No Sheep

Great Mac Documentation: Flashing Icons and SSL

// July 21st, 2006 // Technology Bits

On two occassions this week I went looking for documentation on how to do “stuff” on my Mac. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of documentation I found from Apple with simple Google search strings.

I wanted to setup SSL on the web server that runs on my OS X.4 desktop. So, I searched for “mac ssl web server”. This turned up Using mod_ssl on Mac OS X, which is a detailed guide which acts as a cookbook for getting this up and running using the infrastructure already in place on your Mac.

Later I was helping a co-worker who was experiencing difficulty with starting up his Mac. The symptom was a flashing globe. So, again a Google search: “mac flashing globe”. This turned up another article straight from Apple, Mac OS: Flashing Globe When Computer Turns On. Again the document immediately explained that the network disk must have been mistakenly selected for startup. The solution: be patient, it’ll eventually time out and switch back. Perfect!

Of course, after being patient, we got a new symptom… The flashing globe was replaced with a flashing question mark. Back to Google for a final run: “mac flashing question mark”. This time the Apple document was second in the list, but equally helpful. It also told us to be patient, but listed a bunch of steps to take if this did not work out.

All I can say is that Google combined with the really good Apple Mac documentation is a powerful combination. I’m under the impression that a monkey with an internet connection could support a pile of Macs and still have time to screw around.

apple, mac, macintosh, documentation, google, google search, ssl, web, web server, flashing globe, flashing, flashing question mark, globe, question mark, support

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