Critical Thinker – Page 4

A world not small enough

Today I received emails from two dozen locations in the U.S., Germany, and South Africa too. I sent a story to my adopted children in Kenya, a business update to colleagues in Wisconsin and Tanzania, and communications of various forms to a colleague in Canada, my professor in South Africa, and friends in Hawaii, Chile, and Palestine. This afternoon I spoke with my grandmother in Iowa and my brother in Phoenix; this evening a good friend in Peru. Tonight, I was surprised to discover a voice recording of a song from a friend in Estonia, waiting for me on Skype messaging.

This is my world. These are my friends, my family and colleagues. This is normal for me. And as such, I sometimes take it all for granted, the world is right here, at my finger tips, on this computer.

Yet, I remain alone, for this small, small world is not truly small enough, after all.

By Kai Staats|2013-10-09T01:50:14-04:00August 9th, 2013|At Home in the Rockies, Critical Thinker, Humans & Technology|0 Comments

Back to the Basics

In working at the Buffalo Peak Ranch this summer, I am again reminded of the value of my skills in carpentry, given to me by my father and a lifetime of home remodeling; drafting learned in my first year of Junior High; and mechanical engineering—a way of thinking learned through experience far more than any classroom activity.

With carpentry and wood working, I can rough-in a form for a concrete pour, frame a house, and repair or create a fine piece of furniture. With drafting I can quickly, effectively communicate in two dimensions an idea for a 3D construction. With an understanding of the application of force, applied to static and dynamic interactions, and the basics of volume, pressure, and time I can design basic mechanical or structural systems which perform work or provide foundation for shelter.

Without these basics, the world would for me be comprised of buildings that stand for no apparent reason, combustion engines which move us forward and back with magical motivation, and transmissions whose means of transferring the energy of rotation to linear movement—a complete mystery.

In a culture of specialization, fewer people are given these fundamentals, not enough time in the nationalized education programs or time with parents at home to teach the basics. The result is unfolding generations who can use a smart phone, drive a car, or turn on the tap to produce a steady stream of warm water, yet, they have no idea why these amenities function, taking for granted what is made available to them.

There is a joy in understanding, a pleasure in knowing how things work. There is a confidence in knowing I am able to build from the ground-up, remodel, or repair a toy, a piece of furniture, or a permanent structure.

Will an increasingly complex future of gadgets and gizmos disable an increasing number of people from these basic pleasures, from rudimentary confidence in their hands and tools?

By Kai Staats|2013-08-05T19:55:00-04:00August 5th, 2013|At Home in the Rockies, Critical Thinker, Humans & Technology|0 Comments

In the Void of Education – Part 2

This topic begins with Part 1.

I have spent ample time in Africa to understand the impact of poor education. It affects people in so many ways. Decisions which concern money, family, religion—even the ability to plan for something more than a few days ahead requires some degree of education. Without it, we are but responding to emotion, our logic limited as leverage for the given situation.

Prior to my interview with a student and teacher I believed an improvement in African education was about computers in the classroom and an Internet connection. Surely, these two combined would bridge the majority of the gaps.

Instead, through my own experience and subsequent conversations with Chuck and Mponda, I realized it is the total teaching system which is at the root of the issue for the teachers themselves are unwilling to teach beyond their own knowledge.

In the West we make the mistake of assuming that because access is granted to a resource, it will automatically be engaged, taken advantage of. My experience in Palestine last year was direct evidence for the contrary. Countless thousands of videos on YouTube and an equal number of publications about both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are immediately available, yet the vast majority of American’s remain ignorant due to the filtered media they choose to accept as fact.

African college students log on to Facebook each day, yet have never used Google nor heard of Wikipedia. Millions of pages of free information available at the touch of a finger tip, yet donated computers often end up locked away in a storeroom, only brought out into the class when the donor arrives for an annual visit, check in hand. The teacher’s lack of comfort with any given teaching technique and associated technology is the greatest barrier to education, everywhere.

