When it comes to computers, the natural inclination of most people is to stick with what they know.  This makes plenty of sense, it takes a great deal of effort to learn a program.  For these people, upgrading or changing can be painful or difficult; and when required, they raise an extremely valid point, “My current setup works for me.  Why should I move to something new when it simply isn’t needed?”

I’m at the complete opposite end of the spectrum.  Somewhere in my demented little mind, I need to play with new programs.  There’s a reason why I run all three major operating systems – Linux, Windows, and Mac – and why all of my computers have at least one Virtual Machine on them.  I’m a software junkie.

For people like me, new operating systems are better than crack.  Everything changes! Some of the more obsessive addicts will literally hunt through the most obscure file dialogs and windows just to figure out what’s different.  While this is all somewhat humorous for well adjusted people who do not live in their parents basements, the typical geek takes such changes very seriously. “Add and Remove Programs is now called Programs!  Gah!”  People have demanded that Microsoft be boycotted for less.  But while anything related to Microsoft is fertile rant country, I’d like to aim at another company which elicits some very strong feelings from its users: Apple.

Before I begin my descent into spittle drenched obscenities, I’d like to provide some background.  Last week, Microsoft released the latest version of Windows, called “Windows 7”, to beta testers.  As you might have inferred, I downloaded the beta as soon as it became available.  (Well, that’s not exactly true, I technically downloaded the beta before it became available.  BitTorrent can be your friend.)  And it doesn’t disappoint, there are enough new things to really set my geek lust into high overdrive.

Unfortunately, I’ve only been able to play with the new version in a limited environment, called a virtual machine.  At a practical level, this means that I haven’t been able to test drive some of the niftiest features!  So, I finally worked out a way to do a native install without completely destroying one of my computers: through Boot Camp on Mac OS X.

At a theoretical level, Boot Camp is an awesome feature.  It helps you work out the details of a multi-boot configuration and provides an easy set of easy instructions.  Unfortunately, it’s only awesome at the theoretical level.  At the practical level, you run into one of Apple’s most nefarious pieces of propaganda, “Mac OS X doesn’t need to be defragmented.  It automatically defrags as it goes.”

Wrong.

Fragmentation occurs on all hard drives, regardless of how they are formatted.  It’s a consequence of disk use and how files are saved.  I like to think about disk fragmentation via the use of a simple analogy.  Imagine that you and your family are going to the movies.  Being social, you invite your neighbors and some friends who (for whatever reason) think that an evening at the movies would be all kinds of zany fun.  There are a few levels of organization in your group: the individual people, which are similar to bytes; the families, which are similar to files; and the entire group, which is similar to a partition.

When you arrive at the movies, you discover that much of the theater has been sold out.  As a result, while some families will be able to sit together, others will have to sit in pairs or trios. (For this analogy to work, keep in mind that I live in Utah; they’re big families.)  The families that get split up are “fragmented.”  Now let’s assume that splitting up the family just isn’t a good idea, so Dad asks the usher for his help in getting everyone together on the same row.  The usher acts like a defragmentation utility.  He helps move other people around until all 8 of the family members can sit together in the same row.  But even though the family (file) is now together, the group isn’t.  The usher could further move people around until the entire group is sitting together, if he wanted, but it's probably unnecessary.

Every modern OS does at least some defragmentation.  Both Windows and Linux have useful defragmentation utilities that are extremely capable.  While Mac does a tolerable job on defragmenting files, it completely lacks a useful drive defragmentation tool.  Instead, the “Community” just says, “Mac OS X is the world’s most advanced operating system” and “It doesn’t need to be defragmented.”

Yeah, right.

The angry and bitter skeptics (meaning me) usually get an additional line of propaganda, “Okay, so it doesn’t really defragment, but most people won’t ever need to completely defragment the drive.  It’s just overkill.”

Hardly.

Steve Jobs’ utter lack of planning and cover up has completely killed my hopes for a dual boot Mac.  As you might guess, this makes me oh so happy.  Below is a love note that “Boot Camp Assistant” left for me this morning, after it failed to partition my hard drive.

To be clear,“The World’s Most Advanced Operating System” can’t create a new partition because it lacks a basic file utility.  Yes, it’s light years ahead of the competition.  The preferred solution is to use Time Machine to backup the whole drive (all 250 GB of it), reformat, and then copy the data back.  That’s just stupid.  I use a samba share for my TimeMachine backups.  A full backup and restore to the server, over wireless, takes about four days.

But don’t lose faith, because there is a third party utility called iDefrag which can successfully defragment the drive.  Of course, it sales for the “highly reasonable” price of $35.  In contrast, the “inferior” competition ships these utilities for free.

Either way, I’m not getting my Windows 7 fix any time soon because of Steve Jobs’ ego and Apple propaganda.  Apple, again, has utterlyand  thoroughly destroyed my child-like sense of wonder and faith in the world.  Well done!

(Swearing starts here.)

Similar Posts:

• Reluctantly Reviewed: iDefrag
• Backup, Sync and Share – Part 5.2: Windows Vista Backup (Disaster Prevention)
• A Pitiful and Pathetic Story
• How to Scrub a PC Hard Drive
• Backup, Share and Sync – Part 2: Hard Drive Preparation and Server Configuration

Categories: Computer, Rants
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