Sigh, every time Mac OS X Lion roared, I cringed! The lion roared so much that I had brought the beast to the Genius Bar‘s beast masters, hoping the beast masters would tame the beast so I could get a good night’s sleep. I got the beast back, and it was a bliss for a short while. I was able to have good night’s sleep, knowing the lion would only roar happily with me in good times and not at me.
Unfortunately, as if the lion had forgot all about the beast masters, the lion went on roaring just two days after I had brought the beast back. This time the beast roared at me in manners that I could not know what to make of and why. At least, before I could understand the lion roared for the beast had bad logic (i.e., logic board). I thought the beast masters of Genius Bar had already got rid of such a disease for my lion and got it back to be a peace, loving, domesticable animal. Nope, I was very wrong, because this time the beast had none of me. The beast roared at me for hours if I had let the beast be.
I wasn’t much of a beast master! I had to shut the lion with hard kicks. Off the beast went into comas and out again just to roar at me in very strange manners. The beast rather played beach ball, roared at me in mocking ways, and prevented me to have a sensible conversation with the beast. Sometimes, I wished I’m a beast whisperer, so I could mold the beast to my will to which even the beast masters would have been jealous.
Sadly to say, I had to cripple the lion on purpose so the beast would be sensible again. Sure, it was cruel of me, but it was a necessary evil! I would not allow the lion to keep guard of the intruders, because a dog would have done a better job (i.e., no more FileVault 2). I would not allow the lion to play with toys that eventually would excite the beast to roar at me and not with me (e.g., not allowing lion to resume applications on startup or right after a restart, not allowing lion to switch graphic modes automatically such as from integrated to discrete mode). Hell, I couldn’t even trust the lion that it would not play with spinning beach ball when it was time to stop playing and let work (i.e., not allowing login screen to come up whenever the Lion goes to sleep).
It was painful to me to know that I had to be awful to my lion in ways that I had described above, but I got my bliss. It was more important to be bliss than not! So, if your lion needed to be straightened out, you could try to be rude to the beast!
For who doesn’t give a darn about little details of hating and loving between lion and myself, then here is the juicy part only! My mid 2010 MacBook Pro was replaced with a newer logic board by Apple after I brought it to Genius Bar at one of those Apple Stores. The machine came back and worked normally for two days, but then I found out I could not log into my machine and was presented with a forever spinning beach ball at the login screen. The mouse pointer worked as I could move it around using the trackpad, but that was about it. The spinning beach ball would keep on spinning, and I could forever wait to be logged into my account even though I had entered the right password.
Hard booting was how I’d tamed Lion temporary. Of course, performing a hard boot each time it happened wasn’t the answer. Luckily I was able to make my machine to run OK by crippling Mac OS X Lion’s full potential! By not allowing Lion to turn on a login screen and demand for password, I was able to get rid of that spinning beach ball. Now, I could just wake the machine up and use it normally, sacrificing the security aspect of a login screen — knowing anybody could just wake my machine up and use it without my knowledge.
What worse was that I could not use FileVault 2, because if I had done so the login screen would be back. FileVault 2 requires users to login no matter what to unlock the encrypted hard drive. This was why I had to turn off FileVault 2. I so wish I could use FileVault 2 so I could just turn off my machine to protect my data, because somebody had to know the password to unlock FileVault 2 to get to my data. FileVault 2 could protect my data from single mode user boot up method which could be done to become root at will and siphon the data away.
To ensure everything would work normally, now I would just run Lion in discrete mode which used NVIDIA graphic card only. Before Lion, Snow Leopard could just switch between Intel and NVIDIA cards without a single hitch. Crossing my fingers and hoping I would not have to visit Genius Bar again any time soon.
Vinh Nguyen