When someone does not understand the very basics of applied science, whether it is biology, chemistry, geology or physics, how can this not affect the decisions he or she makes? How can government policies, both local and national, not be heavily influenced by the education of decision makers?

Last week a South African governor declared a 500,000 Rand fine for any witch caught flying across the border from Swaziland above 150 meters elevation. Is this any more ludicrous than an American congressman who is totally ignorant of the scientific method and associated data collection techniques declaring global warming a conspiracy of scientists the world-over, or demanding that the Christian creation story be taught along side evolution as the means by which life was given form on this planet?

The void of education is not only in Africa. It is everywhere, affecting all of us.

This topic is continued in Part 3.

By Kai Staats|2017-04-10T11:17:37-04:00May 4th, 2013|2013, Critical Thinker, Humans & Technology, Out of Africa|0 Comments

In the Void of Education – Part 1

To Live on Planet Earth
This week I have been in Tanzania working on a documentary film about Astronomy as a motivator for finding passion in the sciences. I had the great fortune of meeting Chuck Ruehle, founder of Telescopes to Tanzania and member of Astronomers Without Borders, and Tanzanian educator Mponda Maloso who works through EU Universe Awareness.

Together, we ventured to a secondary school outside of Arusha, Tanzania and engaged Term-3 and -4 classes in the basics of using a telescope, the value of astronomy in education, and what kinds of jobs may be open to these students if they pursue the sciences.

Following an interview with a 13 year old girl who had this spring looked through a telescope for the first time in her life, she asked, “Sir. May I ask you a few questions?”

“Yes, of course,” I responded, seating myself in my chair beside the camera again. I settled in for the conversation while Mponda sat on the corner of the nearby desk.

As the only one of three students who chose to conduct her interview in English, she was courageous enough to also engage me in this Q&A session, which I fully appreciated.

She took a deep breath, looked at her feet and hands, and then back to me as she asked, “Is it true, … that we live outside the Earth and not in it?”

I smiled, thinking she meant in a cave or underground. I did not truly understand and looked to Mponda for clarification. He nodded back to the girl again who was quite serious.

“What do you mean? Do you mean underground?” I looked out the window to emphasize the sunlight behind the growing clouds.

She added, “No. Do we live inside the ball,” making the shape of a ball with her hands, “or outside the ball, on top?”

I paused for a moment, considering the time which had come and gone since the awareness of the basic arrangement of the solar system was re-established (the ancient Egyptians had it figured out as well, but that knowledge was lost to history).

I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry. She meant that the sky, the moon, the planets and the stars—that they traversed the inside of a ball in which we lived. This girl sends text messages on her cell phone and has likely used Facebook, but does not understand the very fundamentals of how the Earth exists within our solar system, something established hundreds of years ago (and thousands of years before that, once or twice).

I was dumbfounded. Mponda did not appear to be surprised for he sees this every day through his work in Tanzania. I confirmed that we do in fact live “on the ball” and that the Earth is in orbit around the sun, along with the other bodies in our Solar System. She went on to ask questions about weather prediction, which were well stated. I was impressed by how much she desire to learn.

The telescope had opened her mind, it got her thinking beyond the rote memorization and classroom chanting of facts and figures which is what most of sub-Saharan Africa calls education.

Mponda later confirmed the majority of the children here are not aware of the very basics, most of them believing we live inside a sphere and only having heard rumors we have walked on the Moon. The Space Shuttle, International Space Station, even the concept of a telescope completely devoid from their education.

These are not unintelligent children. Rather, they have very, very limited interface with the greater world. This is true for most of Africa, the legacy of the post WWI British school system which trained everyone to be clerks, very little more. The teaching style, even the curriculum has hardly changed.

I interviewed her teacher an hour later. Without my provocation he sated, “Because of Chuck and Mponda I learned that we live on the outside of the Earth, and that we move around the sun in our Solar System.”

