Ticked Off

A state of the art Apple IIe was my first computer, purchased in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1983 for business and personal use. Together with the Apple printer and double floppy drives, it cost $3,200 in an era when $16,000 was an outrageous price for a new Cadillac. That Apple computer came to Florida when we moved to Apalachicola the summer of 1984, and served as the church computer as well. Until we arrived, they were using a typewriter and a mimeograph machine to prepare and copy Sunday bulletins; the typewriter may have been an IBM Selectronic with the changeable ball, not sure.

We went through several Apple IIe computers at Trinity Church, which I bought because such luxuries and frills were not compatible with the parish budget or vestry frugality. In time we switched to PCs, first with DOS with which you learned a bunch of commands such as control-P for print, which is still good, then with Windows and scroll-down menus and pictures to click on. When we moved home to Panama City in 1998, my Apple IIe computers came with me because loads of my stuff was stored on the old Apple floppies. At some point those computers started giving trouble, and I found an almost brand new Apple IIe computer identical to my first one on eBay for $5.00 plus shipping. It’s still set up and operable but hasn’t been touched in several years. 

My replacement computers over the next ten years were PCs with various editions of Windows, being a cheapskate, always refurbished ones. There were constant struggles with some virus or other malware, and episodes with BSOD, and bad words; and so when a virus or other malware ruined my last PC in 2009 it seemed time to return to Apple, reportedly not as susceptible to viruses and such. My still being cheap, and having a perfectly good monitor, the replacement was a refurbished Mac Mini, which is the size of a book instead of a monster, and works as well as the most powerful desktop PC that ever took up space beside my desk. 

Then when my trusty and beloved Sony laptop -- given to me as a farewell gift by the loving folks at Grace Church when we left there the end of 2001 -- gave out and would no longer go online and the Geek Squad told me to quit spending money on it, it was replaced with a refurbished MacBook and my repentance and return to Apple was complete. No viruses in three years and reasonable satisfaction.

Until yesterday morning, when my email program refused to work. Turns out my MacBook wasn’t alone. Checking out a troubleshooting site disclosed that an Apple security update on Wednesday evening fouled not only my email program but lots of other folks’ as well. Working for hours through suggested remedies yielded no correction or satisfaction. Apple mail isn’t working for me except on my iPad; on the MacBook it’s necessary to go through Google to get my twellerpc@gmail.com and through Knology to get email addressed to twellerpc@knology.net. 

Frustrating, Apple. 

Bad words at you, Apple. 

To get theological about it, let Apple be anathema.

Tom