Tag Archives: Adobe

Friday the 13th

9 Mar

A day before the ominous Friday the 13th in December last year, my MacBook Air crashed and died. I never saw it coming although there were tell tale signs of instability after installing MacOS Catalina 10.15.1 a few weeks earlier. I caved in and updated because of iTunes and my iPhone XR. To cut a long story short, I had to update the OS in order to have the latest version of iTunes that could sync with the iPhone XR. Otherwise, I could not back up my phone, something that I don’t do that often.

So all was fine and dandy except a few small matters like several of the softwares. The Adobe and Microsoft softwares that I have—essential but not critical—could no longer be used because the versions I have were not supported with the 10.15.1 OS. But since I hardly use those softwares these days and I could back up my iPhone XR, this was all that mattered I rationalized.

On that faithful eve of the ominous day, I had my Skype launched and ready to have the weekly session with M1. Suddenly, the app was acting up and I had to restart the laptop. Several times in fact. A prompt came up and caught my eye – the OS needed to be updated with Catalina 10.15.2.

Reflecting back the several instances of instability and the recent wonky behavior of Skype, I thought perhaps it was best to update the OS. Bad idea, really bad, bad idea.

The laptop could not install the OS and hung several times. A black screen kept appearing with each restart. Uh oh. Even with Global Network Recovery and all the steps I could find online could not save my MacBook! Oh no….

The next day, Friday the 13th I went to Machines, a local authorized Apple reseller to see what could be done. To my dismay, Machines no longer provided support for older devices. Oh no! The apprehension of this ominous day struck.

My 11” MacBook Air is a 2012 model and deemed a vintage device and as such, do not qualify for further technical support. I was advised then to go to a third party repair shop. Do I have a choice at that point?

So off to a third party repair shop I went. Thankfully, these guys fixed the problem (they took a few days though) and I also had all my data recovered for an additional fee. Phew. My MacBook Air is now downgraded to MacOS Sierra 10.12.6 and should remain at this version for optimum performance.

But less than a month after that, the laptop acted up again resulting in the decision to do a total reformat. This was after backing up all the recovered data to an external drive. So so problematic.

While updates are good, it does not necessarily add value to older devices. One should be cautious before doing so, otherwise be prepared for some stress of losing data and then a little hole in the pocket to fix the damage and retrieve the precious.

Hopefully nothing disastrous will happen to my laptop on this ominous date this coming Friday. And I have since been backing up my iPhone XR on iCloud.

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Why Couldn’t I See It

25 Mar

Using the iPad is bad, I think. My eyesight seems to have suffered from the constant use of it with my games and reading or maybe it’s not the iPad but age catching up? Or something else.

I was having problems with my computer yesterday and again, the QuarkXpress that the dinosaur in me is still using could not launch. Whenever this happens and quite frequently I must say, what I normally do is to reinstall the software. It’s complicated to elaborate but I find this the best solution to solve my problem.

The CD is usually on my desk, in its box but for once, it wasn’t inside the box. And for the life of me, I couldn’t see or find the CD. Panic ate into me. Oh no… How am I going to start on my latest book design if I didn’t have my trusty software reinstalled to work with? I am not an InDesign person and try to avoid using it at all cost if possible.

That night I went home and searched for my QXP CD again thinking maybe I could have brought it home. But nope, it wasn’t at home. Not only eyesight has become a problem, the memory too! Oh dear… I couldn’t sleep that night.

The next day when I went into the office, I looked again but casually this time and suddenly, the CD popped out, it was right there! On my desk, under a book. How come I didn’t see it the day before? Am I so blind?

Then again you know that theory when you need something, you just cannot find it. And the more you look, high and low, the harder it is to see the thing. Then after a breather, you look again but not so hard and voila! It appears right before your eyes. I’d like to think it must be this rather than my eyesight and for this reason, I will continue using my iPad for my games and reading. Phew

  

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