HD For Indies

UPDATED THURSDAY: See bottom

Ah, a rainbow of flavors...a colorful cascade that would have been an oh-so-trendy shirt a few years ago....instead, that is what I see on my MacBook's screen on bootup now.

My MacBook's performance hit a new low today - it spontaneously lost power (with a fully charged battery AND AC power connected) a couple of times, and I decided that was it and called Apple's tech support. After a five minute wait (not bad) I got connected to a woman who was helpful and proficient and didn't make me go through anything stupid like reinstalling the OS or anything. She had me deep zap PRAM (opt-cmd-p-r on boot 3 times in a row), and then I tried to run the hardware diagnostics (hold down D while booting with Disc 1 that came with the MacBook). Then I got something new -


(click for larger view, command - click to open in new tab)

....so that's not good. This was an accelerating failure - starting with last week when it would come into the studio in the morning and it was off, to the point where it would spontaneously power down every few hours or less. So the Apple rep put me on hold while she went off to get the return/repair process started, and the best irony of the week - the hold music cut immediately to the line of "You've lost that loving feeling and it's gone...gone...gone...wooOooOooo woah..." (Yeah - the Top Gun song - and maybe that's not a good choice for the hold music when people call in for support?) : )

In 20+ years of using Macs, I haven't seen a failure like this. I've seen snow crashes where the video card throws up garbage, but the eerily organic way these stripes fade up - (oh wait, you don't know that part, so watch the video.

Since I got one from Apple Retail on the SECOND DAY they were available, it is safe to say it is one of the early ones off the assembly line, and this is the price I pay for a 1.0 product, esp. a 1.0 product bought in the first few days - the odds of failure or problems are much higher. Only because I wanted to put out Teh Pfreshest Nooz did I go ahead and get one at that time. Or at least that's what I tell myself - truthfully, I was in the Must Have New Toy binge.

So I'm writing this on my old 12" PowerBook which I fortunately haven't sold yet. I'll keep ya'all posted on the saga...but blogging slows while I deal with all this...

-mike

UPDATE Thursday: Apple's shipping box arrived, a clever deal where I just pop out a couple of inserts to my size laptop fits in there. So within 24 hours Apple had picked up the laptop and it is on its way back to them. Well done Apple! I just hope it gets back before I go to LA in a couple of weeks (more on that soon).