Can Apple get a Virus?

Recent experience has enlightened me to the fact that Apple's policy is 3 repairs before a replacment. It shouldn't be a big job to replace the HD though.
 
Thanks for the feedback guys/gals.

It will be interesting. Yes, hopefully just a HD failure, and we have two Apple "certified" shops here in Calgary, Westworld and MyMac. Westworld being the better turnaround of the two I'm told.

But to send off the unit to get fixed wouldn't be my favorite idea, guess I'm getting flashbacks my Hitachi laptop experience where it would be gone for weeks at a time till it got fixed.

If that is the case, I'll get my own HD and install it.


dmetzcher said:
Just ask them to replace the machine, or the hard drive, whichever is causing the problem. I think that it's up to them to either repair or replace, but, if you are assertive, as everyone suggests, and are also very nice to the manager of your local Apple store, you MAY be able to get the whole machine replaced. This is not terribly likely, however, if it's just a bad hard drive. They will probably want to send it back for repair.
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Just to keep this saga of my wife's failed intel imac OSX failed HD.

Came up with an idea of using my USB 200BG backup drive to recover the original drive.

Boot system up with CD in drive. Hold "C" key after the 'tada' sound till you see the spinning wheel comes on. That will enable you to boot up with the DVD drive.

(Of course the system isn't set to boot off DVD drive in case you get a brain fart thinking that route...)

Install, after the language screen, go to Disk Utilities and pick the DVD drive. Click on OPTIONS button near the bottom right.

Select format using GUDI, not APM.

Click OK

Then partition the drive.

Then exit Disk Utility and you should see an Orange Circle around the drive and install OSX Tiger to it.

From reading other blogs, this can only be done on Intel systems, not sure if just duo or solo, but my wife's is a duo.

Once Tiger is installed, buy Disk Warrior and recover the information from the original HD inside the unit.

Found this over at: http://www.macobserver.com/tip/2006/08/16.1.shtml
 
Good advice. Disk Warrior has saved my butt many times. Data Rescue is another great one.

But if you're dealing with a physically busted HD (not just corrupt data), I'm not sure any software will do you much good. Depends on the extent of the damage, I suppose.
 
...well good news! Got the wife's imac osx going using an external USB drive and loaded osx tiger to it, which i am writing now from.

Weird, can see the wife's imac hard drive from this drive, so maybe the drive isn't lunched, but corrupted.

Copying files from there to the USB drive and then will try Disk Util to see if I can fix it.

Didn't use Disk Warrior yet, this is just using the Finder window with the USB and original internal hard drive showing.

Once in awhile while accessing a folder on the original drive the beachball spins, so definately something slow or corrupt on the drive.

But i'm a hero again, able to save and burn her files onto a DVD using the built in dvd. Hey silly question, how does one 'pop' a dvd/cd out of the drive if say for instance the HD did crash totally? There isn't a little pin hole like most drivers.

Also, how to do a screen shot (aka print screen) in Apple? Want to do a screen shot of what I see if anyone wants to see how booting up with a USB looks like.

cheers
tom
 
Print Screen

apple+shift+3 grabs the screenshot, and saves it as a .png (tiger), or a .pdf (<panther) onto the desktop, as Picture 1, Picture 2 etc.

Apple+Shift+4 gives you a cross hair, and allows you to select what gets captured. when you release the mouse again, Picture 1.png or similar appears on your desktop.

add 'alt' into the combination to have it work like windows, and save it to the clipboard instead

Releasing CD/DVD's from the drive

rebot, while holding the mouse button down, the cd should pop out.
 
This got me attention about the virus and the spyware. Are they same thing as a "virus" ? So, these will not affect on OS X, right??

I have a NetBarrier, but I have not updated it because I don't feel like spending my money. Life is short so we should enjoy something else for now.
 
tomax7 said:
Too bad, have to take the Mac to a repair shop. So much easier to do a PC, crack it open, change the HD and away I go.

I understand the Mini can't be open by normal means, need a special flat blade or something.
Click to expand...

Your comment is true, and I can certainly understand where you are coming from, coming from a typical do-it-yourself PC background myself, however, there are tradeoffs with certain hardware that I was willing to make.

For example, if you want to be able to replace parts in your Mac, easily (very easily), there is the PowerMac/Mac Pro model. This is comparable to a Dell desktop, for example, in that you can swap out hard drives, RAM, etc, and, frankly, do it far easier (with a Mac Pro) than you can on typical a Dell.

When you talk about the Mac mini, you are talking about a machine that is designed to be small and compact. One can argue that Apple also purposely makes it more difficult to open them up, in an effort to make the computers "throw-away" machines after a certain timeframe (years, frankly). This was the case with the first machines Apple produced in the late 70s (is that date range accurate?), where user expandability was frowned upon by Jobs. That being said, you are talking about the Mac mini, and the small footprint of the device requires certain compromises, like the inability to perform upgrades as easily as you would with a typical desktop. In the case of the mini, customers are getting a tiny, nice-looking machine that performs well enough for them, and the case design matters to these users.

With laptops/notebooks, yes, you can easily swap out the hard drive of a Dell notebook (with many/most models), compared to a MacBook, for example. But, look at the form factor of a Dell laptop compared to the small, sleek MacBook. The only way I know to compare the look of the cases of a Dell (and most other non-Apple notebooks) to a MacBook is to invoke the image of the machine in a wind tunnel. The aerodynamic look of the Apple notebooks is part of their appeal. Again, there is a tradeoff. My iBook looks great, but the hard drive upgrade I performed took a few hours, a lot of extra care, and pages of directions. In the end, I still wouldn't trade it for an easily upgradeable notebook from another company. For me, part of the appeal is the design on the outside. Many users think this is foolish, and I was certainly one of them, but the market has changed. Computers are tools, yes, but they have also become somewhat of an accessory. One could complain that the MacBook Pro model doesn't come with a dual-layer SuperDrive (or didn't when it first started shipping...not sure about now). Yes, that's a drawback, but the thing is so thin that anyone who purchased one clearly looked past that and accepted the tradeoff, rather than waiting for thinner dual-layer drives to be produced by Apple's hardware partners.

Apologies for the rather lengthy reply, but I've heard this complaint from more than one person who, like me, comes from a typical PC background, and, though it is a shame that you can't replace the parts easily on most Mac models, it can be done. The tradeoffs are part of any hardware purchase. More miniaturization means that this might not be such a problem in the next few years, but, for now, it is. (And I'm not apologizing for Apple. I think they could have made the RAM easily upgradeable in the new minis, like it was in the older models, but they didn't. There may be a good reason for this -- I haven't researched why it is the case -- but upgrading RAM should always be easy enough for a child to do without much instruction.)
 
Also, the flat blade you need is a plastic (not metal) putty knife. They are found in most hardware stores for a dollar or less. If you are still under warranty, though, don't bother with it. Just take it in and let Apple deal with the repair.
 
The hard drives can be replace quite easily in Macbooks. (Or it seems so in the pictures in the manuals I've read.)
 
Sunnz said:
The hard drives can be replace quite easily in Macbooks. (Or it seems so in the pictures in the manuals I've read.)
Click to expand...

Yup, just pop out the battery, and take out some screws. Memory replacement is easy too, there's a lever that you pull that will pop out the old memory, then you can insert the new memory. Much more user-friendly than some other computers I've worked on.
 
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