Even I have computer troubles. I was using my Mac today (17-inch MacBookPro that’s fairly new) and all of a sudden a pattern of weird boxes came on the screen, then the mouse froze, and now it won’t properly boot, same pattern remains on screen. Sigh. I hate it when my computers die. At least I now have a backup. So back to work. Who said Macs never crash? Not me.
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Robert Scoble works at Fast Company.TV (title: Managing Director). Everything here, though, is his personal opinion and is not read or approved before it is posted. No warranties or other guarantees will be offered as to the quality of the opinions or anything else offered here.
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April 23rd, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Have you tried booting in safe mode?
April 23rd, 2007 at 4:26 pm
Wow…first Patrick’s Mac, then your 17-incher. Sounds like Macs are biting the dust in your household.
April 23rd, 2007 at 4:27 pm
It worries me that everywhere i look people’s macbooks and macbook pro’s are dying on them!
I was downloading the back catalogue of diggnation episodes the other day when i came across one where kevin rose’s macbook wouldn’t stop rebooting.
It’s the only thing putting me off buying one, that…and the fact that apple will probably release a new model the second i do buy one.
April 23rd, 2007 at 4:39 pm
he he. Be ready to get flamed for making the ‘unthinkable’ happen.
April 23rd, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Ouch. Although really, the issue is more that laptops crash than anything. I hope Apple is prompt enough to give you a replacement and that you don’t have a problem like that again (or at least, not for a long time).
April 23rd, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Was it a hardware or software issue? I assume hardware, but I’m not completely tech-savvy on all that. Sounds like memory or something.
April 23rd, 2007 at 5:04 pm
As Robert mentioned, try the safe boot and see what happens.
———-
I think your problem is really just being friends with Winer, he has more computer problems than anyone I know. May explain Patrick’s problem also :-)
———-
Luckily, in 20 years of using Macs, I’ve had just one hardware problem (other than spilling a cup on coffee into my PowerBook) and that was just a power supply.
April 23rd, 2007 at 5:15 pm
I’m a fan of OS X and Apple design, but based on the sheer ratio of crapped-out new Macs that I’ve seen in the last six months or so, I have to believe that QC at Apple is sub-par. Out of 6 machines, 3 MacBook Pros, and 3 MacBooks, 2 MacBook Pros and 2 MacBooks had to be sent back to Apple for repairs. That’s terrible! (…and I’m not including Scoble’s misfortune either.) Too bad, because when they work, they’re pretty wonderful.
April 23rd, 2007 at 6:04 pm
I’ll supress my shock for a few brief seconds ;). Sounds like a video card issue. My Toshiba M4 did the same thing. Twice. Since you probably push your GPU pretty hard, it wouldn’t surprise me if you fried it.
Apple would be incredibly stupid not to repair your machine poste haste. You should raise a big stink about it if they don’t. Every Mac customer counts, especially if they want to have 7% of the next billion computer users ;).
April 23rd, 2007 at 6:19 pm
Just go down to the Happy Apple Store, they’ve got geniuses there.
Every time I go in to a Happy Apple Store there are many, many people waiting to talk to these geniuses.
April 23rd, 2007 at 6:19 pm
I had that happen to me once, after waking my sleeping powerbook. All I could do was the hold-the-power-button-until-tone-sounds thing, which rebooted it. Haven’t seen it since.
April 23rd, 2007 at 7:13 pm
That happened to my 17″ Powerbook too, but this is about 2 years ago. When I took it to the shop it was the motherboard that had gone. They said it would cost nearly as much to fix as to buy a newer model with more features and that they would put some money towards a new one! Good game.
Big mac fan, just waiting for Apple to release a tablet and I’ll buy a new one! For now I’m on XP…tried Vista, but couldn’t see how it even touched the sides of OSX!
April 23rd, 2007 at 10:05 pm
Mac crashes - try this, try that…
Windows crashes - Microsoft sucks!
April 23rd, 2007 at 10:16 pm
Does sound like a h/w issue, prob graphics card like Rober McLaws said.
Altho I’m a Mac fan, I’m getting more and more concerned about Apple QC on their hardware too, especially laptops.
I think the price of affordable Macs has been paid for in reduced quality.
April 23rd, 2007 at 11:30 pm
Robert, you should call them if it is still within the warranty. You may also call their quality control department, I had a positive expereince with them.
Few years back, I purchased a Mac for a relative. They messed up on shipping. But after calling customer service several times, they were able to connect me to another department. It was a third party run audit department — at least that’s what I was told. That department immediately issued me a $100 refund. They asked me how much compensation I need to cool down my anger, I asked $100 and they gave me. I really liked it. I do not remember whether I was also taking Microsoft discount, if I was then may be they wanted to impress the competing company’s employee:)
On a not so positive note, two years ago a friend gifted a shuffle to my wife. First, for some reason whenever we connected the shuffle to the computer the iTune keep erasing the music collection on the shuffle. It turned out that it was auto sync, because we were syncing from a CD and when the CD is not in itsimply deleted the collection. Few months later, a firmware upgrade basically destroyed the shuffle. I called in but they were not a great help. They keep suggesting me to visit an Apple store. Shuffle prices fell, and it was not worth taking the hassle for a few months used iPod. I am sure if I had gone to their store they would have fixed it.
