![]() ![]() Some vendors feel that they, not the owners of the device, get to chose when a device is "obsolete." This could mean everything from graphics cards, network cards, displays, storage devices or printers.Some vendors appear to purposely make it difficult to deploy a competitor's product and routinely make their joint customers pay for their use of someone else's software or hardware.Suppliers, on the other hand, believe they are, to paraphrase something Robert Heinlein's character Lazarus Long said, the bride at every wedding and the the corpse at every funeral. ![]() After all, they have the computer to serve their own needs, not the needs of the supplier. Enterprise IT departments and many end users are happy with their computing environment and don't see a need to change. These vendors don't stop to consider that they don't own the entire computing environment. Many vendors only test their updates in a lab containing only their own computing environment.When contemplating my experiences with other updates, it has become clear to me that the following things are true: I also noticed that Apple, once again, turned on my Bluetooth radio even though I had it turned off. That's right: Nothing happened when I did the macOS Sierra update-except I learned that one open source game wouldn't work any more and that one utility needed a setting changed to work properly. Then an even more ominous sounding voice-over began with "Jwas much like any other summer’s day in Peterborough, and Ralph Mellish, a file clerk at an insurance company, was on his way to work as usual when- nothing happened!" In this sketch, ominous sounding music came up even though the visuals were of a calm sunny day. macOS Sierra update like a Monty Python sketchĪlthough I had fears of what could happen next, my experiences reminded me of a wonderful Monty Python sketch, "The Adventures of Ralph Mellish." Then, and only then, do I press the button to start off the update. Once the download completes, I shut down all of the background processes executing on the machine in question, disconnect it from the file and print servers and, in some cases, I take the system off the network completely. Only after these rituals are completed are the updates or backups downloaded. I've learned that any shortcuts here can lead to days of problems later. Then the data is synchronized with our cloud-based and off-site backup facilities. ![]() Then the OS, all applications and all data are carefully backed up using my individual machine backup tools. ![]() Then this data is synchronized to my on-site file servers. Since my production and travel laptops are kept as mirrors of one another, data must be synchronized across machines. My backup rituals are a somewhat complex process that has been developed and tested over, I hate to say it, decades of experiences-some good, some bad and some that became the basis of well-received articles and reports. My next step before downloading what could be a network-destroying software bomb is to back everything up. The only solution was to uninstall SyncMate, load the OS update and then reinstall SyncMate. After all, the installation appeared to work properly. The system would never complete the reboot process, leaving the user scratching his/her head. It appears that Eltima's low-level drivers caused Apple's installation process to die in disgrace-only after the installation appeared to be completed. For example Apple's El Capitan update was known to have issues with Eltima's SyncMate. I've developed a number of time-tested rituals to protect myself, my work and my investment.įirst, I scan the internet to determine if others have had problems with a given update. Getting a notice that an important OS update was in the works was plain scary. I can recall many occasions in which what appeared to be a simple OS update or patch turned into a multi-day, very painful exercise that included calls to the suppliers of my systems, the supplier of my operating systems, the suppliers of my printers and even the supplier of my networking equipment. Since my production environment is made up of systems from different vendors, purchased at different times, and software from different vendors, the prospect of updating anything, much less the operating system on one of my production machines, is scary. Living with an electronic tower of potential trouble My personal work environment also includes a cloud-based storage service, several Linux servers for local file and print services as well as a lonely, old Windows-based laptop to execute a single application to support a long-term consulting contract. An update to macOS Sierra was available for my main production system, a MacBook Pro, and my travel system, a MacBook Air. I was notified that a software update was available for a few of my systems. ![]()
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