4 ms·

With Apple, you can take it to any store and they'll diagnose it immediately. With business support (which isn't even expensive for individuals; it was $500/yea

With Apple, you can take it to any store and they'll diagnose it immediately. With business support (which isn't even expensive for individuals; it was $500/year when I had it) they'll give you a loaner on the spot. If you've got backups, your downtime for a dead machine maybe a few hours.

willtim 8y ago
A loaned machine would be useless to me if they cannot swap the SSD. I wouldn't even be able to connect it to our company network.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  How is your company's network configured such that you need to physically swap the hard drive in order to connect? What happens if the hard drive dies?
  - willtim 8y ago
    For our VPN details, I would have to get my IT dept involved. My point is that machines often need a lot of additional software and configuration. If the world ran NixOS then perhaps a loan machine with "backups" would be almost as convenient as an SSD swap.
    - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
      OS X has an incremental, automatic backup system built in called Time Machine, which works pretty well in my experience. You'd just restore your time machine backup to the loaner machine, which would restore the vpn credentials.
      - willtim 8y ago
        Time machine is really a consumer gadget, I'd be surprised if IT departments were deploying it within organisations. Crashplan would be more appropriate, but I'm not sure how smooth the restore would be. IMHO not having a swappable SSD really sucks.
        ianhowson 8y ago
        In my experience, Time Machine is rock solid. I've backed up and restored many times onto new machines and the only thing that it doesn't handle well is Homebrew (or anything in /usr/local). I've had the same macOS installation for about ten years now. Also, in my experience, Crashplan is a steaming pile of garbage. Are you verifying that your restores are checksum-accurate? Are you verifying that all files are present after a restore? Neither was true for me, and support were unable to help.
Filligree 8y ago
I appreciate the convenience of such stores where they exist, but neither Ireland nor Norway has any apple stores. Only third-party resellers, none of which are nearly as good.
- H1Supreme 8y ago
  Exactly. The majority of my office is on an HP contract. Something goes down, a tech comes in that day and fixes it. The nearest Apple store is an hour away, and someone would have to drive it.
- maccard 8y ago
  I had an issue with a MacBook pro in Ireland. A 15 minute call with support and they couriered a new one out to me the following day and picked up the old one. I signed into iCloud and Dropbox, and was back up an running in a few hours. Doesn't get muxh smoother than that.

willtim 8y ago

A loaned machine would be useless to me if they cannot swap the SSD. I wouldn't even be able to connect it to our company network.

Wowfunhappy 8y ago
How is your company's network configured such that you need to physically swap the hard drive in order to connect? What happens if the hard drive dies?
- willtim 8y ago
  For our VPN details, I would have to get my IT dept involved. My point is that machines often need a lot of additional software and configuration. If the world ran NixOS then perhaps a loan machine with "backups" would be almost as convenient as an SSD swap.
  - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
    OS X has an incremental, automatic backup system built in called Time Machine, which works pretty well in my experience. You'd just restore your time machine backup to the loaner machine, which would restore the vpn credentials.
    - willtim 8y ago
      Time machine is really a consumer gadget, I'd be surprised if IT departments were deploying it within organisations. Crashplan would be more appropriate, but I'm not sure how smooth the restore would be. IMHO not having a swappable SSD really sucks.
      - ianhowson 8y ago
        In my experience, Time Machine is rock solid. I've backed up and restored many times onto new machines and the only thing that it doesn't handle well is Homebrew (or anything in /usr/local). I've had the same macOS installation for about ten years now. Also, in my experience, Crashplan is a steaming pile of garbage. Are you verifying that your restores are checksum-accurate? Are you verifying that all files are present after a restore? Neither was true for me, and support were unable to help.

Filligree 8y ago

I appreciate the convenience of such stores where they exist, but neither Ireland nor Norway has any apple stores. Only third-party resellers, none of which are nearly as good.

H1Supreme 8y ago
Exactly. The majority of my office is on an HP contract. Something goes down, a tech comes in that day and fixes it. The nearest Apple store is an hour away, and someone would have to drive it.
maccard 8y ago
I had an issue with a MacBook pro in Ireland. A 15 minute call with support and they couriered a new one out to me the following day and picked up the old one. I signed into iCloud and Dropbox, and was back up an running in a few hours. Doesn't get muxh smoother than that.