Apple Sux
Ok, so they don’t always suck - they can design kick-ass products, but they’re quality and support need some work. I’ve had several problems recently with both my new macbook pro and my ipod video, and i need to vent a bit.
I took a chance and bought the new intel-based macbook pro. I’ve had it a few weeks now, and for the most part its the same as the powerbook. The main 2 things that are different are the intel chip (vs PowerPC chip in powerbook), and the RAM access (twice as fast on macbook). For the few apps that are compiled as a universal binary (like camino browser), macbook rocks. But most apps are not, and performance is about the same as the powerbook.
Specifically, i was using firefox (powerpc binary) a week ago when my laptop froze up. The mouse would still work, but nothing else would. I let it sit for a while (10 mins), came back, and it was still frozen, so i hard-rebooted. After this, it would not ever boot up again - It would go to the screen where it says “Mac OS X” in small white square window with solid blue background, and then just be completely solid blue, and stay forever. I kept hard-rebooting (by holding down power button till it turns off) and repeating this process for several days. Unable to find any info help online, I went to the “genius bar” at the local apple store. They would not accept drop-offs, and the wait to talk to anyone 1-1.5 hours. Sigh. I had to goto work, so i skipped it. Later I tried a few more things on my own, including the firewire target disk mode (press-T-on-bootup), but nothing worked till i wiped the drive and did a fresh install. So i lost all my data, but at least my laptop works again. I’m not sure exactly what happened, i’m guessing there were bad sectors on the harddrive that could not be read on bootup so it hung .. but not sure. I should prolly run some exhaustive drive checks …
The other problem i have is with my ipod video. I have the 60GB one, bought last december, and 3 times now it has frozen up on me. The screen is lit up, usually during mp3 playback, but the entire unit becomes unresponsive. Normally you can power on/off a device or computer if it freezes up, worst case remove batteries/power and reboot. But ipod video does not have that option. I had to wait till batteries were drained and it powered off. Then i plugged it in and it would reboot. Not annoying enough for me to get rid of if and by a new mp3 player, but annoying enough to piss me off and blog about it. Heh.
Update: Check out the comments for ways to fix..
a) Have you tried AppleJack? It’s a free utility that just installs a script that makes running Unix command line fixes in single user mode really easy. Great for fixing stuck macs when they won’t boot and yer too lazy to even grab the install cd to boot off. It doesn’t really sound to me like you have a bad disk problem, sounds more like a corrupted system preference or cache, which I expect to happen more frequently on MacBooks. (everyone has said “there’s gonna be some kinks to get worked out w/ these new systems” yet everyone seems to be surprised when these kinks appear) I know, it sucks. No one should spend $3k and not be completely satisfied afterward. That’s why I always spend my money on hookers and blow.
b) You can reset an iPod, unless yours is being really uncooperative these instructions should do it. If it still locks up once in awhile try running the iPod Updater software to reinstall the iPod’s system software. That’ll wipe your iPod clean but can often fix narcoleptic or epileptic iPods.
and finally, you would never catch me inside an Apple Store. What’s the point in that? Especially when it comes to iPods. If you have a serious iPod problem just go to the Apple website and request service. They’ll overnight you a nice little box that your iPod will fit perfectly in with prepaid postage to get it home to the mothership. Then, after they see that you’re not an idiot and there really is something wrong with your iPod they’ll mail you another one. The whole thing usually takes less than a week, which is a hell of a lot less time than you’d spend standing on a line at an Apple Store (before being told to ‘Fuck Off’ by a ‘Genius’)
Alright, I gots a lot more blogs to offer tech advice to this morning so I gotta run. Let’s have a drink sometime. Cheers.
I had that same problem with my Mac hanging up on boot after the same circumstances (I had to hard re-boot). I ended up in the same situation, basically had to wipe the drive and reformat as well. The guy at the Mac store said that when you have to hard re-boot, sometimes the boot sector of the disk gets confused/corrupted (b/c it didn’t shut down gracefully).
The only reason I thought to comment is b/c even though the app won’t start with the OS, unless there’s a hardware malfunction, it will still work as a target drive. So you could still access your data via another Mac. On the rare chance it happens again, I thought I’d mention it so if you ended up in that situation again you wouldn’t have to lose all your data. Hopefully it won’t ever happen again.
ok… Hope your well mang.
C
heh - aren’t blogs great?
I had the same issue with my mini a few weeks ago - I can’t find my notes right now and I definitely hit an issue with a hard drive corruption. I was a bit puzzled how it happened cuz I don’t remember shutting down improperly and thought journaling was sure to come to the rescue in this instance! Reformating my partition is pretty much how I solved the issue and sure glad I had backups! There is some heavy duty disk utility out there that may have solved the issue - admittedly frustrated, I let it go and just started over - it was about that time
all in all, the Internet community has always been a great resource for issues - my one experience with Apple support made me feel like I was talking with Dell but at the end of the day, at least the dude was clear about what was supported and what was not (I was getting more into hacking my system arena if I recall correctly!)
I just touched my first PowerBook over the wkd - had a burner from HK VJ for us with his crew at 2 local clubs here - they went hardcore on us n so reminded me of that place we went to down the alley from minna - what the hell was it called again? ok - i’m going clearly off topic - keep having fun with your MacBook Pro dude and hang in there - long live dnb!
Thanks for your post, i really had some trouble with finding the right information but you have helped me great
Thank you
Japie
Thank you
Japie Bruinst