When the universe gives you a break on something you tried to plan for but failed, it’s time to pay attention! Case in point, I helped a customer today who spilled iced tea on their MacBook Air. This customer had followed all of my usual MacMedics advice, which always makes me super happy to hear. A $299 AppleCare+ deductible covered the customer’s liquid damage incident. They had also backed up via Apple’s powerful Time Machine feature, which is also amazing! This customer is a busy business consultant, so they instantly saw the value of just buying a new M1 MacBook Air (also purchased with AppleCare+). The unit that we’re repairing will become a backup computer.
When your laptop is your ATM bank machine, this is a GOOD plan. They had also purchased one of the LaCie hard drives that feature the USB-A and the USB-C cable that works with both old and new Apple Macs. Everything is looking awesome, just perfect planning. MacMedics sends away the sick MacBook Air to get fixed by Apple, they buy a new M1 MacBook Air (great time to upgrade!), and they will “restore” from Time Machine.
It couldn’t have been easier – in and out in 10 minutes. Well, they got home, and guess what? The Time Machine last backed up last year! The best-laid plans (especially backups) always need to be checked and tested. While Time Machine is pretty much a “set it and forget it” system, you still need to check it and look at the results of your backup. It will tell you when it’s not working, so pay attention when it does. If you don’t plug in your backup drive, it will nag you too. Thankfully, I was able to get the sick computer running and got a current backup logged, so it was no big deal, and my happy customer was able to get right back to work.
