Mac users...question about support

[CalamityJanet]

I seem to remember that part of my decision to switch to Mac was the Apple Care plan. I think the salesperson assured me that if I paid for the plan (and it's NOT cheap!) I would be able to get support on the phone from someone in the U.S. I even remember discussing that here on the forum when a few others were considering getting a Mac...how great it is to pick up the phone and get "surfer dude" in California is what someone else (MarieBoyer?) said. I must have missed something...

Yesterday I had a problem with burning photo files to a DVD so I called Apple Care, and guess where my call landed....India! I mean no offense to anyone. Other than the outsourcing issue (that I don't agree with), I would not mind speaking with anyone anywhere in the world if I can understand what they're telling me. Because of the language problem I was not able to resolve my issue. :mad: Was I mistaken in thinking that Apple Care is not supposed to be outsourced?

[bnk1953]

Janet - sorry about your experience. I have had the apple plan on a couple of my computers - which saved me once because a monitor went bad after 2 years - got a brand new one. Also have it on my wife's new macbook. It's basically an insurance policy on your mac or apple products. When I have called apple care - I have never run into the situation that you had. One possible solution would have kindly asked to speak to another person explaining that you were having trouble understanding the person speaking to you. In this day of outsourcing - I had to do that with another company - and the person switched me to someone that I could understand.
By the way - did you ever figure out how to do what you wanted to do?
~bruce.

[Teacher617]

Janet - I'm sorry for your experience as well. Nothing about the purchase of AppleCare guarantees the location of the person you speak with, but understanding what he or she says is, of course, of primary importance!

A close friend of mine had a similar experience with a phone support person whom she couldn't understand. After realizing that she wouldn't get the help she needed, she politely thanked the gentleman, hung up, and called back. She then spoke with someone she was able to understand.

If we can help with your DVD issue, just say the word.

Tricia

[CalamityJanet]

Hi Bruce, Thanks for the reply!

The insurance was the major reason I bought the plan, mainly in case the monitor fails on my iMac. Glad to know they come through when needed.
My problem was with my super-drive. And at the end of the conversation the guy told me the drive is broken, gave me a case# and told me to take it to the Apple store to get the drive replaced, so I can't complain about that! Except the Apple store is over an hour away and I"m not sure it's broken.

I did search the Apple iMac forum for posts about the error 0x80020063. The DVD burns but doesn't completely verify. There are many other people who are having this problem and Apple replaced the drive and it still happens. So most thoughts are that the discs are the problem. Much discussion about one brand vs another, etc. I got tired of reading through all that so I called India.

After that I did a little experimenting. I've scanned 5 years worth of negatives and they are in folders on my desktop waiting to be burned on DVDs as backup and so I can also use them on my Windows laptop. I didn't want to put them in iPhoto yet. But there was one folder on the desktop that contained photos that were imported to iPhoto from the camera, edited in PSE and saved to the desktop so I could put them ion CD's for other family members. (We have the only Mac in the family.) That folder burns perectly! So I took three of the others that didn't verify before, imported them to iPhoto, exported back to the desktop, burned them to three separate DVDs and it worked perfectly! I haven't had time this morning to keep at it to see if I can burn them all that way. Is there a reason why you can't scan and save to the desktop and burn to DVD? (I'm still pretty new to all this.:o)

See? It's kind of complicated and hard to explain! But I think I might be right about not dragging the iMac out for repair yet. If it aint broke, don't fix it! Any insight will be greatly appreciated.

[Teacher617]

Janet, no reason at all why you shouldn't be able to scan, save to the desktop, then burn to DVD (without the use of iPhoto). I did this with all of the photos I scanned for my mom's birthday party.

Just a thought ... could it be the type of file that's getting in the way? What file extension is on the images that won't burn?

Tricia

[CalamityJanet]

Thanks, Tricia! I guess you were typing while I was explaining my situation to Bruce.

You know, I thought about asking to speak to someone else but I really didn't want to offend the guy. Apple already sent me a survey about my support experience and I explained that I couldn't really evaluate the man's support skills beause of the language problem, but that he was very friendly and patient. After all, it's not his fault I have a hard time with foreign accents. But I do think any company should consider this when they put someone in the job.

If you have any advice about my DVD issues I'd really could use it! I really want to get these scans saved on DVD and move on to making the slideshows. Right now I feel like I'm going in circles...:o

[CalamityJanet]

Tricia, you're quick!

The files were all saved as jpg's by the Nikon scanner software.

[bnk1953]

Lets try to take this step by step in burning. What is the process that you are actually burning to the DVD? I've got an old Mac G4 and also a Macbook. I don't use iPhoto to save files. Are you using the "burn folder" method? dragging your files/folders into the burn folder and then burning the DVD from there? A little more info might just get us a working answer.
~bruce.

