Earlier this evening, I brought home another new laptop — the third PowerBook I’ve owned in the last ten days.
No, I didn’t have another one stolen. I returned my “baby” to the Apple Store and exchanged it for the identical model because — how to put this delicately? — my baby was a lemon.
Transferring files from my old 15-inch PowerBook (right) to my new 15-inch PowerBook (left).
When I bought my 15-inch PowerBook at the Apple Store in Chicago on Tuesday, I noticed immediately upon beginning the OS X installation process that the screen did a weird flickering thing. It’s hard to describe, but basically, the display went haywire for a split second, then immediately returned back to normal. The glitch was so fast, you could blink and you’d miss it entirely. But obviously, a brand new computer shouldn’t do that.
That “flicker” should have set off alarm bells in my head, but I was in a hurry and decided to ignore it. Bad idea. Over the last several days, the display malfunctioned at least a dozen times. Usually, the problem came in the form of a split-second flash of “junk” in the bottom third of the screen. Once, the entire display image appeared to “jump” downward by about an inch, then immediately move back up into place. Another time, it just generally went haywire, like it did in Chicago, but again only for a split second.
That wasn’t all. The keyboard had issues, too. Specifically, the spacebar sometimes squeaked, and the “N” key kept getting stuck:
Also, the battery came nowhere near the promised longevity (90 minutes, if that, versus 3-4 hours), and native OS X applications crashed several times (Safari and iMovie, to be specific — again, totally unacceptable for a brand new computer that I’d barely touched).
Last but not least, the display showed a pattern of tiny horizontal lines which are extremely annoying when it comes to looking at photos and such. Alas, these lines are apparently “normal” for the new 15-inch PowerBooks. They don’t appear on the 12-inch or 17-inch models, nor on the older 15-inch models. Admittedly, they’re the sort of thing that I can probably learn to live with… but dammit, I shouldn’t have to. (Here’s a picture.)
So anyway, as these problems mounted, I decided it was time to head to the Apple Store and make a reservation at the Genius Bar. Becky and I did this today, and the keyboard problem was enough to convince the “genius” to replace my five-day-old laptop with a brand spanking new one. That’s the good news.
The bad news is, the new system has the same horizontal bar problem — which, as I said, appears to be inherent in the new 15-inch PowerBooks, which is incredibly lame — and I’ve already seen the screen “flicker” twice. Bah.
I’m not sure what to do. I really, really want a 15-inch PowerBook; I’ve simply outgrown the resolution and screen real estate on the 12-inch models, and the 17-inch models are heavier and bulkier (not to mention more expensive) than I want. But I’m rapidly losing faith in this new line of 15-inch models, and even if the “flickering” problem can be resolved and the battery life is better on this machine, I’m not at all happy with the idea of paying $2,500 for a computer that has tiny horizontal lines where smooth, happy pixels should be.
Perhaps I’ll return this computer and see if I can buy an older 15-inch PowerBook, if they’re still selling any of those. Perhaps I’ll make the jump to the 17-inch, in spite of the extra 0.9 pounds and $500. Or perhaps I’ll just suck it up and deal. Admittedly, none of the problems I’m having are debilitating… but the screen “flicker” seems like the sort of thing that can only get worse, not better… and besides, like I said, I shouldn’t have to be making allowances for faulty computer issues already, immediately after buying the machine! This sort of thing is simply unacceptable, and not up to Apple’s standards. In the wake of this summer’s iPhoto bug (now fixed), I find myself feeling increasingly disgruntled. What has happened to Quality Control at my beloved Apple???
Oh, well. I’ll quit my bitching for now. Just wanted to update y’all on the latest news from Brendan’s laptop odyssey. Stay tuned, as they say.
UPDATE: I just had a kernel panic. After rebooting, my AirPort card had mysteriously stopped working, and its icon had disappeared from my menubar. When I tried to click on the speaker icon, it too disappeared, and my sound card was disabled. I had to reboot the computer again to get everything working again.
Buggy, very buggy.
UPDATE 2: The saga continues. Latest developments here.
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Categories: PowerBook Problems
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November 28th, 2005 at 2:19:19 am
apparently flourescent lights might be a part of the flicker problem, try it in a room without them see if that helps. not sure what the lines are from.
if you aren’t married to the increased resolution, you can get refurbed versions of teh previous rendition at the Apple Store online. you can also sometimes find deals on older models at places like www.powermax.com and www.smalldog.com
November 28th, 2005 at 2:27:35 am
The “flicker” problem isn’t frequent enough to attribute it to any type of lighting… I think others may be having a somewhat different type of “flicker” problem. Anyway I was using it in a room without flourescent lights.
As for Power Max and Small Dog, that would depend on me getting a full refund from Apple, rather than simply doing an exchange…
November 28th, 2005 at 3:33:09 am
hmm, that added to the kernal panic makes me question the reliability of your second laptop…bad batch I wonder? I’d give Apple a call, i have had great experience the one time i had a problem with them in the past (bad keyboard).
