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Horrendous introduction to Macs for my friend!

J@ffa

J@ffa

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 21, 2002
688
51
Behind you!
One of my best friends just got a MacBook, yesterday in fact. I was going to take her through it all, show her how to set it up, that sort of thing. She brings it round to mine today, so I plug it in the MagSafe, start it up, and up comes the 'Choose Language' thing — and BANG. Kernel panic.

No way, I think. Must be a one off. Restart. Start setting it up. BANG. Manage to get through the setup process, etc, but setup bombs out when trying to pick an account picture. Hmm. Restarting goes straight to the Finder etc. Start showing her apps… and again, there it goes. Restart. Bit of Dashboard... boom. We had a laugh about how she must've gotten a 'Bad Apple', and she knows that ****... happens. She's going to swap it for a replacement tomorrow, but seriously, this is ridiculous. How can a brand new machine be completely ass-backwards on arrival? It's really gutting, moreso for her as she's completely new to Macs. You have to think of the number of people who take this the other way. She knows my Mac doesn't do that, isn't at all flakey, and neither is anyone else's, and she has plenty of smarts and knows that it's obviously not normal. How many people buy one because they think it's a good time to change, and have some sort of problem that has them swear off Macs for good and buy some Windows POS to replace it? :(
 
J@ffa said:
One of my best friends just got a MacBook, yesterday in fact. I was going to take her through it all, show her how to set it up, that sort of thing. She brings it round to mine today, so I plug it in the MagSafe, start it up, and up comes the 'Choose Language' thing — and BANG. Kernel panic.

No way, I think. Must be a one off. Restart. Start setting it up. BANG. Manage to get through the setup process, etc, but setup bombs out when trying to pick an account picture. Hmm. Restarting goes straight to the Finder etc. Start showing her apps… and again, there it goes. Restart. Bit of Dashboard... boom. We had a laugh about how she must've gotten a 'Bad Apple', and she knows that ****... happens. She's going to swap it for a replacement tomorrow, but seriously, this is ridiculous. How can a brand new machine be completely ass-backwards on arrival? It's really gutting, moreso for her as she's completely new to Macs. You have to think of the number of people who take this the other way. She knows my Mac doesn't do that, isn't at all flakey, and neither is anyone else's, and she has plenty of smarts and knows that it's obviously not normal. How many people buy one because they think it's a good time to change, and have some sort of problem that has them swear off Macs for good and buy some Windows POS to replace it? :(
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thats what happened to me. i'm a new apple owner and my imac froze up on the first start-up. it was disappointing at first, but thats what happens when something is mass produced. my second imac is working just fine now and i am very happy to switch over to apple.
 
Something simular happened to me when I got my first Mac.

I brought my Mini home, plugged it in and spent about an hour poking around with it. I didn't even get it online because I didn't know the password.

The biggest difference was how the store handled it. I bought it at The Mac Store in Seattle, Wa. I took it back and asked them to fix it. Everything was going smoothly until it came to signing the repair paperwork. It said that if the problem was siftware related then I'd have to pay $50/hour for repairs with a minimum of $50. Being that I haden't even had the computer for 24 hours and haden't used it for even two hours I wasn't about to agree to the possability of paying to have it fixed. I couldn't get them to waive the $50 or even call me if they found it wasn't hardware related, so I just returned it for a full refund.

I went home, and Email the store manager and told him about my experience. He Emailed me back and aplogized and said he would have waived the $50 if he was in the building when I was there. He offered me a $100 off if I came in and bought the same machine. I said ok and came in when the funds were back in my account. When I came in and talked to him he pulled out a CDR with "Windows XP" written on it (about week before Boot Cmp came out) and said they found that disk in my old computer and it was responsible for the kernel panics. I had never seen this CD before so I told him that he and his techs were full of it.

I wearily took my new Mini home with the $100 off and haven't stepped foot in their store again and never will.

My new Mini has worked flawlessly and I just bought myself a 17" MacBook Pro (and an iPhone, on the same day) and am giving the Mini to my girlfriend so she can finally get rid of her Windows 98 box.
 
Nothing will beat a PC when it comes to unpleasant surpises so all good :)
I got my macbook a week ago and I trully love it.
 
D4F said:
Nothing will beat a PC when it comes to unpleasant surpises so all good :)
I got my macbook a week ago and I trully love it.
Click to expand...

I don't know whether to agree or disagree. With a PC I'm expecting it to fail, it's just a matter of when that's surprising. I tend to be a bit more surprised when my MBP has a problem (which has only been a few times in the last 4 months).
 
J@ffa said:
One of my best friends just got a MacBook, yesterday in fact. I was going to take her through it all, show her how to set it up, that sort of thing. She brings it round to mine today, so I plug it in the MagSafe, start it up, and up comes the 'Choose Language' thing — and BANG. Kernel panic.

No way, I think. Must be a one off. Restart. Start setting it up. BANG. Manage to get through the setup process, etc, but setup bombs out when trying to pick an account picture. Hmm. Restarting goes straight to the Finder etc. Start showing her apps… and again, there it goes. Restart. Bit of Dashboard... boom. We had a laugh about how she must've gotten a 'Bad Apple', and she knows that ****... happens. She's going to swap it for a replacement tomorrow, but seriously, this is ridiculous. How can a brand new machine be completely ass-backwards on arrival? It's really gutting, moreso for her as she's completely new to Macs. You have to think of the number of people who take this the other way. She knows my Mac doesn't do that, isn't at all flakey, and neither is anyone else's, and she has plenty of smarts and knows that it's obviously not normal. How many people buy one because they think it's a good time to change, and have some sort of problem that has them swear off Macs for good and buy some Windows POS to replace it? :(
Click to expand...

IMO....all Macs should be tested before leaving the door. This would only help Apples image and ensure a very high rate of quality machines leaving the factory with 0 problems. I for one would be happy to wait an extra week or even two if I knew my Mac was being checked before being boxed up.
 
same here i bought my core duo black macbook bang right after it was done setting up 30 minutes into it, it crashed and i was like wtf but it never happened again it was weird :confused: but now it works fine :)
 
Anyone who is foolish enough to write something off for one issue clearly knows nothing about the nature of mass produced products. There is going to be a bad one. Sure, a few people may be willing to wait for quality, but when you have 1000s of orders coming in daily, I am sure that is not an option, nor can you assume all those people are willing to wait.

If I get a bad one. Oh well. I call them up and get it fixed. Now if they don't fix it, we have a problem. If they attempt to with the same results. At that point I would second guess it.

Sounds like some bad memory in this case. Call Apple up and get an exchange (Don't get into the repair cycle, you will get a refurb which is not what you paid for.)
 
I don't believe anyone here is "writing" off Apple products, but Apple product users tend to expect more quality control from Apple products. I know I do.
So far I am 100% satisfied.:D
 
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