Steff.me

A little under a month ago I started having a few issues with my MacBook. As it is now, it’s just under three months old. The problem back then was that it would randomly freeze up on me or applications would just sit in my Dock and repeatedly bounce away. With my year free AppleCare, I thought I’d better phone for assistance because Mac’s don’t crash or freeze up, do they?

Your toaster doesn’t crash. Your kitchen sink doesn’t crash. Why should your computer? Think of the countless hours you would save if your PC worked on your time‚ not the other way around. Then think about a Mac. — Get A Mac, It just works.

AppleCare phone support was useless. First up, I was asked for the serial number and what model of Mac I was using to which I responded and informed her it was a MacBook. Then I was told to, I swear this is true, “press control, alt and delete at the same time”. I’m sorry, what? One second while I find the delete key… no, my MacBook doesn’t appear to have one. What good would it do anyway? She told me that she wanted me to restart the computer and this would be how to do so. So the telephone call didn’t get off to a great start.

I was told to run a system check from the Apple installation CD, which I did and it reported nothing was wrong. I was then asked to wait for a length of time while she searched for a way to solve my problem. So I waited. It was at this point I took a break and decided to whine about out-sourcing calls to India or to people who clearly don’t have a clue what’s going on. She returned and told me that she couldn’t offer any further assistance but would email me some articles that may be of use. Then suggested a name of a local company that may be able to repair my laptop, since I don’t live near an Apple Store. Then she hung up.

After about five or ten minutes, I received two emails:

1. Resetting Cuda/PMU on Power Mac G5, Power Mac G4, Power Macintosh G3
2. Mac OS 9: If Your Computer Crashes, Freezes, or Won’t Start Up

Someone, please tell me, how either of those two articles seem fitting to send to someone who is having issues with an Intel-based MacBook which runs OSX? I told her it was formatted and a clean install of Tiger. How do these seem relevant?

Thank you very much, Apple Support.

The problem gets worse

I didn’t bother taking it to the suggested local company, for a number of reasons. I just started work and it was very difficult trying to find the time to make it over there, I have an incredibly poor sense of direction and Google Maps actually directs to the wrong address. For about a week it also seemed to be getting better; freezing up less frequently. Oh how wrong I was.

My MacBook appears to be suffering from a short in the keyboard or some form of loose connection, as at random intervals (usually about fourty seconds apart) the dialog box asking “Are you sure you want to shut down your computer now?” pops up. On top of that, it started entering Dashboard without being told to. I assumed it was a software issue and happened to be invoking Dashboard somehow but then I remapped my F12 button to be “All windows” Exposé option and it started doing that instead. It also shuts itself off whenever it feels like.

So at the moment I have a three month old MacBook that freezes up, crashes, powers off randomly, has irritating pop ups and goes to the desktop whenever it feels like. I thought having a Mac would take me away from all that crap you find in a PC. Next thing you know I’ll have a “Your Mac would like to freeze up on you. Cancel or Allow” dialog box pop up but I won’t be able to click a button because the mouse cursor will turn into a colourful, spinning beach ball.

I’ll be phoning Apple Support again, this time asking them to come pick the laptop up to repair it. They did it with my PowerBook, they can do it with my MacBook. I’ve had enough…

Update: We’ve been told to take it to a company called AT Computers, which you may remember I didn’t have a very good dealing with last time (it’s around the middle of that post). AppleCare needs a lot of work!

Update 2: My mother took my MacBook to AT Computers today (I’m in work during the day). They told her that Apple do not care about their customers after they have purchased from them and she should consider buying from a different company. She was asked questions such as “Have you tried rebooting?” and “Have you tried reformatting?” before they eventually gave up and said they’d take the laptop to look at it. Oh but we have to wait three to four weeks before they do.