The Nightmare Ends
In which our narrator relates the circumstances
of his silence.
On Boxing Day - known in the USA as the Day After
Christmas - my iBook gave up the ghost. What I didn't know at the time -
somehow the news had escaped me - was that I should have known this was going to
happen. You see, my poor iBook has an essential design flaw. Evidentially at
least one of the components on this poor computer wasn't designed to handle the
heat & power generated by the computer's normal operation, and burns a hole
in the logic board, the very heart and soul of the computer.
Fortunately I had a bit of warning, so
I managed to back up the mail file - the single most important thing on this
computer - before it went tits up
dead.
Two days later I got on a plane
back to the USA - more on this a bit later on - and, the day following my
return, I dropped my iBook off at the Encinitas CompUSA. I was told it'd be two
weeks before I'd get it back.
In fact,
it was a day more than three weeks before it came back to me, and,
unfortunately, it came back the day *after* I flew back to Sydney. My father,
bless his heart, FedExed it to me. The Australian government, seeing a computer
arriving in it original box, thought it was new, and promptly charged me a GST
of AUD $138.00 - figuring that I certainly had to pay tax to import a brand new
computer.
But what the heck, I was glad
to have it back. Only. Only.
Only...
...It didn't work. Oh, well it
sort of worked, it would boot, if I did the four-fingered reset of the PRAM.
But every minute to 90 minutes it would lock up so hard that I'd need to remove
the battery, reset the PRAM and wait 5 minutes before it would boot again.
Something was definitely still very wrong with
it.
So, after the computer had been in
my possession two days, I dropped it off at the AppleCentre, about a 20 minute
walk from my house. How long would it take to repair? Hard to say, they said,
as they'd been seeing a lot of iBooks lately. As if that came as any
surprise.
And so, this morning I got a
call - two weeks less a day after I dropped it off, I was told I could pick up
my computer once again. This time - the second time in a row - the logic board
was replaced, along with some heat pads that absorb & dissipate the heat
generated by the CPU.
Fine, I'm glad
it's working. But this whole experience has soured me on Apple. I had fallen
in love with Apple again, really thought that this time they could change the
world. Instead they sold me a buggy computer - and did so *knowingly*, as this
problem has been known to them for some period of time - and took their good
sweet time repairing it. From 26 December through 20 February I've had no
iBook, no iChat AV, no Entourage (therefore no steady email). They and their
buggy computer have seriously interrupted my ability to get work
done.
And I'm pissed. Could I really
tell someone to get a Macintosh? After what I've just been
through?
I doubt it. And that, more
than anything else, makes me sad. Because this beautiful, wonderful computer,
this amazing OS, all of this doesn't mean shit if it can't be backed up with
some quality. Apple is a quality brand - that's why people pay the extra money
for it. But if the quality of the brand has been left behind, why buy a Mac?
At least 90% of what I do on this iBook I could do on a LINUX laptop - it
wouldn't be as pretty, as easy to use, as adaptable, but I'm a geek and I'd bend
the computer to my will. So I'm wondering if I shouldn't be spending my time
and energy on LINUX, and leave Apple and OSX behind. Much as I love them,
they're starting to look like a dead end.
Posted: Sat
- February 21, 2004 at 12:52 AM