Over the last week or so my six-month old 15-inch Powerbook (the 1.25 Ghz model) started acting strangely – it would sometimes go to sleep unexpectedly, and sometimes have a hard time waking from sleep, and it was also not recognizing what should have been known wireless networks.
On Saturday, right after I installed the latest SlimServer software, it went to sleep and wouldn’t wake up. I removed the battery, unplugged the machine and waited till it ceased thinking it was asleep, but it wouldn’t reboot. I tried resetting the power management unit, but no dice.
Luckily, I have Applecare on the Powerbook, so a call to Apple was in order. After telling them what I had tried so far, they decided that there was no alternative to shipping it back to Apple. So they’re sending out a box and off it will go today – they said to expect a five-day turnaround. Sigh – living without my Powerbook for a week will not be easy. Luckily, I still have my trusty Toshiba Portege 2000 to see me through my mobile needs while I wait.
There have been widespread reports of quality problems with this particular model of Powerbook – but the reports I’ve seen have been either about warped lids (which my machine also exhibits), or display problems – I haven’t seen any mention of the problem I experienced with this model.
It made me think of something Terry Gray said while we were chatting about Apple back in January – that despite Apple’s reputation for hardware design and manufacturing, in his experience their hardware hasn’t been all that robust, and what they really do best is software, and that he wished they’d license OS X for Intel commodity hardware. Now that’s an opinion that goes against the common wisdom about Apple, but I’m beginning to wonder if he doesn’t have a good point.
Let me (us) know how it turns out, Oren – I ended up buying the same model for myself, replacing my home desktop, about two months ago.
Multiple sources in Apple – official and otherwise – has said that the engineering problems regarding lids, latches, and displays in the first generation of 15″ PowerBooks have been dealt with. Addressing those issues was mentioned as a cost item from the previous quarter. We’ll see.
maybe part of this is due to the price pressure Apple is under (their stuff is well-designed and manufactured — perhaps too much so). competing against commodity hardware is tough. I think the exotic materials work against them (the polycarbonate iBook and the titanium and aluminum powerbooks). the iBooks are a little less exotic and less brittle, as far as I can tell.
I have no idea why they don’t launch the ultimate switch campaign: a fully-functional, office-ready OS on your existing hardware. In essence, a switch for $99.
Supporting every one-off video card, NIC, and disk controller could be a hassle . . . .