Oh, Apple.  What did you do now?

It’s one thing to introduce broken (or bent) functionality in an upgrade release.  It’s quite another to break (or bend) existing functionality in the same upgrade.

I really like Lion so far.  What I thought I would miss, I don’t, and I’ve already become dependent on several of the base features that the upgrade offers.

And, hey, Microsoft (you big wad o’ suck) take note:  a major update for $30 that I can install on all of my machines!  And I don’t have to pay attention to see if it’s ultimate home premium 64, too!

(aside:  I’m more pissed that usual at Microsuck.  Earlier, using Bootcamp, I was playing Rift and I noticed that performance was lagging badly.  To the point where I just decided to log-out and get some work done.  After logging, I see that my tx/rx light on the dsl modem is solid.  During shut-down, I see the usual dire-imprecations and deadly warning spew that pops when you update a Microsuck in-progress system update download.

WTF?  I explicitly turned off the “feature” of independent updates in favor of only-update-when-I-tell-you option.  You know, the way real operating systems do it.  Apparently this setting means jack-shit as the crapware decided, again and on it’s own, to go out and download god knows what from the ‘net.  Pure and unadulterated hubris.

Now I don’t mind the constant virus updates — I deleted three security exceptions from the Windows box today alone.  But this constant updating without my permission really is pushing it.  You confirm everything I want to do, concerning downloaded content, several times.  But true to the “do as I say not as I do” philosophy of this bloatware, Windows continues to ignore user selections and configurations and just farts and whistles it’s way through a continuous stream of critical updates.  Pure crapware.

Wanna end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?  Send them free copies of Windows to install on all their military infrastructure.  War will be over in a week, guaranteed.)

That was a long “aside”.  Or rant.  Or some factual observations.  Whatever.

Anyway, back to a real operating system that not only let’s you get real-work done, but also listens, remembers, and then doesn’t ignore your configuration settings…

I’ve been having problems with my Lion installation not waking from deep sleep.  I define two levels of sleep.  One is light-sleep: where the computer’s screen saver kicks-in, and a simple mouse-twitch brings it back.  The other is deep sleep: this would be when you explicitly put the computer to sleep, or your power management settings kick in.

What I’ve been experiencing has been happening either on weekend-mornings, or in the evenings when I get home from work.  I sit down at the computer and poke the shift key, twitch the mouse, tap the space bar and … nothing.  Repeat shit-key poke, mouse twitching, space bar tapping. … Still nothing.

I poke the caps-lock key.  … No light.  This is not good.

Both my keyboard and my mouse are wired USB peripherals.  So I dis(re)connect the devices from the hub and, again, twitch the mouse, poke the cap-lock key and … black screen.  There is no power indicator on the new 27″ iMacs.  So I have no idea what state the computer thinks it’s in.  Time for some drastics.

I tap the power button.  This is usually enough, on my MacBook Pro, to jog it awake but, on my iMac…nothing.

Eventually, frustration wins out and I do a hard-reset by holding down the power key until it powers off and then I reboot.

Goddamnit.

I have a three support contract with Apple on this desktop but I’ll be damned if I’m going to call them to confess that I’ve no idea on how to wake-up my desktop from sleep.  So, I google it.

I found this article, which explains how to reset the PRAM and NVRAM on your iMac because, you know, batteries get old and flash memory gets stupid over time.  So I follow the steps and, when the computer restarts, it’s definitely brighter.  (I’m not that good of a touch typist and I tend to inadvertently do things to both the brightness and volume controls…)

But, the next day when I get home from work, the computer is back in Rainman mode and I have to power-down to bring it back.

So I google it again, and this time I see a post on a mac-forum that blames the problem on disk permissions.  Sure.  Why not?  So I run verify disk and, lo’!  I have a bunch of crap that gets re-perm’d.

Still not going to call Apple.

I’m writing this article and I guess I’ll see what happens the next time I try to roust the machine from deep-sleep.  I’m pretty confident that it’s going to fail and, if it does, then I’ll log a call to tech support.

In the meantime, if any of you have suggestions, I’m open…