DSC 180

September 23, 2012 9:06 PM

Circa 2005, Steve Jobs was introducing a new feature to iTunes and he called them podcasts! Unfortunately, during the LIVE presentation Adam Curry was not happy with his Mac!! Priceless!
posted by TangerineGurl (28 comments total)

Heh.
posted by roll truck roll at 9:25 PM on September 23, 2012

He should have zapped the PRAM. Rookie.
posted by Brocktoon at 9:30 PM on September 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

Ben Hammersley is generally credited with coining "Podcast" but actually Kevin Marks deserves equal credit : the whole idea and name came out of a conversation they had at a conference.
posted by w0mbat at 9:47 PM on September 23, 2012 [3 favorites]

It's usually file system stuff.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:02 PM on September 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

Now do we mention no agenda?
posted by TwelveTwo at 10:03 PM on September 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

I've always wondered what the hell a "podcast" is.
posted by KokuRyu at 11:07 PM on September 23, 2012 [2 favorites]

It is what pod fishermen do with their podding poles.
posted by TwelveTwo at 11:56 PM on September 23, 2012 [1 favorite]

He should have zapped the PRAM. Rookie.

I've always loved the phrase "zapped the PRAM." I gather you don't have to do it with modern Macs, which is good, but makes them slightly less entertaining to talk about.
posted by JHarris at 12:14 AM on September 24, 2012

You don't routinely have to do it with modern Macs, but the key combo is still there, still waiting to be drudged out as a last ditch-effort to save what is probably a faulty motherboard.
posted by ShutterBun at 12:27 AM on September 24, 2012 [2 favorites]

command-option-P-R while booting!
posted by heeeraldo at 12:29 AM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

I've always loved the phrase "zapped the PRAM." I gather you don't have to do it with modern Macs, which is good, but makes them slightly less entertaining to talk about.

I just fixed an issue by zapping my PRAM a few weeks ago.
Also zapping my PRAM will be my go to pull for any tech related joke for the rest of my life, also probably for at least a few more years, my go to sexual euphemism.
posted by St. Sorryass at 12:48 AM on September 24, 2012

It was probably a placebo but zapping the PRAM made my mac feel like an entirely new, faster and different mac. It was like the mac and I had a massive falling out, and zapping the PRAM was the last ditch rom-com holiday that brought us back together, even stronger than before.
posted by bemetta at 1:18 AM on September 24, 2012

Sounds to me like they were more aghast at the profanity than at the Mac restart content. After all, the first question is "how do you control, say, dirty stuff" and not "how do you filter out people complaining about their Apple equipment".
posted by chavenet at 2:12 AM on September 24, 2012

I believe "Priceless" is the tagline for some other major multinational corporation that operates with debatable ethics.
posted by ardgedee at 4:13 AM on September 24, 2012

Also, for whatever it's worth, you can't zap the PRAM on Macs for the past few years.

The Intel Macs have NVRAM, not PRAM, and it stores even fewer corruptible user settings than the PRAM did in the classic OS days.
posted by ardgedee at 4:18 AM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

DISABLE EXTENSIONS
posted by thelonius at 4:23 AM on September 24, 2012 [2 favorites]

Ben Hammersley is generally credited with coining "Podcast"

That's MetaFilter's own Ben Hammersley.
posted by rocket88 at 5:13 AM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

Err..you can't zap PRAM/NVRAM for network settings but other things do get stored there such as, start up disk so as part of the hardware necromancy it is not without merit though not on par to its previous powers. Of course, I get this from the help page listed, which could be false, like the Anarchist Cookbook.
posted by jadepearl at 5:45 AM on September 24, 2012

After all, the first question is "how do you control, say, dirty stuff" and not "how do you filter out people complaining about their Apple equipment".

Same thing ;)
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:08 AM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

I made a pair of Mac Geniuses (Genii?) swoon recently by telling them I'd zapped PRAM (and a couple other old school things) while troubleshooting it before I brought it in. I imagine dealing with soccer moms at the "lifestyle center" Apple Store and their "my iPhone won't work!" shit is pretty tiresome day in and day out. They were all excited to get nerdy with me. So cute.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 8:51 AM on September 24, 2012 [2 favorites]

I'm amazed that it actually worked for you. My history of PRAM zaps were usually followed by a format/re-install. It always seemed like one of those go-to troubleshooting tasks that never solved anything.
posted by Brocktoon at 9:10 AM on September 24, 2012

I suppose one could accomplish the same on a modern Mac by "zapping" all of the files in /Library/Preferences. That would certainly make your machine feel like it's brand new.
posted by i_have_a_computer at 10:38 AM on September 24, 2012

That kind of onstage fuck up would have never happened when Steve Jobs was running the show!


Wait a minute.
posted by mazola at 12:54 PM on September 24, 2012

Zapping the PRAM (OK, "resetting the PRAM" is the less exciting term), was always a physically satisfying exorcism, akin to casting a two-handed, four-fingered spell on the machine. Take *that*, and *that* (and if you hold it for long enough) *that*. Three was always the magic number of startup chimes (OK, "bongs") for me.

Its invocation was, however, often met with a mere shrug from the machine. "Is that the best you've got when my innards are in pain?".

What's up next: checking for extension conflicts?
posted by pjm at 5:06 PM on September 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

Tangentially related question: has anyone ever solved any problem at all by repairing permissions? Because that was some prime OS X voodoo for a long time.
posted by The Hyacinth Girl at 7:22 PM on September 24, 2012

I've used "repair permissions" to open a crashing application before.

I think it's worked 2, maybe 3 times in the past dozen years.
posted by ShutterBun at 12:47 AM on September 25, 2012

My old PowerPC Mac Mini doesn't have WiFi, but I did have a USB WiFi adaptor. Apple doesn't support many WiFi solutions for OS X that aren't built-in or Apple-made, but it turned out that the device used the same chipset as a supported device. I found a process on the internet that involved installing the driver for the other device, then manually editing its configuration so it'd recognize the device. The last step of the process for getting it to work was that fabled bit of OS magic, a Permission Repair.

When I did this it would work okay for a while, but eventually (sometimes after many days, sometimes after minutes) the system would stop with a kernel panic and would have to be restarted. The panics seemed to happen more often as the system ran, so eventually I would end up reinstalling Leopard and going through the process again.
posted by JHarris at 1:05 AM on September 25, 2012

FOLLOW UP:

Adam Curry worked this video into his CUSP conference presentation.
posted by TangerineGurl at 11:11 PM on October 22, 2012