notlikecalvin news

An early call from Darren at Amsys this morning: the replacement logic board has been fitted and has tested fine. They’ll be using Amtrak to ship it back to me (not friends with TNT anymore?).

But, of course, tomorrow’s the weekend, and since The Ruler Of The Universe likes us to all stay asleep for two whole days no work is allowed – especially from courier companies because they get so tired from running around all week: no shiny-fresh iMac until Monday at the earliest.

Boo and hiss. Still, if this one can deign to last three entire months (which only logic board #2 has managed so far) then that should be enough to finish my degree with. Here’s hoping, eh?

Another call to Amsys today: the replacement logic board is apparently now “available”, but whether it’s actually being/been fitted I don’t know. If it hadn’t been repaired and retested by today then it isn’t going to get back to me by tomorrow – and then the weekend gets in the way.

[Why are our weekends still rooted in the Dark Ages?]

So maybe – maybe – I’ll get my Mac back at the beginning of next week. And that’s starting to edge into not-quite-good-enough territory.

The story so far: last Monday my iMac G5 started freezing, and although it initially seemed like a software problem – not too serious – after a call to AppleCare, on Tuesday it wouldn’t start up at all and was exhibiting exactly the same symptoms as the previous two times. So, another long call to AppleCare and TNT arrived to ship it down to Amsys, Apple’s contracted service provider. On Wednesday, Mark called from Amsys: it was working fine, even after several restarts. Fantastic.

The iMac got left “on test” over the rest of the week and through the weekend. I called Amsys this afternoon and agreed that they may as well ship it back to me, if they couldn’t find anything wrong with it.

Half an hour later Mark calls me back: one last start-up to gather some system information and – guess what? – it’s dead again. And, surprise-surprise, it’s the logic board! A replacement is on order (why don’t they have spares – it’s the faulty part) so that’s another couple of days, plus another for transport: hopefully I’ll be back to full power by the end of the week. Hopefully.

Still, I was a single failed restart away from getting my bugger-up old logic board back. Thankfully I’ll be getting one of those shiny new ones which can’t possibly go wrong. Just like the last two times.

Mark just called from Amsys: they’ve got my iMac and, of course, it seems to be working perfectly. Grr.

I’ve assured him that it’s not, that it will freeze at some point, and then freeze more regularly until it won’t start up at all. I would have thought that the problem with this model would be more of a recognised fact to those who have to service them – have I just been incredibly unlucky, or are Apple and those they contract told not to let anything class-actiony out of the bag?

Anyway, Mark will keep it on test and has reassured me that he won’t be wiping my hard drive as part of their proceedure. Which is nice.

I think I’ll go to the seaside today.

Once again, my Rev A iMac G5 has completely failed. Fantastico.

Yesterday evening I started to get system freezes (not kernel panics, incidentally) – the display would freeze up, and there’d be nothing to do but force a restart. That kept happening, until the boot process itself began to freeze: the grey apple, the spinning cog, the loading screen, the login process – the system would randomly hang at any point, whenever it wanted.

So I rang AppleCare – mayaswell get my money’s worth, even if it meant fifteen minutes on hold. Karl got me to boot into safe mode and remove all my startup items. And that seemed to fix it, I repeatedly managed to boot it up okay, so I got off the phone.

And then it began to freeze again, at what seemed like entirely random times. And then it wouldn’t start up at all – in exactly the same manner as the previous two times. Boo and hiss.

So this morning I was up bright and early to be back on the phone to Applecare. Not so long a wait this time, but it turned into a fifty-minute call (on my mobile, at peak rate…) as we ran through various bits and pieces, at the end of which I had a dead iMac with my OS X installation disc stuck inside it.

So it’s dead. Again. The good news is that this time I wasn’t expecting the fantastic service I got when this first happened, and I knew the case would get transferred to a company down in Kenley called Amsys, and my iMac would need to be couriered there and back by TNT for the hilariously named “on-site” repair.

[Last time I never mentioned how un-sensible TNT were in getting it back into my hands, such was my rage, but that's another story.]

Now, having said all that, Amsys gave me a call really quite quickly, and they even remembered me from three-and-a-bit months ago, which was nice. And then TNT called me right on their heels – and they even picked it up at the exact time they’d stated, only four hours after my call to Applecare. So, as bad things go, this was pretty good.

Okay then, here’s the interesting stuff – when I get my iMac G5 back, it will almost certainly have its fourth (4th) logic/midplane board. I pointed this out to Gemma at Applecare, and she commented that, should it fail again – ie, a fourth time – then Customer Relations would probably be willing to discuss “an alternative”. Well that’s nice, but here’s the thing: what sort of “alternative” are we talking about? Another Rev A/B iMac G5, with the same likelyhood of logic board problems? Even if they still have any in stock (does Apple keep old models just so they can replace defective ones?) there’s absolutely no guarentee that it won’t happen again.

