Apple - Me Love You Long Time!

I have to say that I wanted my next blog posting to be of substance and significance, since I've been so busy that I haven't had time to post in a very long time. It's not that I have nothing to say, I've just been too busy to say it. And, it's actually nice having a life outside of the internet.

So to the subject of my post. My new found love for Apple.

I embarked on a project yesterday, after feeling my Macbook Pro screeching along painfully. The 80 GB hard drive that it came with was more than 2/3 full, and so like any computer, it was starting to be dreadfully slow, even with an upgrade from the 2GB I got it with, to 3 GB. So, I decided that I was  going to upgrade the hard drive myself. I called Apple Tech Support for information on how to reinstall my Final Cut Express, but they weren't all that helpful. So, I researched it on their support website, and it wasn't all that helpful either. Whatever would I do?

The first step was to buy the replacement hard drive. At $49.99 with a $10 reward zone certificate at Best Buy, that 250 GB hard drive was a steal. Following the advice of a "genius" at the Apple Store in Columbia, who I was very pissed at (maybe later,) I went to iFixit.com for instructions on how to take the laptop apart.

It turns out that I had all the tools I needed, even if they weren't the exact ones on the site, and within 30 minutes the old hard drive was out, and the new one in. Before I started, I actually did a final Time Machine Backup, to make sure if anything went wrong, I had at least a backup of my latest and greatest.

Loading the Operating System on the new drive was a little tricky, but having been on the phone with Apple last week, I knew what to do. First, I had to clear PRAM, which prior to last week I never knew existed, and then, booted to the Snow Leopard DVD. I realized quickly that I had to "initialize" the hard drive so that the OS would recognize it, and once I figured out how to do that (5 minutes,) The installation was underway.

Loading the OS takes about 45 minutes, and I used part of that time to gather as many of my application disks as I could, as I dreaded the process of reinstalling my apps. I made a list of the things I felt I absolutely had to have right way, and it was very long, so I prepared to work into the dead of night.

Once the OS was done loading, the setup gave me a number of options which I skipped over, then went back to, because there was something there that was very intriguing. There was an option to RESTORE FROM TIME MACHINE BACKUP! I was very skeptical, but it did say that it would restore my data, applications and settings from a Time Machine backup. I figured I had nothing to lose.

It took about 5 minutes to calculate the amount of data in my Time Machine Backup, and then it came back with 60 GB of data, including my profile, settings and applications. That sounded about right, as I had only about 30 GB free space on the 80 GB hard drive. The process would take about 45 minutes to complete. So I kicked it off, and watched the President's address on TV.

By the time the Speaker of the House had completed his very well rehearsed and choreographed performance, the restoration was pretty much done, and to my surprise, the majority of my applications, settings and all were installed on my mac, and working just as they did on the other drive. I only ran into a few issues with iLife 11 and iWork 09, with them both needing to be reinstalled. It took a bit of massaging to get iPhoto to work right, but for the most part, my libraries and pictures transferred over completely.

Mail, iCal, Address Book, all came back in pristine condition, which would have been devastating if they hadn't, since my MobileMe data are all stored on the Mac. Most importantly, I started up Final Cut Express and it opened right up! I didn't need to reinstall!

Having done perhaps hundreds of Windows installations and reinstallations in my past, this was by far, the easiest and best reinstallation experience I have encountered. In addition, When I checked for Software Updates, Apple rolled all the updates into one file, so that I didn't have to download a gazillion like on Windows update. Sure it took longer to download, but the experience was so much easier and pleasant.

I haven't tested all my applications, but I'm sure that the ones that I haven't tested yet will be fine. After all, I do have all the install disks. I am staying away from OS X Lion (10.7) for now, as there are incompatibilities with at least 3 of the applications I use. But all in all, this experience was one of the least frustrating I have ever had, and I can't say that about most windows installations.