Keith Brophy

Adenvtures in Zombie Time Capsule Land

It was an ordinary Wednesday evening, when we discovered that our Time Capsule (Apple’s backup and network storage device) had been zombified. It wasn’t actually on the prowl for human flesh and it’s appearance hadn’t changed that much save for it’s green life light going dark - it was dead.

The wonder of the interwebs introduced me to a veritable army of the TC dead, so much so, that a website had been setup as a memorial for TCs no longer with us. It appears that the inital batch of TCs had a limited lifespan (approximately 17 months) - maybe Mr Jobs took note from Bladerunner’s replicant friends.

Always living on the edge, I hadn’t just used the TC as a backup device - I used it’s server grade disk as a network storage device also, promoting it to a primary, unbacked source of my treasured ones and zeros. (Lesson learnt!)

I called upon the support services of Apple with my AppleCare plan clutched in my hands. As part of a “special extension programme” (code for “sorry, we messed up”), Apple immediately offered a new replacement TC. They also noted that I had to return the dead TC - intact and without voiding the warranty in any way. Opening the TC in any way was deemed as a warranty voiding exercise.

After a bit or wrangling and asking if I could escalate the issue, sense was finally established. Apple agreed that an authorised Apple service provider could open the TC, so long as they confirmed with Apple that it had not already been tampered with (by me!).

All in all, I have my data back along with a new TC. The old one (with it’s plastic bottom ripped in places) is due back to Appleland tomorrow.

So if your TC does succumb to the zombie ways, make sure you push for your right to get the data from it.

Free iPad with Every Replacement Battery

In a support document, Apple tells us that when you eventually send your iPad in to have its battery replaced, Apple will just send you a new iPad instead. The Battery Replacement Service will cost $100.

Go Below Surfaces

From Network Effects, an article about the effect of the telegraph on newspapers, in the Economist (December 19th 2009):

Writing in the Atlantic Monthly in 1891, W.J. Stillman, a journalist and critic, decried the effects of the telegraph on his profession. “America has in fact transformed journalism from what it once was, the periodical expression of the thought of the time, the opportune record of the questions and answers of contemporary life, into an agency for collecting, condensing and assimilating the trivialities of the entire human existence. The frantic haste with which we bolt everything we take, seconded by the eager wish of the journalist not to be a day behind his competitor, abolishes deliberation from judgment and sound digestion from our mental constitutions. We have no time to go below surfaces, and as a general thing no disposition.”