Nontrivial Exercises

MacBook Back, Working … and Cooler

As I had hoped in my last post, my MacBook was indeed back last Thursday. I wasn’t able to pick it up until Friday, though, because they had sent it to the wrong Apple Store and it took them a while to figure out whose MacBook just showed up at their store. Fortunately, there are 4 Apple Stores in the Dallas area, and the one they sent it to is only about 5 miles away from the one where I dropped it off (yes, that’s a fairly high Apple Store density).

It turns out that they didn’t replace the logic board, as other people have reported as the fix for their random shutdown issues. Rather, they replaced the top case (the housing for the main, bottom part of the laptop, not the screen), the trackpad and the keyboard. I thought that was strange but the Apple Genius where I picked it up said that the case can affect the temperature sensors and that may be what was causing it to just shut down.

Well, it certainly didn’t shut down anymore except when I told it to, which made me very happy. However, as I started to use it the next day, I noticed that the keyboard looked a bit strange. The left side of the keyboard - basically the keys 1, 2, 3, q, w, e, a, s, d, z, x - were bowed out so that they would actually touch the screen when I closed the lid. The right side was similarly protruding, though not quite as much.

So, on Sunday I took it back into the Apple Store and they said yes, in fact the keyboard was bowed out. Since it was Sunday and they were busy, they couldn’t do anything to it then but they said that they would try to reseat the top case, as perhaps the repair center didn’t put it on correctly.

So for the second time in six days I dropped off my MacBook to be fixed.

The next day, for the second time in now seven days, I was impressed by Apple’s customer service. Monday early afternoon I received a call that my MacBook was fixed. When I picked it up that evening, they said that they had actually replaced the keyboard.

So I now have a new top case, which is nice because my other one had started to develop discoloration from where my wrists rested on it (another issue that has been reported on some of the first MacBooks), a new trackpad (which also had been warn down noticeably in the middle of the surface), a new keyboard, a new screen cover (my first one had a small scratch - something I must have done at some point) and only shuts off when I tell it to. One more very interesting thing, though - my MacBook now runs significantly less hot than it did before. I’m not sure if they did anything else to it, but I can use it on my lap without my legs starting to sweat.

All in all, I’m pleased with my support experience with Apple. They were very responsive, easily accessible (since I had an Apple store conveniently located near me), quick in turning around my problem, and they truly addressed my issue. I’m disappointed that I had to take it in more than once, but the whole experience of two repairs took only seven days, and I actually had use of my machine for about 2 days in that period. Not bad for dealing with some first generation hardware issues.