HeXagon’s Hut

Few months ago I got a brand new ASUS Laptop. I felt like king. My ex’s laptop dies. She gets a brand new MacBook Pro. I’m jealous, until today.

She is on the internet, using the laptop and all is well. She walks away to go eat. Comes back about 20 minutes later at which time the display is off (power saving) but the laptop is not asleep. She clicks the mouse and gets a scrolling wheel. Great. Simple fix… Reboot.

Laptop attempts to reboot and doesn’t get past the gray screen with the apple logo and rotating status circle. She tries this, 3 to 5 times. We decide with the help of my father who has 3 Macs that a Genius Bar appointment would be nice. I make an appointment for 8:30 at the Stonebriar, Frisco Apple Store.

We show up, laptop in hand. I decide to boot it up to replicate the problem for them. Sure enough it locks again. The Apple certified technician, as he called himself, inserted a USB drive, indicated that the system had no mechanical problems and did a disk geometry repair. This is the point where little red flags went up in my head.

I ask him if he could check the entire S.M.A.R.T. status instead of just looking for ‘errors’. S.M.A.R.T. can have problems without logging any sort of error. I’ve been around enough enterprise level hardware in the last 3 years to know that S.M.A.R.T. status is not the almighty ruling authority on hard drive health. This guy gives me some run around on how it is the “Apple standard policy” that if a drive doesn’t reflect S.M.A.R.T. errors, its not broken. I mention again to him that I have been around my fair share of hardware and S.M.A.R.T. does not always report problems correctly and if he could show me the full output of S.M.A.R.T. Again, this guy gives me a run-around on it. I give up at this point. He is obviously in his own little world.

After the geometry repairs complete he tells us more than likely it wouldn’t fix the problem. Wait, so he just wasted 5 minutes of my time? Thanks. He says an Archive and Install would be needed and that we can do it from the CD’s at home since they charge for it. With my ex becoming agitated at me for talking to this guy and pressing him for information, i give up. We leave and go home.

I get home and try and install Snow Leopard to her MacBook Pro again. Wait, why can’t I install to the drive? Oh what the F(@# now? As it turns out the file system is so trashed on the drive, probably due to drive failure and repeated hard cycles because of the failing drive, that the kernel can’t handle it. The kernel reports a file system problem, flips out, and removes the device from the kernel’s register of devices. Now I’ve got the drive removed, hooked up to my fault tolerant, user repairable, and user friendly ASUS Laptop running Windows 7 with HFSExplorer pulling her data off.

Thanks Apple, you wasted my gas, money, and time to give me a run-around and bullshit.

If anyone is interested in who to steer clear of in the Apple store in Frisco, TX:
Here is his business card info. He is a complete moron in my opinion and has no business working there if he isn’t going to do anything but spout his “I’m holier than thou,” crap.

Name: Douglas Parker
Title: Lead Genius

This guy wasted my time and money and treated me like another dumb customer. I resent it and I refuse to do business with Apple ever again.