If you’re a Mac owner, you may be aware that an update of the latest operating system (Leopard) was released yesterday. Naturally, I rushed to install it.
Now, my computer had been acting a bit funny recently, and in retrospect I guess I should have heeded the warning signs. I had to unplug certain USB devices before I could start up. It was a minor inconvenience. I figured I would resolve the problem down the line somewhere, or that maybe the update would do the trick. Whether due to this low level bug, or something else, when I installed the update I had major problems. It ran fine for a few minutes, then strange things happened. The menubar disappeared. If I tried to start an application, I got a dialog box telling me that the program involved was no doubt corrupted. The computer refused to respond to the keyboard. Then certain programs froze while others plodded merrily along. In short, my computer was having an episode of decompensation before my very eyes. Needless to say I did the only logical thing: I panicked.
At least, I panicked at first. After that I hit the Google (using my wife’s computer, on which the update had installed flawlessly) and eventually found an answer. I was able to restore the computer to the previous setup using Time Machine. Oddly enough, although I supposedly restored it to the precise state it was in prior to the update, the mysterious bug that caused the startup problem did not reappear. In fact, the computer ran great. I then reinstalled the update (yes, I tend to tempt fate) and the computer is still running better than ever. My computer’s GAF went from 20 to 100 in a few short hours.
I don’t know what this all means, except that living through the above two paragraphs took about six hours of my life and who knows how many of my remaining hair follicles, not to mention the fact that it caused me to rush my anti-Joe post of yesterday, leading to a far lower level of vitriol than I could have reached had I had time to fine tune it. It also took some data that I didn’t back up, but that’s life.
Though I can’t say with certainty, I suspect that my computer had something Macs are not supposed to get: a virus. I suppose it’s inevitable that Mac viruses will become more common as these machines become more popular.
I pass this along to give the PC diehards something to gloat about. Lord knows they deserve to have some happiness in their otherwise miserable lives. As for me, I will put this behind me. In a few weeks I’ll forget all about this unfortunate event, and I will return to the state of zombie like bliss that is the hallmark of the true Mac user, as we see here:
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