Hello,
This is a message for the commenter “WC from Bristow” who posted a review of Mac OS X Snow Leopard on the Apple Store website on Decemer 11, 2010 (review posted below for SEO/reference).
I just wanted to let you know that your MacBook Pro is DEFECTIVE. I hope that by some strange chance you might read this before your warranty expires. There is a known issue with the GeForce 9400M graphics chips in the original unibody MacBooks with removable battery. There is random screen flickering. This is a hardware issue, and no matter what you do will not go away. If your laptop is still under warranty, and even if it’s not, take it back to Apple and demand a replacement. They will probably swap it for a new, current-generation MacBook.
Just a friendly suggestion from someone who went through the same frustration.
Not Impressed
- Written by WC from Bristow
- 11-Dec-2010
Snow Leopard brought some serious problems. Mail will chew up 50 to 75% of the processor just idling. Flashing video/screen on MacBook Pro 15″ when on low power video card setting causes me to run all the time in high performance mode so it does not flash… and now my battery lasts for an hour and a half if I am lucky. (in part because of the processor overloading of Mail). This adds 2 lbs+ to the laptop because I must now carry two extra batteries (and I do).
I spend a lot of time in Mail… and bugs like copying the email address and getting a bunch of extra garbage that needs to be trimmed after pasting is aggravating. Dock lockups, Browser lockups. Spinning beach ball of death with much greater frequency than normal Leopard. At points cascading chronic app crashing which is “cured” by rebooting the machine (a la Windows)
Hope that Lion brings some relief. Snow Leopard has fleas.
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.
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