Today I went into the Apple Store in Regents St, London to swap my third MacBook Pro for a new one. For anyone that has heard me rant over the last few weeks you will know that I am not a happy camper! Today I questioned why I am such a Mac advocate. In fact today I thought about becoming a waitress on an island far away from technology.
So into the Apple Store I go. Armed with a level headed Mac lover to calm me down and remind me how much worse it would be if I were on PC. I braced myself. After explaining my self and a long discussion of my options… I had to make a decision. They were not prepared to jump me to the front of the queue to upgrade the RAM and transfer data to my next MacBook Pro. My first option was to leave it overnight and come back tomorrow afternoon. Time and money… How much of my own should I spend on this? Over an hour to get to the Apple store! Add an hour to get back that is over 2 hours today and tomorrow. I was not impressed. The manager tried to get it delivered to me tomorrow afternoon but they don’t do Sunday deliveries. So my final option was for them to fetch it in the afternoon and deliver the new one the next day. I suppose its an “ok” solution. You spend over £2000 on a computer and you expect it to work. I am not happy and I don’t really believe that my next Mac will work but what choice do I have?
If this next one does not work I’ll go back to my 17″ PowerBook. I have not noticed enough of an increase in speed to warrant this kind of stress. Not to mention the battery life is way less on than on my PowerBook. It gets so hot when plugged in that it burns my fingers and my legs when it’s on my lap.
Apple, what is going on?
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…and the horror continues. Just give me a sign if you want me to reboot you from this mac-nightmare
Good luck anyways..
Sorry, Niqui. I know it’s not much consolation to you, but I’ve never had a Mac that worked any other way than flawlessly.
Good luck on the replacement!
Actually, offfering to pick it up and deliver the replacement the next day is rather an extraordinary level of service. Backing up and transferring all your data is not a trivial task. I do this as part of my job and it’s an all-day task, generally speaking.
Also, please note that while you choose to call it a ‘laptop’, Apple and the rest of the hardware-producing world calls this class of computer a ‘notebook’. They are too hot to hold directly on your legs. If you must, get one of the many 3rd-party devices out that that will create a barrier to the heat generated by these miniaturized workstations.
Totally with you. I spent 2 hours (over 2 days) in there to get someone to take out a DVD from my mac mini. No dice to do it yourself. When I finally met a “genius” he told me my drive is shot, I got to pay £200 for a new one, £50 for getting the DVD out and £23.50 to put in the £70 RAM upgrade I bought. I told him to please leave the mini open, as I am going to do the lot myself. I put the RAM in, shut the mini, bought a USB 16x lightscribe DVD writer for £42 and got on with my life. I really like mac hardware, but the service in the apple store is just a joke. I will not be treated like an idiot and customer service does not require appointments. If my thinkpad needs an upgrade I go to the nearest IBM retailer, put it there, pay and pick it up an hour later, no questions asked, no problems. Apple really seems to advertise the brave new world examples: Don’t fix things, always buy new! A new Mac Mini would have been cheaper than my repairs.
Yikes. Yes, for £2000 you’d certainly expect a laptop to be close to flawless. Have Apple explained why every new laptop you’ve received has had problems? I’m astonished.
Is it worth not waiting for someone to insert the extra memory, and just use it as is until you’re certain the laptop works properly, then upgrade.
Mike.
ToddA – it certainly isn’t an all-day task to get all the data onto a new machine. I can only presume you use Windows or somesuch, since with a Mac you have two options, both taking as long as it takes to copy the volume of data over firewire (typically a matter of minutes per 10GB):
1. Boot the old machine in Firewire Target Disk Mode and use Apple’s bundled Migration Assistant on the new machine to get the data across
2. Boot the new machine in Firewire Target Disk Mode and use Carbon Copy Cloner on the old machine to clone it to the new.