He is twenty eight years of age and a license math and science teacher in the Tanzanian school system. I nodded, affirmed his recent, personal discovery, and asked how this affected him.

He pressed himself back into the chair, folded his arms across his chest, and then leaned forward again taking a deep breath, “You know? I … I see now that we are on the planet Earth which moves around the Sun. The other planets move around our Sun too.” He paused to make eye contact, as though he was seeking affirmation. I nodded, smiling.

“The stars in the sky, they are very, very far away, most of them far bigger than our own Sun. And the galaxies, well,” he laughed the laugh of one who is about to say something profound, “they have so many stars we can’t even count them all.”

I waited.

“It makes me realize how very small we are. We are just so small and the universe, it is so big and beautiful.”

Repeatedly, my interviews have brought the same words to my microphone and digital recorder, “I see now how small we truly are, and how everything is connected.”

Humility. Connection. Humble awareness of our place in the much larger universe. Connecting the dots. Truly thinking for the first time, not just repeating what the teacher shouts at the class. You don’t need a computer to do this. As Chuck makes clear in his classroom interventions—it is about getting out of the desk and learning with hands engaged. Building, Testing. Breaking. Rebuilding and testing again. It’s the scientific method that generates passion for real learning, the kind that keeps us learning for a lifetime.

This topic is continued in Part 2

By Kai Staats|2017-04-10T11:17:37-04:00May 4th, 2013|2013, Critical Thinker, Humans & Technology, Out of Africa|0 Comments

At a Crossroad of Curiosity and Fear

A Crossroads
We live at an interesting crossroad, a time in which our telescopes are piercing the brilliant reaches of the very birthplace of our universe while our microscopes review the mechanisms by which life itself formed, from which we and all life on this planet do continue to evolve.

In this era science is not just a series of required classes for college degrees, but the very foundation of what makes our world tick. Cell phones cannot ring, vehicles cannot navigate, digital televisions do not transmit nor can we perform complex surgeries without tipping our hat to science. It’s not a club for the intellectually elite nor a conspiracy to undermine God, but the discovery, piece by piece, experiment failed by experiment succeeded to understand how things work and to then apply that knowledge to the improvement of our lives on this none-too-resilient planet.

Curiosity
Humans, this species so capable of immense creativity and at the same time such massive destruction has landed a one ton, mobile robot on the planet Mars, the fourth of its kind.

Curiosity is not just the name applied, but what drives us to do bold, daring things. Curiosity is what took us from continent to continent by hand hewed boat and over thawed land bridge by foot, thousands of miles over the course of thousands of years.

Once again, curiosity has taken us to foreign soil.

The average distance from the Earth to Mars is about 225 million kilometers and yet, we crossed this distance, reaching out through the extension of ourselves in eight months, traveling at a speed greater than half the circumference of the earth every hour.

In two hours Curiosity flew the distance that Magellan’s ships required nearly three years to complete five hundred years earlier, the technology that enables this great feat given birth just sixty years prior.

And yet, more humans are without adequate food and water now than in Magellan’s time, more warfare, more skirmishes, more people killed in war in the past one hundred years than at any time in history.

Fear
This is a time in which the religious are perhaps more afraid of losing their foothold in the psyche, in the heart, in the daily regimen of their followers than at any time in history. Not for loss of a need for supernatural guidance—humans have for millennia proved themselves incapable of maintaining healthy, self-imposed regulation—but for the distractions of a busier, less hierarchical world taking away from the time and omnipotent domain once given to God.

The reaction is fear. Fear of change.

In the summer of 2011 Stephan Hawking explained on international airwaves the mathematical evidence for the Universe to have been created not by a greater power, but by the very nature of space and time itself, without intelligence, without design. The same math that enables us to fly from London to JFK, the same underlying principles which govern the function of our microwave oven do give foundation to physic’s claim. If the logic holds, we have no choice but to redefine what God means to us … or stop reheating our left-over food and instead serve it cold.

