Macintosh to be specific... A lemon Apple...

It all started when my old IBM Thinkpad started making rather disconcerting noises. The day had finally arrived; Thinkpad a22m had put in a good six years of trouble free service but the sites and sounds of laptop aging were suddenly occurring at an alarming rate.

I started to research laptops. I wanted an ultra portable, but found the prices way out of my little league ball park. However, a friend, and card carrying member of the Church of Apple (CoA), pointed me in the direction of the soon to be released 13 inch MacBooks. After more research, primarily on spec / price points comparisons (after all, Mac has (had?) an outstanding reputation for quality), it was clear that the MacBooks were a great deal.

So I decided to wait (and hoped my Thinkpad would as well) on the release of the new 13 inch MacBooks. My order was processed on the 30-May-2006.

Let it be known, that I am not an early adopter. I can't afford to be. I buy new technology when it is old. When the bugs are worked out and supply and demand has shifted in my favour. Unfortunately, on this particular occasion, my guard was down and I drank the CoA Kool Aid. I bought the shiny new technology, I became an early adopter. Bad move.

I am typing this now on a replacement MacBook that arrived on 10-Oct-2006. That's four months and ten days after I ordered the MacBook. Aside from the two week delivery, the rest of the time was spent on the phone with tech support, dropping it off at an authorised Mac dealer for repairs and replacement parts, and finally shipping it back and waiting another few weeks for the replacement I am now typing away on.

This web site simply tells the story of my 'early adopter' punishment. I believe Apple has addressed the bad logic board, inverter board, and heat sink issues. At this point, now that Apple is beyond the first generation of manufacturing cycles, I would have no qualms with suggesting others buy a MacBook. I purchased the first generation based solely on faith in Apple's quality assurance processes. I was blinded by the anecdotal evidence of the CoA faithful and the preachers from Apple marketing. Having used Window's OS on PCs for so long, I have grown use to paying for being a beta tester, I expected more of Apple.

Got a MacBook story of your own? Feel free to post it here.