MacBook locked up

[LarryHoward]

My daughter accepted a set Apple updates for her MacBook Pro yesterday that included a firmware update. Got a caution that it could take a while and to make sure the charger was plugged in and to not interrupt the process.

Hit "accept", it went into a reboot and 16 hours later it's still sitting there with a splash screen and no sign of progress. Nearest "genius bar" is 65 miles away. Any Appleheads have a suggestion?

[Ish]

My daughter accepted a set Apple updates for her MacBook Pro yesterday that included a firmware update. Got a caution that it could take a while and to make sure the charger was plugged in and to not interrupt the process.

Hit "accept", it went into a reboot and 16 hours later it's still sitting there with a splash screen and no sign of progress. Nearest "genius bar" is 65 miles away. Any Appleheads have a suggestion?

If it was a Windows machine, I would say pull the batteries and the charger, let it sit for a minute and plug the batteries back in. Only owning an iPod makes me a crabapple head, I guess.

[kimbottles]

Reboot and start over. (You might have to do as Ish suggests and pull the batteries.)

Paging Beau, help needed at the service desk.......

[LarryHoward]

The initial instructions specifically warned about interrupting the process with a reboot.

No matter. She was fossil hunting with a friend today about 1/2 way to Annapolis so she took it with her and was headed for the Apple Store a couple of hours ago. No speak to a person option on their phone line.

I'm very comfortable with a DOS machine but Apple keeps you away from the BIOs, setup and the rest.

[LarryHoward]

All up and updated. Took the genius 2.5 hours to bring it back. A couple of the updates were crashing the thing repeatedly. Just as well she took it in. The auto install for those updates were non starters given her machine's configuration. They finally found a way to force them through.

[BeauV]

Sorry to arrive late.

What got done was what I would have recommended: Take it to the Genus Bar. Glad it got fixed.

Apple runs a version of Unix, even though they don't call it that. This is the reason that the system is "generally" a lot more reliable, but there are complexities in this that "normal" folks don't know and shouldn't have to know. If all else had failed, a complete disk wipe and reload would have been in order, IMHO.

BTW, that is one of the reasons that one should ALWAYS be entirely, completely and absolutely backed up. Even with the most reliable system available (which the Apple probably is) there is no way they can recover from some potential failures. Please, friends, back up your junk.

[JoeP]

[quote="BeauV] "Take it to the Genus Bar." That seems like a species statement to me.[/quote]

[Ish]

[quote="BeauV] "Take it to the Genus Bar." That seems like a species statement to me.[/quote][/quote]

I noticed that, but I thought "back up your junk" was pretty funny too.

[LarryHoward]

Sorry to arrive late.

What got done was what I would have recommended: Take it to the Genus Bar. Glad it got fixed.

Apple runs a version of Unix, even though they don't call it that. This is the reason that the system is "generally" a lot more reliable, but there are complexities in this that "normal" folks don't know and shouldn't have to know. If all else had failed, a complete disk wipe and reload would have been in order, IMHO.

BTW, that is one of the reasons that one should ALWAYS be entirely, completely and absolutely backed up. Even with the most reliable system available (which the Apple probably is) there is no way they can recover from some potential failures. Please, friends, back up your junk.

Don't disagree. Just disappointed that she had to spend 7 hours getting an upgrade failure backed out and redone. You would hope that when Apple or MS download updates that they would install smoothly.

[BeauV]

Sorry to arrive late.

What got done was what I would have recommended: Take it to the Genus Bar. Glad it got fixed.

Apple runs a version of Unix, even though they don't call it that. This is the reason that the system is "generally" a lot more reliable, but there are complexities in this that "normal" folks don't know and shouldn't have to know. If all else had failed, a complete disk wipe and reload would have been in order, IMHO.

BTW, that is one of the reasons that one should ALWAYS be entirely, completely and absolutely backed up. Even with the most reliable system available (which the Apple probably is) there is no way they can recover from some potential failures. Please, friends, back up your junk.

Don't disagree. Just disappointed that she had to spend 7 hours getting an upgrade failure backed out and redone. You would hope that when Apple or MS download updates that they would install smoothly.

Larry, the Admiral and I were just discussing this last night. Apple has been sliding on quality, and one place it shows up is in the upgrade process. Back in the bad-old-days of Steve Jobs at least a dozen people would have been fired because of this. We have a kinder and gentler Apple - and lower quality. Fear can be a useful tool.

[kdh]

I've been delighted with my $1000 iMac. It's not as fast as the Alienware Windows 7 box I bought for a home theater PC, but the iMac is never noticeably slow while I'm using it, even with my 150 Mbps internet connection.

The "swipe left and right" magic mouse commands are brilliant. No more hunting and clicking for the arrow to page back while browsing.

