Yesterday at the gym, my trainer was entering the results of my last set of squats on his Apple® MacBook® when his screen suddenly turned light blue and froze up just like a good ‘ole Windows® machine. It was dead in the water with no way to turn the machine off or to restart it.
As my CLNC® amigos know, I’ve had mucho experience with Windows over the years, and I recommended that he unplug the machine from the power supply and then pull out the battery, in effect doing a good old-fashioned “hard shutdown.” I also warned him he would lose any unsaved data and that I wasn’t doing that set of squats over again, so he’d better remember the weight total.
After the hard shutdown, we did a “Safe Boot” by holding down the Shift key as the machine started. This allowed the system to boot slowly with many turns of the Apple spinner (or the gear, for you Mac-heads). Once it was fully booted, we restarted the machine again. This time it took nearly three more sets of squats (lots more spinning) before it was up and operational as it rebuilt the boot cache and other Mac-specific process caches.
By the end of the workout I was walking with Elvis legs, but his MacBook was running. Although I don’t speak Mac, I did advise him to run some general Mac maintenance routines, consider a software update and then read up on basic troubleshooting for Macs. I also told him that if the problem recurs, it might be due to a recent buggy software update and to check the Apple Support Site and Apple Support Communities for more information. The above links will also be helpful to my Certified Legal Nurse Consultant readers who are using Macs until they build up the courage to buy a real computer with a real operating system.
Seriously though, you can use a Mac or a Windows computer for your legal nurse consulting business (or both on the same machine if you have a Mac and Boot Camp). The state of today’s software allows you the flavor of your choice without detriment for your CLNC® business.
Keep on techin’,
Tom
P.S. Comment and share your Mac or Windows BSOD experiences here!