Computer hell.

I am just livid!

For the last two weeks or so I’ve been slowly descending down the levels of computer hell and somewhere around the seventh ring are those indescribable f**ks from Adobe. Don’t worry; the idiots from Apple are round about the fifth ring so they’re there too.

It’s times like these I really, really miss the world before OSX.

A week or two back, I made the mistake of trying to install another Apple update (10.4.11). The update is the last update where my trusty G4 is supported; Leopard just isn’t supported on G4s (at least that’s my understanding). So, I tried installing the thing and of course, blewy!

I’ve been down this path before now – twice I think, maybe three times, you would think I would know better. It always happens at the most inconvenient time imaginable (of course, is there ever a time when it’s convenient to waste hour reinstalling software and trying to recover your data?

So, for two weeks now I’ve been rebuilding.

It’s slow work.

Reformatting the drive, reinstalling software, backing up, downloading updates, downloading them again because they don’t verify... oh, I could go on and on.

I learn a few things in the process though... for the next time.

First, Safe Booting. They don’t have it written down as prominently as they should but, you should know to launch into Safe Boot mode before doing installs. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, hold down the shift key during startup.

Apple describes it thusly:

Safe Boot is a special way to start Mac OS X 10.2 or later when troubleshooting. Safe Mode is the state Mac OS X is in after a Safe Boot.

Starting up into Safe Mode does three things to simplify the startup and operation of your computer:

• It forces a directory check of the startup volume.
• It loads only required kernel extensions (some of the items in /System/Library/Extensions).
• In Mac OS X 10.3.9 or earlier, it runs only Apple-installed startup items (some of the items in /Library/StartupItems and /System/Library/StartupItems - and different than login items).
• Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger only: It disables all fonts other than those in /System/Library/Fonts.
• Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger only: It moves to the Trash all font caches normally stored in /Library/Caches/com.apple.ATS/(uid)/ , where (uid) is a user ID number such as 501.
• Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger only: It disables all startup items and any Login Items.

Taken together, these changes can work around issues caused by software or directory damage on the startup volume.
Some features don't work in Safe Mode

Safe Mode can be useful for troubleshooting. However, certain Mac OS X features do not work when you are started up in Safe Mode. For example, you can't use DVD Player, capture video in iMovie, use an AirPort card, use audio input or output devices, or use an internal or external USB modem.

See, Apple doesn’t really talk about that in great detail unless you go looking for it (and you’re not going to until after you have a problem).

Apple’s message boards are laden with people going through this kind of angst and woe.

In a word, gggggrrrrrreeeeeeeaaaaaattttttt.

Getting back to the subject at hand though, the other thing that isn’t written down anywhere is that if you are experiencing problems after installing an update before fearing the worst you might want to try one very simple thing - launch from a bootable cd/dvd or partition and run the disk utility on the drive you just updated repairing permissions.

REPAIRING PERMISSIONS?!?!?

Yep, I actually found that during the whole installing of further update process at one point when things weren’t ‘taking’ like they should that just running disk utility and repairing permissions did the trick (and I haven’t found that one written down, ANYWHERE!).

So, that’s the Apple side of things. At this point though, I’ve got a good build of the OS on three of the six partitions I use, all of them with duplicate accounts (the only thing I have to do now is burn disc images to DVD of them) so on that side of things matter are settled.

But Adobe... what a bunch of clueless f**ks.

I don’t know what happened to Adobe, I really don’t. They used to be such a good company. Maybe it‘s the fact that they’ve had less and less competition in the marketplace as they’ve knocked off competitors but, boy are they sucking it up lately.

First off, around Christmas time I tried installing the CS3 suite – what a mistake. I tried downloading the trial versions and installing them and even went as far as to order the upgrade (the Premium upgrade meaning I get royally screwed). It was just a world of pain and suffering. Never mind the month of back and forth with Adobe, what an incredible bunch of non-responsive and clueless idiots.

Don’t believe me? Try calling Adobe customer service and see what I mean. It’s like talking to a dog and trying to explain the concept of the color blue. It’s not that they are unhelpful, just wildly obtuse.

In the meantime, Adobe has gotten so concerned with piracy that using and installing their products has become a nightmare. When you have a software package that costs me time and money because I can’t get it to properly run the time has come to look for alternatives – it’s funny because Adobe is in the same position that Quark was in a bunch of years back when they were known infamously for their customer service (or lack thereof). Well, we see how that worked out. I can only hope Adobe experiences the same pain after what I have gone through trying to get their products to work over the last six months.

The latest jewel was the nice error I got when trying to get Illustrator CS to run. I can’t waste time on trying to fix buggy software that should work – Adobe get your act together!