I can't imagine ever buying a Windows 10 box.

[Orestes Munn]

I have 3 Macs and an iPhone from work and another 7 or 8 of them in my group. They work most of the time, but are not the same bulletproof, utterly reliable, thing they were back in the 90s. On the other hand, we gave great support and they're still much better than the alternatives.

[LarryHoward]

Sorry to arrive late.

What got done was what I would have recommended: Take it to the Genus Bar. Glad it got fixed.

Apple runs a version of Unix, even though they don't call it that. This is the reason that the system is "generally" a lot more reliable, but there are complexities in this that "normal" folks don't know and shouldn't have to know. If all else had failed, a complete disk wipe and reload would have been in order, IMHO.

BTW, that is one of the reasons that one should ALWAYS be entirely, completely and absolutely backed up. Even with the most reliable system available (which the Apple probably is) there is no way they can recover from some potential failures. Please, friends, back up your junk.

Don't disagree. Just disappointed that she had to spend 7 hours getting an upgrade failure backed out and redone. You would hope that when Apple or MS download updates that they would install smoothly.

Larry, the Admiral and I were just discussing this last night. Apple has been sliding on quality, and one place it shows up is in the upgrade process. Back in the bad-old-days of Steve Jobs at least a dozen people would have been fired because of this. We have a kinder and gentler Apple - and lower quality. Fear can be a useful tool.

I have to give the "genius" credit. She experienced the exact symptoms that Jess had and then broke down the upgrades individually and worked them to success. Not easy and way neyond a casual user's toolset or ability. Jess is our only full time MAC user because she is a scientist, not a techie and I talked her into the MAC as a better day to day user experience. Chris our unrepentant PC engineer (including Droid phone). Lynne and I match software with our work systems (so PCs) but use IPhome and I'm on my iPad at the moment.

[Jamie]

My Apple powerbook 180c laptop still works, even if the battery is looong dead.

[Bull City]

Somewhat related... about a week ago, I upgraded my MacBook to El Capitan, and my email has been a little haywire since then. I use Gmail and have always the Apple/Mac mail client called Mail, which I like. After talking to Apple support, it seems that I unwittingly moved from POP3 to IMAP mail protocols, and oodles of emails, that I had saved on my Mac, disappear. So I am faced with restoring my email folders from a back up and changing back to POP3. I hate this kind of crap. Good thing I am retired and we're in a spell of rainy weather.

Helpful hints are always appreciated.

[kdh]

Somewhat related... about a week ago, I upgraded my MacBook to El Capitan, and my email has been a little haywire since then. I use Gmail and have always the Apple/Mac mail client called Mail, which I like. After talking to Apple support, it seems that I unwittingly moved from POP3 to IMAP mail protocols, and oodles of emails, that I had saved on my Mac, disappear. So I am faced with restoring my email folders from a back up and changing back to POP3. I hate this kind of crap. Good thing I am retired and we're in a spell of rainy weather.

Helpful hints are always appreciated.

The modern way, I think, is to use one of the modern "free" providers, I've used Yahoo! since 1998, leave everything on their servers and use the provided web client or the Mac client to read and compose. I've never stored e-mail locally on my box.

[BeauV]

Somewhat related... about a week ago, I upgraded my MacBook to El Capitan, and my email has been a little haywire since then. I use Gmail and have always the Apple/Mac mail client called Mail, which I like. After talking to Apple support, it seems that I unwittingly moved from POP3 to IMAP mail protocols, and oodles of emails, that I had saved on my Mac, disappear. So I am faced with restoring my email folders from a back up and changing back to POP3. I hate this kind of crap. Good thing I am retired and we're in a spell of rainy weather.

Helpful hints are always appreciated.

Bull,

Here's a nice web site describing the differences between POP3 and IMAP. http://www.pop2imap.com

I believe that the most recent Apple Mail client will do just fine storing your mail on your computer (for use when you're not attached to the internet, like on an airplane or boat). A lot of us converted from POP3 to IMAP quite a while ago, and the web site above will walk you through it. Although It think you actually figured it out, based on your post above. I would NOT recommend using POP3, as you'll find that very very few email systems support it now and soon there will probably be none. In the web site I've listed it explains the primary reasons for using IMAP - mainly that if you have email that you read on multiple devices (phone, pad, computer) you won't have to delete the same email on all three devices. This works precisely because the email isn't saved on the remote device. But there are a number of other reasons which are more technical. Basically, people stopped trying to support POP3 quite a while ago and as a result bugs go unfixed, often forever.

