Apple: June 2006 Archives

It took me a day longer than I thought, as I ran out of time before I could make it to the Apple Store, but I finally went to complain about the MacBook last night. Color me absolutely impressed.

See, one thing I didn't think about was that I purchased it on May 26th: 14 days later is June 9, and yesterday was the 14th of June. I figured I'd give it a shot anyway, and arrived at the Southcenter Apple Store at 8:50pm. When attempting to sign into the Concierge for the Genius Bar (don't even get me started), they said that there wasn't any room for people to speak to a Genius, and to come back again tomorrow.

Uh, no. I just drove down here with a fresh formatted MacBook.

So, we hung out at the bar for a bit. Eventually, someone came to speak with us, and I explained a few of the things that were ticking me off about the machine. He managed to find a Genius, and a manager as well. The Genius asked me to demonstrate some of the things that were wonky, but the only thing I could reliably demonstrate was the narcolepsy. I powered it up, and flopped the machine shut. True to form, the white Apple burned bright, he saw it, and talked to a manager. Because it was only five days since the cutoff, they agreed to just exchange the MacBook instead of sending it off for repair wankery. I am so happy that it didn't turn into an ordeal, and I am so happy that I bought the MacBook locally rather than heading down to Portland or ordering it online.

Then again, I might have received a working one from the getgo. :P

And now, my new RAM came in, so I'm going to install it. Huzzah!

This MacBook, as attractive, svelte, and powerful as it is, is probably the worst Apple product I've personally owned. Tonight, I'm going to head back to the Apple Store from which it came, box in hand, and demand a replacement MacBook.

1. The MacBook is narcoleptic. The machine will not faithfully go to sleep when it is closed, nor will it wake up when it is opened. If it does go to sleep, as you leave it there, it will randomly wake up. The logs will tell me every time it woke up, but not why -- it's just random. My ride to work seems to consist of my MacBook wardriving for me, completely without my knowledge.
2. I have never seen so many kernel panics. This is amusing, because I've been using Mac OS X since Developer Preview 2, and DP3 would kernel panic if you plugged the wrong USB device in. I think I get one a week now, and I don't really need to do much to get it to happen, but I don't know exactly what to do to make it happen.
3. Applications hang, then hang, and then hang some more. I'm not sure if this is memory, hardware, or a buggy OS, but my beigebox PC running the hacked Intel OS X was more stable. Applications beachball out of nowhere. And no, not just Rosetta apps, that's a different story. Regular old Intel compiled universal applications will just die. And then spring to life. And then die. Programs quit unexpectedly. I've sent 25-30 reports to Apple, just because. I never send those damn things, and now it's fun.

Those are the big items, I suppose. I'll let you all know how it goes. All one of you. :)

This weekend, perusing the newsgroups and web sites I frequent, I found out that Michael Bartosh, OS X Server extraordinaire, passed away at 28 very young years of age.

Most people have no idea who Mr. Bartosh is, and I personally never met him or had the opportunity to talk to him except via few messages during my search for answers to questions on the woefully undocumented OS X Server. He was a genius when it came to esoteric NeXT and Apple server technologies, and was one of the few people on these lists that I trusted enough to be the Word. Not only did he know Open Directory, authentication, and server integration like he was born with them, he was constantly at Apple's neck in the nicest way possible, trying to get them to document, fix issues, and turn Mac OS X Server into a real enterprise-class product, instead of the near afterthought it started out as.

I could write more, but it could easily turn into another blogger plaigery wankfest, and I don't have the words to do him justice. Instead, in true form, I will link to a couple of sources. Thank you for all your help all these years, Michael. You will be missed by many people you never met, and my heart goes out to your family.

the AFP announcement: http://www.afp548.com/article.php?story=20060611204217263
John C. Welsh: http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2006/06/ah_crap.html
A picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/x180/18889652/in/set-444799/