Down, Girl

Yesterday, though the Sony Ericsson makes no claim that their W800i is compatible with Apple computers, I plugged the USB data cable into my Powerbook and my phone. And, as with all peripherals plugged into Mac OS X, it worked great: the Memory Stick Duo in the phone showed up as a removable drive without fuss.

So I setup up the phone as a Bluetooth device for my Mac, and no problems: now my phone is a file vault, and I can sync contacts and calendars with it, and it can also act as a remote control for my Powerbook! Fantastic. I had several applications open, connecting to the phone via USB and Bluetooth. Life was rolling, comin' out Milhouse.

And for some reason unbeknownst to even my little peanut brain, I just grabbed the phone and unplugged the USB cable without first unmounting it from Mac OS X. Wow, the Powerbook did not like that: I got a shaded-grey screen of death, which told me to hold the power button down for several seconds and let it reboot.

I did, and it did. But it didn't completely, which I felt was a little unfair, since I did do what it told me to do, and I figured it was only right that it should hold up its own side of the bargain.

But it didn't. All the apps that were running at the time of crash have now decided to side with the computer in protesting that I so violently yanked out the volume when they were so happily using it. That means ... no more access to IM (Proteus), music (iTunes), email (Mail), contacts (AddressBook), calendar (iCal). That also means ... I'll need to do a full archive-and-install these next few days to get her back up and running again.

If it were Windows, I would gripe for a few minutes, and then accept my fate because of my choice. But this is a Mac. I expect more. I paid (slightly) more, and it hurts to see that I'm getting this kind of Window(s) treatment. But for some reason, a strange suspicion came over me. I checked it out, and I was right: my baby is just over a year old, meaning the warranty is out now. If she behaves and recovers, I'll buy her a little cupcake or something.