This, obviously, still leaves you without an easy way to get your older emails on to IMAP. Here's a possible suggestion. Once you've restored your emails to your POP3 account, have a look under the "Mailbox" tab where you'll find "Export Mailbox". This will let you save all your POP3 mail on your local machine. I believe you can then shift over to IMAP and use the "Import Mailboxes" command under the "File" tab to pull all the old mail into the IMAP system. But, I'm guessing the web site does a better job of describing all this.

I know it's a PAIN, but you'll find IMAP to be a much more reliable email system. Sadly, improvements in technology often involve migrations from one standard to another as the industry fixed errors we made in earlier attempts.

B

[Bull City]

Somewhat related... about a week ago, I upgraded my MacBook to El Capitan, and my email has been a little haywire since then. I use Gmail and have always the Apple/Mac mail client called Mail, which I like. After talking to Apple support, it seems that I unwittingly moved from POP3 to IMAP mail protocols, and oodles of emails, that I had saved on my Mac, disappear. So I am faced with restoring my email folders from a back up and changing back to POP3. I hate this kind of crap. Good thing I am retired and we're in a spell of rainy weather.

Helpful hints are always appreciated.

Bull,

Here's a nice web site describing the differences between POP3 and IMAP. http://www.pop2imap.com

I believe that the most recent Apple Mail client will do just fine storing your mail on your computer (for use when you're not attached to the internet, like on an airplane or boat). A lot of us converted from POP3 to IMAP quite a while ago, and the web site above will walk you through it. Although It think you actually figured it out, based on your post above. I would NOT recommend using POP3, as you'll find that very very few email systems support it now and soon there will probably be none. In the web site I've listed it explains the primary reasons for using IMAP - mainly that if you have email that you read on multiple devices (phone, pad, computer) you won't have to delete the same email on all three devices. This works precisely because the email isn't saved on the remote device. But there are a number of other reasons which are more technical. Basically, people stopped trying to support POP3 quite a while ago and as a result bugs go unfixed, often forever.

This, obviously, still leaves you without an easy way to get your older emails on to IMAP. Here's a possible suggestion. Once you've restored your emails to your POP3 account, have a look under the "Mailbox" tab where you'll find "Export Mailbox". This will let you save all your POP3 mail on your local machine. I believe you can then shift over to IMAP and use the "Import Mailboxes" command under the "File" tab to pull all the old mail into the IMAP system. But, I'm guessing the web site does a better job of describing all this.

I know it's a PAIN, but you'll find IMAP to be a much more reliable email system. Sadly, improvements in technology often involve migrations from one standard to another as the industry fixed errors we made in earlier attempts.

B

Beau, thanks for the comments on the future of POP3. I saw this website and a couple of others. Had I understood how IMAP worked, I wouldn't have the problem. Once the holidays wind down, I'll get to work on it.

[BeauV]

Somewhat related... about a week ago, I upgraded my MacBook to El Capitan, and my email has been a little haywire since then. I use Gmail and have always the Apple/Mac mail client called Mail, which I like. After talking to Apple support, it seems that I unwittingly moved from POP3 to IMAP mail protocols, and oodles of emails, that I had saved on my Mac, disappear. So I am faced with restoring my email folders from a back up and changing back to POP3. I hate this kind of crap. Good thing I am retired and we're in a spell of rainy weather.

Helpful hints are always appreciated.

Bull,

Here's a nice web site describing the differences between POP3 and IMAP. http://www.pop2imap.com

I believe that the most recent Apple Mail client will do just fine storing your mail on your computer (for use when you're not attached to the internet, like on an airplane or boat). A lot of us converted from POP3 to IMAP quite a while ago, and the web site above will walk you through it. Although It think you actually figured it out, based on your post above. I would NOT recommend using POP3, as you'll find that very very few email systems support it now and soon there will probably be none. In the web site I've listed it explains the primary reasons for using IMAP - mainly that if you have email that you read on multiple devices (phone, pad, computer) you won't have to delete the same email on all three devices. This works precisely because the email isn't saved on the remote device. But there are a number of other reasons which are more technical. Basically, people stopped trying to support POP3 quite a while ago and as a result bugs go unfixed, often forever.

This, obviously, still leaves you without an easy way to get your older emails on to IMAP. Here's a possible suggestion. Once you've restored your emails to your POP3 account, have a look under the "Mailbox" tab where you'll find "Export Mailbox". This will let you save all your POP3 mail on your local machine. I believe you can then shift over to IMAP and use the "Import Mailboxes" command under the "File" tab to pull all the old mail into the IMAP system. But, I'm guessing the web site does a better job of describing all this.

I know it's a PAIN, but you'll find IMAP to be a much more reliable email system. Sadly, improvements in technology often involve migrations from one standard to another as the industry fixed errors we made in earlier attempts.

