about Macs performing oddly.  Folks have described sluggish behaviors, lines on the screen, graphic distortions, freezing, crashing, and generally misbehaving.  Not to dismiss the richness of possibility for other problems, but we’re finding a lot of these issues are related to the heat.  Computers, like penguins, don’t like getting too hot.  That’s why they have so many fans, vents and cooling systems built in.  Laptops are more susceptible than desktops because of the tightly packed components in a small space.

So how do you avoid baking your Apple?

First, find out how hot things are.  Go to our website and download the application called iStat Menus.  Install it (turn off the auto update features) and check the readings.  We’re in the process of creating a better looking page just for downloads, but for now, you’ll find it on the left hand column on our site-map page here:

http://www.micksmacs.com/sitemap.htm

Once that's installed, you can get an accurate sense of how hot your computer is.  Each Apple computer will have a slightly different range, but generally speaking, when you see temps rising beyond 160F, you’ll be hearing fans and feeling some performance drag.

So what to do?  Here are 7 ways to "play it cool, boy."

1)  If the room is really, really hot and you’re not using your computer, shut it down, give it a break, give yourself a break.  Pour yourself, not the computer, a cold one.

2)  Find a cooler place to compute.  Canada is nice.

3)  If you have a notebook computer (they used to be called “laptops”) consider using it on a desk and not in your lap where the exhaust vents can get blocked.  With the advent of faster processors comes greater heat.  As with most legally savvy corporations, Apple decided changing the name to “notebook” computer was enough to avoid the scalded thigh lawsuits.  In the winter, however, laptops can be quite cozy on cold nights.

4)  Consider getting a laptop cooler.  No, they’re not ice chests, but rather platforms with cooling fans built in.

5)  If you can’t take a break and the room is a few degrees shy of Hades, RESTART the computer.  Often programs get stuck and, like an engine racing in the driveway, they will overheat the processor.  

6)  Stream video at night.  You can see video at night better anyway.  And if there is a choice, stream video that is not Flash based.  Flash is a huge processor hog that can heat up your computer.  Steve Jobs doesn’t like Flash and keeps wishing it would go away.  However, it’s a big part of video on the web these days, so you’ll likely need to use it to watch YouTube animal videos.

7)  Get more RAM, even if you’re a Sagittarius.  RAM has no moving parts and when you have enough it takes the stress off your hard drive and other parts that generate heat.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a heating system to purchase.  

Stay cool!

Mick

P.S.  TiVo upgrades are hot!  We do ‘em!  Call us about putting a larger HD (for storing more shows) in your TiVo! 

Computers Are Dumb

Computers are dumb.

Perhaps that sounds odd coming from a guy who spends all day working with them, but it's true.  We are still in the infancy of the digital revolution.  Even the very latest gadget from Apple Inc. will look like a Model T or Steam Locomotive compared to what we'll be working with in 30-50 years.  The automobile (at least a steam version) is older than this country.  It has well over 2 centuries of technology behind it.  That is (in part) why our cars last longer than our computers.  Many historians tie the birth of the computer to the Manhattan Project in 1945, but the first computer most of us actually got our hands on didn't arrive until January, 1984.  That was the birth of the Macintosh, the moment everything changed.

That was only a little over 25 years ago.

As fast as we believe technology evolves, 25 - 50 years is still not very long in the development of a sophisticated machine.  

Okay, so maybe computers are not so much "dumb" as immature.  A 25 year old machine is a lot like a precocious 6-year old kid.  Not a baby anymore, but definitely not old enough to do much on it's own.  We have to tell it to do everything.  Oh, sure, we can set up automated systems to remind it to get the mail, empty the trash, take messages and even go to sleep on time.  But as soon as we try to work with it on more sophisticated tasks, a computer needs us to know a lot more than it.  It's like having a car mechanic with the ability to completely rebuild your engine, but only if you tell them exactly how, and in what sequence, to do so.  How frustrating would that be?!

And it leads unnecessarily to technophobia.

We see it every day in what we do.  I cannot tell you how many of our clients feel they need to denigrate themselves before they can ask for help.   "I'm a total idiot when it comes to this computer."    We hear this all the time...

Don't be afraid.  We're here to help.  

We're building visual tutorials on our website that you can check out any time for help with some common tasks.  We're also trying to be even more responsive with instant remote desktop counseling sessions. These are live tutorials or fix-it sessions where we (upon request only) tunnel through the internet to see your computer's desktop and talk to you through your Mac.  If you've never done this kind of screen sharing before, you're in for a treat.  It's pretty cool.  And it's a fast and easy way to help you figure out how to tell your dumb computer what you need it to do.

Remember. It's not you. It's the computer.  :-)

Happy Weekend!

Mick