Fifteen states now have bills in their assemblies guarantees citizens the right to repair what they buy. Meanwhile, companies like John Deer and Apple are being very litigious in preventing third parties from repairing their products, even going so far as to prevent the product from working at all unless you bring it to them manufacture.
Ray wants to know if you can dual boot a Windows machine with Apple OS X. Leo says no. You can go the other way around and boot up to Windows 10 using boot camp, but you can't make a Windows machine run OS X unless you do a "hackintosh" setup, which is a direct violation of Apple's terms of service. Plus, Apple won't sell you a copy of OS X without a computer.
Patty has new iPad and she hasn't been able to unlock it. There is a process that Apple uses called "IForgot" that will help you to recover and reactivate your iPad. Here's a tech note on how - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204306. This page will walk you through. If that doesn't work, then your next move is to go to a nearby Apple store or call Apple support. You'll also need to know your AppleID.
Jack's iMac runs El Capitan, and his iMovie and Garage Band have stopped working. He has been told he has to upgrade to get them working back. But he's hesitant. Leo says that it's OK and you should upgrade. Apple isn't like Windows. You can safely go to Mojave, or at least High Sierra. Why did your apps stop working? That's a puzzle. Maybe your graphics card is too old? Or Apple may have just broken the connectivity. Upgrading to Mojave though is important for security reasons.
Penny has been using Webroot and wants to know if she should renew it or not. Leo says not to renew it. She should just uninstall it and rely on Windows Defender. It's free, and Microsoft updates it regularly. She may, however, need to download a stand alone removal tool from Webroot, which will smartly remove all the junk that her antivirus leaves behind.
Andrew bought a new MacBook Pro with the Vega 20 graphics and i9 processor. He hooked it up to an external monitor and the display is flickering. This is the top of the line laptop he paid $4,200 for. What's wrong? Leo says Andrew should take it to Apple to look at it, because it sounds like a hardware issue. He returned it and got a replacement, and the new one is flickering as well. Leo says to change cables and change displays. Eliminate all the easy things. Unfortunately, since even happens on the laptop's screen, Andrew really needs to take it back to Apple and have them fix it.
Blaming a weakened economy in China for lackluster sales of the iPhone, Apple's CEO Tim Cook sought to explain their huge drop in stock value this week, and as such, Apple has stopped trading until they figure out what's going on. That's not a good thing, but it's pretty clear that the company hasn't really had a good sales experience over the last quarter or two, and Cook expects the next quarter results to be no better. Leo says it was only last August that Apple became the first company to be worth a trillion dollars.
Jason's iPhone 6S battery is swelling. It's the third time it's happened. Leo says he'll have to go to Apple and have them escalate the issue. He should do that fast because the battery replacement program is ending. In fact, maybe he should make the case for a new iPhone 6S altogether.
Cotton has a 2013 MacBook Pro, and recently had to buy a battery from MacSales.com because it began to swell. He also replaced the SSD. He had to remove the battery with acetone because it was glued in. But after installing it, the laptop was dead. Leo says to head over to iFixIt.com and check out their instructions on replacing the battery in his laptop. He may have missed a step. But it's also very possible that Cotton may have shorted out something like a fuse.
1. Facebook had a terrible year, starting with leaked information to Cambridge Analytica of up to 87 million users. It lost 19% value, up to $100 billion, the biggest loss in the history of the stock market. Mark Zuckerberg lost $40 billion personally. And there was congressional investivations. All told, Facebook had 21 scandals centered around privacy violations. It was as bad a year as Facebook could get.
2. Apple lost 20% of its value. It went from being the first trillion dollar company to no longer holding that title.
