Oh yes … next time you bring your MacBook in for repairs, bring along everything in your “environment” along with it. Everything. They said it — so they should own it.

And I assume that you have tried using your computer in a bare bones fashion for a while with nothing connected at all (except maybe the internet, and then try it for a while even without that)? Do this for a few days. If you don’t crash, keep doing it and doing it. If you still never crash, you have your answer.

And is it true that your MacBook passes a self-test at the store (with nothing connected at all) and fails a self-test in your home (with nothing connected at all)? If so, then by “environmental” they don’t mean the devices, they mean exactly that: the environment. Heat or static or some kind of EM interference creating a buggy state in memory. Your system should NOT be vulnerable to this and this is grounds for a replacement. But the very nature of it makes it difficult to demonstrate. Take a video (date and time stamped) if you can of the self-test running at home (with obviously NO devices connected make sure the video shows this!). Video yourself booting the machine from a cold start until you do the test — don’t just start shooting when the test starts. If the video shows a failure, I’m sure that they will take you seriously and if they can’t reproduce what they see in the video they will assume it is an intermittent environmental sensitivity that shouldn’t be there, and they will replace the whole machine is my guess (because there is no other good solution).

Good luck with this. I hate seeing people turned in spirals over and over regarding a single issue, but there are some types of problems with computers that can’t get caught by all the usual methods where this tends to happen.

By the way, you can smooth your support experience a lot if you can independently find a way to reproduce the problem consistently that has no ambiguities, and provide these instructions to the support people. The instructions should take the form…

(a) Start the system up from power down.

(b) Performs actions X, Y and Z in exactly this order.

(c) Watch the system crash.

Ultimately since you live with the machine every day and do not have to service dozens of other machines in the same period, *you* are the person best equipped to discovers this sequence. But none of these steps should involve vagueness or ambiguities like “surf for a while” or “use it for X number of hours”, if you can possibly avoid it. If you the main user of the machine can’t come up with a reliable set of instructions like this, then you can see the kind of difficulties that the support people are up against with your particular situation.

Ignoring the obligatory a-Mac-is-crashing-so-all-Mac-users-should-implode silly comments above…

“This has be one of the most infuriating computer experiences I ever had, which is a shame because I really do like the platform.”

It is a shame. But pinpointing the problem in a system, especially if it is intermittent, can be a very difficult exercise even for a smart knowledgeable person who is trying hard. I would think of all the issues with one machine as just one problem with a frustrating solution process. Your best outcome will be if (a) the support people actually are able to find a way to *reproduce* the problem consistently, and then change something that removes it (the first step there being the most important to avoid ‘voodoo’ solutions), or (b) you get a total replacement. Any other form of resolution is not likely to be permanent.

If I had to guess, and I am, I’d say that it sounds like you have some bad RAM. If you added any third party RAM, I’d remove it and see if that solves the problem. At least run a RAM test, and it probably wouldn’t hurt to do a wipe and re-install of OSX, just to be sure that it is/was a clean install. This is definitely not normal behaviour, I’ve had a MacBook Pro since they were released and have only seen a handful of crashes in all that time (usually caused by some bad application) and I regularly have my computer run for WEEKS at a time without even a restart (only putting it to sleep when taking it on the road). They are, in my experience, incredibly stable machines.

Wow! Everybody says Mac this good or that good. Afterall, it is ust a mac with bunch of crashes! Congraluations! By the way I”m writing this on a iMac.

I’m confused! Folks I know claim Macs never crash and are impervious to viruses. Now I hear your Mac is crashing and my favorite virus alert site lists patches to the recent Mac OS a mile long. What’s up with that?

I think it is getting back at you for deriving the quote:

‘the grey veil of death’

Never heard that before and don’t think appropriate, your MBP may feel the same way and hence your performance issues…

Z

Hi Kevin–

Great site.

I’ve been a portable Mac user since the PowerBook 100. Also a dedicated Newton 2100 user to this day. However, on to the relevant part of my post:

I love the convenience of the Apple stores, but I personally don’t feel they’re anywhere close to aggressive enough to handle most hardware problems. I’ve had half a dozen or so occasions to have my PowerBooks repaired in the last 15 years or so, and have *always* sent my computers in to Apple rather than had them repaired locally. Here’s why: In almost all cases, the send-in service center has replaced almost the entire innards (i.e., mother/logic/daughter boards), and I’ve never had a problem re-occur. I’ve even had more than once the service center send me an entirely new machine, and once, they even sent a significantly faster model in return!

I also usually get exceptionally fast return service; one time I called on a Thursday, got my slips and shipped on a Friday, and got the ‘Book back on Tuesday. I couldn’t have been happier with that turnaround.

Best of luck with the platform. I run my MacBook Pro for weeks or even a couple of months without a full reboot, which is remarkable for a portable computer. I have desktops I haven’t rebooted ever except to do software updates occasionally. I hope you can get your problem resolved and establish some faith in Apple.

DBL: I agree with you even though ultimately, I’d love the for the equipment I bought to work. Turns out the crashes started up an hour ago followed by kernel panics. Hardware test again shows errors and I’m on the phone with Apple support this very second. This has be one of the most infuriating computer experiences I ever had, which is a shame because I really do like the platform.

This doesn’t feel like a reassuring outcome to me. Problems don’t just magically disappear because a Mac Genius looks askance at them. You might be better off if the system got worse so you could eventually have enough service attempts to be put in the category where they will give you a whole new machine. If I were you I would be wishing for more trouble as soon as possible. Seriously. I forget how many attempts it takes, but there is a threshold, and they won’t tell you for obvious reasons, and you shouldn’t mention it either — the threshold, I mean not the brand new system — you can mention the replacement if the whole thing gets obviously frustrating enough for you. But if they get the strong impression you are gaming the system you could get put on a whole other ‘threshold’ list that you definitely don’t want your name anywhere near, if you ever want to buy Apple again and have any support person take you seriously.