Let’s look at serial numbers. This iMac’s original serial number (the case, logic board, and everything) tells me it was made at the Shanghai factory in the forty-third production week of 2004. It’s no surprise that this serial number falls into the range included in Apple’s neatly-named iMac G5 Repair Extension Program for Video and Power Issues (something to do with capacitors, apparently). I didn’t think to keep a note of my second logic board’s serial, but the one I’ve just sent away also came from the Shanghai factory, and was made in production week 40 of 2005. And that doesn’t fall under the range given in the repair program. It was a newer board but it only lasted three months.

What would be the point in giving me a replacement machine if the part which keeps going wrong doesn’t seem to show any sign of not failing over three (maybe four) different versions? And would I be able to keep my hard drive? If all they had available was the current first-generation iMac core duo (with its own set of exciting teething troubles) would I be able to manage without Classic?

All these questions and many more will hopefully remain unanswered. Remind me to ask insist that Amsys not wipe my hard drive for testing purposes, and check that TNT know where they should be delivering it back to.

[The ultimate irony, of course, is that I'm writing this on my PowerBook G3 "Wall Street" from 1998: she may have a snapped screen hinge but she's been a lot more reliable than my lovely, lovely iMac.]

And I realised that what I wrote, in the measely 4000 characters (split between the two 2000 characters “any extra comments” sections) available, was pretty much what I’ve been wanting to post here, more or less:

1. Provide separate provisions for customers: a) those who know what they are talking about, b) those who have no idea.
2. I experienced the exact same hardware problem with my iMac that I’d had several months before, and I expected it to be dealt with in the same way, ie a replacement midplane board was shipped to me and I swopped it out. That previous time I got a working computer again in less than 48 hours: sending my Mac off to be repaired somewhere in Surrey took two weeks and would surely have been a greater expense to Apple – what happened to the DIY programme? It was extremely annoying to me that I knew the exact problem with the hardware after following the same testing procedure, and the repair process has become less efficient and a greater waste of my time. I also couldn’t understand why Amsis, apparently Apple’s sole designated repair company, doesn’t have iMac midplane boards in stock as a standard item – it’s pretty much the thing that goes wrong in that model, and it wasted another few days.
3. Is this something that’s going to happen to my iMac every 3-9 months? I’ve been using Macs for the past fifteen years – I stuck with you guys when Gil Amelio was CEO! – and I’m not used to them breaking all the time. So, y’know, I’m a bit cheesed off.
4. Realising my time to buy AppleCare was running out, I bought it through Apple’s online store a couple of days before my iMac packed up – but I had to wait for the AppleCare box to be delivered before I could activate it! Surely AppleCare should be active from the moment you buy it, since it’s just an extension of the warrenty – you could at least email me the activation code whilst the box is being posted! Another few days, wasted.
5. The exact nature of the repair options wasn’t at all clear to me. I thought that an “on-site” repair would be a guy with a van who came and fixed it: how wrong I was. And perhaps the telephone support person could tell you where your nearest Apple-approved repair place was, so you’d be able to make an informed decision about which repair option to go for. Again, what happened to the DIY repair scheme?
6. Did I just waste my money on AppleCare, since there is a warrenty extension on the power and video problem with first generation iMac G5′s? And don’t get me started on navigating Apple’s online store, customer accounts, and the Education area: that needs a bunch of work.
7. I’d be delighted to help you improve your service: last time I was very impressed, but it all seems to have gone downhill. I’m not a Windows user, and I’m not used to being treated like one. Give me a call.
8. I don’t actually have my Mac back yet. Maybe tomorrow. Hopefully.

Fingers crossed.

Nine months on, it’s happened again: my iMac G5 has a serious problem. After a week or so of irregular problems with powering-up, she’s now in exactly the same state as before: black screen and overblowing fans. I’m betting my bottom dollar that I’ll be needing a third midplane board from Apple, as it looks like this is the same problem with the power management unit.

Annoyingly, even with the same quick turnaround as last time I won’t get this fixed until next weekend. But it’s been a while, so let’s recap what I’ve been up to since and during the Edinburgh Fringe:

• Assisted Simon Wilkinson with a searchlight installation for the opening of Perth’s new concert hall [Simon's photos / my photos]
• Lit Crestfall for Nutshell at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow [my photos / Scotsman review]
• Trained staff members at Fairbridge in using Macs for editing their own video projects
• A number of print design projects for CHA [research report (PDF)]
• Real-time reactive lighting and sound design for Sherlock Holmes & the Case of the Improvised Plot in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe
• Half of the improvising technical team for The Stand Players’ Fringe show, Completely Made Up

In addition, last week I devised a Murder Mystery evening for the Drama Society, set at Bretton Hall: I’d written a couple of these for the EUTC at the Bedlam, but this was a bit different – great fun, though.

Crestfall also gets another run later this week, this time at the Traverse in Edinburgh. We were all really pleased with the reception it got at the Citz, and it’s going to be another little adventure staging it end-on. Please do come along if you’ve got an evening free for a slice of genuinely contemporary theatre. I’ll buy you a drink.

(When I get a spare moment, part of my work in this final year of degree is to work out what I’m going to do once I get that piece of paper and can’t laze around as a student any more: looking at the list above doesn’t really help to clarify that much…)