November 28th, 2005 at 6:07:58 am
Apple always backs up their products. I think both you guys know that. Hopefully, if problems persist, they’ll give you another sans bugs.
November 28th, 2005 at 8:15:17 am
If you can’t find a better 15″, you could also consider getting a 12″ and a cinema display. It gives you the portability of the 12″ with major screen real estate for extended periods. The down side is pretty obvious, but price-wise it is similar to the 15″ maxed-out model to get the 12″ and a 20″ cinema display (or you can get a very similar Dell monitor for a couple hundred less). Very lame that you have to consider anything other than the 15″ since you’ve decided that’s what you want. Good luck.
November 28th, 2005 at 9:32:07 am
my guess here is there is an endemic problem with a batch of computers. However, I’ve not heard an uproar about this problem quite yet. A brand new machine should not have a Kernel panic - period. You might consider contacting Apple as David suggested and keep after them. Or head back to the Apple store and explain the problem — if they decide the new one is a lemon have them ship you one from Apple instead of taking one out of the store room. I will say that the increase in qc problems at apple is a bit distressing — my 15″ PoweBook had to have a hard drive, optical drive replaced at only four months (but then, I put a lot of miles on a machine fairly fast in my line of work and the machine has been humming along rather nicely since then.)
November 28th, 2005 at 10:30:34 am
Hm… can you say “Crapintosh?”
November 28th, 2005 at 10:31:54 am
Strange with all those problems with the Macs (I know of a few with similar problems with new PBs). Maybe you’ll have better luck with a PC?
November 28th, 2005 at 10:43:54 am
lol Bink, that’s funny… no see you don’t understand. The problems we mac users complain about as being either bugs or a lemon machine you PC users accept as fully functional and par for the course.
November 28th, 2005 at 10:48:53 am
Brendan, we have a report http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000753069961/ so it would seem you are not imagining things.
November 28th, 2005 at 10:53:42 am
bink
Here’s an example of how good Apple’s customer service is:
I have some friends who bought a powerbook or an iBook, I forget which, a few years back. The screen on the thing shattered without any real warming or any misuse on my friends’ parts. The thing was well out of warranty. Standard warranty is only one year. They called Apple and told them about it. Turns out others were having the same problem with that make’s screen. Apple gave them a new one, free, even though it was a good TWO YEARS past the original warranty.
Apple could have been jerks and not even mentioned the problems with the other laptops and said, “Sorry, but you’re out of warranty.”
I don’t know of any PC builder who would go that length to keep a customer happy.
Stick with Windoze and maybe one day they’ll come out with a new operating system that doesn’t have spyware/adware capabilities built right into it.
:-)
November 28th, 2005 at 11:13:49 am
Dude, Get a dell
November 28th, 2005 at 11:15:35 am
Well, the answer is obvious, in my eyes–complain, complain, complain. If Apple is content to put out sub-par products, we should let them know that we aren’t content with mediocracy.
Two of my sisters and my dad all have 15″ PBs that they love very much and can’t stop bragging about them, so the problems must be with the latest model.
November 28th, 2005 at 11:51:05 am
Yeah, something’s going on at Apple for sure - six months ago, I got a new iBook G4 to replace my 2001 iBook, which had been stolen (so Brendan, I really do feel your pain).
While the new computer worked fine, there was a lot of grinding and “unhappy noises” coming from the machine. It even crashed a few times — something that never happened with my old computer.
I had a freak accident last week with my iBook and took it into the store. Short version is that though I technically have the same machine, it has a new screen, new hard-drive, new keyboard, new battery…and it’s even more grindy than the last one. It’s slower, too. Nothing’s crashed yet, but then, I haven’t finished restoring my old data & software.
Apple has amazing customer service (I’ve had several personal experiences with service on the level that A Nun Mouse was referring to - it’s a company-wide standard, I think), and that alone will keep my loyalty for quite a bit longer — but I’m disturbed that they seem to be resting on their laurels with regards to their actual machines.
November 28th, 2005 at 12:15:27 pm
bink
I knew that someone would jump on this and start talking about how much Macintoshes suck, etc etc. Pretty sad if you ask me.
All computers are complex mechanical beasts, lots of parts put together, any of which can break. Something you also need to understand about manufacturing is that companies can not build 100% flawless sets of products. Any given product in that set might be outstanding but the odds are that there is atleast a small percentage of them that aren’t. The reason is that its cheaper to simply replace the few flawed products that might come out than to go through the steps to make 100% flawless products. This is easily evident in LCD manufacture. Dead pixels are a problem in LCD’s, with those millions of transistors, chances are one or two might not work exactly right. Most LCD sellers (in moitors and laptops) won’t replace your screen if it has 3-5 dead pixels (a basic 1024 x 768 screen has 750,000 + pixels, the new 15″ powerbooks, with their 1440 x 900 have 1.3 million and the 30″ Apple Cinema Display has a staggering 4 million pixels).
