Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

Macbook

Oct 1, 2010 7:30PM PDT

I keep getting the message "restart your computer" when I turn my laptop on

Any idea what the problem may be please.

Thank you

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Okay
Oct 27, 2010 7:26AM PDT

So, you didn't call the actual Apple Store after all.

I don't know where you live.

But since the third-party repair service you refer to is in Santa Clara, you could also consider going to the Valley Fair Apple Store.

2855 Stevens Creek Blvd
Santa Clara, CA 95050
(40Cool 551-2150

http://www.apple.com/retail/valleyfair/

I can't promise they'll be cheaper, but consider this: Apple is in the business of making it's customers happy because that's what makes them money and gets them the rating of 87 on the Satisfaction scale, 10 points above everybody else.

The other guys are in the business of making money off repairs.

- Collapse -
Trust me
Oct 27, 2010 11:32AM PDT

Trust me, Apple Stores are just as hit or miss as anyone else. Apple hires people based on personality, not technical skill. They literally have a section in their handbook for service providers saying how you can teach technical skills to anyone, but a desire to interact with customers is next to impossible.

Which is true to some extent, but you can really only go so far when it comes to teaching people technical skills. You can teach someone how to replace a HDD or something like that, but you can't teach the intuition a good tech has which helps them correctly identify problems. Sometimes diagnostic programs are wrong. I had a system once, all the diagnostic programs said there was absolutely nothing wrong with it, but the thing kept locking up and other weird things. Turned out one of the logic board memory banks was bad. Strangely enough, the system could pass multiple memory checks, but if you took the RAM module out of a particular slot and moved it somewhere else, the system started working perfectly.

Apple's TSPS (tech support for certified techs) was convinced it was the RAM itself, and I disagreed. I was right, though I give them credit for giving me the idea to test the memory banks.

That's the sort of thing you can't teach a person, you either have it or you don't. Anyone can be taught how to repair a system, but diagnosing a problem is an altogether different scenario.

And I've been to that Valley Fair store, and it's a right PITA to get to. Might not be so bad lugging a laptop in there, but pity the person who has to lug a 27" iMac in. The Oakridge mall a few miles away in San Jose's Blossom Hill neighborhood is generally much better. It's quite a bit smaller, but the important bit is there's a door to the parking lot right around the corner. And it's kind of the *** end of the parking lot no one tends to want to park in, so you have a better chance of finding a place.

But long story short... Apple Stores are hit or miss as to whether or not the job will be done well, same as any other place. Honestly, I'd rather take my system to an AASP, since they are in it for the money, and with Apple eating their lunch, they will absolutely be customer focused.

I'll even help out on that front. I have personal experience with two Bay Area AASPs. One is called DT&T, and I do NOT recommend them in any way, shape, or form. Horrible company, and they're up in Fremont anyway. Another place is called Compu Pro in San Jose, and they do good work. I've run across a few systems they've worked on before, and been fooled into thinking the systems had never been worked on before, which is about as high a praise as you can get as a hardware tech. Granted in one case they forgot to transfer the airport card when they replaced a display on a 13" MacBook Pro, but they do some beautiful work.

And the way Apple's labor reimbursement system works, is it's on a sliding scale. You make more money if you fix the system quickly, with as few parts as possible, and it stays fixed for at least 30 days. As opposed to a flat rate fee almost every other company pays out.

I work as an Apple repair tech, so I know what I'm talking about. But I don't, nor have I ever, worked for Apple, or either of the companies I mentioned. I've so far been very unimpressed with Apple's retail stores. The only time I've found them useful was when I needed them to drill out a screw for me. Apple just LOVES their tiny little screws that are machined out of this really soft metal and have shallow groves for the screwdriver bit, so the slightest of slips and the entire screw is stripped. The MacBook Air is horrible... There's 13 of these PH000 screws in the display hinge you need to remove to get the thing off. It's not fun if any of them strip. But just working at an Apple store doesn't magically mean that this will never happen. There have been some horror stories about Apple stores same as anywhere else.

- Collapse -
MD
Oct 27, 2010 9:59PM PDT

I am actually in Maryland, there is a MAC store not far from me, I will take it there.

Thank you very much for caring.

- Collapse -
Addendum
Oct 27, 2010 11:15PM PDT

I forgot to mention that Apple is NOT an easy company to do business with. As a consumer they're great, but as a technician or someone who wants to sell Apple products in your store, they are a nightmare.

They make some nice stuff, which is why people want it, but just like happened in the 90s, they let the success go to their heads, become unbearably arrogant, and it eventually comes crashing down around them. I'm honestly surprised the iPod market hasn't imploded already. How many times can you sell someone essentially the same device for $500?

I only hear bits and pieces from when my boss' boss has a question about how Apple does things, and it leads to discussions about the weekly meetings with Apple reps. And I can pretty well imagine just how much worse it actually is from my experience as a tech and trying to deal with the Apple way of doing things. Like you have ten days to get a bad part back to Apple or they start charging you for it. Pray that something never gets lost in FedEx's network because trying to deal with THAT turns into a 2-3+ day odyssey very quickly.

Apple refuses to tell anyone, even certified techs, how many dead/stuck/bright pixels are allowed before we can replace a display. In a couple of service manuals they have a basic matrix, but it really only applies to that one specific model. If you have a system like that, you have to deal with Apple's SPS department, usually sending them a photo of the screen, and then they decide yes or no and give you a special verification code if it's yes. They can't just make a simple matrix saying if the screen size is X, then >= Y number of bad pixels means replace the display. That wastes a lot of my time as a tech. Time I could be spending fixing someone else's system.

- Collapse -
Pixels
Oct 28, 2010 12:31PM PDT

I heard somebody got sneaky and wrote an app that turns off pixels randomly.

Say you have four actual dead pixels and the threshold for replacement is five.

Apple says "uhm, no."

So you run this app, and now you have fifteen unresponsive pixels even after a reboot.

You send Apple the screenshot, and they agree to repair the screen.

Then you run the app again or reset the NVRAM.

- Collapse -
Possible
Oct 28, 2010 1:32PM PDT

It's possible, but I'm a bit skeptical. Because if it were messing with the NVRAM, then when the tech put in a new display, it should mess with that one too, and they'll think it's a DOA unit. When they get to two or three DOA parts, they should be getting very suspicious.

And any good tech would test a system personally before performing any repairs. When I first started my job, there was maybe a year's worth of backlog on systems. I found maybe 2 dozen or so that allegedly had bad HDDs that just needed the OS reinstalled. While I was waiting on my employer to get me the tools I needed to do the job, I fixed probably 20-30 systems without having to do anything but reinstall the OS. If the person turned off the program before sending it in, I'd be taking the system to my boss saying how there's nothing wrong with the display.

Now maybe there's a bit more to the program that I'm not aware of, if it exists/existed at all, but I don't see what you described as having that much success. Apple has probably been at the large scale warranty repair business longer than any other computer company, and they've probably seen about every possible way there is to game the system. I don't see something as crude and rudimentary as what you described having a lot of success. It's a nice story though.