While editing some images in PhotoShop this morning, my home iBook (2002 vintage) went belly-up; the screen went to vertical bars and all attempts to restart produced no startup screen, no spinning of the drive. Realizing it is likely a significant hardware failure, I checked my AppleCare warranty and saw I had only 7 more days until it expired! I’ll be dropping it off to the IC unit at the Phoenix Apple Store this morning.
I’ve had 5 personal Macs since 1989, and another handful and a half at work, and this is the first time I’ve experienced a total meltdown. So here is your warning, go home and get a good backup (and do it again next month); I have some partial backups but am already fretting about some files, photos, and a pile of tunes that will either be lost or need to be resurrected.
Update: The Apple Store sure is busy, must be nano fever. There is like 1 or 2 “geniuses” at the bar and like 10 employees with sales, if that says anything. Anyhow, when I explained my problem, I was rather embarassed with the start-up screen came on cause it did not on 5 attempts at home. I immediately felt like an Apple-Idiot, someone who could not even find the power button or knew how to move a mouse. Fortunately, the sick iBook abruptly flashed a screen of thick, colored bars, which came and went a few times. Genius 2 said to Genius 1, “MLB?”, and the reply was, “MLB” — no kidding kids, that is Main Logic Board. Off it went, 7 days before the warranty went belly up. I feel lucky.
Congrats on the AppleCare, condolences on the data and MLB. Timing is everything.
well… the motherboard is fried, not the hard drive. the data should be fine. If they just swap in a new MLB, you should get it back in the same condition it was in when you dropped it off – except it should work 🙂
I believe that vintage of iBook also has several repair extension programs as well. You might want to ask about that when you pick it up as your warranty is just about done.
We have a couple of thousand iBooks in our district now and the earlier models had a lot of MLB and screen failures.