Brendan Loy

[address redacted]

July 12, 2007

Dear Apple repair technicians:

In order to help clarify and explain the problems I am having with my PowerBook, I have written this detailed synopsis of what is occurring, including a brief bit of history.

This is the third time in the last six weeks that I’ve had to bring in this computer for repair. On June 5, I brought it in with a long list of problems (which is on my Desktop for your reference as Computer problems June 2007.doc). On June 13, the computer was returned to me with, among other things, a wiped hard drive and freshly installed operating system. An apparent catastrophic hardware failure later that day resulted in an almost immediate repeat repair, so I did not get the computer back “for good” until June 20. (The hardware failure somehow “fixed itself” en route to the repair center, and has not recurred.)

Unfortunately, as soon I got the computer back on June 20, a number of problems began to frequently occur—some of them similar or identical to problems I’d experienced prior to June 5, some of them new and different, but all very disconcerting, given that this was a brand-new OS and thus presumably shouldn’t be experiencing these sorts of issues. The problems are detailed in the pages that follow.

Although the problems appear software-related, I believe they are caused by some physical defect of the computer, not the operating system or software, and I do NOT believe they can be solved by simply erasing the hard drive, reinstalling the OS, and/or otherwise tinkering with software settings. I say this for a couple of reasons. First and most obviously, the problems picked up right where they left off after the hard drive was erased and the OS reinstalled last month. Given how stable Mac OS X normally is, it seems highly unlikely that a freshly installed copy of the OS would develop such severe problems so quickly. Nor did I install any unusual applications that would be likely to “poison” the OS in some way. Secondly, during the times when my computer was in repair, I used a bootable clone of my hard drive to run my system on another computer (my wife’s old iBook), and although it was slow (it’s a G3 with 500 MHz), none of these problems occurred when I was using the same OS, and the same set of programs, on a different physical machine. So I think something is wrong with the machine itself, and unless we can pinpoint what’s wrong and fix it, I think the time has come—this being the fourth repair in 12 months, and the third in less than six weeks—to consider replacing the unit.

In any event, I’ve been keeping a detailed log of the problems that have occurred since I got the computer back on June 20. Here is a summary:

Mail frequently refuses to save outgoing messages. This is the most severe and consistent problem I’ve been having since getting the computer back. Starting on June 23, I began to frequently get this error message when composing a Mail message:



The error seems to occur on roughly half of the messages I send. Those messages are not saved in Drafts, Outbox, or Sent Mail—no copy of them is saved at all. Once the error message appears, any subsequent attempt to save the message (e.g., by manually clicking “Save as Draft”) fails. On the other hand, some other messages are saved with no problems. There is no apparent rhyme or reason to which messages get saved and which don’t, and no obvious reason why there would be a problem saving messages (e.g., my hard drive isn’t nearly full).

• Crashes in core applications. This is one of the problems I reported on June 5, and it was not solved by wiping the hard drive and reinstalling the OS.
  
  For example, Safari “quit unexpectedly” for no obvious reason on June 22, June 29, July 7, and July 8; iPhoto quit immediately upon opening it on June 24; Mail quit while I wasn’t even actively using it (it was in the background) on June 27; the Finder quit in the middle of a standard Spotlight search on June 24; and Firefox froze on July 9.
  
  In all cases, I wasn’t doing anything unusual, such as doing particularly CPU-intensive tasks or using external devices, that could help explain the crashes. The core applications just seem unstable and prone to crash, which I don’t expect from OS X!
  
  As I mentioned, these crashes are not new. I complained about core-app crashes in Computer problems June 2007.doc, a file on my Desktop which I submitted with my computer when I brought it in for repair on June 5. The same thing is also mentioned in Computer problems July 2006.rtf, which I submitted with a previous repair last year.

• Erratic behavior when waking up from sleep. This is another problem that I have had, and complained about, previously. It, too, is mentioned in both Computer problems June 2007.doc and Computer problems July 2006.rtf. But the previous repairs, including wiping the hard drive and reinstalling the OS, have not solved it.
  
  For example, on June 23—three days after I got it back from repair—I put the computer to sleep by closing the lid, and when I opened the lid and tried to wake it up, it was unresponsive. I had to manually turn the computer off & on again with the power button. I made a video to document the problem, which is on my Desktop as sleeperror1.mov.
  
  Three days later, on June 26, when I woke the computer from sleep after closing its lid, I found that it had spontaneously reset the screen brightness to zero brightness, so the screen was completely dark. This occurred again on July 4.
  
  On June 28, closing the lid sent the computer into Safe Sleep, for no apparent reason. (The battery was not low, and the lid was only closed for a few minutes.)
  
  Finally, on July 5, the computer repeated its June 23 behavior, refusing entirely to wake up from sleep, forcing me to restart it manually. Again, I documented this problem by video, which you can see on my Desktop as sleeperror2.mov.
  
  I emphasize that this is a sporadic problem—it doesn’t occur every single time I close the computer’s lid, or even 10 percent of the time, for that matter. Therefore, it may be difficult to reproduce the error, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a real problem. I’ve done my best to document it when it does occur, so that you can understand my complaint.
  It happens often enough that it’s a real problem, because I can’t trust the computer to behave properly when waking up from sleep.

• Weird UI glitches in core applications. I didn’t mention this problem when I brought the computer in on June 3, but I did mention it back in July 2006 (see Computer problems July 2006.rtf), and it’s happening again. For example, on June 25, as I was using Safari with Mail in the background, the menu bars for the two applications briefly got mixed up:
  
  
  
  Then on July 1, as I was using Calculator, the program’s interface partially disappeared:
  
  
  
  On July 2, the same file appeared in triplicate in TextEdit’s “Open Recent” menu:
  
  
  
  And on July 11, the “carrots” in Dictionary and Thesaurus malfunctioned:
  
  
  
  In the screenshot at right, the Dictionary entry for amorous should appear (since the carrot is in the “open” position), just as the Thesaurus entry appears, but it does not. I clicked the carrot multiple times, to no avail.
  
  Obviously, these UI glitches are relatively minor issues, and I wouldn’t be complaining about them at all if it weren’t for the other, more serious problems. However, given everything else that’s happening, I think they’re relevant.

In addition, the catastrophic system failure that occurred on June 20, then “fixed itself” en route to the repair center, remains entirely unexplained, and I am not convinced it won’t happen again in the future. In my experience, computers that “fix themselves” with no explanation also tend to “break themselves” with no explanation later on.

My goal here is to really come up with a lasting solution to these problems, including replacement of the unit if necessary. I don’t meant to be picky or rude, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a professional computer of the PowerBook’s caliber, with a world-class operating system like OS X, to perform without these sorts of frequent, Windows-like glitches. I bought the AppleCare warranty so that I could depend on the functionality of this computer for at least three years, and yet here I am, halfway through the life of the warranty, bringing it in for the fourth time—and several of the very same problems remain unresolved from the first of those four repairs, back when the computer was barely six months old. (And in several cases, the problems actually started when it was only two or three months old, in March or April 2006.)

If you have any questions, please feel free to call me or e-mail me directly. I don’t know whether this is allowed under company policy, but for what it’s worth, you have my explicit permission to contact me in this manner—indeed, I would vastly prefer it. During the last repair, several days were wasted due to inefficient “conversation” between myself and the repair technicians, with the AppleCare Support line serving as an intermediary. The result was an unfortunate game of “telephone” that made it very difficult to communicate effectively. It would work much better if you’d just call or e-mail me. My phone number is [redacted] and my e-mail address is [redacted].

Thank you very much.

Sincerely,

Brendan Loy