Look up! Look within.
How does one then seek guidance in Her realm? Do we look further and further back in time to a place where we cannot fully explain and with one finger extended in objection, the other to test the wind and state, “There! How can you explain that?!” Or do we instead look deeper inside ourselves for the common threads of peace which do provide commonalityand seek that place which prefer no explanation for how we feel.

The next decade will likely bring as much change as the prior ten, yet how we behave toward each other, who we thank for what we have and where we place blame will not keep pace. In stark contrast to that which we change around us, on the inside, I believe, we remain very much the same. What comes next will only be understood when we again look over our shoulder to recognize where we have come from.

By Kai Staats|2013-02-25T18:32:28-04:00February 25th, 2013|Critical Thinker, Humans & Technology, Looking up!|0 Comments

Sometimes

I sometimes think about what it meant to love someone, to wait for someone at a time when the only means of communication was a hand written letter delivered by horse, boat, or plane. Soldiers received letters from women who waited two years for their return. While they surely had doubts, it was perhaps the speed of their communication which kept their fears at bay. They had no choice but to remain steadfast to the memory of an image, a scent, the sound of a voice. Their faith was not challenged by text messages or email which work to undermine long-term dedication.

Sometimes I wish the incredible words we share sat deeper inside of us, at a place lower, more solid, more secure than the anxiety which erodes them. This modern speed of communication is an accelerator for what eats at us daily. The technology we use to transmit how we feel seems to not give us confidence, rather it amplifies our sense and fear of being alone.

We have shared ample poetry and song and love letters to last a lifetime. And yet, we fail, sometimes, to feel love.

By Kai Staats|2017-04-10T11:17:39-04:00February 9th, 2013|Critical Thinker, Humans & Technology, The Written|0 Comments

TMI

There was a time not long ago, less than two decades perhaps, in which we looked to the future of a digitally interconnected species, worldwide. We believed then that famine, war, and daily strife would all but be eliminated, information the saving grace of the human race.

With satellite imagery we could greatly increase global crop yield and with internet-based communication, improve distribution. With real-time digital photography rogue military regimes could no longer get away with ethnic cleansing for the world would be aware, instantly, and take action to make it stop. Somehow, we believed, our cell phones would make us more connected, as individuals, towns, and nations.

Yet we now know things have simply not worked out as we had hoped.

I don’t need to quote the facts, for that is the heart of the issue. We simply receive too much information and for the overwhelming processing of it all, we filter and we turn away. Or we shut down.

If each of us was wet-wired, Matrix-style, to a massive computer which provided all the information we desired, real-time video feeds of every catastrophe and military invasion and non-wartime action worldwide, they would continue. In fact, they do.

It’s not for lack of compassion nor a desire to do the right thing, but the reality that it simply takes too much energy, too much time, too much empathy to open ourselves to the quagmire that unfolds when we learn that no human conflict on any scale is simple in its form nor easy to resolve.

Too much information is available to us. Too much information is required to truly engage and understand. Instead, we pick a side given the little we do know, and defend our position because we struggle to simply say, “I don’t know.”

By Kai Staats|2017-04-10T11:17:39-04:00January 13th, 2013|Critical Thinker, Out of Palestine|1 Comment

The New Meaning of Friendship

This morning a maintenance man came to my apartment at Mount of Olives in East Jerusalem to fix the plaster on the east wall of the kitchen. Given the noise and dust and his breaking the new light fixture I just hung last night, saying “No problem. No problem. It’s ok.” as glass shattered across the floor, I realized this morning was lost to mundane tasks and so I took advantage of the time.

I logged into Facebook for the 2nd time in nearly two weeks and was completely overwhelmed. I found myself scrolling through pages of posts from people I barely recognized, some names I didn’t even know.

