Upsetting The Apple Cart

October 19, 2009

I’ve always been an Apple Mac user, I’ve never used a PC to do any work on in my life. The truth is, I can’t use a PC – I don’t know how to find my way around one of the damn things and I’d always intended to keep it that way, that is, until recently.

Over the past few months I’ve been having all kinds of trouble with my one time sweetheart, my 17″ Macbook Pro. It all started 4-5 weeks ago when my mac was fast approaching it’s 2nd birthday – after a long day at work I put my mac to sleep, tucked it into it’s second skin and made my way home. Now I’m a bit of a workaholic and truth be told, my mac never gets much of a rest. But when I went to wake it up – nothing. I scoured the net, tried every trick I’ve ever learned, but nothing worked. So I took it to an authorised Apple service centre. As I was passing the Mac to them, I heard something loose rattling around inside. Not good.

After a day of keeping my fingers crossed, the call came in – the logic board was broken and there were some loose ‘clips’ inside. It cost me a cool £750 to get my baby back up and running again. United again, I figured we could soon make that money back. Wrong.

A few days after getting my mac back, I noticed another loose item inside – another clip had worked it’s way loose (what the hell are these clips?) and had to be removed. A few weeks go by and everything is fine, until one day, the track pad stops working and I had no idea why. That was until I felt the underneath of my mac and noticed that the battery had swelled up and bent out of shape causing the trackpad to stop working properly.

So at present I’m without a battery, I have a laptop that can be on my lap, just as long as I’m sitting somewhere near a socket. Apple have very kindly agreed to replace the offending battery, however I can’t help but think that my 2 year old computer is falling apart at the seams and hasn’t fully justified it’s whopping price tag (£2000). And I haven’t even mentioned the electric shocks it likes to give me when I’m working (I didn’t even have to pay for that extra!).

Did I consider switching to PC?

Yes I did.

For about 4 seconds.

5 Responses to “Upsetting The Apple Cart”

Jonny
October 19th, 2009 at 10:59 pm

Oh dear, just what I want to be reading as I ponder on making ‘the switch’ to a very expensive new Macbook pro sometime soon! Im a PC user, always have been, but have worked briefly with Macs and certainly don’t preach PC use.

I’ve actually read (and seen) a fair bit about these swelling batteries lately, sounds like it’s becoming a common issue. A quick google will find you plenty of similar stories.

I really dislike like how Apple seem to charge its loyal users extortionate prices for repair of what appear to be common defects. Although a lot of these problems occur outside of warranty, there’s often a pattern suggesting the problem existed the whole time – it was just a matter of time. Apple really shouldn’t be profiting from these problems (and they must be!) and should be rewarding its loyal following with decent servicing at near-to cost price.
James
October 20th, 2009 at 7:53 am

I have an old powerbook that barely runs any more, it’s sluggish despite not having much installed and the battery lasts about 45 minutes.

I’m pretty much the polar opposite to you in that I have been a PC user forever and I just don’t like the Mac, it’s clumsy and inefficient for me and once the powerbook finally gives up the ghost, I will be more than happy to replace it with a windows laptop at significantly lower cost.

I can’t believe the excessive cost for repairs and parts that Mac users are always happy to pay though!
Andrew Shillito
February 8th, 2010 at 7:59 pm

Dave.

4 seconds – what’s up with you fella !
You should not consider such drastic action, not for 1 second, let alone 4….
Robert Alvord
February 27th, 2010 at 1:55 am

This does seem like something that should have been caught in a QA at the factory. That said, good luck in finding a PC maker that doesn’t charge an arm and leg for some of the same stuff. I’m a 12+ year IT professional, who has been using Windows/DOS PC’s, etc. for a good number of years more. That said, I made the switch a couple of years ago to a MacBook Pro. I couldn’t be happier. What I tell people now is that you’ll end up spending more on that Windows PC getting it to plain work correctly over the years, than just spending the extra up front on a Mac. Even the software tends to be cheaper. I’m sorry you had this problem, and hopefully, it isn’t common.
James R
April 29th, 2010 at 1:01 pm

Hi Dave,

Should have called Me!

Sounds like the HD system crashed IMO, and then it was NOT put back together correctly and that led to the other issues. No sure you got your won battery back either.

Have you go a new Mac now?