A lot of folks buy a Mac, start using it, and don’t have a problem for years. In fact, that’s actually kind of a big problem with Macs. They tend to ‘just work’ until the hardware starts to come apart at the seams, and then important, expensive things start to die for real. I’ve walked into enterprise environments with 6, 8, even 10 year old Macs in daily use. In this post, I offer three suggestions costing less than $350 TOTAL that will provide three full years of absolute Mac peace of mind…
Time Machine
Every Mac comes with Time Machine built in. Buy a cheap, big USB drive (like this 1TB Western Digital Passport), plug it into your Mac, and click “Use this Disk for Time Machine Backups.” Now just leave it plugged in as often as possible, and you’ll have the ability to recover old files, or restore your system in the event of a disaster.
AppleCare
When you buy a Mac, purchase AppleCare. It costs between $100-$250 at the time of purchase, which sounds expensive until you realize that for three full years, anytime you experience an issue with your Mac, you can bring it to the Genius Bar at any Apple retail store, and one of the highly skilled technicians will get your Mac back up and running. Hardware dies? They replace it. Everything short of the battery and accidental damage is covered. It’s unbelievably cheap insurance.
Dropbox
Time Machine is fantastic, and AppleCare ensures that you’ll always have a working Mac, but what about those extremely important files that you might not want to be without for more than a few minutes, hours, or days? Enter Dropbox, an online service that installs a small piece of software and a folder on all of your devices (Macs, Windows PCs, iPads, iPhones, and several other mobile devices are supported). Whenever you change a file, it’s updated EVERYWHERE. Your Mac dies? Everything in your Dropbox is fine. You can get a 2GB account for free (or 2.25GB if you use this shiny referral link). 2GB is plenty for essential documents, but they also offer additional storage fairly inexpensively ($10/mo for 50GB, $20/mo for 100GB) that you can use to back up larger files like iPhoto and iTunes libraries.
So that’s it. Add these three simple purchases/techniques to your Mac arsenal, and you’ll rest easy knowing that your data is safe and your hardware is protected for three full years, for less than $350.