What spawned my discussion about being surrounded by Macs in my day-to-day environment on campus was a friend of mine in my Compiler class (ECE466 for Statefolk). He had a 12" Powerbook and seeing him switch made me wonder exactly how prevalent these things had become.
Today he finds himself in a bit of a pickle, or more like a jar of pickles with a broken 12" Powerbook. His Powerbook will randomly shut off and not turn back on. A call to Apple results in little more than the following two options:
1) Reset your power management settings, or
2) Reinstall your OS
Now he tried the first option, and being that he was in class at the time the second option well, wasn't really an option. His issue has hardware-problem written all over it (at least the PC diagnostic side of me thinks so, but I claim no expertise in the Mac-arts) despite what Apple says. The problem exists regardless of whether or not the Powerbook is plugged in, so it's not a battery issue.
Any thoughts?
What I've noticed from reading the Apple support messageboards is that Apple's hardware is not flawless as some like to think. It seems to either work perfectly (and I mean perfectly), or have some extremely obscure problem (usually with an even more obscure fix). I'm just hoping I have none of the horrible problems I've read about the G5s; I have this bad habit of tempting fate, maybe I should quit while I'm ahead :)
I still keep my stance on Apple's Powerbooks: they are too bulky for my tastes. Make a thin-and-light notebook and I'll be a mobile convert, but sticking a 90nm PPC 970FX processor in a laptop is not the solution. Intel had the right mentality with Pentium M, a mobile processor has to be designed from the ground up to be a mobile processor - it cannot simply be a underclocked desktop part that can go to sleep every now and then. Until other companies decide to dedicate the resources necessary to implement a similar approach Intel will retain their tight grip on the mobile market. Apple isn't in the business of microprocessor design so I'm not faulting them, but there are others out there who are: they're at fault :) (I know it's not easy to design a chip, much less a good one so I will entertain and accept "easier said than done" responses to my comments). Oh and the same "designed to be a mobile chip first" applies to mobile GPUs as well; mobile gaming will not be a reality unless a similar approach is entertained.
It's bedtime for me, goodnight all :)
Today he finds himself in a bit of a pickle, or more like a jar of pickles with a broken 12" Powerbook. His Powerbook will randomly shut off and not turn back on. A call to Apple results in little more than the following two options:
1) Reset your power management settings, or
2) Reinstall your OS
Now he tried the first option, and being that he was in class at the time the second option well, wasn't really an option. His issue has hardware-problem written all over it (at least the PC diagnostic side of me thinks so, but I claim no expertise in the Mac-arts) despite what Apple says. The problem exists regardless of whether or not the Powerbook is plugged in, so it's not a battery issue.
Any thoughts?
What I've noticed from reading the Apple support messageboards is that Apple's hardware is not flawless as some like to think. It seems to either work perfectly (and I mean perfectly), or have some extremely obscure problem (usually with an even more obscure fix). I'm just hoping I have none of the horrible problems I've read about the G5s; I have this bad habit of tempting fate, maybe I should quit while I'm ahead :)
I still keep my stance on Apple's Powerbooks: they are too bulky for my tastes. Make a thin-and-light notebook and I'll be a mobile convert, but sticking a 90nm PPC 970FX processor in a laptop is not the solution. Intel had the right mentality with Pentium M, a mobile processor has to be designed from the ground up to be a mobile processor - it cannot simply be a underclocked desktop part that can go to sleep every now and then. Until other companies decide to dedicate the resources necessary to implement a similar approach Intel will retain their tight grip on the mobile market. Apple isn't in the business of microprocessor design so I'm not faulting them, but there are others out there who are: they're at fault :) (I know it's not easy to design a chip, much less a good one so I will entertain and accept "easier said than done" responses to my comments). Oh and the same "designed to be a mobile chip first" applies to mobile GPUs as well; mobile gaming will not be a reality unless a similar approach is entertained.
It's bedtime for me, goodnight all :)
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Alex - Friday, March 26, 2004 - link
Just fyi, this is a 2-month old 12" AlBook-Alex
Alex - Friday, March 26, 2004 - link
Hey everyone,I am in fact, the poor schmuck with the problem Anand is referring to. I'm pretty sure it's a hardware problem because I haven't done anything crazy with the OS, but I will reinstall as soon as I have some free time. Is there any way to reinstall the OS without foobarring my home directory???