To Niqui – believe me, it could be worse. Check out my issues with getting an iBook replaced a while back. It sometimes took months for each individual repair, and it frequently failed again (in the same way) a few days later.
http://www.zoara.plus.com/ibooksaga/index.html
Apologies for the lack of formatting or any mistakes; I abandoned it shortly after transferring it from my blog to this page (as my issues finally got fixed and I couldn’t be bothered to update it).
I hope you have more luck than I did!
In my experience on the Mac since 1992 I’ve only had three mishaps with their machines.
In 2001 I bought a 733Ghz G4 which had a fan die in the first month. I took it into the repair shop and had it fixed in less than 2 hours. No problems since then…. we still use this machine.
Later in 2003 my studio purchased one of the first dual processor G5 towers. I had it a whopping 4 days when I hit the power button and nothing…. a smell of burnt electronics and no happiness. I took this machine to the shop and it was diagnosed and repaired in 3 days. It ended up being a logic board problem which ultimately fried both CPU’s and my power supply. Not a single problem afterwards.
Earlier this year my partner bought a G4 Powerbook. He had it about three weeks when we started noticing green dots flashing on his screen. It became worse and I was convinced that his video RAM was shot. He took it into the Apple Store in the late afternoon…. they determined the video RAM was flawed. They shipped it to a repair center in Texas that evening… 48 hours it was on our company doorstep in perfect working order. No problems since.
Because of the nature of electronics you are bound to have bad machines show up regardless of the vendor. I’ve read estimates in the range of 5-12% of all computers hitting the marketplace have some kind of hardware flaw. It sucks to be the person having to deal with it, but it is more rare than you probably feel it is at this time. Not much of a consolation, I know…
Completely off topic here, but Hi Niqui! Great to see you’re doing so well and enjoying alot of success overseas.
Couple of things:
1) See if they will allow you to do the data transfer yourself, *in the store*. Assuming it is able to boot to firewire target disk mode, it is a very easy procedure. You will not be able to leave the store with them, but they should be able to agree to it, since it makes you a happy customer, and saves them some work in the process.
2) Another poster said “a few minutes per 10 gigs”. The general rule of thumb is that a Mac to Mac set-up data transfer takes about 30 minutes per 10 gigs, roughly. Factor that into your plans.
I just wanted to run through time-scales for those who think I am being unreasonable…
On Thursday 31 August 2006 I got MacBook Pro no. 1.
(took over an hour to install extra RAM so total time of 2h30min)
Took it back on Monday 4 September 2006 and got MacBook Pro no. 2.
(took over 2 hours to install RAM – total time of about 3h30min)
Took that back on Saturday 9 September 2006 and got MacBook Pro no. 3.
(took about 45min as I was VERY unhappy and demanding)
Took that back Saturday 23 September 2006 and then had the swap out on Monday 25 September 2006 for MacBook Pro no. 4.
(took about 20min to negotiate the swap process)
That is about 7 hours in total at the Apple store. Bearing in mind it takes me about an hour to get there and an hour to get back so that is 8 hours of travel time.
In less than a month I got 3 dud Macs from the same store and wasted about 15 hours of my time. No matter how Mac obsessed you are you have to understand that that is not acceptable!
Oh my God–this is both horrifying AND such a relief.
I too have spent inordinate amounts of time at the Apple Store here in Los Angeles. I’ve wanted a Mac for years and have never had the money for one. When my PC got stolen this summer on a work-related trip, my boss bought me one as penance.
Took it home, opened it up like a kid on Christmas morning–and it didn’t work. Took it back to the store, and my hard drive was completely shot. They gave me a new one and I went on my way.
Now this second Mac has suddenly stopped accepting CDs altogether and roughly half the DVDs I put into it.
Which is a problem considering…I USE IT TO MAKE DVDs and CDs as part of my job!!
All of my friends have Macs and have been telling me I’m crazy, that Macs never have problems and blah blah blah. Glad to know I’m not insane! Not that I’m glad for your misfortune, but still, it’s a comfort to know I’m not cursed or something!
And while I love my Mac….I can’t help but remember that of all the PCs I had over the years, I never had a single problem with any of them…