Thursday, September 22, 2011

Applecare and that Genius moment


Every once in a lifetime comes that moment we have all dreamed about but never, never expect to happen and then it does. Today I had one of those moments. I showed an Applecare technician how to do it!

It started a couple of days ago when I discovered that my Apple Garageband Loops were missing. AWOL in a big way. I am passionate about Garageband and now could not live without it. It is my free accompanist, always in time, plays in any key and never a wrong note. What more could a singer ask for?

Then it allows me to arrange and orchestrate my music  and allows me to sing anything, like The Songs of the Auvergne which no ordinary pianist will touch as they are sooooo difficult. I digress.

How to get the Loops back now that was the question? Apple have a wonderful system called Applecare. For three years if you pay a bit over the odds there is a friendly voice over the phone almost all day who will guide you through the foibles of one's computer but this call fills one with dread as one knows one could be at it all day. I was! 8 hours of click this, trash this, do this do that and then at the end of a huge re install  and still the Garageband Loops would not appear.

I was on to my fifth guru by this time and these gurus are called geniuses! They have a wonderful calming manner as most of us are just about to tear out our hair when we phone them. But my last who was charm itself gave up on me as the reinstall download took two hours and it didn't work. It was getting late. Not a Loop insight. It was take a deep breath and start again tomorrow. A sleepless night.

The snag was I knew they were sitting on my computer. There they were all perky in a folder on my Hard Drive and no way of getting them to show up. I must admit I am good with computers. I am not afraid of the things and I have to know where they store things because of Final Cut Pro. You have to know where to look if your hour long programme suddenly takes flight so I started to play around and then I found it!

It was so simple, almost as simple as turning the computer off and then on when it plays up. I just happened to look by chance in the Garageband Preferences and there it was, an invitation to share loops with all users on my Macbook Pro. One click and the 36 hours of hell were solved.

I had great pleasure in explaining to my genius just how easy it was to fix! I had also worked out why I wasn't seeing the loops. I like 3/4 time and minor keys and Garageband doesn't. It doesn't do waltz loops only  common time ones so no loops show up. So I explained how to do it!

If I hadn't found that click I still would not have my loops. Still he was charming and being of a mature age I did enjoy the experience. It will never happen again!

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