I can't take it to the Apple Store because the computer belongs to the university, and I can't send it back yet because they asked me to reinstall the OS first, but I haven't had a lick of free time since this came up (the computer first started doing it on Tuesday and I called them yesterday afternoon).
Basically, after the 'book has been running for about 20-30 minutes, it goes into sleep mode. It won't come out of sleep mode unless I wait about 10-15 minutes. It sounds to me as if something overheating is causing the sleep system to go off, but the computer never gets hot enough to set off the fan.
Appreciate all the info, especially about whether I can reinstall without overwriting everything.
-Alex
Braz - Friday, March 26, 2004 - link
#14: I have a TiBook that is starting to see some of these issues. It's an old machine, so I'm not frustrated, but sometimes the keyboard goes all haywire (delete key activates expose, etc). Simply lifting the keyboard and reseatting carefully solves it, which is a clear indication that the orange cable is crimped or frayed. No biggie for me and I don't think this is the problem with Anand's friend.Newsflash: Apple's HW, while good, are still susceptible to HW failures. That's why they have service options and support. Unfortunetelly we all have bad experiences with something we own sometimes.
TMoney - Friday, March 26, 2004 - link
There was a problem that developed in some of the old 15inch powerbooks, that may actualy be manifesting itself in your friend's notebook (though it will be a lot harder to diagnose). Under the keyboard arround the spacebar and the left hand command key there was a little orange cable that ran under the frame. The problem was, on some laptops, it was in the right spot and the user used it in the right way to fray the cable. This seemed to cause random crashes and shutdowns, though I never heard of not being able to start it back up.But I agree with #13, take it into the Apple Store.
Michael - Friday, March 26, 2004 - link
Tell your friend to go to the Apple Store at Southpoint. They should be able to help him out better than a phone monkey could.lookmark - Friday, March 26, 2004 - link
Heh. No, of course Apple hardware isn't flawless. Far from it. They make computers, after all -- complex beasts with all kinds of potential problems.Why on earth hasn't your friend sent the machine back to Apple -- is it out of warranty already? It sure sounds like a hardware issue to me.
galactusofmyth - Friday, March 26, 2004 - link
"What I've noticed from reading the Apple support messageboards is that Apple's hardware is not flawless as some like to think."Its kind of hard to imagine that anyone thinks Apple could ship tens of millions of computer over 25 years and that they were all "flawless", lol. Mass production doesn't support perfection in my experience. In any event, if you read the quality surveys by PC Magazine and Consumer Reports over the last couple of years, Macs consistently rank at the top in terms of least amount of problems and customer satisfaction. In terms of reliability, they compare favorably to the other name brands. Check out the repair problems Sony and Dell users endure, as reported by PC Magazine:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1185200,00.as...
Apple tied for highest. Consumer Reports came to the same conclusion about Apple's reliability in its most recent report on customer satisfaction.
http://www.macnn.com/news/23534
Reading any company's technical support site is not a good barometer of quality, since every one posting there has a problem of some sort. Apple's notebooks certainly are not close to flawless, but as of those surveys they are as close as any other brand.
egarc - Friday, March 26, 2004 - link
Sounds like a faulty power button. Tell him to activate "Restart after power failure" because this should reveal if the problem is a power interruption.Tim - Friday, March 26, 2004 - link
Anand:Do a search on PowerTune, which is the new technology IBM is using in the 970fx. It's pretty neat stuff. For lack of a better term, it strobes the on-off-sleep functions of the CPU so fast that you get a huge bump in both battery life and length of use. It literally snaps the CPU off in-between computing cycles to do this.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/39/34108.html
I still dont think it's in the same league as centrino but it's pretty spiffy. :D
Holger Eilhard - Friday, March 26, 2004 - link
Oh, Anand in case you read my mail I wrote a while ago: I got an IBM ThinkPad T41p (on which I'm just writing this :) ) and must say as a previous Dell owner: This notebook is great and not comparable to any Dell I've seen before (and I've seen many of them). It's a good combination of power/weight. Only one small problem is to keep the top of the lid fingertip-free ;-)