Apple support FTW!

K

koffiejunkie

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So on Sunday morning my MacBook Pro started complaining that it can't connect to time machine, because the volume was in used. I checked, and it wasn't mounted, but I figured there's some stray file descriptor hanging about, and I didn't feel like hunting it down, so I just rebooted. Well, it never completed shutdown, so I turned it off, and turned it back on. But it didn't come on - dead as a doornail.

Took it to the apple store last night, the guy said, oh, this model had a flaw in the graphics chip, we'll replace it free of charge (it's almost 2 years out of warranty).

This was 20:00 odd last night. I just got an e-mail from them to say my MBP is ready for collection. I'm super impressed!
 
My Macbook is now 4 years old, DVD drive is dead but everything else still kick like a mule, the perfect mac to recover a dead HDD, mount a FW drive , rip DVD's (external drive) do mail, watch movies, listen to music, create documents, and simply enjoy being productive, so, if you get a lemon, scream and shout. I know of very few Windows pc's that still does everything I want 4 years after the fact, the only thing that I've done is upgrade to 2 GB RAM and 500 GB of HDD space. I also dont know of any Windows Pc's that still starts in 35 seconds after 4 years.
 
That may be so, but I don't know of any Windows PCs that can only run a couple of thousand programs like every Mac.
Mac = superior by technology, inferior by design.
 
alf101 said:
I'm one of the many ex-Apple customers who have this problem:http://getsatisfaction.com/apple/topics/2006_imac_graphics_card_crash_freeze
so I won't be spending another cent on Apple products, regardless of who sells it.
Click to expand...

I know you are not happy with apple but have you tried fixing the problem yourself? The issue seems heat related. Who knows if you have the knowledge skills you might just be able to revive it via a simple ventilation mod or something like that.
 
alf101 said:
Eventually I had enough of it and dumped it in the garage.
At least I'm cured of my Apple fanboism. :)
Click to expand...

I would have gone one step further before tossing it, rip all the EMI shielding out, try and reflow the logic board in a oven. Now I would give up :D
 
Geez guys. Grow up. My post was about service, not hardware. All manufactures make lemons from time to time. I mentioned HP, not because it broke (it did, the motherboard failed multiple times) but because it took them FIVE WEEKS to replace it, and then they returned it with a busted hard drive, which they took another week to replace.

Incidentally, alf101, Apple did admit the problem with your iMac. While looking this up, I found several post from people (in the UK, at least) either getting their iMacs replaced or the motherboards replaced without any hassles.
 
Now, ignoring all the hard feelings for a little, I discovered a few interesting things with this motherboard swap out. Some of you might know that I've been looking for a full disc encryption solution, and I have found one that seems to work very well (Seagate FDE drive and SecureDoc). This of course means, the Apple guys cannot even boot my machine, let alone log in.

When I got it back today, I had a few weird issues, and after poking around I realised this occurred because of the motherboard swap-out.

  • Time was out - said it was 2007 or something. I figured as soon as I connect to the internet, this will correct itself, since I have NTP enabled.
  • Couldn't connect to anything. I could connect to wifi, but simply didn't get an address from DHCP. At first I thought the Wifi at the apple store must be protected in some weird way or maybe just maxed out on IPs - who knows. Then at a coffee shop I couldn't connect, and figured maybe their internet is down - bad coincidence. But when I got home and couldn't connect to my own wifi, I realised it must be because of the date setting. Changed the date manually, rebooted and it came right up.
  • Some settings were reset to their defaults. The battery icon appeared at the top. I usually have this disabled since I use iStat menus for that. My trackpad was reset to its default settings - tap to click disabled. I'm sure I'll discover a few more.
  • VMware things I've moved my VMs. It probably checks the MAC address - I'm surprised it didn't ask me for my license again.
  • Aperture did ask me for my license again :( And this was a bit of a catch - since I had Aperture 2 retail, and the on-line upgrade license for Aperture 3, it asked me both.
  • Time Machine wanted to know if I wanted to re-use the backup volume I had selected. Again, probably because the MAC addresses changed.
  • iTunes thinks my account was accessed from another machine. Same thing happened when I put my old MacBook's drive into this MBP for the first time - no biggie

Nothing serious, and I assume they take care of some of this (time, default settings maybe) if they can log in. Just amusing :)
 
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OK, So PCs did tick me off tonight - I'll admit that. Got this old Cyrix 6x86 PR200 (166Mhz) on an ancient PC Chips Socket 7 AT (not ATX) board from a relative that bought it back in '98. It can only take EDO SIMMs and currently has 40MB RAM in it. Run Damn Small Linux fine but Windows 2000 is not happy with the IDE controller. No matter what I tried I could not get it going. Stupid old PC!!! At least it still looks good for a 12 year old :
369741_100825082628_6x86.jpg

Apparently it was originally assembled as a 386 DX/40 (AMD CPU) back in 1994 with 4MB RAM.
 
The ATI 1900XT Radeon card which came with my 2006 Mac Pro had overheating issues (design flaw). It started causing freeze ups last year. I cleaned out the dust from the fans but it only helped for a few days. At the end I had to buy an ATI 4870 from Apple (reseller) and CORE did not even have stock and would not tell me when they'd have stock = Core are Idiots and Apple are Idiots for using Core. Apple said that the 4870 does not work with the 2006 Mac Pro but it worked 100%. Still works and the system runs perfectly.
 
I've always had better support from Digicape than Core, with direct support from Apple trumping both.
 
kilobitsperyear said:
* drum roll *

tada... anyone try that here... get service I mean, from Apple Za...

Is there a "tell Trevor" for Apple Za ?
Click to expand...

I got a motherboard replacement, free of charge, on my 2007 MBP. Out of warranty. From Digicape (but paid for by Core). So it does work, the way it should, sometimes.

But I guess we all have different experiences.
 
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