As Facebook is already something I avoid, I realized I had to either close my account or take control. I chose to remove more than 200 Friends … and it felt ok. It is not that I find particular people unworthy of my time, rather, for the little time I spend on Facebook, I’d rather commit myself to personal exchanges which are engaging, educational, uplifting, and memorable than time wasted in sorting.

But it was not easy for the greatest hurdle in reducing the list from more than 350 to 119 was letting go of that back-of-the-mind sense that this person might someday be one who is doing something really cool that I want to know about, or someone with whom I might want to collaborate, or even someone who might promote one of my films. What if? When? Could be?

I can’t live like that. And that is not friendship, at any level. So, I established a short list of parameters by which I filtered and ultimately pruned my Friends list, as follows:

Is this person a family member or family friend?
Do I recall who this person is without hesitation? And does the memory invoke a desire to talk to this person again? Or was this person a part of my life in the past and not likely to be again?
Is this person someone I respect or admire, even if I have not communicated with him or her for some time, and someone for whom I do not have an alternative method of contact? (email, phone, LinkedIn)
Is this person someone I recently met and am just now getting to know?

Once established, the process was relatively painless (although there were moments of hesitation). The greatest challenge was surrounding my work with my film Monitor Gray, for I had invoked a large addition of new Friends during the development and fund raising stages of this project. All amazing actors and directors and producers who are part of the industry and I appreciated their support. But in the end, they are an active bunch on Facebook and I was overwhelmed. I had to assume (hope) they were already on the Monitor Gray Page and would receive my updates there. And of equal importance, I had to assume they would again find me if they desired my feedback or assistance.

A weight was lifted. For I no longer feel a sense of dread of visiting Facebook as I once did. I no longer need to “hide” or manage dozens of people whose posts are simply not related to my life in order to find those which carry meaning for me.

In the end, this allows me to use Facebook not for marketing, but truly to maintain friendships as I travel and live overseas, away from my climbing friends of more than decade and those whom I call family in the States.

This sense of calm inside is supported by the work of social scientists who have discovered that despite the incredible number of friends we claim to have, the number of “close” friends remains nearly identical to the number of members of a nomadic hunter-gatherer family unit at about twenty five

[need to find this article again]. Seems our social networking DNA is far stronger than our modern technology.

What’s more, a Cornell University researcher found the number of confidants (those with whom we entrust our personal matters) we maintain has actually diminished since the inception of social networking, as the lack of face-to-face communication has resulted in greater social isolation and less confidence in those we call our friends.

My goal is to keep the number of Facebook friends below 100, in fact, ideally, at about 30. A tight knit, closely coupled group of family and friends with whom I dialogue and brainstorm and learn. But what I must keep in mind is that those thirty people would also need to reduce their Friends to a more manageable number in order to engage at my desired level.

So, for now, an experiment unfolds … as I can see a time in the not too distant future in which I close my account altogether, making phone and Skype calls and face-to-face visits the norm, and moving on to more valuable uses of the Internet: research, learning, working on my photo gallery and writing in this blog.

By Kai Staats|2017-04-10T11:17:40-04:00November 8th, 2012|Critical Thinker, Humans & Technology|3 Comments

How to conduct a successful Kickstarter campaign

While I do not claim to be wildly successful in my first Kickstarter campaign for a sci-fi short film called Monitor Gray, we did raise $9500 with a goal of $7500, 50% of which was contributed in the first 24 hours.

I conducted a decent amount of research ahead of time, learning a great deal from the success and mistakes of those before me. In summary, there are a few must-dos to make Kickstarter a success:

Build a pre-launch website which mimics the Kickstarter site, including your video, story, and contribution rewards. Spend a month asking your friends, family, and co-workers for their honest feedback and adjust accordingly.
Build momentum BEFORE you launch, getting people jazzed for 3, 4, even 6 weeks ahead of time using Facebook, Twitter, and email (my preferred medium).
Have at least 50% of your funds aligned before you go live. If you do not have this, you run the risk of failure. Of course, this is more possible for campaigns striving for smaller amounts (<=$50,000) than for those trying to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars which will build upon the viral effect in multiple social media avenues.
Post updates frequently. Make them about the project with a personal flair.
Thank each contributor, and build personal relationships with those who have contributed larger sums with hope that they know others who are also affluent for your campaign.

