Apple Made It Right
I just received my 1st Generation 13” white Macbook back from the Apple repair depot in Tennessee, and I must say that my support experience was much more pleasing this April than April last. Last year, around this time, I brought my Macbook to the Apple store exhibiting three problems: the backlight dimness was flickering without rhyme or reason, the trackpad button would double-click with every press, and it had the highly recognizable yellowish discoloration around the processor area. In addition to having to drive an hour-and-a-half to the nearest Apple store and, my Macbook was off in a padded envelope and I was forced to wait for nearly 30 days to be reunited with my computer. If that wasn’t enough, I was forced to use a windows machines in the interim because my never-ending quest for internet enlightenment never ceases. During the time my computer was missing, they replaced the logic board, the bluetooth module, the top-case and the power inverter. I was unsure why they had to replace the bluetooth module as it had never exhibited problems before. My only thought is that it may have been damaged when they did the aforementioned repairs. Sadly though, within a month I was now experiencing a new problem–my bluetooth radio would disappear unexpectedly and sometimes not reappear for several reboots. Needless to say, I was nervous to have another 30 day repair ordeal so I basically dealt with non-working bluetooth for a year now. Well, I finally bit the bullet and took my computer to the Apple store to have them look at the bluetooth module. I performed a few pre-repair steps before making the trek to Lyndhurst. I took out my after-market 160GB hard drive and replaced it with the stock 60GB drive. I also had Tiger loaded on the drive with all of the latest patches and updates installed. To my surprise, the computer was fixed and back to me in less than 5 days (3 business days). The repair included replacing the hard drive (not necessary but mine was a Seagate model that was prone to data corruption), resetting the RAM (which I am not sure what this meant), replacing the top-cover (again, not sure why this was needed) and oddly enough installing Leopard onto a drive that came to the repair depot with Tiger. I proceeded to put my 160GB drive back in, reset the PRAM (Command-P-Option-R) and let the Apple chime go four times before releasing the keys. Everything has worked fine since and overall I am happy with the experience. My computer is snappy and working like a champ and I have that new Mac smell emanating through the house. My faith in Apple is restored.