Back in September, I purchased my first Mac. It was a MacBook Pro “Core 2 Duo” 2.4 15″ (Unibody). It was a beautiful machine, aluminium and glass and all, and the most powerful laptop I’d ever owned. However, right out of the box, it was defective. When using the GeForce 9400M video card, the screen would intermittently flicker off and on. This became very annoying when watching videos or doing Photoshop work. There were no problems when using the 9600M GT. After searching the ‘net and finding many other people with the same problem, I decided to take the mac in to the Apple store for repair. The “Mac Genius” didn’t even want to look at the laptop, he told me it’s a known issue, gave me a case number and told me to contact Apple by phone to arrange a return. So that’s what I did.

In mid-October, I received MacBook Pro #2. Exact same model. This one worked perfectly. Until one day, I found a fly INSIDE the computer. I called up Apple support again, and they told me to take it to an “Authorized Service Provider”. So I made yet another trip to the Yorkdale Apple Store. They looked at the machine and took it in for repair, telling me it would be ready by tomorrow. In the end, the simple LCD replacement turned into much more and ended up taking a week. Turns out that somehow my “logic board” (Apple jargon for motherboard) had a short, and destroyed every new LCD they tried to install. So they called me to tell me they’d decided to replace it with a brand new one, and migrated all my personal data over.

I went in to the Apple store to pick up MacBook #3. They had migrated all my data over and it worked great, however it was a “Core 2 Duo” 2.53 15″ (SD). Faster CPU, better screen, but this one only has the integrated GeForce 9400M, and not the 9600M GT. So I told the “Genius” and he went to get the manager, who immediately upgraded me to the C2D 2.66 MacBook Pro 🙂

Needless to say, despite all the wasted time, I’m quite happy with Apple’s service. A free upgrade is always a good way to please a customer. Way to go Apple.