Right now the fan on my MacBook Pro is making this terrifying whirring noise. It sort of sounds like putting a stick in your bicycle spokes. This happens to be the most critical issue with my MBP at the moment but it’s not the only one: the case is a little warped so the display doesn’t close exactly right, my “mouse click”" is wonky, and there is an ever present buzzing noise (unrelated to fan) that stops when I engage the second processor by either turning on PhotBooth or running another processor intensive application.
If you Google ANY of these issues you will see online forums flooded with customers suffering from similar problems. Considering how supposedly magical–and expensive–Apple products are it feels pretty unfair that my machine has so much personality. Nevertheless, I love my MacBook Pro and don’t remember fondly the days when I had to click through five or six error messages every time I booted up Windows. I wouldn’t really ever consider going back to running daily spyware sweeps or feeling lucky that my computer only had one virus on it rather than the usual two or three.
For the past year I’ve been working at a production company where I was in charge of the maintenance of multiple Apple computers. Here’s what I learned:
1. Buy AppleCare - This should be a given on any Apple computer purchase. It’s inevitable that your machine will start acting weird after the one year warranty period ends. Apple products are too expensive to consider disposable and too fragile to assume you will upgrade before you need to fix them. Unlike many computers, Apple machines also tend to retain their value somewhat. At my office we sold a three year old PowerBook G4 for $800 dollars. That’s a lot of money for a computer that old and a solid chunk of the $2000 MacBook Pro we replaced it with. If you have AppleCare you can guarantee that your machine will both stay in working order while you use it, plus be suitable for resale when you upgrade.
2. Find someplace to repair your machine that isn’t the Genius bar - You have to make an appointment at least a day in advance at the Genius bar and it’s not always staffed by the most knowledgeable of computer geeks. Worse, chances are they can’t fix your computer there but will rather pack it up and mail it in to Apple for repair. This takes a long time and means you have to make an take a trip to the Apple store, usually in some god awful mall, just to be told they can’t fix your machine.
I’ve had good luck at the independent authorized apple resellers such as Di-No computers in Pasadena, CA. One thing about Di-No is that you have to schedule an appointment about a week in advance before they can look at your computer (there’s a $100 rush fee if you’re desperate). This makes the turnaround time similar to the Apple Store but the techies are a lot smarter and their customer service can’t be beat.
Another option, though I haven’t tried it, is to send your computer into MacService.com. They send you a pre-paid shipping container that you mail your computer to them in. Once it’s at their place turnaround is 24hours. I’m thinking about using this service to fix the fan on my MacBook Pro.
3. The “Power Management Controller” - About a month ago my computer wouldn’t start up correctly. It took a long time and once it did start up, the finder was so unresponsive the machine was mostly unusable. I ran disk utility etc and eventually was forced to reinstall the OS. This didn’t correct the problem so I was forced to wipe the hard drive and perform a clean re-install. This fixed the startup issue but oddly my iSight camera wouldn’t work plus there were some other funky things still going on. My girlfriend was recently the victim of a painful full on hard drive failure so of course I was paranoid thatApple’s shoddy hard dives were now striking me. However, after a detailed Google search I found something called the “Power Management Controller”
Over time, the settings in the System Management Controller may become unusable, which can result in operational anomalies with the computer. Examples include not turning on, not waking from sleep, not charging the battery, or not recognizing the AC Adapter, among others.
I tried resetting the PMU and what do you know, all the “anomalies” disappeared! I bet I didn’t even really need to reinstall the OS let alone erase my hard drive.
4 - Buy a Laptop Sleeve/iPhone condom - I had been in the market for a laptop sleeve for a long time but every time I went to an Apple store I just couldn’t bring myself to drop $40 on a little padded bag. Meanwhile my laptop got more and more scratched eroding the resale value. About two weeks before my girlfriend bought we a sleeve for Christmas, I dropped the messenger bag the computer was traveling in and now it has a big dent in it. Stoopid!
5 - Apple Computers are way better than Windows computers - Despite all my annoyances with Apple computers, the truth is I’ve been very happy with my MacBook Pro. I like knowing that my computer is not part of some giant botnet and there is nothing I can do about it. I like that I don’t have to spend hours updating virus definitions and chasing mysterious “cannot be found” .dll files. I like that every time I install some piece of shareware it doesn’t fill my browser up with a bunch of ancillary software that I can’t get rid of. Most of all I’m glad my computer manufacturer doesn’t think I’ll buy something just because a super model is straddling it:
I’m much more intrigued that my computer could fit in a manila envelope. That’s impressive!
Ever since I was a little kid I’ve fantasized about getting in shape. Usually it involves some sort of long vacation or absence from my friends and family over which I work my gangly arms into thick man branches. When I return everybody is blown away by incredible transformation and visibly frightened by my awesome hulk.