So, I bought my first Mac, a white 2.2 GHz SR MacBook, from the refurb store after almost two years of waiting.
It arrived last Friday, and I was pretty happy with it for a while. First, I noticed that the backlight was penetrating the lid all around the perimeter of the back of the screen, and in sort of a halo around the Apple logo. A minor annoyance, but still not the way things should be. Second, I noticed that when the MacBook wakes from sleep, whatever is plugged into the upper USB port will not be recognized until I restart the MB. Later I noticed that the same thing happens intermittently with the other USB port under the same circumstances. Again, is this an absolute defect? Probably not, but darn it, it shouldn't be that way. Thirdly, when I first went to make a video with the iSight camera in Photo Booth, there was an incessant buzzing/chirping noise in the audio. I've tried to record in iMovie and with YouTube quick capture, and it's the same. Of course, there is no chirping when I record just audio, but it's there with the video. I heard about this problem a while back, but there didn't seem to be any resolution, and it's pretty much impossible to find info on it either in the forums or anywhere else.
So I called AppleCare this morning and went through a long process of explaining the problems to the rep. He told me to reinstall iMovie and Quicktime, and that after one reinstallation or both, the problem would be gone. I knew this would do nothing to solve the problem, but humored him, agreeing to hang up and call back if I still had an issue. I called back after reinstalling, and got a guy whom I could barely understand, and after apparently disregarding the support session # from my last call, he walked me through many of the same steps until I explicitly told him that I had tried all the steps and that it had done nothing. He finally tells me that I need to send it in, but I try instead to negotiate a Genius Bar appointment at the Knoxville store, which is a 1-2 hour drive away. He told me that I couldn't make an appointment for the day that I was available, so I'd have call back when I picked a different day.
The reason I can't send it in is because I need this computer for college, as my HP's dying was the reason I chose to get the MacBook now. I need to install my friend's copy of MS Office tomorrow, but he only has one installation code left, so if Apple does try to get me to send the MB in, I will be out a copy of Office when they wipe the HDD. I don't know what to do when I go to the Genius Bar. I don't want to let them talk me into sending it in because I need the MB so badly. Even if I do have to send it in, I have a feeling that Apple will just slap in a new internal mic and call it fixed. I also have a feeling that the problem may not be the mic at all and possibly the logic board, because if it were caused by an obvious problem, there would probably be a lot more knowledge of the issue and its solution available on the internet.
What would you do?
It arrived last Friday, and I was pretty happy with it for a while. First, I noticed that the backlight was penetrating the lid all around the perimeter of the back of the screen, and in sort of a halo around the Apple logo. A minor annoyance, but still not the way things should be. Second, I noticed that when the MacBook wakes from sleep, whatever is plugged into the upper USB port will not be recognized until I restart the MB. Later I noticed that the same thing happens intermittently with the other USB port under the same circumstances. Again, is this an absolute defect? Probably not, but darn it, it shouldn't be that way. Thirdly, when I first went to make a video with the iSight camera in Photo Booth, there was an incessant buzzing/chirping noise in the audio. I've tried to record in iMovie and with YouTube quick capture, and it's the same. Of course, there is no chirping when I record just audio, but it's there with the video. I heard about this problem a while back, but there didn't seem to be any resolution, and it's pretty much impossible to find info on it either in the forums or anywhere else.
So I called AppleCare this morning and went through a long process of explaining the problems to the rep. He told me to reinstall iMovie and Quicktime, and that after one reinstallation or both, the problem would be gone. I knew this would do nothing to solve the problem, but humored him, agreeing to hang up and call back if I still had an issue. I called back after reinstalling, and got a guy whom I could barely understand, and after apparently disregarding the support session # from my last call, he walked me through many of the same steps until I explicitly told him that I had tried all the steps and that it had done nothing. He finally tells me that I need to send it in, but I try instead to negotiate a Genius Bar appointment at the Knoxville store, which is a 1-2 hour drive away. He told me that I couldn't make an appointment for the day that I was available, so I'd have call back when I picked a different day.
The reason I can't send it in is because I need this computer for college, as my HP's dying was the reason I chose to get the MacBook now. I need to install my friend's copy of MS Office tomorrow, but he only has one installation code left, so if Apple does try to get me to send the MB in, I will be out a copy of Office when they wipe the HDD. I don't know what to do when I go to the Genius Bar. I don't want to let them talk me into sending it in because I need the MB so badly. Even if I do have to send it in, I have a feeling that Apple will just slap in a new internal mic and call it fixed. I also have a feeling that the problem may not be the mic at all and possibly the logic board, because if it were caused by an obvious problem, there would probably be a lot more knowledge of the issue and its solution available on the internet.
What would you do?