[CalamityJanet]

Bruce, I'm following the steps in "Switching to the Mac, the Missing Manual".
!. Insert blank disc.
2. When dialog box opens, click Open Finder>OK.
3. The disc's icon appears, double-click to open it's window
4. Drag the folder into the window
5. Click the burn button in the side bar
6. Dialog box opens asking to confirm burn and choose speed (I used 8X)
7. Click burn button, cross fingers and stare at it until done!;)

I'm going to try a few more right now to see if it still works.

[Teacher617]

One thing to try - always burn a DVD at the lowest possible speed. DVDs are funny that way - you get more reliable burns. Doesn't seem to affect CDs. Other than that, your process is just fine.

Tricia

[CalamityJanet]

Well, I just did another successful burn!! Four in a row...woohooo! I sure hope this means I've got it figured out now and it's not just a fluke. I'd sure like to know why I can't burn from the desktop, though.

So I guess I have no choice now except to import them to iPhoto, export to a new folder on the desktop and burn from there. If If I'd known this before I would have just saved them iPhoto in the first place.

Does this mean that now I have three full copies of each jpg file on my hard drive and I can delete the original scan files and the ones I exported back to the desktop to burn? iPhoto shows that the ones i imported are safely tucked away in my library folder.

Any tips on how to simplify any of this? I still have many more negs and slides to scan.

[Wendy]

hi Janet ..

As long as they are safely in the library then dumping the desktop ones is fine

I usually create an album an iPhoto ... organise them in there and then export to the desktop and burn from there :)

Wendy

[CalamityJanet]

Thanks, Wendy!

I've done so many now that I think I should just back them up to be safe. I want an external HD but I've put that on hold for a while. When I get caught up I'll follow your tips to get them edited, organized into albums and burned as slideshows. I'll be so happy when I have the old stuff all digitized! I have your workflow all written down from previous posts but this inability to burn from the desktop without passing thru iPhoto messed up my plan...I WILL be asking Apple about that!

[Wendy]

Hi Janet ...

It something I haven';t actually come across before as my workflow is to import them into iPhoto as step one .... so it was quite a surprise to hear that burning them the other way causes problems ..

Wendy

[CalamityJanet]

Hi Wendy,

I start in iPhoto, too, when I'm uploading the photos from our cameras. With the scans I thought I'd like to just go straight to DVD so I could put them on the PC. I think I should work, as Tricia said she was able to do her scans that way. I'll investigate further with Apple tomorrow. I'll let you know...

Just a thought...I might not be able to get through to Apple support any time soon. Their $600 cell phone is coming out tomorrow.:rolleyes::rolleyes: I will NOT be waiting in line to get one!

[bnk1953]

My process for burning is a little different.
1. Get files that I want to burn.
2. Under "file" while on the desktop I click "New Burn folder"
3. This puts a "Burn Folder" on my desktop w/ one of those radio active symbols.
4. Drag the files that I want to burn into that burn folder
5. Once I have all the files in that burn folder (these are aliases that direct the burning to the real folders), I click one on the burn folder to highlight it, then go back to file on the desktop "top" and go down to "burn disk". A prompt comes up to insert a blank disk and tells me what capacity will be neded. Then I follow the prompts after inserting the disk, name the disk, etc. and let it do its thing.

This process has never failed me. And no iPhoto use at all.

~bruce.

[CalamityJanet]

That's interesting, Bruce. I saw that method in my book, but the author described it as what to do if you don't have a disc available. Since I had some on hand I just went to the next method since he said they are basically the same process. I'll try it your way this morning to see what happens. I'll let you know...

Thanks!

[CalamityJanet]

Bruce, I tried your method and the disc burned but did not verify and I got the same error 0x80020063.:(

Then I tried my method again and it also did not verify. The only thing I did differently was when I imported to iPhoto I selected the main folder on the desktop. (Yesterday I imported/exported each subfolder one at a time.) The photos appeared in the Library view so I assumed the import was OK. After the verification failed I checked the library "originals" folder and they weren't there.:confused: I guess iPhoto was showing thumbnails of the scanned files still on the desktop? I dragged them to the trash, emptied it, and started all over. This time I imported/exported each subfolder one at a time, verified that they were in the originals folder, put in a new DVD and it burned and verified successfully.

So it seems that on my iMac the verification process is checking the iPhoto originals folder and if the images aren't there it doesn't verify. And since you and others have not had this problem I'm assuming there's something wrong with my software somehow. :(

Many thanks to Bruce, Wendy and Tricia for trying to help me with this! I've learned a lot, even if things are not working the way they should, and I've got a work-around for now so I'm able to get the job done, just not in the most efficient way. If anyone comes up with any other suggestions I'd really appreciate it! :)