By Graham K. Rogers

Having taken in my 13" MacBook Pro for hardware checks after a continuing series of Kernel Panics (KP), I have tried to run with the iOS devices: iPhone and iPad. After a day or so, I took my spare iMac home from the office and began to restore that for daily use.

Introduction

I was content to run with a limited photo-workflow capability for a while, but over the last couple of days the biggest difficulty has been managing files: particularly in relation to my eXtensions site.

I can write the text, although adding html links and other coding was tedious because of the back and forth between apps. There is also a less than easy process when creating, editing and transferring images into the software for upload to the site.

With a couple of other obstacles that have appeared, I took stock of what I was doing before going to bed, where I read part of a book on the iPad. Maybe Microsoft is right about the Surface: the iPad is not a replacement computer.

The key is the way it is used. For one-off tasks, such as reading, presenting, some photography or access to the web, the iPad is fine. For the productive work I have been used to, involving the manipulation, merging and transfer of different data or file types, I am still locked into work on the Mac.

Solution

After signing the necessary papers at work that are needed for removal of any hardware (except notebook computers) I took the iMac home and started work. I did not need to find the Wi-Fi password, but as the iMac has never been here, I guess that was a useful intervention by iCloud Keychain.

Apart from some music downloaded for iTunes, there is not much data on the 500 GB disk - itself a replacement for the initial 320 GB disk that failed a year or two back.

Being an older iMac, it does not have Thunderbolt. Instead (as well as USB), there are two ports for Firewire 800 and 400. Only one of the Time Machine backup disks at home has FW 800, so I connected that. I was asked if I wanted to use it for Time Machine backups. I checked, "Decide Later".

Before using the backup restoration, I did copy a few items from the iMac disk to external storage as well as a few photos to DropBox: the rest was replaceable. Time to bring things up to speed.

Preparation

I was initially shocked to see that the most recent backup was for November 2013 with OS X, 10.9; but checking the button, marked "Restore from" found me what I wanted and I selected the most recent (Wednesday morning).

Before taking the final step, I was again warned about the "erase all contents" result if I proceeded. Some users find these warnings tedious. Think of the potential if there were no warnings. The disk was erased and the restoring process began. There would be time to make tea, I thought.

I extended that possibility to shopping when the first estimate of time showed something over 6 hours, although minutes were being ticked off, second by second. Once or twice the time increased as the progress bar crept along, almost imperceptibly. I would make that tea.

Result

Of course, unlike the MacBook Pro, I cannot carry the iMac from room to room, so it will stay at the desk in my bedroom for now.

See also:

• Kernel Panics Galore: Unwelcome Problems (now apparently cured)

• Kernel Panics Galore: Unwelcome Problems (not apparently cured)

• Kernel Panics Galore: Unwelcome Problems (preparing for the service center)

• Kernel Panics Galore: Unwelcome problems (sailing into dry dock)

• Kernel Panics Galore: Unwelcome problems (adapting to change and making changes to images) - Resize, Auto Resize and Simple Resize

• Back to the iMac with a Time Machine Backup - A Quart in a Pint Pot

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand where he is also Assistant Dean. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs. He is now continuing that in the Bangkok Post supplement, Life.