B

Beau, thanks for the comments on the future of POP3. I saw this website and a couple of others. Had I understood how IMAP worked, I wouldn't have the problem. Once the holidays wind down, I'll get to work on it.

Give me a shout if you get stuck - I may not know the answers, but I can find someone who does.

[Ish]

I lost an email address in my provider's switchover. Used to be POP3, now IMAP. I can see old emails but can't get new ones, and the associated website address is also unreachable. No big deal, but if that was your only address it could be problematic. Luckily, it was #8 in my email hierarchy, a throwaway address I used occasionally.

[kimbottles]

What on earth do you do with EIGHT email addresses???!

[Ish]

What on earth do you do with EIGHT email addresses???!

I have a few more hanging around somewhere.

Used to be that I got 10MB of web space with each email address. As my old web site grew, I had to add additional email addresses to store all the images that I had to upload. I used to have 10 addresses running on my Shaw account, since I had to build a web site for Anne, and for her bells. After a while it got totally out of hand, then they increased the limit to 20 MB per address, and I could compress things. However, rewriting all the HTML code to new sites didn't interest me, so I left it as it sat.

Here it is, if anyone hasn't seen it. If you check the image links, they go all over the place. http://members.shaw.ca/paradigmshift/

[BeauV]

Kim,

Some of us have a "history" and don't like loosing folks. You probably worked in the same place for awhile, if I recall. But when leaving a company I tried to get them to agree to forward emails to me as long as possible. Thus, you may still be able to reach me at any of: bvrolyk@standford.edu, bvrolyk@sgi.com, bvrolyk@aol.com, bvrolyk@yahoo.com, BeauVrolyk@yahoo.com, BeauVrolyk@gmail.com, etc..... There must be two dozen of them. Some of the old ones, like aol, died when they went from pop to imap. But

Beau

Edit: I just tested and Stanford and SGI have given up on me - pretty funny!

[kimbottles]

Kim,

Some of us have a "history" and don't like loosing folks. You probably worked in the same place for awhile, if I recall. But when leaving a company I tried to get them to agree to forward emails to me as long as possible. Thus, you may still be able to reach me at any of: bvrolyk@standford.edu, bvrolyk@sgi.com, bvrolyk@aol.com, bvrolyk@yahoo.com, BeauVrolyk@yahoo.com, BeauVrolyk@gmail.com, etc..... There must be two dozen of them. Some of the old ones, like aol, died when they went from pop to imap. But

Beau

Edit: I just tested and Stanford and SGI have given up on me - pretty funny!

Given I owned 50% of the company I worked at I was pretty well stuck staying there. People think owning the company is sexy or something, in reality it means your employees are free to come and go, but you are stuck there.

My company email address still works, even though I have sold all of my stock to employees. I think they are just being nice to me.

[Bull City]

Kim,

Some of us have a "history" and don't like loosing folks. You probably worked in the same place for awhile, if I recall. But when leaving a company I tried to get them to agree to forward emails to me as long as possible. Thus, you may still be able to reach me at any of: bvrolyk@standford.edu, bvrolyk@sgi.com, bvrolyk@aol.com, bvrolyk@yahoo.com, BeauVrolyk@yahoo.com, BeauVrolyk@gmail.com, etc..... There must be two dozen of them. Some of the old ones, like aol, died when they went from pop to imap. But

Beau

Edit: I just tested and Stanford and SGI have given up on me - pretty funny!

Given I owned 50% of the company I worked at I was pretty well stuck staying there. People think owning the company is sexy or something, in reality it means your employees are free to come and go, but you are stuck there.

My company email address still works, even though I have sold all of my stock to employees. I think they are just being nice to me.

You must have gotten the free lifetime postage in your buy out deal. Lucky dog!

[kimbottles]

Kim,

Some of us have a "history" and don't like loosing folks. You probably worked in the same place for awhile, if I recall. But when leaving a company I tried to get them to agree to forward emails to me as long as possible. Thus, you may still be able to reach me at any of: bvrolyk@standford.edu, bvrolyk@sgi.com, bvrolyk@aol.com, bvrolyk@yahoo.com, BeauVrolyk@yahoo.com, BeauVrolyk@gmail.com, etc..... There must be two dozen of them. Some of the old ones, like aol, died when they went from pop to imap. But

Beau

Edit: I just tested and Stanford and SGI have given up on me - pretty funny!

Given I owned 50% of the company I worked at I was pretty well stuck staying there. People think owning the company is sexy or something, in reality it means your employees are free to come and go, but you are stuck there.

My company email address still works, even though I have sold all of my stock to employees. I think they are just being nice to me.

You must have gotten the free lifetime postage in your buy out deal. Lucky dog!

Email postage?