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I can sympathise with the difficulties the Genius Bar cause. I had a standard MacBook - about 2 months old - when I noticed, whilst working on it on the train,
by JackWebbHeller 15y ago
I can sympathise with the difficulties the Genius Bar cause.
I had a standard MacBook - about 2 months old - when I noticed, whilst working on it on the train, after picking it up one of the screws from the underside had become loose and fallen out. I spent a while trying to screw it back in with my fingers on the train, just enough to stop it falling back out again.
When I got home I gave it a proper go with a screwdriver. Problem solved? Nope.
Over the next few weeks this kept happening - not just with that one screw but with about 3 or 4 (of the 8 in total). I got suspicious and took it straight to the Geniuses.
I've calculated the total time, per appointment, to be 2 hours - 10 minutes getting ready (shutting down, disconnecting displays and HDDs, etc), 40 minutes travel there, 15 minutes waiting, 15 minutes being served, 40 minutes travel back.
Appointment 1 (2 hours elapsed): Problem diagnosed, genius did the screwdrivering themselves.
Appointment 2 (4 hours elapsed): Screws still loose, genius took a look and put in an order for some new screws.
Appointment 3 (6 hours elapsed): Screws have arrived, genius replaces all the screws.
Appointment 4 (8 hours elapsed): Screws still coming loose. Genius 'resits' the MacBook underside.
Appointment 5 (10 hours elapsed): Still no luck. Genius orders new MacBook rubber base.
Appointment 6 (12 hours elapsed): New rubber base is fitted.
Appointment 7 (14 hours elapsed): Screws STILL coming loose. Genius orders replacement of base 'fitting unit'.
Appointment 8 (16 hours elapsed): Genius fits new base fitting unit. This takes 3 days so I can't use my MacBook at all during this time.
Appointment 9 (18 hours elapsed): Still no luck. Genius offers to replace MacBook. But, I don't have an entire system backup (I was using BackBlaze and had a hard drive crash the month before), so I have to fork out £80 for a HDD to set up Time Machine again.
Appointment 10 (20 hours elapsed): Backup taken. MacBook swapped.
Appointment 11 (22 hours elapsed): New MacBook doesn't boot properly. ANOTHER replacement...
... and finally I had a faultless MacBook again. All it took was almost an entire day of my life.
- JackWebbHeller 15y agoAlso, forgot to mention the brilliant ending to the story. All this was happening around the same time Gizmodo and Engadget were having fun reporting "emails from Steve Jobs". I emailed a copy of all my Genius Bar woes to sjobs@apple.com - nothing for 3 weeks, when one morning I awoke to a phone call from my local Apple Store. They said they'd heard about my troubles 'via Cupertino' and promised me if anything ever went wrong again, I'd get a full refund...!
- gma 15y agoThat's brilliant. Did anybody try any loctite on those screws?
- JackWebbHeller 15y agoCan't say I know too much about Loctite (as far as I know they don't sell it in the UK where I'm from), but they did point out that each of the screws had a small amount of blue substance on their bottom half. Supposedly this was meant to stop them coming loose, although clearly it wasn't much use...
- youngtaff 15y agoYou get Loctite as a brand in the UK more commonly known as superglue, the other thing you can use is thread lock - somewhere like Halfords will stock it.