My MBP Returns Home Again
DHL “released” my macbook pro box back to me today after I called and hassled them about it. Just another note in the Apple Support Saga: According to DHL, Apple’s Contract with DHL does now allow the customer (me) to sign for and pick up the laptop box from DHL dispatch if there is a missed delivery attempt. Apparently they feel this reduces theft somehow. Anyway, to avoid this annoyance, make sure Apple Support sends “The Box” to your workplace, or be prepared to stand outside your door all day waiting for the DHL guy.
So now I get to go through Apple Setup again and create my user account and go to System Preferences and change “key repeat rate” to “Fast” and change “delay until repeat” to “short” and pull out all the crap that’s in the dock and put terminal in the dock and I think you get the idea. I have to set up my mac again. Every time. I’ve done this around 40 times in 2006 alone.
Apple Setup has an option to transfer data from you old mac, but it’s pretty specific to transferring your home directory from a previous machine. There is no option to “restore you laptop to the way it was before the hard drive crapped out”.
And wouldn’t it be nice if it was simple as copying my home directory? But no, many applications install stuff into the “/Library” folder and so on, kernel extensions, registration keys. As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, the music that I purchased from the iTunes Music Store will no longer work on my macbook pro even though it is exactly the same machine with a new hard drive. Everywhere in the iTMS documentation it says you can “authorize up to 5 computers” … but really what is implemented is you can have up 5 different installations of Mac OS X authorized to play your songs at any given time. If you lose access to those installations for whatever reason you are screwed and/or have to deal with Apple Support to reset some counters. I am really curious how Apple Support handles this iTMS authorization issue but I haven’t had the energy to make the phone calls yet.
I was hoping the boot-disk-RAID-mirror would solve the problem of backup but in the end it didn’t work out due to complexity, poor documentation of Apple RAID Mirroring, and just plain not understanding what happens when there is a conflict between two mirrored disks. In one of my tests, the file with a conflict just ended up with some bogus data in it … I didn’t feel like it was worth my time to analyze what does and does not work with Apple RAID when the mirrored pairs are disconnected, modified differently, and then reconnected. There is no point to making a backup if you are unsure whether it’s even going to work.
This is a long way of saying I would love to hear about a way to back up your mac in a way that minimizes all these problems.
and a 
Google just launched a neat service called 
foo, 
Teddy Grayson, and 
Sylvia Hoss are discussing. 
rajbot 11:25 pm on December 27, 2006 Permalink |
You and I have very different DHL experiences.
When Apple sends a DHL box at home, I call DHL with the tracking number and tell them to hold the package, since I’m not at home. Then, someone from DHL *calls me back* to confirm that they will be holding the box for me at their facility. Then I come home and find a laptop happily waiting for me on the stoop.
My MBP is still at Apple repair facility. Who knows when I’ll get it back. It’s probably been usable 50% of the time that I’ve had it.
peliom 1:12 am on December 28, 2006 Permalink |
I just bought this blackberry phone on Amazon. I think I’m going to sell my MacBook Pro and just use the blackberry … it’s got IM and ssh is installable.
Adam Rosi-Kessel 7:02 am on December 28, 2006 Permalink |
Why not dd?
peliom 9:49 am on December 28, 2006 Permalink |
The reason dd (or imaging the HD with Disk Utility) doesn’t work is because in some cases one or more system files are corrupted and you want/need to re-install Mac OS X.
But perhaps that is just a pathelogical case due to bad hardware. This morning I’m getting the same HFS file corruption as I was before, even though there is a brand new Seagate drive in my MBP. Very interesting…..
rajbot 4:09 pm on December 28, 2006 Permalink |
I just got off the phone with AppleCare.. peliom got to hear the end part of the ridiculous phone call.
This is the third time that I’ve had to send my machine in to Apple for repair. I called to check on the status, and it was ‘on hold’. They were not repairing it because they needed some information from me. Hmmm.. Apple Repair has my MBP, what information could I give them? I eventually got connected to someone who could tell me what was going on, and she informed me that when they took the machine apart, they found it had been taking apart before! And that it was missing some screws and maybe something was cut! And this was abuse! Apple wanted to know if it was I who had taken apart and abused the laptop.
No, I said. This is the third time I’ve sent this machine to Apple for repair. Apple is the only one that has taken my machine apart. Apple abused my laptop! Yes, she says, I see you’ve sent in your machine three times this year, so I will write down it was damaged by Apple repair.