The basis for my summary is as follows …

Kickstarter’s own Kickstarter School gives a detailed, proven means of diving in.

What NOT to do at Kickstarter (in addition to many, many success stories, updated regularly)

Target too many niches
Launch in a hurry
Not make a video perfect
Not have the media ready BEFORE launch
Anticipate how people will perceive the funding amount

Modest Guide to Success on Kickstarter

Pick your goal.
Pick your tiers.
Pick your timeframe.
Make a great first impression.
Plan your campaign before you launch.
Be responsive to backers.
Stoke the fire.
Expect surprise backers & non-backers.
Try to get on the Kickstarter homepage or weekly email.
Sprint to the finish.
Thank your backers.

A story of traffic generation which lead to monetary creation.

And the Wiki HOWTO Be Successful on Kickstarter

Hope this helps!
kai

By Kai Staats|2017-04-10T11:17:41-04:00September 19th, 2012|Critical Thinker, Humans & Technology|0 Comments

An Afternoon at Apple

At any given Apple Store there seem to be a lot of people wearing name tags that claim “Genius” and yet, they know very little about how computers actually work. As former CEO of a top-tier Apple VAR, yes, I have a level of expertise that is beyond that of the average user, but that does not mean that my experience should be so frustrating that I’d rather venture to BestBuy.

A recent example of an interaction at an Apple Store:

Apple Genius: “Can I help you sir?”
Me: “Yes. I would like to compare the graphics cards in your current models, laptops and Mac minis, to determine how I might improve the render time for video editing.”
AG: “Oh! The new models are 2.6 times faster!”
Me: “Faster than what?”
AG: “Well, faster than before?”
Me: “Before what? The last model?”
AG: “Yes.”
Me: “Really? Are you certain? The CPU frequency is just 10% higher than in the last model. So how can it be 2.6 times faster?”
AG: “Oh. Well, … er, what kind of software are you using?”
Me: “Video editing. Adobe Premier.”
AG: “Ah! If you were using FinalCut, it would be must faster.”
Me: “I tried the new version of FinalCut. It’s a child’s toy compared to Premier. But more importantly, both use GPUs. Again, that is why I am here. I want to compare the graphics cards of your current models to determine which will give me the best render times.”
AG: (rambles on about FinalCut and improvements)
Me: “Look. Is there anyone here to knows about GPUs? Maybe some other Genius?”
AG: “Let me see who I can find for you.”

I wait. A good fifteen minutes later another Genius approaches. The first hovers, listening in.

AG2: “How can I help you?”
Me: “Do you know anything about GPUs? The number of cores, the on-board RAM associated with the graphics cards in your current units?”
AG2: “Yes. How can I help you?”
Me: “I want to compare the current laptops with the Mac minis, to determine which is the best platform for video rendering.”
AG2: “Hands down, the 15″ laptops are the best.”
Me: “Why?”
AG2: “They’re faster.”
Me: “Uh. Ok. What makes them faster?”
AG2: “Well, they are 2.6 times faster!”
Me: “You’re kidding, right? Guess you guys both watch the same commercial (smiling). Look. Video rendering takes place on the GPU, not the CPU. The number of cores directly affects the rendering time. More cores equates to more divisions of labor. More equals better. All I need to know is the number of cores on each GPU, the amount of dedicated RAM, and ideally, the bus speed between the GPU and the Southbridge, the I/O controller which is pulling data off the drive. Do you, or do you not have this level of technical knowledge of your computers.”
AG2: “I am sorry sir, but maybe you can find that information on the Apple Store.”
Me: “No, it’s not there. But I am certain Nvidia’s website has it. Thanks.”

