Re:Is Apple suitable for the freelancer?
by JackWebbHeller on Saturday June 11, 2011 @09:28AM
(#2643852)
Also, forgot to mention the brilliant ending to the story. All this was happening around the same time Gizmodo and Engadget were having fun reporting "emails from Steve Jobs".
I emailed a copy of all my Genius Bar woes to [email protected] - nothing for 3 weeks, when one morning I awoke to a phone call from my local Apple Store. They said they'd heard about my troubles 'via Cupertino' and promised me if anything ever went wrong again, I'd get a full refund...!
That's brilliant. Did anybody try any loctite on those screws?
Re:Is Apple suitable for the freelancer?
by JackWebbHeller on Saturday June 11, 2011 @09:43AM
(#2643884)
Can't say I know too much about Loctite (as far as I know they don't sell it in the UK where I'm from), but they did point out that each of the screws had a small amount of blue substance on their bottom half. Supposedly this was meant to stop them coming loose, although clearly it wasn't much use...
I had a standard MacBook - about 2 months old - when I noticed, whilst working on it on the train, after picking it up one of the screws from the underside had become loose and fallen out. I spent a while trying to screw it back in with my fingers on the train, just enough to stop it falling back out again.
When I got home I gave it a proper go with a screwdriver. Problem solved? Nope.
Over the next few weeks this kept happening - not just with that one screw but with about 3 or 4 (of the 8 in total). I got suspicious and took it straight to the Geniuses.
I've calculated the total time, per appointment, to be 2 hours - 10 minutes getting ready (shutting down, disconnecting displays and HDDs, etc), 40 minutes travel there, 15 minutes waiting, 15 minutes being served, 40 minutes travel back.
Appointment 1 (2 hours elapsed): Problem diagnosed, genius did the screwdrivering themselves.
Appointment 2 (4 hours elapsed): Screws still loose, genius took a look and put in an order for some new screws.
Appointment 3 (6 hours elapsed): Screws have arrived, genius replaces all the screws.
Appointment 4 (8 hours elapsed): Screws still coming loose. Genius 'resits' the MacBook underside.
Appointment 5 (10 hours elapsed): Still no luck. Genius orders new MacBook rubber base.
Appointment 6 (12 hours elapsed): New rubber base is fitted.
Appointment 7 (14 hours elapsed): Screws STILL coming loose. Genius orders replacement of base 'fitting unit'.
Appointment 8 (16 hours elapsed): Genius fits new base fitting unit. This takes 3 days so I can't use my MacBook at all during this time.
Appointment 9 (18 hours elapsed): Still no luck. Genius offers to replace MacBook. But, I don't have an entire system backup (I was using BackBlaze and had a hard drive crash the month before), so I have to fork out £80 for a HDD to set up Time Machine again.
Appointment 10 (20 hours elapsed): Backup taken. MacBook swapped.
Appointment 11 (22 hours elapsed): New MacBook doesn't boot properly. ANOTHER replacement...
... and finally I had a faultless MacBook again. All it took was almost an entire day of my life.