- Joined
- Dec 8, 2009
- Messages
- 453
- Reaction score
- 10
- Points
- 18
- Location
- The same as Sheldon Cooper - East Texas
- Your Mac's Specs
- iMac 2014 i5 5k 32gb 1tb fusion, second TB display, 2014 MBA
This is being written on a five year old Shuttle with Linux. The reason? In about a millisecond I went from owning 5 Macs, to being now in possession of a single Macbook Air, and four piles of junk. A Texas storm hit without warning and before I could get to any plugs, a direct hit on the Internet Radio tower blew most of the electronics in the house into dead boxes. An I7 Imac, three Mac Minis - one almost sixty feet away - and an Apple TV. Plus a couple of TVs, a fridge, AV receiver and other stuff. Thank goodness my Air was and is still at the office.
All were protected by commercial grade (that is to say, not WalMart quality) surge protectors by Triplite and APC. Interestingly enough, none of those were damaged although the main UPS was smoked. It's an insurance problem and I will wind up with four new Macs, so what the heck. My SuperDuper and Time Machine backups are ok, so there was no data loss.
But, what bothers me is that only the Apple branded stuff was fried, computerwise. This Shuttle sits right next to the big Imac and was three feet away from where the strike entered. It, and two FIC Ice Cubes with Debian and BSD in the same room, on the same network, were not damaged and weren't even plugged into protection - just straight into the wall.
Conclusions. Pick one or more, or think up one of your own.
1. Coincidence. Some things get popped, and some don't? This time it just happened to be the Apple stuff.
2. Surge protectors hurt more than they help? Even fancy ones that protect all incoming wires in addition to the power?
3. Bill Gates arranged it? (He can't compete using his bloatware OS - maybe he signed up with the Storm Gods to level the playing field.)
4. Apple engineers live in a area that doesn't get the Wrath of God storms that the Mid and Southwest get blasted with all the time, and it never occurred to them to, say, maybe put a couple of fifty cent MOV's or TVS'es across the powerline?
5. Or...
All were protected by commercial grade (that is to say, not WalMart quality) surge protectors by Triplite and APC. Interestingly enough, none of those were damaged although the main UPS was smoked. It's an insurance problem and I will wind up with four new Macs, so what the heck. My SuperDuper and Time Machine backups are ok, so there was no data loss.
But, what bothers me is that only the Apple branded stuff was fried, computerwise. This Shuttle sits right next to the big Imac and was three feet away from where the strike entered. It, and two FIC Ice Cubes with Debian and BSD in the same room, on the same network, were not damaged and weren't even plugged into protection - just straight into the wall.
Conclusions. Pick one or more, or think up one of your own.
1. Coincidence. Some things get popped, and some don't? This time it just happened to be the Apple stuff.
2. Surge protectors hurt more than they help? Even fancy ones that protect all incoming wires in addition to the power?
3. Bill Gates arranged it? (He can't compete using his bloatware OS - maybe he signed up with the Storm Gods to level the playing field.)
4. Apple engineers live in a area that doesn't get the Wrath of God storms that the Mid and Southwest get blasted with all the time, and it never occurred to them to, say, maybe put a couple of fifty cent MOV's or TVS'es across the powerline?
5. Or...