Embio Posted August 22, 2007 Share Posted August 22, 2007 hey guys, I was talking to a certain user who takes his name from a certain military rank and has an avatar from a famous purveyor of food products about the Core Duo Macbooks, and how his had begun to crack. I laughed and said I thankfully have no such trouble.... 10 minutes later I looked at the usual spot (just where your palms rest and the 'spacers' that prevent the iSight hitting the deck meet that section) and found there was indeed a crack beginning to form, when I pulled it out to look at it more closely, one end split off! Seriously, the guy has powers. Anyway, I immediately booked into the genius bar at the Trafford Centre store in Manchester the next night and made my way down, thankfully my Macbook was within its warranty by 8 days and the Genius (Ian, if any Mancs are reading!) was happy to talk for 20 minutes or so about Apple, the iPhone, Leopard, Vista, and all sorts. He promised the computer would be sorted by the next day, and it was! Free of charge. I just got back from picking it up, this time our natter went on for so long a queue began to form. Theres two points to this little story really, 1. The Genius Bar staff are great, as is Apple's servicing, despite the horror stories you read online. 2, Colonel is a witch..... ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Urbz Posted August 31, 2007 Share Posted August 31, 2007 Yup, I've had nothing but good experiences at Apple Stores all over: from Montreal to New York to Florida! They all seem nice, knowledgable, and in the case of the Geniuses, geeks! Nice to meet people that you really have something in common with at a nice store, and to have those people be employees of said store! I <3 Apple Stores Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mifki Posted September 1, 2007 Share Posted September 1, 2007 Apple Stores <3 Me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmillar Posted September 11, 2007 Share Posted September 11, 2007 Once upon a time Macs were known as QUALITY stuff. The 'money is no object' kind of quality. They were also known as AVANT-GARDE, and used superior technologies. External drives were fed by the unsurpassed interface SCSI. Their serial ports were balanced, each signal line having its own return, instead of a common ground for all, for greater stability (albeit theoretical). Diskette drives were CLV, a much more elegant solution than CAV, and -again theoretically- giving greater data security against loss. I remember when Apple practically pioneered 24 bit video (16+ million colours). When Apple started ditching its own high tech solutions and going generic I started to watch closely the technical decadence of a no-compromises on excelence company. If Apple had stuck with SCSI the demand for consumer chips would have driven costs down and it may have hit the personal computer mainstream. True, back then we were locked inside a 'box'. But what a box! The best money could buy. But aren't we now locked in also, only even more so? Steve Jobs hides hard drives in impractical nooks and crannies on the aluminium iMac demanding painstaking removal of many vital subassemblies in a delicate specialist's job after having removed the vast glass front panel with specialist tools. Could he have provided a convenient external trapdoor? Well, er, yes, of course he could. But then if you wanted to future proof your Mac he wouldn't be able to exact outlandish prices for the 'big' drives, which wil be mainstream in a couple of years at the most, whereas in the old days you would simply plug in an external SCSI drive with no performance penalty. But wait! Isn't there something out there called eSATA? Why didn't Apple include an eSATA port, for heaven's sake? It is the best available consumer level interface for external disks, and it costs pennies! It cannot be an oversight. It must be a management decision. Perhaps to entice us with it in the next iteration. Welcome to the 'Mac du jour'. Is it sensible to dream about the NEXT iMAC just days after the new one has seen the day? Hardly. Certainly, it will include Penryn and other worthy bits. And that is just the beginning. My sources tell me the video cards on the 'old' white iMacs are faster than the new HD2400/2600 ones. And also the ones the MacBookPro is fitted with! Alas! Alack! Absurd! In the 'not so old days' Macs enticed technology connoisseurs. They were the machines that dreams were made of. Today it seems as if he just wants to wow the untutored masses with an eye for flair and style. Part of the answer may lie in the fact that Apple has been remarkaby succesful of late in the Portable market, running in third place after Dell and HP. Portables command a price premium and are extremely profitable, specially if you give them 'allure'. And if he fits his desktop machines with portable parts he may drive his buying prices still lower. Of course for the desktop this brings advantages on noise, heat, power dissipation.But it does NOT excuse the deliberate hobbling of machines by denying access for certain swaps, shutting you out of eSATA, or deliberately choosing 'budget' video cards for what is, lets face it, a 'premium' machine in today's marketplace. And providing basically good and attractive machines with plastic enclosures that CRACK and DENT is part of the syndrome I am referring to. If Apple begins to be seen as providing 'disposable' machines, they are done for. Steve, please! For old times' sake! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
