It’s no secret I’m an Apple loyalist. The first computer I set eyes on was an Apple][e when I was four. I touched my first Mac when I was 6, and the first PC my family owned was a MacSE 30 with an ImageWriter II. I’ve had a couple non-Macs over the years (running everything from Windows to Linux and a shade of BSD in between), but I keep coming back to the products produced by Steve and co.
And that makes my disappointment with my MacBook so much harder. Since I got it about 12 months ago, it’s been in for repairs three times. One for a cracked topcase, and twice for hard drive failure. That means I’m on to my third hard drive now.
I’m glad I forked out for my Apple Protection Plan (increasing my purchase price by over 25%!), as the most recent repair would have cost over $200 without it, but the APP doesn’t cover the inconvenience of trekking out to the Apple Store, of being without my primary PC for days, or of spending hours restoring data from a backup.
While Apple quality assurance is pretty dismal at the moment, their customer service is fantastic. On Thursday morning, I booked online for an appointment at the Genius Bar that night. I rocked up with my faulty laptop, described the problem, and demonstrated the click sound that the drive was making.
The Genius attempted to boot off an external drive (which failed dismally), decided that this wasn’t something he could fix on the spot and booked it in. Because they were out of hard drive connecters (which he thought might be worth replacing, he said it might not be read until Monday or Tuesday. That meant a turnaround time of 2-3 working days on a non-mission critical consumer-level hardware fix! So much better than the 2-3 weeks I was out the last time I needed a new drive.
To top it off, I got a call on Saturday saying that it was ready. When I picked it up on Sunday, I discovered that was because the engineer who had ended up doing the repair had forgone replacing the connector. I’m hoping that’s because he tested it, rather than because he took a shortcut. We’ll find out eventually I guess.
In the meantime, I’m a happy camper, even if I will be cautious about purchasing new-release Apple hardware.
Oh, that’s right, I got an iPod Touch (2G) two weeks ago 0_o
3 replies on “My Mac’s a Lemon (And I Want My Money Back)”
I suppose that there will always be a small percentage of “failures” in any production line. Fortunately most companies keep it around 0.3%. In number terms this is still a fairly large amount (3mil units translating to roughly 10k fails per production run). Of the six Apple products I’ve acquired throughout my life none have failed, ever.
I hope that yours is an aberration and that the problem was correctly diagnosed and rectified.
Well, as mentioned, this particular unit seems to be having more than its share of problems.
Like you, my previous experience with Mac hardware was positive, which is part of the reason I keep buying more.
[…] to go several days without one’s primary PC makes one appreciate anything that can help replace the lost functionality. And so I spent a very […]