iQuest Studios

I went down to the Apple Support Centre today to collect my new battery for my MacBook Pro. I must say I am rather pleased with the job they have done on my laptop. The sunken in Power button was fixed, and the bottom case with some bulging part above the lid button was also fixed. Even my very dirty screen was wiped for me. All this for the excellent price of $0, even though my warranty’s expired, all thanks to the exception code given to me by the very friendly Apple Staff on the support hotline.

But I couldn’t help thinking: what if I don’t have the exception code? Well, from the price list displayed at the Support Centre: it would cost me S$100 just to send the machine in for diagnosis, and extra costs for my replacement parts (the battery costs about S$235, and I am told that to fix my sunken in Power button, it would cost another S$100 to S$200) and of course transportation fees for the parts to come in from the US. So of course the guy recommended me Applecare, which extends the warranty of the product to 3 years from the date of purchase. Of course I politely declined his offer, given that it costs S$629. (Can you believe it, Applecare for the Macbook Pro is more expensive than any other Mac line - even more expensive than Applecare for iMac or the Mac Pro!)

Now, as we all know, Apple has poor quality control, and the problems and defects for it’s various products are numerous, especially issues of swollen batteries and excessive thermal grease. A look at the MacBook Pro’s wiki page on the Apple Defects Site and one could probably guess why lots of people chose to buy Applecare. Is it possible that Apple is so evil so as to deliberately lower their quality control, in hope of increasing sales of their wildly expensive Applecare plan? (The Applecare plan for the Macbook Pro is 20% of the price of the base model). I mean it is possible right? It would seem like a great chance to profit. (I have never seen exactly what’s in the Applecare box, but I can’t believe people actually pay S$600+ for a paper box)

But of course, to quote my friend: “Big brain, evil heart; everything’s possible.”. Seeing that I am such a person too (ok, maybe that was a tad egoistic), can I really fault Apple?

Till next time,
cheers

Tags: Apple, Applecare, defects, evil, macbook pro

Ever wondered how my workspace looks like? (probably not, but nevertheless, here’s a chance to find out)

Larger Image

As you can see, I have my Macbook Pro hooked up to a secondary monitor, with a dual screen setup. I find the extra screen estate really valuable when doing coding. On one screen, I will be running Dreamweaver, and on the other I will have Safari open, so I can quickly make changes to the code and refresh the end product. Dual screen setups basically increases productivity by a lot, and that’s why when I am out on the road, I feel very handicapped without my secondary screen. By the way, the thing my laptop is sitting on is actually an old flatbed scanner that is no longer in use. I have also propped my MBP pro up at the back, so as to raise it to the same height as my secondary monitor and to allow for ventilation at the same time.

To the left of my Macbook Pro, you can see my external hard disk, which is connected to the Apple aluminum keyboard on the keyboard drawer. I mainly turn it on once everyday to run a Time Machine backup.

Then besides my external hard drive is my speaker. I am sorry that my sub woofer and my right speaker is out of the picture, but you probably can tell that I am barely cutting it as it is. Anyway, it’s a Creative speaker, which I brought end last year as an upgrade to my old speakers, which were quite screwed. I hardly use my speakers anyway, as I have my iPod connected to a stereo system in my room.

Then you have my second Mac, the Macbook. It may seem to be independent of the MacBook Pro, but it’s not entirely true. I have hooked up (wirelessly) both computers through a useful utility called teleport, so I can control that Mac with the same Keyboard and mouse I use to control my Macbook Pro. In fact, I have set it up so that I can control the entire setup with any of the keyboards/trackpads/mouse connected to any one of the Macs. So basically that Mac acts like a third screen, though the applications that are running on it is separate from those running on the MacBook Pro. I use it to run some background tasks (such as converting videos) and extra web browsing screen estate. (The cool thing about teleport is that it also supports file drag and drop and clipboard copy and pasting)

I doubt you can see it clearly, but I have a custom built desktop PC tucked away at the bottom right. (the thing that had an Apple sticker on it). That is my gaming machine (I removed bootcamp from my Macbook Pro as I found Windows XP to be a waste of space) and backup server, where I dump the older files.

When I need to, I would either boot the Macbook into Windows XP, or turn on the desktop and hook my secondary monitor to it, mostly to test how certain pages look under Windows IE. I believe that a workspace layout really really boost my productivity on the computer.

Just a random post. UPDATE: I ended my 4 week cycling hiatus with a 40KM ride today, and I feel so much better now.

Till next time,
cheers

Tags: macbook, macbook pro, teleport, workspace