The MacBook is MacDead. The Mysterious Case of a Poisoned Apple & The Woman Who Stands Accused of Murder.

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UPDATE 4/25: The MacBook was received April 1. I wanted to test it out for a while to see if the repairs would hold, and they have. The thermal assembly was deemed to be defective according to repair slip. It was replaced, along with a couple of other parts. I am grateful to have the Mac book and appreciate the efforts of Apple’s corporate support team as well as others who helped me get the issue addressed.

UPDATE, 3/22: The MacBook has been repaired by Apple, and shipped to friends who will deliver it to me in a few days.  I am very excited, and will be writing a new post about this subject when the Mac is back in my hands. In the interim, I thank those who offered support, including Karoli, CJ, readers, and Mark from Apple Computers.

You’re walking down a city street. To the left of you is a parked car with a dented fender. Do you assume that the car owner got drunk and wrecked her car? Do you extrapolate that assumption into a conviction that the car must have run over a person? Do you hold onto your theory so tightly that no matter what other evidence exists, you’re absolutely certain that only a drunken collision with a pedestrian could have caused this particular dent?

Of course you don’t, at least not if you’re a reasonable person. You’d need more evidence, like witness statements — maybe even from the owner herself — and actual tests to name the cause of the dent.

Yet when I brought my four month-old MacBook into the Apple store, and residue was found near the hinges and fan, the guy at the genius bar insisted I must have murdered my MacBook by way of spillage. Argument was futile. He’d made up his mind — nothing but a spill could have caused the residue that was present, and there could be no other cause but spillage for the MacBook’s breakdown. The three-year warranty my donor generously purchased would not, I was informed, be honored.

It was frustrating because I know there was never a spill — not in, or near, or even close to my MacBook. Most people who’ve met me know, and readers of this site know, that the gift I received from an anonymous donor in November was the equivalent of winning a million dollar lottery for me. I spent years pining for a Mac. When I got the MacBook Pro, it was like the decades-long burden of Windows was lifted from my shoulders. I was free to create things I never could before. The MacBook really is an incredible machine — when it works.

This isn’t a slam against Mac or Apple. Macs are popular for very good reason, and Apple’s customer service is generally rated high among customers. This is, instead, about my sense of disbelief and the feeling that I have been among the unlucky ones who’ve had their first Apple experience turn out badly. I don’t like being accused of something I didn’t do. It’s like being sentenced to hang for a crime I never committed, and having no way to prove my innocence short of having a CSI crime lab perform forensic tests. And while I realize that many criminals deny culpability, and that some people lie — especially if it might save them money — I’m not lying. The MacBook has rarely been out of my sight, has not been near anything wet, and has been kept in its storage bag when not in use.

Like Apple’s customer service department, I can only guess at the origin of my MacBook’s problem. I believe it started in January, when I first called tech support because the MacBook wouldn’t exit sleep mode, even after being turned off and then on again. It took about an hour of trying several things to get the MacBook to start up normally. After that, there were intermittent glitches with sleep mode and power, but I attributed these to settings. A few days ago, the MacBook started to randomly shut itself off. I called tech support and they made the appointment at the genius bar. The computer started normally in the Columbus store, and the tech said he didn’t see the problem. I asked him to wait a minute, and predictably the MacBook went blank. He took it to the back, and brought it back out showing me where he found residue, and said that the repairs would cost $1230. Several phone calls and emails to customer service (and even Steve Jobs) ensued, with the final result of an offer to fix the MacBook for $630 — for damages I know I did not cause.

Like all internet junkies, I went to Google to see if I could find other people who’ve had similar problems. I found that people have been complaining about random shut-offs and sleep mode issues since 2006. I am apparently not alone.

http://www.appledefects.com/?cat=19
(featuring dozens of posts about MacBook’s shut-downs and failure to exit sleep mode, including one that “notes…that their is a brownish discoloration on the heatsink, likely caused by the excessive heat buildup”.)

http://cnettv.cnet.com/8301-13415_53-10204593-11.html
(”…problems getting out of sleep mode.”)

http://www.macintouch.com/reliability/macbooks.html
(”…survey of owners having problems with logic board in 15″ Powerbook, inability to wake from sleep: “Almost one in five 15″ MacBook Pros sometimes refuses to wake from sleep”. “19% of the 2.0 GHz 15″ MacBook Pros released in March are prone to sudden, unexpected shutdown”.)

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/apple-notebooks/69215-please-help-macbook-power-failure.html
(”My Macbook randomly shuts down without any kind of warning…”)

http://www.macgurulounge.com/solve-ibook-powerbook-macbook-macbook-pro-power-problems-resetting-pmu/
(…”laptop has trouble literally turning on (as opposed to Mac OS X booting up properly…laptop doesn’t want to go to sleep or come out of it. LCD backlighting that fails to activate.”)

http://macosx.com/forums/hardware-peripherals/304051-macbook-pro-power-problem.html
(”Battery showed fully charged by green LED on the power cord, I could hear the normal internal noises it makes when booting up, like the optical drive and the faint sound of the fans…. however, no keyboard lights and a completely black screen.”)

http://www.macbookrandomshutdown.com/category/random-shutdown/
(245 consumer complaints about Mac’s shutting down or failing to power, including MacBook Pro)

http://www.appledefects.com/wiki/index.php?title=MacBook_Pro#Random_Shutdown (”MacBook Pro users have reported random shutdowns… It is thought that heat and/or a bad motherboard causes the problem”.)

http://www.appledefects.com/wiki/index.php?title=MacBook#Random_shutdowns
(”There have been reports of random and inappropriate shut downs, in the midst of doing typical computer tasks. After the random shut down, the MacBook frequently has trouble turning back on, and sometimes will repeat the random turn offs frequently enough to render the MacBook completely unusable.”)

I’ve spoken with several experts. One, an independent Apple repair person, agrees with Apple that only spillage could have caused the problem. Others have different opinions, and believe that the residue could be from overheating, an inoperative fan, or a loose case and condensation. They also believe that residue may not be the cause of the breakdown but that the logic board may have been faulty from the beginning, when I originally called Apple with the sleep-mode issue.

So at this point it’s a he-said, she-said issue — but he’s the one with the ability to deny warranty coverage.

I’ve ping-ponged between all five stages of computer grief this week — No, it can’t be! Grrrrrr. Please? What am I going to do now? It will be okay, no really, it will — and am sitting down at a PC getting reacquainted with Windows. Like I said in my previous post, it’s like going back to a partner I was really happy to divorce, but I’m grateful to the friend who lent it to me.

Some Macs last for years without any problems. Unfortunately mine did not, and it’s this experience that I’ll carry into the future. As much as I don’t like PC’s, and find them cumbersome, I’ve never had one break down in its infancy — or that needed any sort of repair in their first couple of years, and this includes the bargain-basement ones I’ve bought from Best Buy. It’s disheartening that my long-awaited first Apple experience turned out poorly. I find it unconscionable that Apple didn’t really care to investigate the root cause of my problem, but was instead eager to void its warranty.

The MacBook is MacDead. Long live the MacBook.

Tagged as: Apple, MacBook Pro, Power Problems, Random Shutdown, Steve Jobs