Apple

How to upgrade from Tiger direct to Snow Leopard

Posted on March 28, 2010 by Steve Livingston Smart working 0

Although I’ve had few problems with the Tiger OS X operating system for my Apple Mac, there’ve been a few occasions recently where applications have not supported Tiger (e.g. Google Chrome, Evernote etc) – this is only going to get worse.

So I thought I’d better make the move from Tiger to the latest Mac OS Snow Leopard. Easier said than done.

Here’s how I managed to upgrade from Tiger to Snow Leopard.

First, let’s address my two initial points of confusion:

Can you move straight from Tiger to Snow Leopard? There is little guidance on this but the answer is YES (provided you’ve got the right hardware i.e. Mac with an Intel Processor . 1 GB of RAM. DVD drive for installation and 5GB of spare hard drive disk space).
Is it a case of just sticking the Snow Leopard CD ROM in to update and sitting back – NO!

(I wonder whether point 1 is not widely publicised because plenty of folk will have paid £100+ to upgrade from Tiger to Leopard OS when it was launched a couple of years ago (before the launch of Snow Leopard) however, now you can jump directly from Tiger to Snow Leopard for just £25!)

As you have gathered from point 2 above, I did initially just shove the Snow Leopard disk, rebooted my Macbook (holding down the C key to activate the installation process) and installed it. Beforehand, I had ensured that I had cleared up my disk using the handy Disk Inventory X free tool to free up the minimum 5 GB. I had also backed up my data.

It all appeared to install fine, but when I clicked on Safari, iTunes, Finder and pretty much any other application (apart from Firefox) it failed showing an error message along the lines of “Safari quit unexpectedly”. So frustrating!

Here was my Twitter feed at the time!:

After much searching online using trusty Firefox (with Safari now defunct) for possible explanations, I found the following which came to the rescue:

This article. – although the disk permissions etc didn’t actually help, it was the reference to the “fresh installation” that opened my eyes to the fact I’d probably missed something…..

This video showed exactly what I should have done – basically, erase Tiger OS. Having followed this advice, it worked perfectly.

I hope this works for you too.

Design Thinking for Business – Lessons from Apple’s ipad

Posted on January 28, 2010 by Steve Livingston Innovation Thinking 0

We are tentatively emerging from a painful recession yet the masses (myself included!) are salivating over Apple‘s latest creation – the Apple ipad.

It’s a snip at just $499 but we seem to forget that most people already have perfectly decent laptops or PCs at home. Yet you can bet your bottom dollar that millions of these things will fly off the shelf once released later this year – but why? What is it that Apple have become so masterful at that they can create a roaring demand for something that people don’t (truly) need?

For me, there are 3 key traits of the ipod – iphone -ipad:

Design
Experience
Simplicity

Underpinning all 3 is the willingness to strip commonly accepted everyday items down to their bare bones and to start again – true innovation thinking. They did this with the mp3 player, the mobile phone and now the laptop / netbook.

So what lessons can we learn from Apple’s approach to business?

Design thinking = fantastic user experience = Salivating customers / owners = Mad raving fans. How cool is the stuff you make or the experiences your services provide? Are your prospects salivating…?
Build the fire and the heat will come – People will always pay for or reinvest in beautifully designed stuff and experiences (we’re not rational beings! we even purchase or change service providers when we already have something that functionally achieves the same objectives). In a crowded and fast moving market, Apple just shifted the goal-posts…again
KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid. Apple constantly re-engineers products to reduce complexity and get back to basics
Mix old with new to help transition customers from what they’re used to – see how the ibooks are made to look like normal paged books as you thumb through the pages to help transition traditional book reading purists. Experience is everything (for everyone)
Keep adapting and driving forward. It would have been easy for Apple to sit back and keep tweaking their iphone. Instead they took the riskier option. Today it’s more risky to play safe.

What’s your take on the launch of the ipad and ensuing media frenzy? Why has it captured everyone’s attention? As entrepreneurs, business owners and ambitious employees, what lessons can we learn from this?

Who’s in charge of your business?

Posted on January 26, 2010 by Steve Livingston People Power 0

: Image by Getty Images via Daylife

You may think that you are in charge of your business, however, in the digital age of social media where anyone has the power to comment on your business and influence both local and global opinion (either via blogs, Twitter, forums, Facebook etc), is this still the case?

There have been many recent high-profile incidents where global brands have been forced to change direction commercially or, at the very least, acknowledge the comments and feedback of disgruntled customers whether they wanted to or not e.g. Dell, Apple are a amongst a distinguished line-up of apologetic global brands.

A few harsh and frank words typed into a blog, Facebook, Twitter or a video review posted to YouTube has the power:

at worst to bring about a viral movement resulting in an army of disappointed individuals congregating online who collectively could cause serious harm to your business, or
at the very least rank some negative feedback within Google ready to leap out the next time your dream prospect does a search on your business in Google (and they will).

There is nothing you can do to stop this – and why should you?

Feedback is a gift after all whether positive or negative. It is how you deal with negative feedback that is key when the eyes of the world are watching…

A recent study showed that potential customers warmed more to businesses who had negative feedback but took proactive steps to remedy the complaints compared to those that bathed solely in positive feedback. However, for this strategy to be effective it is vital that you are listening for comments made online about your business – and act on it (quickly).

A good example is my local hostelry, The Swan Hotel in Tarporley. A thoroughly nice country pub and hotel with largely 4-5 stars on Trip Advisor. However, scroll down through the recent reviews (as most people do) and you can’t help but be drawn to a review that gives 1 star and says “Child unfriendly”. Read on and the reviewer goes on to berate the hotel and service for a whole host of cock-ups. Left unattended this review leaves a huge black mark against the rest of the positive reviews and, on personal a note as a father, I’m sure I would be scouring through for alternative child friendly options.

The good news is that the owners of the Swan Hotel were listening and promptly posted the following apology under the review:

Problem (not only) solved but turned into a positive.

Be under no illusion, you are no longer in charge of how your business is perceived. Your business will be held accountable for every action it takes and it will receive continual feedback. Your job as business owner, manager or employee is to listen, respond, engage and use the feedback to continually improve and adapt your products and services.

In this way, your millions of managers can help keep your business on track far better than you could alone.