Eat Humble Pie…APPLE Pie

Some time ago I blogged about my obsessions to ‘get new stuff’. In fact I often rant about all that. But remember I was all ape about my new Apple Mac? (and here. )Waiting every day for it to arrive and in the middle of it all my new hiking shoes arrived from the states?

Well…
The shoes were too tight…
And the Mac has spent more time in the repair shop than on my lap!

Here is the email I sent to Steve Jobs…yes, I found his email address 🙂

Dear Mr Jobs
I bought a sweet new Macbook 2 months ago I am a great lover of all things Mac!!

It remains to this day in the repair shop, and I remain frustrated!

The story –
From day one it was having difficulty connecting to my wireless network, thinking it was my modem I bought a new Netgear wireless modem.
No change
Called Apple help line twice and we spent an hour on the phone. At one stage we reset all the settings in the DHCP area only to watch them disappear before my eyes!

Generally speaking this is the go –
After ‘sleep’ and ‘restart’ I am sometimes asked “Your normal network is not available, do you wish to connect to ‘sc*****r‘” (which happens to be my normal network)
Sometimes there are no networks available in the drop down list, and sometimes all but mine are available.

Sometimes I would be in the middle of a session on the net and it would get slower and slower and disconnect.

AIRPORT CARD GETS REPLACED AS IDENTIFIED ISSUE BY APPLE PERTH

The first time I open my MB after the repair the error msg appears.
I narrow this issue down to one consistency;
From startup or restart – no network connecting…then if I put it to sleep and wake it up it connects straight away to my network – every time.

MACHINE BACK TO APPLE SHOP

Whilst in repair shop I illustrate by doing a restart, but it freezes on restart as though I put it to sleep and can only be started with a hard reset by the assistant. (happened in battery and power mode)
“You sure have some real issues with this computer” said the assistant. I left it with him again!

10 DAYS LATER

I am rung and told it is finally fixed, it was a third party software issue, so they said.

The moment I turned it on at home the same error msg appeared, no problem I figure as it is adjusting to being moved from the Apple wireless to my house. I do a restart and the machine jams in sleep mode refusing to start backup without a hard reset.
Finally it starts and connects.
I try shutdowns, restarts and sleeps and everything works, again and again and again for 2 hours.

THE I LEFT IT FOR 30 MINUTES SLEEPING

Upon reopening the screen I discovered not only a wireless error but the icon up the top for my wireless had gone altogether!!
No wireless.

I packed it all up into it’s box and took it back in. I demanded a new computer, I just want to do some work!! This has been a VERY unproductive month or more.
But I am told that only one bit of hardware has been replaced (Airport card) and I have to have faults on 4 bits of hardware and have them all replaced before I see a new machine…by that time I have hardly got the machine I paid for 2 months ago! I have a bits and pieces machine.

This is not good enough!

Please someone out there get me a new MacBook!!!!! This is a LEMON!

Scott

Within 12 hours I get a call from Australia Mac head office saying that they had recieved a directive from their international office that I had tried to contact the boss and that Sydney needed to follow me up with VIP care – NOT a new laptop though.

Today they are replacing another piece of hardware as it seems that the 3rd party software theory was not the issue.

In fact the problem was occurring before I loaded any extras onto it.
But I now have someone’s attention in head office so who knows if that will make any difference!

Shoes are still too tight 🙂
And I still love Apple Macs!