My wife got a Samsung and she is happy with it except for the USB charging. All our laptops go in sleep modes and we do not know how to keep USB active while the computer is on standby. Somehow shuffle was charging much faster.
I think Apple QC is great in my experience. At least they are willing to correct their issues. And of course if I recall correctly they had great candies on Haloween for my daughter.
Disclaimer: The commentator is a Microsoft employee. The experiences described were observed in personal life unrelated to employment (except for the possible Microsoft employee discount from Apple:))
April 23rd, 2007 at 11:31 pm
I am so happy to hear all of this good news about their pitiful Macky books crashing, serves anybody who buys one of these hoot machines right to have lost all of yer data too. I this I that. buy a PC. quit kidding around with child’s toys!
April 23rd, 2007 at 11:36 pm
Larry: I was running Vista in Parallels when it started giving me the weird pattern. But I already have a PC. Two of them, in fact.
April 23rd, 2007 at 11:55 pm
To add some balance, I have a Mac Powerbook from 2002, that still runs like a charm. :) So Apple makes quality hardware (or at least they did; I admit that my friends who have new Intel-based MacBooks haven’t been as fortunate).
I had two Dell notebooks since 2002, both of which died within a year. I don’t buy Dell anymore. HP has a new TabletPC that will likely be my next Windows notebook purchase.
April 24th, 2007 at 12:51 am
You sure MS not send their agent to your computer?
Look like you forced to intall ubuntu, and tomorrow you will posting about it :)
Bad adv for apple.
Hope apple give you replacement, before more people read these ;).
April 24th, 2007 at 1:01 am
Pipit: Apple doesn’t care about bloggers who have bad experiences with their equipment.
It’s interesting that that behavior earned Dell a black eye, but in Apple’s case nothing happens.
Steve Jobs’ has us all under this weird spell.
April 24th, 2007 at 2:32 am
Curiosly, my own 17″ MacBook Pro’s screen has also died, the top third is one solid color, the bottom two thirds a different solid color. Replacement screen? Apparently, not in stock, so it could be weeks until I get it back.
It seems strange how manufacturers insist on us using these very expensive software packages for all kinds of things, from editing video to making spreadsheets, but then they treat their customers as if they were using a toy, which won’t affect their work when it goes into service for days or weeks. There isn’t a correlation between what they say they are selling, and the service they give to what they are selling (hey…I’m starting to sound like Donald Rumsfeld!).
Alas, I hope the MacBook I got for my wife will serve as a temporary replacement (she was not pleased I took it back!).
April 24th, 2007 at 4:13 am
Hey Mike, you’re right, you would expect better service for a product this expensive. BTW the people who work in our local Apple Store are incredibly unkind and arrogant, much more so than the guys who work in my favourite ‘ordinary’ pc shop.
April 24th, 2007 at 4:27 am
One advantage of assembling my own pcs from scratch all these years, and dissecting broken ones, macs, too, is understanding how it seems all about the quality of individual components. Asus motherboards, Seagate hard drives, Corsair memory, LG optical drives…Athlon XP processors ..the time has come for somebody to simpply put together stuff known to work for years so we can have Dune-like technology you can confidently hand down to your kids. Laptops seem to be going the way of the cellphone, perhaps? Not meant to be serviced beyond the life of its battery? And don’t get me started about big screen TVs…
April 24th, 2007 at 5:29 am
Robert,
So I was wondering, what video editing software will you use on your Windows machine now, while waiting for your Mac?
April 24th, 2007 at 6:10 am
Actually, I should be more specific:higher quality capacitors rated to 10-15% over-spec, rather than 5%, make a huge difference, for example. ICs over-spec’d for higher power handling. People should demand to know these things, and not tolerate anything less.
April 24th, 2007 at 6:47 am
I might also add a note to be VERY aware of possibly battery issues. I’m hearing a lot of reports now in the online community about expanding battery issues (not exploding though, thank god) which have a tendency to warm the case, destroy the motherboard, etc.
Even if the battery is good or isn’t good, I honestly think a LOT of the problems have to do with cooling - the Intel systems run a lot hotter than the G4’s, and so require extra attention to keeping the whole system cool. On a Desktop that’s pretty easy, and I’ve heard of VERY few problems with any desktop system from Apple. It seems to be their MacBook Pro’s that mostly have the issues (probably because both the higher clock speed, as well as added heat from the GPU and other sources). Just my $.02
April 24th, 2007 at 6:55 am
“Sigh. I hate it when my computers die.”
I’ve owned several computers over my life span so far and use them intensely, never had one die. Most people I’ve helped with computer problems had one thing in common, they fiddled with their settings to much…
April 24th, 2007 at 8:11 am
I have only had one malfunction, on a POWER PC (!!!) where the hard disk died.
I’ve also had a very positive experience with customer service for my old MacBook. I dropped it, plain and simple, and the hinge stuck, ripping my screen in half down the side. So, I had this gnarly gash which I ended up keeping together with a binder clip.
