Wednesday, June 17, 2015

The iMac is Back and Running OS X 10.9.5 Mavericks

Topping yesterday for unusual didn't seem possible to me but there was a notification from the Apple Store to come to collect the iMac.  As Chuck from AppleCare promised, there was no charge for replacement of the power supply.  The difference now is immediately obvious as it couldn't even successfully boot to the level of the Finder but it has now been running for several hours.

My previous experience with Mavericks was good as it was a solid, stable release.  However, what I want is Final Cut 10.2 and that won't run until at least Yosemite 10.10.2.  There is no step-wise path to that version of OS X and the upgrade from here is Yosemite 10.10.3 or nothing.

Even though I am still leery of the upgrade, despite excellent evidence the power supply was at the root of the problems, Yosemite 10.10.3 will be installed tomorrow.  This party has needed to get started for over two months now.  This has been heavily draining for me as it seemed like it would be interminable.

No software has been loaded and nothing has been carried forward except via iCloud for mail, etc.  My keychain is not permitted to be stored on iCloud as that's where OS X keeps the passwords for everything.  Since those are not restored, it may take some dancing to get accounts logged back into the various systems.


As to any criticism, I really don't have one.  The actual root is the absence of any way to do a rigorous diagnostic analysis of the power supply hardware.  My suspicion is such information is not obtainable from a device of relatively low intelligence or Apple would have written the diagnostic software already.  This one really does look like it chalks up to nothing more than damn bad luck combined with a highly-weird coincidence which obfuscated the debugging as effectively as dropping the whole system into a bucket of mud.


The episode has made me a tad gun-shy as any time the screen goes black I think 'oh hell no, not again' but the machine can sleep until the next go-round and Yosemite 10.10.3 will be installed.  This can't go too fast as loading the machine quickly only to see it fail again will result in Silas barking and / or dribbling on himself.  I've already jumped ahead of that a little as the disk drives and audio are connected and they were not during the previous evaluation.


We shall see how things look after some sleep and I'm not going to predict but it's looking sweet so far.


The compound unusual is today Yevette became Death, Destroyer of Fleas.  For Oppenheimer that was a hydrogen bomb but Yevette wanted far more death than that.  One Who Shall Remain Nameless brought five cats into the Rockhouse and that created a Situation which will not be described here.  A single aspect is ok as one of the Consequences was a horde of fleas only rivaled by the number of warriors riding out of Mongolia with Genghis Khan.  And Yevette bombed a million of those li'l bastards into another dimension, achieving complete Flea Death with zero collateral damage.  Excellent move.


If you need the trifecta, CNN reported 'Texas was hammered by rain' and, yep, it did rain but the last time was, from here in Fort Worth, much worse.  Many DFW area reservoirs are far over capacity, one by a reported twenty-five feet, but none, to my knowledge, have failed.  I've not checked this evening but I had not heard of any disastrous problems by this afternoon.  Hopefully this time really wasn't as bad as it was spooky with the last one.  Fort Worth is done with Tropical Storm Bill as he's up in Oklahoma making them miserable now.


The day developed some spontaneous unusual after all.

No comments: