Apple do Care!

Despite the fact that I have AppleCare on my main G5 Quad Mac, I've never needed to us it so far. But recently, the hard drive on one of my offspring's MacBook decided that it had become a mere lump of metal rather than a useful piece of storage, and so AppleCare was used for the first time.

After a quick phonecall where it was quickly established that I had done all the things that one could reasonably be expected to do (check the PSU, check the battery, check if it boots with various keys held down, reset the PRAM, reset the power management, etc.), things moved rapidly to an appointment at the Apple Store on Regent Street in London.

The Genius Bar runs a queuing system even though you have timed appointments, and so I joined the set of people sitting on the wooden benches at the top of the stairs. After about twenty minutes I was called, and the Apple Genius rapidly established that the MacBook hard drive was indeed as dead as I had described. Once a repair form was filled in and signed, I left, expecting a 7 to 10 day repair time...

On my way back home (trains will be the subject of a forthcoming blog posting, so I'll say nothing now) my mobile phone took a message from the Apple Store telling me that the MacBook had been repaired and was ready for collection. Total elapsed time from leaving the MacBook to receiving the phonecall was less than three hours. Needless to say, I couldn't turn around, but I was still hugely impressed at being able to get such a rapid and relatively painless repair.

So, the MacBook is well again and I have a happy offspring once more. The experience was far less painful and much faster than I was expecting, and I have to give Apple 9/10 for a job well done. I deduct one point for the long queuing time at the Genius Bar, and for not having anything on the web-site that says that you don't need an appointment to pick up a repair...

The Marble and the Dishwasher

I used to be a hardware person. I then lived through the 'hybrid' years, when hardware mixed with software, and knowing how to read, disassemble, edit, compile, and program a 2764 EPROM would enable you to do most things. After that we have the current era, where software is all, and hardware seems to increasingly be little more than a platform to run code on.

But sometimes hardware and engineering do come in useful. Like yesterday when the dishwasher stopped working...

Nope, nothing blocked, no build-up of lime-scale, no broken timer mechanism. Much simpler than that!

The mains switch wouldn't lock in the On position, and so no power was getting to the electrics. A little bit of experimentation showed that something inside the switch had failed, and all that it needed was a little bit of pressure on the switch, and 'normal service' would be restored. Which is why I went looking for a marble.

A glass marble. The one I found was blue glass, with a swirly yellow bit in the middle, but that isn't important here. Armed with the marble and some clear tape (aka Sellotape, but that would be advertising) I placed the marble where a 'pressing finger' would go, taped it in place, and the dishwasher was working again. A victory for hardware, or for bodging - it depends on your point of view.

The picture shown here is with the switch in the 'Off' position, but you should be able to tell that from the position of the marble and the tape...

Of course, with a 13 year old dishwasher, getting spare parts isn't always possible, and I was intrigued that they didn't ask if I had a marble and some sticky tape, but they didn't, and so that was that. Time to start looking for a new one.

Of course, the marble is still fine, undamaged by its ordeal (or lack of), re-usable, ready to be pressed into service as an emergency general purpose fix-it device. What? Don't tell me you've never mis-used a marble?

( Glass marbles are available from toy shops. Sticky tape is available from many stationery shops and office equipment suppliers. Repairing dishwashers with this kind of advanced and highly technical equipment is done entirely at your own risk, and this article in no way recommends the use of marbles and sticky tape for any sort of repair. Do not try this at home. )