The Mac platform still just works, though. How, pray tell, do you expect to tell the user that the RAM is bad when the RAM is what feeds the CPU any information to begin with? A separate module to test the RAM on boot and play back a waveform sample of a soothing voice saying “Your RAM is bad, please contact support?”

Would you rather see a black screen with the words PARITY CHECK ERROR in the corner?

How, pray tell, do you route around a critical hardware failure at the OS level? Unless you want JK to install Vista on the MBP and see if that magically detects the ON BOOT ERROR with the system, you’re still comparing apples and oranges. (No pun intended.)

The Mac as a whole Just Works as it’s supposed to. It either checks out cleanly on startup, and runs until it’s either shut down or encounters a later hardware error, or it doesn’t boot at all. This, however, smacks of a problem that I’ve seen on many small/dense portable computers: RAM socket expansion.

The MBP’s heating up too much around the RAM sockets, and as a result, the RAM itself is becoming unseated as it’s in use. Once the system cools (in other words, after many repeated failures to boot cleanly,) the RAM falls back into place, and the system works again. It doesn’t take a Genius to figure that one out, and Vista won’t catch it at all, since it won’t have a chance to log any sort of error condition when half (or all) of its RAM is pulled out from under the running system. You can’t decode and execute what you can’t fetch.

But no, let’s all go after the “It Just Works” stance instead of looking at the actual problems. That’s far more productive.

Best of luck, James. At this point, I’d bring up the heat theory to the local Genius, point out the full list of gripes and lost time, and demand either a new MBP, or settle for no less than a logic board/RAM swap. The only thing that can be trusted on that system at this point is the hard drive. Apple’s in-store support is craptacular, in my experience, and I’ve been much happier going to Apple Authorized repair shops, where they go to bat for you on these issues as a matter of course.

Buy a real computer. Get a Dell or HP.

Your experience with this machine has been a letdown.. both from the quality of the product to the service “genius” who was unable to fix it. Return it.

And to the guy who had an issue with bringing up “it just works”- that slogan does not have an asterisk that says it only applies to the operating system. In this case “It just don’t work”

Lots of folks piled on when your HP laptop had an issue with Vista (which the operating system discovered the issue and corrected it by itself). Interesting how it works when a Mac take a nose dive.

What a bunch of Cr*p…
They should have replaced the laptop by now.
…and this is from the company that controls both the software and the hardware.
This is downright disappointing.

I live on Apple news and I never had a Mac to use. Thought this will make you feel better that at least you had it and will have it back. Best of luck.

@Jason Unfortunately, the “it just works” slogan is a lie and it’s things like this that prove it. Also, it’s interesting how people tend to turn Apple into a software company when their hardware fails and a hardware company when the software fails.

As other’s have mentioned here, Apple are just like any other company in that they have the same bugs in their software, the same flaws in their manufacturing processes, quality control problems and so on. The difference is that in their ads Apple chose to point out these flaws in their competitors whilst maintaining that they don’t exist in their own products. This is why people like to make fun of the slogan whenever they hear of someone having trouble with a Mac – because the slogan is Apple’s and it’s a lie.

I think people tend to whip out the “it just works” slogan because the whole Mac message is one of smugness and superiority.

The fact is that all modern PCs are a house of cards. The hardware is incredibly miniaturized and there’s lots of it. Really finding and fixing a hardware problem is like finding a needle in a sea of haystacks. And hardware is so cheap that its easier and cheaper to replace parts until the problem goes away. No one can fix an intermittent problem on the first try except by dumb luck. Even a genius!!

What the anti-Mac folks object to is the notion promulgated by Apple advertising and the Mac community that Apples don’t break but if they did, the “Genius” will magically fix it.

I’ve never had a working MAC in my home and I’ve never felt empty :)

I agree with the others, get a new one. If it’s the motherboard (I’ve had similar problems that turned out to be the MB) the Apple ‘genius’s’ could take months to figure it out and you’ll be the one who suffers.

Didn’t Kevin experience the similar problem and repair process before?
I understand hardware problem may occur, but Apple’s inability to figure out and fix the problem at the first time bothers me. So much for the word Genius.

Hi James,

That is such a shame! I own a couple of Macs, and have owned dozens (or more!) over the years. I have been incredibly fortunate (touch wood) not to have any of the problems you have had with your Macbook. In fact I am typing this on my MBP 15″ (although in Ubuntu, not Mac OS).

Indeed, RAM could be the problem. However, this also sounds strangely like the problems users were having with the early Macbooks (remember those?), where a wire close to the processsor had melted and would short out as soon as the machine got hot under load…

I tend to agree with the earlier poster… Try to get a refund and purchase a NEW machine (perhaps an Air!?!)

Seriously, I would encourage you to get the whole machine swapped out.

Regards,

Dion