Got up early this morning to do 2h work before having to come and do my real job - but instead spent the morning fixing my first "problem" (after 2 weeks).
10 out of my 12G was wired, iMac grinding to a halt. All apps closed. Culprit appeared to be that Time Machine was stuck "indexing backup disk".
Despite the iMac being really really unresponsive it never crashed. I was able to google, conclude that I needed to clear the spotlight cache and found out how to do this using mdutil from a terminal. After a reboot, spotlight fired up, and Time Machine did a successful backup in a few minutes - all seems back to normal.
This was what I would describe as a "Windows" experience. I have no doubt that mac OS is better than any Windows environment since it is a Linux derivative. But I am not sure how better.
I guess I have 2 questions.
i) How rare are such experiences - I can't extrapolate from 2 weeks of experience. I am seriously thinking of pursuading my Dad to switch to Mac when his Windows 7 PC dies as I am fed up of the never ending support calls.
This is only worth doing if dumb users really can power on and forget.
ii) I conclude my fix was a "power user fix". Is that a fair statement. If so what on earth would a non-power user have done - make a genius appointment?
10 out of my 12G was wired, iMac grinding to a halt. All apps closed. Culprit appeared to be that Time Machine was stuck "indexing backup disk".
Despite the iMac being really really unresponsive it never crashed. I was able to google, conclude that I needed to clear the spotlight cache and found out how to do this using mdutil from a terminal. After a reboot, spotlight fired up, and Time Machine did a successful backup in a few minutes - all seems back to normal.
This was what I would describe as a "Windows" experience. I have no doubt that mac OS is better than any Windows environment since it is a Linux derivative. But I am not sure how better.
I guess I have 2 questions.
i) How rare are such experiences - I can't extrapolate from 2 weeks of experience. I am seriously thinking of pursuading my Dad to switch to Mac when his Windows 7 PC dies as I am fed up of the never ending support calls.
This is only worth doing if dumb users really can power on and forget.
ii) I conclude my fix was a "power user fix". Is that a fair statement. If so what on earth would a non-power user have done - make a genius appointment?
