And now to skewer the apologist:
I can't help but call b.s. on your posts, sorry if i'm wrong. I get the feeling I'm not though
You are, don't worry, I'll explain.
I'd say the giveaways for b.s. are your pointless jabs/references to the iMac you "can't replace the damn thing - but wow that iMac is thin!!
" and the supposed "lost 2 hard drives in the same day, both pristinely kept".
The dimensions and design of the iMac (i.e. "thinness") is detrimental to a design that provides an accessible and easy way to replace the hard drive.
This is self evident.
First, if you view your iMac as an awful computer that only has appeal in aesthetics, why would you buy an iMac over one of the many, many other computer choices available to you for less money?
That's what we call a straw man, implying that my criticism of one aspect of the iMac negates all desirable aspects of it.
A. The design of the transmission in this car X is stupid and difficult to replace.
B. Since you hate car X so much, why did you buy one?
A. (rolls eyes)
Second, if you truly had 2 pristinely kept hard drives that both died in the same day, in separate computers, I'd be willing to bet everything I own you likely have an electrical issue in your house or workspace.
Point being: hard drives fail and there's a good reason to keep backups.
Also, the computer ran on battery, the other hard drive was in a case plugged in the wall socket.
If you lost 2 hard drives in the same day in 1 computer, then it would seem even more obvious that you have either faulty hardware in that computer or a household electrical issue.
If neither of these are the case, you have pretty awful luck my friend. Consider a visit to the witch doctor.
Yes, I realize that it was a case of spectacular bad luck, witch doctor has been notified. However when one has such bad luck, one's eyes opened. It's like a catastrophic flood is the best incentive for one to seek that flood insurance one had always thought to be a waste of money.
On my previous two computers (not including the iMac I'm dealing with now) one of them had a hard drive malfuncion (both iBooks). Of the two HD based iPods I've had (a classic and a mini) one of them (the classic) had a hard drive failure - ten days after I purchased it.
Hard drive failures happen, that's just a matter of time - what was catastrophically unlucky was to have 2 drives fail in the same period of time.
Assuming I'm wrong, and you have truly lost a lots of hdd's to be able to claim they're horribly unreliable, I would just ask this. What on earth are you doing to all these hard drives that are supposedly failing for you? Do you pick up your computers and just throw them around the room for fun every now and again? I ask because if you have 1 iMac that has had 2 hard drive failures in a year, it's probably faulty hardware in that computer, or faulty electrical wiring in your room, not faulty drives IMHO.
Well, the iMac has already been to the Apple authorized repair and nothing was wrong with it except the drive itself. I don't expect to hear any differently this time.
How I treat the iMac? It sits on a clean table, in a well ventilated room at about 22°C. It is never moved or managed physically.
Hard drives fail. So do SSDs so that's no solution, btw.
Out of the dozens of Macs and PCs I've dealt with amongst work,family and friends, I've seen maybe 4 or 5 genuinely dead HDD's in the past few years. That includes internal and external drives, and most people treat their computers like crap, particularly their laptops. I know HDD's are fragile, but seriously?
Seriously, you could treat a hard drive like a delicate lotus flower and it still would fail. They're not built to last a long time and a certain failure percentage is acceptable to the producer. There's nothing strange about that, it's part of the low low price of modern, high speed rotating platter hard drives.
Anyhow, I used to think optical was wonderful too, until you misplace the discs, they get scratched, they can't be read properly by your particular model/firmware version disc drive even though the disc is fine, you lose your serial number for the install, or the biggest pain, your software's license only allows you to install on 1-2 computers max, so when you upgrade to a new computer you're out of installs meaning either you're totally out of luck or you have to contact the company and plead for a new authorization which you may/may not get for a few days. Been there, done that, F___ that.
If you misplace the disc, it can almost always be redownloaded.
If it gets scratched the same applies.
On a Mac, I've never seen a disc rejected because of firmware, in fact I'm pretty sure that doesn't happen.
If you lose the serial number for install, that has nothing to do with optical discs. Downloaded software can and does often come with serial numbers - now what if you forget your Apple ID?
Same for software licence, it isn't something exclusive to optical media. The terms on the MAS are nice though Apple is known to screw its customers regarding licences (e.g. FCP) so I don't like to put all my eggs in the Apple basket when it comes to software licence.
So far, when it comes to backups, no form of backup has saved me more often than dropbox. I for one whole heartedly welcome lower cost, less restrictive, re-downloadable software stored on servers way more reliable than my apartment.
Dropbox is, I agree, essential and can save so much important stuff. Mostly because it is seamless, automatic and just works. It's a must have.
However it is not for backing up any vast amounts of data, often prevalent with Apple's "digital lifestyle", but Dropbox is excellent for the most crucial personal data - anything from 2-10 GBs is fine in my experience - anything bigger and things start to become too expensive and too slow for Dropbox.
So there need to be good and reliable ways to back up everything else, i.e. the 100s of GBs of data. An acceptable way is redundant hard drives, combined with the more permanent backup with optical media ROMs.
One's photos/music/video etc. is data that does not change, ever. Backing it up on a cheap, yet reliable ROM is just common sense. Having it on a HD is convenient, but it would be a folly to regard that as a failsafe backup.
It isn't, and for my stuff, my life and my memories - I don't accept anything that's going to fail just by standing there. Everything can get destroyed, but HDs are the only things that can lose data just by standing there or by being used correctly.
So that's not very reliable. Thus optical media of 50-100 GB per platter, is a pretty damn fine deal. It's cheap, its reliable, it's predictable and it's available (even for the Mac).
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I really disagree with your post. Of all the several computers I've owned in my lifetime (over 10 at least), I have only had one hard drive fail on me, and that was on a Dell.
I also have had Time Machine backups that has never failed me since it was first released.
You sir, just have a string of bad luck, and that is unfortunate.
Yes that's unfortunate, no doubt, but the fact remains that I don't like to have fortune decide when or if my HD is going to die. The same applies to you and all users of HDs or SDDs. They have a certain odds of failing completely.
How would you like to have 1% chance of losing all your data? That's unacceptable risk for me. How about 0.01%? Also too much risk for me.
My data is irreplaceable. It is invaluable.
I have 10 year old+ hard drives that work fine. But some failed, and one would have to be quite naive or irresponsible to dismiss hard drive failure as a fact.
In fact if you heed my words, you'll thank me one day.
Thus I put no stock in HDs. More solid media is needed for me, and of the stuff available today, nothing beats optical (combined with Dropbox and a backup HD)
It is the "fail-safe" and it is important for that very reason.
By the way, the fact that your hard drive failed in a Dell is a nice anecdote, but I don't blame Apple for the HDs failing in Macs or iPods. HDs fail. In any computer. Sooner or later.
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Blame it on your internet provider not Apple.
It isn't the ISPs fault Apple isn't offering software on optical media.
