My MacBook Pro is at the Apple Store getting its third logic board and, strangely, I’m okay with that. I first noticed a problem with the right USB port dropping off when accessing a USB Drive or recording. After some diagnosis at the Apple Store, they figured the logic board needed to be replaced. So I turned it in and a few days later got the cal to pick it up.
When I showed up, a very nice Apple Genius explained the new board had a small defect for the onboard battery (the one that keeps time when you shut it down). They had already ordered a replacement but told me to take the Mac home until the new one showed up. Sure enough, they now have the replacement board and are setting things right. This was a great consumer experience. Not because the board was wrong but because they cared enough to figure that out and get the situation resolved even before I knew about it.
As an aside, if you ever get a new logic board, make sure to de-authorize your iTunes account before the replacement. The logic board has the serial number on it so to the rest of the world it is like you got a new computer. It looks like I’m also going to need to restart the Time Machine.
When I first bought my Mac, the Apple Store employees talked about the ProCare service. While I didn’t initially bite on it, after taking a few of the free courses I quickly realized there is a wealth of good information there. In addition the folks at the Irvine Spectrum Apple Store are all quite nice making spending time at the Genius Bar informative and fun. I went ahead and signed up for ProCare a few months ago (fortunately before Apple split it up into two services) Now having taken 4 or 5 classes I can report it is a good thing. I was pretty knowledgeable and my switch to the Mac was relatively painless. The Mac has really opened up the fun side of computing for me with music, video and pictures. I’m finding the genius bar appointments extremely helpful in learning all this media fun. The Genius’ enthusiasm towards Apple software is infectious and could end up costing you a few bucks in new software you didn’t even know existed. My report card on ProCare so far, A+.
I ran into my first real Mac snag this week. For some reason the .Mac service was acting very wonky. When I booted up the .Mac synchronization was not available. In the .Mac preference pane the “sync” and “advanced” buttons were greyed out. While I could some times prod them into activity most of the time I could not. I spent about an hour doing google searches and monkeying with this problem until it occured to me I drive right past an Apple store on my way home so I decided to see what the Genius Bar made of it.
A few hours later I found myself sitting at the counter in the Irvine Apple store while a very nice “Genius” told me I had somehow managed to corrupt one of my settings. She simply pulled my “Library” folder onto the desktop and the Mac fixed itself. This did require me to do a bit of legwork in a few programs to reset everything but the Store employee did most of that for me and told me that if I ran into any more problems to just stop back and she would sort it out for me.
This is something new for me. I’m used to PC vendors who forget you exist the moment the register says “approved” and funds have transferred. I’m very pleased with this experience and thinking that ProCare might not be such a bad idea after all.
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