~pcwiz Posted September 30, 2007 Share Posted September 30, 2007 Wow jmillar, you sure feel strongly about this stuff to write a book about it pcwiz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zurk Posted September 30, 2007 Share Posted September 30, 2007 i'll stick to my $300 hackintosh and suffer none of the above problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
~pcwiz Posted September 30, 2007 Share Posted September 30, 2007 BTW, zurk, don't mean to be mean but your $300 Shuttle SD30G2B is a complete joke if it has a 6GB Laptop HDD as it says in your signature. Or is that a typo? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zurk Posted September 30, 2007 Share Posted September 30, 2007 no typo. and it has 2 GB free. does what its supposed to do (firewall/gateway/router) and does it reliably. thats all i care about. 6 days uptime and counting. i have an amd for playing games (XP) and a e10k via linux server with 2.18 TB for DVR stuff. work is done on the laptop running debian etch with xp/office in virtualbox. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
~pcwiz Posted October 1, 2007 Share Posted October 1, 2007 Gee, using a computer preloaded with OS X for a firewall/gateway/router is a COMPLETE waste...Why install OS X if thats all you use it for. A good distro of server Linux would do a better job than OS X at that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zurk Posted October 1, 2007 Share Posted October 1, 2007 Gee, using a computer preloaded with OS X for a firewall/gateway/router is a COMPLETE waste...Why install OS X if thats all you use it for. A good distro of server Linux would do a better job than OS X at that. much simpler to configure so i dont have to bother with stormwall (and conversely less likely to screw up), is unix so linux isnt much better, supports power savings and at $300 is cheaper than a $380 hardware router. routes evdo, charges evdo rev a interface and multiple gigabit ethernet streams fine while cpu temp is at 36C. completely silent plus supports a mouse and gui for reading & clearing logs....the computer industry is now REALLY cheap. mac os x running dual core router with 1 GB RAM for $300 is amazing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
~pcwiz Posted October 1, 2007 Share Posted October 1, 2007 I guess you got me with that point Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevel Posted September 5, 2008 Share Posted September 5, 2008 OK.... so I have exactly the SAME problem....exactly where the two little bobbly things come down protecting the eye-sight. RH Side is cracked.... its still attached but and found there was indeed a crack beginning to form, when I pulled it out to look at it more closely, one end split off! Well, I get the distinct idea that if I did pull at it like that it would just crack off... ATM its fixed with sellotape.... basically to avoid this happening. The left side shows discoloration.... (basically looks like it will be going soon)... And the spooky thing.... A colleague warned me about this....about a week before it happened.... Anyway: I actually bought this from MicroAnvika (£100 cheapr at the time as end-of-line 2.2Ghz) Its till in warranty.... but can I take it to the Apple Store (next day fix sounds pretty good and MicroAnvika will send it back to Apple anyway?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr.Sneis Posted September 22, 2008 Share Posted September 22, 2008 I had my palmrest replaced yesterday, it's a first gen core duo macbook so it's warranty was long gone years ago. I don't know if it's procedure for them to accept these repairs out of warranty but I didn't have much difficulty. Top case + batteries FTL. I have to say though, the genius bar employees are OK in my book but sometimes the "supporting" staff could use some customer service training. In my experience, if you are early or late for your appointment by too long they have what I would describe a "preset script" for telling you to eff off until you can get a new appointment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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