Breaking Appletalk and Other Intricacies
Wow, firstly, I feel like an asshole. The other day I complained about sites lacking full feeds only to discover today that my official atom.xml Blogger feed was not full! Argh. Next time, please, let a guy know these things. This is just embarrassing. This has been remedied too, by the way. Enjoy the full feed in your favorite RSS reader. As I?ve said before, I recommend Onfolio (and no, I get no kickbacks from that, just saying it's the shit and you should use it).
Now that I?ve gotten that embarrassment out of the way, let me tackle another issue: Apple computer and the way their hardware works with their software. Here?s my scenario:
I have an old Powerbook that is dying a terrible death. When you can hear the hard drive go clink, whrrrr, etc, then it?s time to upgrade. So here comes a (very nice) shiny 17? Powerbook. The thing is just gorgeous.
Boot up goes fine, and the firewire transfer of all of the old documents, users, settings, and programs from the crappy machine goes without a hitch. The system transfer program is definitely one of my most beloved Mac features.
Then I try to connect a network drive, and get the following message:
"Connection failed. This file server uses an incompatible version of the AFP protocol. You cannot connect to it."
This gets a ?WTF?? and an immediate Google. I then find out the truth: Apple has removed Appletalk, their own namesake protocol, from OS X 10.4, Tiger. Insert extreme eye rolling and rage here.
First of all, it makes no sense to drop it other than their declaration of ?We?re dropping all OS 9 support. It is dead to us.? That?s fine guys, but did you also realize you broke ?Filesharing for Macintosh? on NT 4? Remember when I said I was replacing our file and calendar server? Yeah, this means that this beautiful, new, shiny 17? Powerbook will gather dust until I finish with that project.
?But,? you protest, ?why not just install OS X 10.3 on the new box?? Well, that?s what I thought too. Then I learned an even worse truth: OS X 10.3.4 or below will NOT install on G4 processor machines! Jesus Christ Apple, you?re really wanting me to hate you now, aren?t you? The damn installer won?t even run, it crashed at the default Mac bootup screen (ie, a grey background with a silver apple in the center).
I tried Carbon Copy Cloner, but no dice. As the author notes (and I found out for myself just to be sure), it doesn?t work with 10.4. Better put, it doesn?t work with 10.3.X moving to a G4 processor?but does it?
From what I?ve read (and I?m not digging up any more links for this bullshit), a 10.3.5+ install disc will work and supports the G4 proessor. Does this mean that if the old laptop is 10.3.5+ it will Clone with no problems? As I recall, the old laptop in question doesn?t have the latest and greatest service packs/updates, and this idea literally came to me just as I was typing this out. Aren?t blogs great?
So now I get to come into work on the weekend to update the old laptop and see if it will clone for me. If not, the shiny goodness will wait until the new server is fully functional. If it does work then I will have conquered Apple?s new demons, and I guess that stands for something.
Finally, big thanks to Scoble for throwing me a link, and that goes for Doc Searls too. You were on my bottom 5, but I got nothing but respect for ya. See ya next week?hopefully with better news.
So whistle as the wind blows
Whistle as the wind blows with me
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