Wait, if my machine keeps breaking, and you say it is because Apple Repair has been abusing my laptop, shouldn’t you send me a new one, instead of the same broken one you keep sending me?
Need to talk to someone else… wait on hold… new guy says nope. This is decided on a case-by-case basis. So you aren’t going to replace my macbook that was abused by people at applecare? Nope! So how many times do I have to send it in before it qualifies for a replacement. “Sometimes five… sometimes eight.. it depends”. Well, I’ve had five different problems, with five different case numbers. “No sir. Maybe if you have to send it in again”.
“So, to clarify, Apple will not replace a MacBook Pro that has been abused by other Apple technicians who previously repaired the laptop.”
“That is correct.”
Merry Christmas from Apple!!
2/17 purchase
5/23 first mail-in
6/06 second mail-in (they sent it back with a 100GB drive that only formated to 30GB, which was the problem I complained about. They replaced the logic board, though.)
7/11 battery ballooned up and would no longer fit
11/3 power supply melted
12/19 sent in. Apple says that they found screws missing and physical damage from a previous repair. Classifies this as abuse, but won’t replace laptop.
They still have the laptop, and the repair status is still ‘on hold’. Who knows when I’ll get it back, but they aren’t trying to repair it. Maybe tomorrow they will start…
rajbot 4:27 pm on December 28, 2006 Permalink |
dd_rescue might be of some use for peliom..
may 5:12 pm on December 28, 2006 Permalink |
oh what a nightmare :-( they really *REALLY* should send you a new machine.
rajbot 6:10 pm on December 28, 2006 Permalink |
I did a technorati search for ‘applecare’ and this popped up. I think I get it now.
AppleCare Support Step 1: “That’s not a hardware problem. That’s definitely a software problem.”
AppleCare Support Step 2: “OK, that’s a hardware problem, but you have been abusing your machine! Your warranty is now void.”
rajbot 3:26 pm on December 29, 2006 Permalink |
Can you believe I’m on the phone with AppleCare again? My repair is still on hold, waiting for a “re-quote”. I was on the phone for an hour yesterday, and gave them a re-quote, but they can’t find it. Unbelievable…
peliom 4:12 pm on December 29, 2006 Permalink |
My update today: It looks like the culprit is bad RAM from crucial. After figuring this out it took three phone calls to crucial to get an RMA number, and they won’t ship the good RAM until they either receive mine or I pay for new RAM. If I were a normal person my laptop would be out of commission for two weeks, but I’ve got an extra 1GB SODIMM around here somewhere.
Lesson Learned: after installing new RAM, always run Apple Hardware Test (by inserting the restore CD and holding down the “D” key). It also seems like a good idea to run AHT when you get random filesystem corruption. I thought it was the hard drive but in fact I think what happened was HFS blocks were read into RAM, got corrupted, and then written back out to disk….
rajbot 4:36 pm on December 29, 2006 Permalink |
I called again, and after a lot of waiting on the phone the woman from AppleCare said she would remove the hold on the repair. I just checked and the repair is still on hold. How many more hours do I have to spend on the phone to get my machine back?
peliom 12:03 pm on December 30, 2006 Permalink |
Happy Saturday!!!! This morning I had the joy of spending 77 minutes on the phone with Apple Support. After the trip to Texas my MBP is now making “a noise” … yes, a noise … something like the fan is hitting something or something. I got to describe in detail the noise until the poor support dude handed me off to a “hardware specialist.” The specialist said “unfortunately, you know the drill” … and set me up with “The Box” … This time I had them the box the work so I don’t have to deal with DHL weirdness.
As a sidenote, the Contact Apple Support page has a place where you can type in your mac serial number to find out if your machine is covered. For kicks I typed in my MBP serial number and they had the purchase date wrong and said it wasn’t covered! It took another 20 minutes on the phone to get that fixed…..
There is no lolipop, no free software, no replacement machine, no free upgrade, no even coupons for music from the stupid iTunes Music Store … just a promise that in *two weeks* I will have my machine back again without this stupid and highly annoying broken fan noise.
I like to giggle and think about what Steve Jobs would do if this kind of thing happened to his Mac Book Pro. I can’t even begin to describe it … this is a family website :-) Suffice to say he would be really, really, really mad.
rajbot 2:32 pm on December 30, 2006 Permalink |
The reason AppleCare is so horrid is probably because Steve has never had to use it. I wrote earlier about how Apple Engineers should use AppleCare instead of OnSite support. Things won’t change until then.