Tag Archives: iTunes

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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The Good Old Days

12 Dec

Not too long ago, M2 was querying me about vinyl albums and gramophones. She had been surfing and found these classics fascinating, even up to the point to suggest that we should buy a gramophone for the house. When we were in Bangkok recently, she saw these things in the mall and gave me a knowing look with a wiggle of her eyebrows. It’s quite amazing that such classics appeal to her.

The younger generation of today is so deprived of such classics with the advancement of technology. All they ever have to music are their iPods, the computer and the internet. Purchasing physical CDs are also being phased out slowly with the easy availability of music purchases online, iTunes or otherwise.

I had flashbacks about my childhood after her query. When I was young, I had access to my Dad’s vast collection of LP albums. When his good friend moved away, Dad inherited his (the friend’s) lot, making the collection even bigger! During the afternoons after school, I remember I used to open the cupboard and sieve through each and every album, admiring the cover design or photo. Somehow I ended up being the only one taking care of the collection – cleaning, playing and cataloging. It kept me occupied indoors when I didn’t feel like going outside to play. I even had one album of my very own: Donny Osmond – My Best to You!

Cringe or laugh you may but it was my mine. There was even a Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album! Eat that.

Sadly, after I moved out from the family home, the collection was neglected. And today, with Dad gone, I don’t remember what happened to them for they are definitely not at home anymore nor with me. A loss and a pity.

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The ME is Still Me and Not You!

25 Nov

Setting up the phone was not as easy as we thought. Because it was my phone, my name, number and ID was everywhere. It took a while to figure out the ID, Phone, Message and FaceTime settings.

“Why is the ME still me and not you when the phone is in your name already and not mine?” I asked.

M2 was blank and M1 was equally confused.

It sounds convoluted. When test iMessages which was sent to M2 ended up coming back to me on my iPhone5S and my iPad Mini, something was not quite right! I think it was due to the fact that the iTunes and App Store account was linked to my email (which we left it as is) that everything got messed up.

Finally, I figured it out. It was under Mail, Contacts and Calendars that we had to identify ‘My Info’ on top of Phone, Messages and FaceTime settings. Once this was fixed, the ME on the iPhone4 is no longer me but M2.

Phew. It was way past midnight when this was resolved.

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