MacBook Pro Quality Control: pthbbbt!
posted in Home Jabber on May 24, 2006
Now I'm wondering if I should have stuck to my jalopy roots: my MacBook Pro arrived today, but the Q, A, and S keys didn't work! Looks great, boots up, come to the registration screen and my name comes out "Nthn Bety" -- say HUH? I call Soon Bok over: "type an A." She tries unsuccessfully: tap, tap, tap-tapTAP. UGH! Apple, whyfore dost thou scoff me cadillac hopes with cheap hardware untested by quality control?
Immediately I got on the horn and began my first AppleCare adventure. An hour later, I have a FedEx return label printed and an RMA scribbled sadly across the shiny Apple "Reconditioned Product" box. Pleas of "I'm losing money every day I can't use my MacBook Pro! This is for my BUSINESS!" are actually met with somewhat agreeable results: an overnighted replacement as soon as FedEx tracking shows the Nate-tainted product, tail between legs, scuttling back to Elk Grove, California. Originally they wanted to send out the replacement AFTER my junker arrived via Ground delivery, around 3-5 days. AHH! NO!
Apple tends to give maddeningly conservative dates estimating when your product will ship, presumably to cover their ass in the off chance that it WILL take 5 days to put the computer in the mail -- and also to make the consumer giddy when it arrives EARLIER than they said it would. E.g.: I was just told the replacement should leave the warehouse by May 25, but it will likely leave tomorrow.
So, count one more vote towards the expanding theory that Apple is cutting corners on the quality of their manufacturing these days. Three keys that don't work?? Don't they TEST these things at all before shipping? Such a weird problem, and one that nobody had heard of as I made my rounds today talking to eight Apple folks.
Would only happen to me, I tell ya. Guilty Cheapass: the cursed consumer.
I just noticed the stomach-turning "NIKE + IPOD!" advert on the Apple homepage, and lo and behold, the Brainfag Shoe concept I had in Brainfag #1 just might be finally materializing. Way back in my internet-hating days (ha!), I snorted about someday being able to check your email on your shoes. Looks like Nike's making shoes that communicate wirelessly with your iPod nano to give running stats and bark commands in your earbuds "RUN FASTER HUMAN! FASTER FASTER!"
5 comments on this entry
Nate - that's terrible! We had some problems with our MacBook here - plugged it in to an old Apple 17" display and it worked great for about one hour - and the display hasn't worked since. Is it possible that the MacBook broke the display? It won't even work w/ the PowerMac now, even though its power light goes on. Nothing. Weird.
Hope Apple comes through for you.
I guess it could if it tried to sync the monitor at a ridiculous frequency -- you know how they warn you when meddling with X11's config file, hand-entering monitor sync rates, how you can fry a monitor if you set something wrong. Hard to imagine, especially since an Apple display should be able to handle a wide frequency range... who knows! Maybe it was just the monitor's time to go!
How do you like the MacBook? The keyboard looks mighty strange to me.. haven't seen it in person, tho..
Antaloap say, grrrth, gimmah, took-took, poo-yeah.
A rough translation might be:
Bummer. I hope all Mac transactions in yr immediate and far-flung future work out to a greater satisfaction than this particular incident. May all yr offspring enjoy a most happy computer shopping experience as well. I am going to go graze now. May all be predator and slumlord-free, o polymath-who-resides-in-the-cold-North.
Yar, jibber-jeremy!
MacBook Pro is the end-result of my musical computer chair dance. It's a beautiful beast, but so hungry on the batteryjuice. That's what I get for MANNING THE MOST POWERFUL COMPUTER EVER.
YAR!
HEY EVERYONE--NATE'S ON MYSPACE!!! HA HA HA HA HA--HACK HACK HA heh COUGH HA huh heh hhm, hmmm.
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