Category: 780: Why Did My Hard Drive Die?, 3 Lion Tips, RIP AppleWorks

Way back when, the go-to word processor for me was ClarisWorks. In grade school I mastered its simple interface. I was able to make pamphlets and donation sheets for scouting bike-a-thons, keep team statistics for my youth hockey team in a spreadsheet and type out all of my homework. In a time before America Online,…

One of the toughest things a technician has to do is tell customers that their hard drive has failed and recovering the data will likely cost thousands of dollars. A Small Dog customer brought in her 24-inch iMac earlier this month because it would not start up. It was on the bench and diagnosed as…

Lion is full of new features and interface improvements. Snow Leopard was, by Apple’s own admission, an evolutionary update meant to fine-tune existing technologies more than reinvent, or even invent. Lion is more about reinvention and the ongoing move to make Mac OS more like iOS. Here are three of the many advances. I’m a…

The old adage says there are only two certainties in life: death and taxes. I’d like to add a third: hard drives die. It might be today, tomorrow, next week, next year. It might be 5 years from now. At some point, it will die. The eternal question is, why? Hard disks are prone to…

Happy Tuesday, It’s the time of year for me and my friends to can and freeze the crates of tomatoes, beans, okra, cucumbers and endless zucchini. While broccoli is mostly over for me, cauliflower is going strong, and cabbages are well on their way. This year I decided to can less with winter in mind…