Of course, Nvidia’s website has all that I needed. But sometimes, it is just nice to talk to a human being. Unless of course, that human being knows very little about the product in question.

—————–

Just yesterday. I purchased a new 27″ iMac for a client and a 15″ MacBook Pro for myself (having learned all that I need to know about the GPUs from 3rd party websites). At my client’s site, I needed to rebuild 5 Macs in an afternoon, to stay on schedule.

I spent an hour at the Apple Store here in Boise, and while I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with one of the employees, I purchased at BestBuy across the street as they gave me a $100 discount for purchasing more than $4000 in a single day.

But here is the difference: at Apple, the employees tend to know ONLY about Apple. They can talk about iPhones, iPads, and all the apps for hours, but mention any third party vendors, hardware or software, and for the most part, they haven’t a clue. At BestBuy, the geeks are well-rounded, having dabbled in Windows and Linux, routers and RAID boxes, home theater systems–the works. They have not drunk just one flavor of Koolaide, rather, they have knowledge that bridges the gaps and in the end, I learn something from their employees as frequently as I teach. At Apple, however, I walk away every time with the employees shaking my hand, telling me they learned something about Apple hardware they never knew.

Yesterday afternoon I purchased a USB stick with a pre-installed version of OSX Lion as I was swapping / upgrading drives between the five systems I mentioned above. Yes, I could have managed a daisy chain of external drives installed using the emergency boot partition, but it would take far, far longer than a DVD or USB install.

However, the USB stick would not boot the 15″ MacBook Pro I just purchased, the latest version (sans Retina). I called the Store and explained that it is not booting, and likely is not the newest version of Lion.

AG3: “Oh, that’s not possible. Lion supports all the systems we have.”
Me: “With all due respect ma’am, it is impossible for an OS to forward support new hardware if there are any changes to the on-board components. It simply does not work that way. The USB stick you sold to me supports 4 machines at this site, but not the one I purchased today. It is obvious that it is not the latest Lion. I therefore ask that you look around to see if you have a new build.”
AG3: “Have you called Apple Tech Support?”
Me: “No. I don’t need Apple Tech Support to insert a USB stick and press the power button. A grey circle with a line through it is pretty obvious. It doesn’t work.”
AG3: “Did you upgrade the drive?”
Me: “Yes. But that –”
AG3: “Oh! We can’t support your system if you change the drive. Please reinstall the original drive and–”
Me: “The drive has nothing to do with it. Seriously. The boot order built into the firmware is USB, CD, then internal drive. I have a machine here that has NO DRIVE at all, and it boots from the USB stick perfectly.”
(pause)
AG3: “Oh. Well, you need to call Tech Support.”
Me: (slightly raised voice) “Look. I spent $4000 today on Apple hardware. I have been screwing around with this mess for more than three hours BEFORE I called, to make certain I was not wasting your time. I zapped the PRAM. I unplugged the units. I tested both with original and new drives. I want to come in to your store and make it perfectly clear that the version of OSX on the USB stick is too old.”
AG3: “Ok … let me see … yes, we have a slot at 9 am tomorrow.”

Of course, the lead Genius confirmed that the build was old, but he had no way of determining the build version and did not know if any of the USB sticks in-store were the current version. And so I was forced to do a daisy chain of restores to get my new 15″ running on a Seagate hybrid drive.

Again, lack of knowledge or perhaps, an attempt at making everything so simple (by not labeling the USB sticks with version numbers), my experience was far more complex than necessary.

To Apple’s benefit, their employees are consistently friendly, truly enthusiastic about their product line, and doing their best to serve you. I also recognize that Apple’s entire goal is to make the hardware completely transparent to the user such that the software is their #1 focus in training.

Makes sense … mostly.

By Kai Staats|2017-04-10T11:17:41-04:00June 21st, 2012|Critical Thinker, Humans & Technology|0 Comments

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