Bottom line? Even the best computer makers aren’t going to be able to realistically come away with a 100% success rate on their computers.
The difference between Apple and the rest of the PC world is that Apple has a much better track record in two areas:
1) Having fewer overall problems
2) Fixing those problems it does have
And unlike PC users, Mac users don’t put up with sub par products either. On the rare occasions that Apple misteps (as seems to be the case with the current crop of laptops) more often than not the users demand a fix and don’t give up until Apple does the right thing (which seldom requires much effort anyway).
Having used both Macs and PC’s extensively over the past decade and working with PCs on a daily basis now I can tell you that Mac’s win hands down in terms of ease of use, security, reliability, and over all quality.
November 28th, 2005 at 2:29:16 pm
Apple sure seems to been having manufacturing problems from the Nano to the latest Powerbooks. Somebody in manufacturing needs a heart-to-heart.
November 28th, 2005 at 3:48:36 pm
Possibly, but the nanos problem is purely cosmetic it doesn’t mar the ability of the player to do what is designed to do. Not saying its excusable, but the PowerBook Bug brendnan and others are finding (it appears to be only on the 15″ from what I have read) seems a bit more serious
November 28th, 2005 at 4:14:24 pm
Wow guys… it was a simple light-hearted comment. I’m not a PC snob in the least, and one day will probably get a Mac myself. I will say that the only thing that irks me about Macs is that you are stuck with one OS, and one manufacturer of the parts. Understandably they have problems like any other software company - did I say they suck? Nope… I just… don’t get it… I’m not jumping at the oppurtunity to make comments that are uncalled for - you guys jumped on me as if you were ready for a fight that just wasn’t there.
The thing is, PCs have more than one manufacturer, more than one OS, and many 3rd-party providers overall. In the end, problems arise from mis-communication between them all (understandably) where Macs don’t have this problem. If you don’t like Windows, there’s always Unix or Linux (although the learning curves for those are a bit high). Usually though, you are still stuck with one OS (windows) like the Mac.
I didn’t ever say that Apple’s customer service was bad either. Never even mentioned it. This Mac/PC war has been going on forever, and I’m telling you people - I didn’t start it on here, you guys did.
So could you PLEASE stop jumping to conclusions based on a few light-hearted comments on a blog comment page!! Geez guys. Calm down!
November 28th, 2005 at 6:01:48 pm
bink
First, typically one uses some sort of textual or visual clue when one is joking (i.e. smilies). If you have been a Mac user as long as I have and had to suffer through the baseless attacks not only on your platform of choice but you as a person, then yes you tend to be a bit defensive. Sorry if you felt attacked though.
Second, there is one computer maker and one OS because Apple has a completely different philosophy from the PC world. Apple feels that the computer and its OS should not be thrown together piecemeal, that what you are getting is a complete solution.
They tried the whole cloning thing and all they found was that Mac Users wanted what they allready had. The only things the clones did was add a bit in terms of price/perfomance.
As for third party parts, you know you can get standard internal hard drives on power macs? and you can use most 3rd party peripherals as well. PCI cards tend to be picky but thats about it.
In addition there are various flavors of Linux avaialable for Mac if you prefer not to use Mac OS X (which being UNIX based seems to be a better choice than the piecemeal linux anyway).
I fail to see the advantage of having so many PC manufacturers putting out generic boxes, often with substandard parts to lower costs mind you. Not to mention the interoperability issues that you get (fortunately not as often now) from having incredibly lax standards between the hardware and OS leading to numerous numerous issues there.
There are three kinds of people I’d recomend a PC to.
1) Hardcore gamers. The games and the equipment just are not there for the Mac. On the other hand you spend most of your tiem in the game so the OS doesn’t matter as much for these people so Windows isn’t so bad for them.
2) People whose jobs require them to use a PC. And this one I add a caveat to, I recomend it only when ACTUAL technical limitations exist that prevent them from using a Mac, not percieved ones (it can’t read such and such a file, it can’t be on our network, when it can).
3) That very very small group of people who actually find windows easier to use AND have used both enough to be sure of this.
November 29th, 2005 at 10:47:19 am
Well said David. I agree with you. I am a gamer, and so Mac pretty much sucks for that. On the other hand, I often use my computer for things in the academic word where Macs are often found and are usually easier to use. I have to say that I still haven’t become entirely comfortable with the Mac OS in terms of the nitpicky details (I like to know the nitpicky details).
So for now I’d still say Brendan is having a “Crapintosh” (wink, wink) problem… of course if he had a PC he might not have that problem but have problems associated with the bass-ackwards Windows programming (wink, wink). Hope that was clearer than earlier.