In the Shop

[libertango]

So I went to the Genius Bar at Southcenter to have my Mac Mini looked at for the snow crash problem. (No, I didn't mention the web form issue. Ach, well.)

Anyway, my expectation was that they'd either a) try to troubleshoot the specific screen saver software, or b) replace the memory chips, since I think the Mac Mini uses shared memory for video.

Nope. They're going to replace the MLB, which is Apple's IBM-like TLA for "main logic board" -- what the rest of the industry calls a motherboard.

{blink}

Well. That's unexpected. In a good way -- it's a more substantive replacement than I thought likely.

That's the good news; that and it's covered by warranty, so no charge. The bad news is, they gave me a 3-5 day turnaround timeframe. On the gripping hand, it's not like I haven't been using akirlu's PC for months at a stretch lately.

I'd dearly love to see their database for how frequently the problem has come up.

Comments

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

The fact that they haven't tried tinkering first, but gone straight to the nuclear option, leads me to think this is something they've tackled more than once of late.

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

To quote the great UK Prime Minister Francis Urquhart: "I couldn't possibly comment!"

But then, one would think if the problem is widespread, my own posts about this on the intarwebs wouldn't dominate a google on mac "snow crash" quite so much. Somebody else would be talking about it.

Is great puzzlement.

[ckd]

Another possible explanation is that it's the simplest way to get the most likely failures fixed, and they can send the board off to get a full diagnostic working-over somewhere better equipped for it than a random Apple Store would be.

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

That, or with an EBITD margin of 22.75% they can afford to just replace the board outright, no diags needed. That is, you may well have the right idea on the front end, but not necessarily so on the back end.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

Unless other people are using different terms to "snow crash".

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

That's occurred to me. You'd think Mr. Stephenson had made the term fairly widespread, though.