I took it to the Genius Bar, told them it just happened when I opened the top, started crying, and even though the guy said “it looks like you dropped it,” we sent it off and they replaced the screen for free.
Maybe it wasn’t a good experience with customer service as much as a good experience LYING, but I’m still tickled that I didn’t have to pay the $800 someone quoted me to fix it.
Maybe if you take it in and start crying?
April 24th, 2007 at 8:22 am
The WAAAAAAA starts now! Or did it start 10 years earlier?
Jay, from Bangalore
http://ideaburger.blogspot.com
April 24th, 2007 at 8:54 am
The ratio of good to bad Macs isn’t any different than any other consumer electronics device. It’s just that because it’s Apple and there’s so much religion around it, people make a lot of noise when one dies.
My MacBook Pro is over a year old with no problems. My Mac Pro is about nine months old with no problems (other than not having any software to really exercise those four Xeon cores ;)).
April 24th, 2007 at 9:09 am
Oh, really? OK, Mr. Videographer - where’s the video of your troubled Mac? Conveniently MIA! Prove it™
But let’s get a discussion going about it, right?
April 24th, 2007 at 9:56 am
Jay: I’d be happy to turn on Ustream.tv today so you can see my dead mac.
I have a separate Mac for video editing.
April 24th, 2007 at 9:57 am
Eddie: I haven’t played with any of the default settings on this Mac.
April 24th, 2007 at 10:47 am
…”and my Mac was like, bleep bleepbeepbeep”…
Did it “devour” your video? ;)
//k
April 24th, 2007 at 11:00 am
I’ve owned my 17″ Mac Book Pro for about 3 months.
I can only hope it’s as reliable as the aluminum 15″ Powerbook G4 it replaced (which I still own) and the 15″ titanium G4 I used before that. Both of which were problem free.
However, I do have clients who’s Macs have died. It does happen.
April 24th, 2007 at 11:16 am
[...] such as these, here and here help spur my desire to get a mac for myself. And posts like this cause a little [...]
April 24th, 2007 at 11:33 am
Call me confused. All the PR about MACs and I was considering to get one. This certainly doesn’t sound good. :)
April 24th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Apples Achillies heel on the mac is their hardware quliaty. We allmost never have to do more then the occasional reboot in a office full of macs, but every ohter week one or two are going in for some kind of hardware failure. That being said the window boxes are very solid hardware wise… but well after a while you can’t keep the os working in any reasonable capacity. What if we lived in a world where apple suddenly stoped cutting corners on teh hardware… Hmmmm.
April 24th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
[...] Back to Windows (my Mac died) Even I have computer troubles. I was using my Mac today (17-inch MacBookPro that’s fairly new) and all of a […] [...]
April 24th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
Windows system failures=On average one every single day over a decade of upgrades and tweaking that made an expert out of me against my will. Electrified anal rape.
Mac system failures=0 times in my lifetime so far (starting in elementary school)
Which would any sane person choose? I made my home rape-free in August 2005.
April 24th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
If you were using Vista and Parallels on the Mac when it crashed, i’d be worrying about Vista, not Mac. i bet that’s what caused your crash.
what did the Mac store say?
April 24th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
how old are you and what do you mean your mac died…oooo i get it its your compuer!lol!!
April 24th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
Troy: They use FCP…on Apple what else do you use? Well, Avid has hit for the platform…
April 24th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
I had a similar thing just happen with my iMac. I woke it from sleep to be greeted with weird, diagonal, pixelated boxes all over the screen. Restarting it didnt help as it wouldn’t even get to the login screen and still had the pattern all over. I took it to an Apple support site and they replaced the logic board. It was disheartening to see that happen, but at least the service was good.
April 26th, 2007 at 12:56 am
I had a string of Dells that fried their motherboards in the first month. I had a run of hard drive failures in my PC’s and more recently, power supply failures. No platform is going to be free of manufacturing defects nor are they going to be immune from the effects of time and heavy usage. I don’t think there is any right OS as much as there is one that works best for the individual. Can’t we all get along?
April 30th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
No we can’t, because in the office environment, way too many Microsoft devotees ask us Macheads for help because we have so much free time from not having to constantly fix our computers.
If we wanted to be bent over and rammed up the arse by the worst modern operating systems on the face of the earth, we would fly to India, pattern a Punjabi accent, change our names, put a red dot on our heads, and work in a call center for 1 sandwich a day as payment.
October 15th, 2008 at 9:08 am
I just turned on my iMac 17″, the chrome one… and the entire screen was covered with the black and white, video banding pattern (looks like fine houndstooth fabric in black and white)… Moire pattern… can’t recall what you call this in tech terminology, as I’ve been away from video work for a long time. Interestingly, the patern slowly changed from covering the entire screen to boxes of the pattern, enough so I could get online and do a search. My search landed here on Scoble’s blog… go figure! So, after a few minutes, reading through these posts above, my screen is clear and free, and all seems to be back up and running smoothly. So… what’s going on? This iMac was brand new exactly 1 year ago, almost to the date… freaky… wondering if I got the “implode on Halloween bomb”? Now what…?