In praise of Apple

For Christmas, I was very, very lucky. Father Christmas, aka Keith, bought me a lovely new iPad, then Elder Daughter was upgrading her phone to an iPhone 5 and passed on her iPhone 4 to me and I was hooked on Apple.
Because the phone had a cracked screen, Keith set to and replaced it and there began a new string to his bow - buying non-working iPhones and repairing them to re-sell. It was but a small effort for me to direct his eyes to non-working Apple laptops and, before we knew it, we had taken delivery of a poorly Macbook and a Macbook Pro. 
Now the Macbook Pro was a bargain, sold as having a non-working DVD/CD writer but otherwise in great condition and with a 500 Gb hard drive. I pounced on it as soon as it arrived and soon had it up and running with all my stuff on it. Useless for Keith to protest that it was to be repaired and sold on. Forget it!
The operating system was Snow Leopard, which apparently could be upgraded to Mountain Lion. Yes, I realise all you Windows users out there are probably scratching your heads by now, but stay with me. The previous owner had wiped all his personal stuff off but it took a long time to boot up and I couldn't access iCloud, although I could with Mountain Lion OS, so I bought and downloaded Mountain Lion and proceeded to install it. Simple, right? 
WRONG! After 5 hours of frustration and angst, I was between a rock and a hard place and the only way out was to reboot it with the disc that had come with it - which was an earlier OS, so now I didn't even have access to Apple Appstore. Could I do a clean install of Mountain Lion, I wondered and went online to find out.
YES ....Oh,  but only if you already have Snow Leopard. Grrrrr!
Snow Leopard could not be downloaded, but had to be ordered and delivered by snail mail, so I rang Apple and spoke to a very nice man.
"I have tried to install Mountain Lion and it's impossible!" I said.
He reacted as if I had kicked his pet dog.
"Oh no, it really isn't!" he protested.
The Snow Leopard disc arrived the following day - great service!
I installed it and the associated updates with no problems and was now back to where I had been before my eyes had fallen on the dreaded Mountain Lion.
Should I?
"Go on, do it!" said Keith, so I did.
It went on like a dream!
So, should the man on the phone be among the millions of people who will undoubtedly be reading this, you were right and thank you, Apple for great service!
Oh and the best bit?  Somewhere  in the house of the previous owner, there is a small child who inserted a penny into the CD/DVD writer and then watched as his father wondered why it no longer worked. 
It works fine now!

15 comments:

cheshire wife said...

Pennies have their uses.

Cro Magnon said...

You've lost me. I just turn on my laptop and cross my fingers. I hope you've framed that penny!

Yorkshire Pudding said...

You should see a counsellor about your obvious and growing addiction to new technology... oh, I forgot - you are a counsellor! So why not talk to yourself in the mirror!

Jennytc said...

Some very surprising ones, CW. ;)

Jennytc said...

No, it's gone in the loose change bag, Cro.

Jennytc said...

Yes, I could do that and the bonus is that it would be free!

WendyCarole said...

All makes perfect sense :) and don't foget windows users do scratch their heads a lot!
I have got a new mini mac. That has mountain lion and I was a bit apprehensive as my last iMac was 10.4 which I think was tiger. But I like it and I am getting used to it. Although some things look so different now.

Jennytc said...

I've always used Windows, WendyCarole, and can find my way around it with little trouble but I'm getting there quite quickly with Apple. It's so intuitive!

Greg said...

If you ever come across another macbook with an AZERTY keyboard & maybe a € centimes stuck in it, do please let me know.

Jennytc said...

Will do, Greg!

John Going Gently said...

How re you coping with the iPad.... I love mine... Although writing a blog is a little more difficult than on a PC!

Jennytc said...

One of the things I would rescue from a burning house, John!

Shooting Parrots said...

Welcome to Mac World! Actually I still use a PC even though I'm surrounded by Macs and iPads.

Jennytc said...

I also still have a Windows laptop, SP - but haven't used it for a few days now!

Kate said...

We are very keen on Apple in our house. It's good to hear that people can make the transition easily. Many PC users say that Apples are too confusing after microsoft, and they don't go there.

Plaster board and dust

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