My theory
This is based on my Black Macbook being sent back to the factory. It is week 21 and has suffered most of the problems of all problematic macbooks.
The power-off problems began with 10.4.7.
I suspect that there was a lightly documented firmware upgrade. (Remember the slow restart). So going backwords is NOT going to help.
I suspect the actual problem is that macbooks were NOT set up correctly for heat and power management. This may or may not have been intentional in order to get enough macbooks to meet initial demand. It may have been intentional, could have been an accident, could have been new information from intel.
Anyways, the result is that a number of macbooks have been failing since the upgrade. If this happens, your macbook is likely in need of a logic board replacement. It is quite probable the CPU or Chipsets have been or are now out of spec. The power off is a design-feature. It is doing that to protect itself.
In my mind this is a pretty drastic feature, as it should force the operating system to shut down, PRIOR to shutoff in-order to save work. It could do this by throttling to 1ghz first, trying shut-off, and if still within 30 secs NOT cooling down, shutting off. Shutting off is WAY to high a price for a machine that is supposed to be protecting my work.
BTW PageMaker and Copywrite are supposed to capture everything without a save command.
So, here are some steps to help you out at the genius bar. First it is much better off to be able to crash on demand for your "genius".
Download Sigma Chess (It is free), and DuoCoreTemp.
Launch Duocoretemp.
Launch Sigma Chess.
Under the analyze meny select "Auto Play" This forces one of the processors to 100%. This is MUCH harder on the processors than yes > /dev/null, and in my case generated a much more reliable and faster crash.
Launch Big Bang Chess
Select White.
Make the move h2-h4 (Pawn to King 4).
Follow with the move h1-h3 (Kings Rook to Kings Rook 3)
This is the key step...
On your next move, select the rook and slide it vertically and horizontally. As you are doing this you should see your tempreture rise. In my case around 71 degrees the mac shut off. The rook may or may not start stuttering before shut off.
Practice this a few times at home. The faster you get the crash, the faster your machine will be repaired.
Took the machine into the genius bar. First off my computer operates MUCH cooler at the genius bar (intel LOVES air conditioning). We chat a bit how I don't think it is the battery (their first guess), and tell them I think I have a way to crash the machine. I tell them I never do this in real life, but I am just doing it to stress the machine. I tell them it crashes several times a day, which it does, and that I am a writer, which I am, and that this is totally unacceptable.
I cross my fingers, and voila it crashes. The genius is now very interested, so I do it again for them.
The ask me how much memory. I tell them 2 gigs. They ask if it is apple (of course not), and I tell them it is OWC. So they swap memory for their own. STILL crashes!!!!
Now they bring out the special harddrive, and boot off that. STILL CRASHES!!!
And that is enough to convince them to replace the logic board.
So the best thing to do is find a reproducable case so that they can eliminate the memory and the system. I don't know if they will get anyone to admit that there was a specific change that brought the problem to light (because it is my guess the machine is now working properly, where before it was burning itself up). But hopefully this will allow more people to get their machines fixed, and that the logic board stock will go up.
