Sep
6
Bye bye macbook
Filed Under General
Yip, I sent the old piece of crap in for repair. Ever since I installed the SMC firmware update it started the Random Shutdown Syndrome (RSS as you may see on other sites). The problem got WAY worse over the weekend, shutting down between 10 and 20 times a day. It has become completely and utterly useless to me. Reports are starting to crop up everywhere now they may have found a fix. Too bad I sent mine for repair last night :(.
Honestly, I have been very dissatisfied with Apple's customer service on a whole. I tried to take the macbook to the apple store on Saturday - by far the worst day for the RSS issue. So I hop in the car @ 7pm and head down to the only apple store in Cincinnati, only to find out I can't book a genius bar appointment, they are full for the evening. So I find the *EVER* so friendly store manager and he informs me that I should sign up before I leave home and that they are ALWAYS full within two hours of the store closing. Well, don't I feel like a stupid dope for expecting service on a laptop that I bought an extended warranty on? Thanks for being OH so friendly Pez, really - I guess it is expected after our last run in.
The saga continued the next day when I made an appointment first thing in the morning and took it down to the store. The "mac genius" that I spoke too didn't even bother to look at the laptop, he just wanted to send it out for repair, 7 days minimum he told me. This macbook is my lifeline to my money making, how could I go without it?!? That apologized and reffered me to a local apple authorized repair center and told me they might be able to do on site repairs. Given that it was Sunday of course the other place was closed when I called. I thanked them *again* for their lack of help.
My next move, which I was so sure would help me get this resolved, was to call apple care. Boy, was I wrong, but one can always hope for something better from a company whose slogan is "Think Different" and has commercials about how their machines don't crash. I explained my issue to the phone tech and she seemed baffled - this can't be uncommon, I have seen hundreds of stories on the net! The tech puts me on hold for like 3 minutes and then comes back and asks "Did you get the apple care warranty for your macbook?", I replied "Of course, I like to make sure my primary business tools are protected". I guess that was the wrong answer, because they needed the freakin' code off the warranty. I was in the car, I didn't have it. Besides, this work would fall under the regular 1 year warrenty, why do they need the code. The tech informed me she couldn't help without that info. WOOOO! More great help from Apple, right?
So I called ComputerDNA on Tuesday (Monday was labor day) and they said it is a common issue on the macbook and Apple is doing the repair directly, but ComputerDNA could ship and receive it for me. They told me they had been seeing a 3 day turn around on repairs. Finally, some real help! So I hop in my car to take the macbook down to ComputerDNA, lo and behold my car dies on the highway. I never made it before closing. I ended up taking it back to the "genius bar" last night and they actually took a look at it, I was able to get it to crash in two minutes. They gave me the same 7-day spiel. Fine, send it, I need it ASAP. They offer to have it shipped directly to my house to hopefully save time after the repair.
I leave for a very important Steelpixel business trip next Tuesday, so this is horrible timing. I really need the macbook to finish up transpondr to a beta state so we can show it off on this trip. I guess I will have to go back to my windows laptop since apple has been so crappy up to this point. I find it sad to be in this situation, but I worry it will be worse once I go freelance on my own in two weeks. Guess I will have to keep at least two mac machines around just to ensure I can work when I need to, sad indeed.
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8 Responses to “Bye bye macbook”
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[...] Well guys, we were actually on schedule with the next show to release tomorrow the 7th, but my macbook died. It seems apple doesn’t care much about people “getting work done”, just more that doing work is possible with the os out of the box. I promise to work hard to try and get the Ze Frank interview done, but I am not sure how capable the machines I have now, are. [...]
This is scary. I just switched over to my first mac this week, a macbook pro. I haven’t had time to setup backups yet either.
Did you have enough time to get everything backed up before it went down?
Kenny,
Luckily I don’t need to backup much since I use so many online tools. The only true loss might be the original podcast audio that I didn’t have time to backup - I made 4 dvd coasters trying.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the macbook pro as it has been running pretty solid for Chris since he got his at his work. They had *some* heat issues that were resolved with the firmware update for the mbp.
Stupid plain macbook.
Hey, Josh this is Spuds from the BattleFest guys. I know this is way off topic but any thoughts on a
LanParty? I know you had the Soga going once and its been awhile. Just wanted to see if Soga has a
future or any other Lanparties for that matter. Well thanx. Sorry for the post here didn’t see any other spot to post.
Spuds, I won’t be running any more SOGAs in the future. The equipment is pretty much gone, and I am not sure the staff wants to even do it any more. I lost a lot of money on the last one we ran due to a fight between a staff member and myself. Just not worth the headache when I am trying to start my own business now.
Happened to me too but got a new one and all’s well so far. Wouldn’t want a PC and wouldn’t want anything less than a macbook now that i’ve had one.
Oh sorry, forgot why I came here - good luck with that and with getting the next show up!
Obviously this is about a week too late to be of much use, but I thoroughly recommend finding a local Macintosh repair shop that is NOT The Apple Store. I have friends that have worked at the “genius” bar…most of them wouldn’t last a week in a real IT setting.
I work as an network/system administrator for a High School, and we service all of our macs with a mac specialty repair shop. Machines covered under apple care are handled without any effort by us. We take them in, they fix them and give them back.
As far as needing an applecare code….that’s nonsense. Our service shop checks applecare status for us, with the serial number. Plus, apple has a handy little area where you can download techtools delux for free if your computer is currently covered under apple care.
https://support.apple.com/techtooldeluxe/
A serial number is all you need and the resulting page will give you your model, apple care agreement number, and expiration date. Maybe next time you can inform the AppleCare operator of this site, since apparently they are ill equiped for getting that information on their own.