Just a minor update: my MacBook Pro has made it safely to Texas, and is being operated on (hopefully) as we speak!

As a diversion, while I wait patiently for my MacBook Pro to be put through the paces and ultimately returned to me (probably, alas, with CPU whine in-tact), I punched some silly phrases into Google, to measure sheer “hit count”:

This chart proves nothing. But it does motivate thinking. The word “macbook” is twenty times more likely to appear on the same web page with “hate” or “noise” than it is with “aardvark.”

And if that ain’t science, then I don’t want to be a scientist.

Next month I will observe the 10th anniversary of my start date at Apple Computer: May 13, 1996. Now, this statement on its own is misleading, and doesn’t adequately reflect the amount of time I spent at Apple. For one thing, I don’t work there anymore, and haven’t since August of 2002. For another, I started as a contractor almost 2 years prior to that date. But that start date is important. It’s burned into my brain forever, alongside my Apple employee number. Why? It’s the day, the pivotal fork in the road where my life changed forever.

You’ll find that Apple employees past and present “just happen” to know the exact date of their hire. I’m sure the phenomenon applies to employees of other companies as well, but I bet if you take a group of 10 people, 5 of whom are Apple veterans, and ask if they know off the top of their head the exact start date for any of their past jobs, the Apple employees will beat out the others with frightening regularity.

One reason for this obsession with the date of hire is pride. The day you start at Apple, be it as an administrative assistant or the CFO, you’re joining a proud legacy, and you know it. I still remember the thrill of receiving that offer letter. I grinned wide, stared down at the relatively meager salary I’d be earning, and signed away my agreement to start in two weeks.

I wanted two weeks because I needed to emphasize the start of something incredible and new. I needed a rite of passage. I had been Daniel Jalkut, relatively bright student turned Apple QA contractor. Now I was Daniel Jalkut, Apple employee and engineer. I was part of the family, and I felt that everywhere I went people would just sense that I was different.

I traveled to Mexico during that two week pre-employment vacation, and suddenly I wanted to relate to everything Apple wherever I went. In Tijuana, where I walked across the border prepared to catch a bus further south, I spotted a night club with an old Apple-II era logo as its marquee. I was tempted to barge into the night club and announce myself: “Soy empleado de Apple. ¿Como están?” The fact that a group of Tijuana drunks would be totally disinterested in this fact didn’t compromise my feeling of kinship with them.

Getting My Feet Wet

My first manager at Apple was an extremely kind yet gruff guy who seemed to respect my youthful ambition to always do my best. Afraid that I would be fired when they found out what a fraud I was (a common fear among all people, I found out later), I kept copious notes for the first month, detailing every minute of time I put into the bugs that were assigned to me. When the first month expired, my manager checked in with me on my progress. I reviewed my notes with some dismay: I had only fixed 4 bugs (albeit some hard ones) in the first month I was there. The time had been spent on necessary tasks like becoming familiar with the sources, organizing my office, etc. I nervously admitted this during our meeting, to which he replied something along the lines of “Geez, leave some for the other guys to do!” He had expected a much longer break-in period before I touched the sources at all.

He was always straight with his employees, and never sugar-coated even bad news from further up the management chain. His first act of shocking managerial honesty came in the meeting where I learned I was being hired:

“They told me to negotiate salary with you. I am allowed to pay you as low as $X or as high $Y. Which do you want?”

$Y was about $15,000 higher than $X, and each was a lot more than I’d ever made before. I laughed nervously and said confidently, “I’ll take $Y.” During that first meeting I wondered if it was a manager trick to get me to take a low number, but over the following few years I learned it was just his style.

Give it to the New Guy

A funny piece of trivia about my first job at Apple is that I was technically hired to work on PowerTalk/AOCE, a technology which had just been essentially cancelled, and the former team laid off. Apparently Apple had to keep the sources “at the ready” and have somebody prepared to do a quick bug fix if one of the important clients of the software ran into an emergency. So they gave my manager permission to hire a general integration engineer whose top priority would be maintaining PowerTalk. This didn’t exactly thrill me, but the fact is PowerTalk opened the door to my permanent employment at Apple.

On my first day, I received three CD-R discs which had been rescued from the disbanded PowerTalk team. The PowerTalk source repository, as it was, lay in my hands. My responsibilities were simply to make it build. Anybody who complains about Xcode or UNIX makefiles should count their blessings. The PowerTalk build was fueled by a complex MPW script that, among other things, relied on the computer’s hard disk being named exactly the same as the PowerTalk build engineer’s disk had been named. Fortunately, I never had to actually fix anything in it.

My life changed forever on May 13, 1996 (a week before my birthday). Nothing I’ve achieved professionally would have been possible were it not for the encouragement, camaraderie, and pride that my coworkers and the company itself shared with me. It says something important that Apple still wielded such magic powers 20 years after its founding. And it says something even more that today those powers are as strong as ever.

Stay tuned for more “Remembering Apple” articles as I reflect on the past and indulge in nostalgia. From here on out all reflections on the past will be tagged “folklore,” in honor of Andy Hertzfeld’s folklore.org project.

I was getting increasingly anxious to finally bite the bullet and pursue repair and/or replacement of my defective MacBook Pro. I have held off for a while hoping that Apple would get its story straight and hopefully have a comprehensive, time and cost effective method for dealing with these complaints. After the initial experience of calling and scheduling a product return, I will say that I’m pretty pessimistic that all of my problems will be fixed, but I’m hoping for the best.

Making the Call

I was inspired to finally call when Tom Harrington told me about his experience reporting similar (though not quite as extensive) problems. Something about the courage of numbers or something. After I called, I also noticed a good write-up by Jason O’Grady on the subject of his similar experience. In my opinion, the more people who speak openly about this problem and the results of pursuing a solution, the better.

Here’s how my process went. I called up AppleCare and got a very friendly, sympathetic representative, who dutifully wrote down every last smidgen of detail I recited to her (for the record, I only complained about display buzz, display squeal, cpu whine, mooing, and heat). I asked her up-front if it made sense, given that I was going to reveal a laundry list of MBP issues, that I be transferred to a “product specialist.” She let me know that if that were to happen she would have to provide them with a written list of the complaints anyway, so I went through that process with her.

It took about 15 minutes and when we were finished I was put on hold while she talked to the product specialist. I never actually got to talk to the specialist, but apparently my representative sort of relayed the facts of my problem to the specialist, and it was the specialist’s job to bat down as many of them as possible while essentially only admitting to the likelihood that the screen buzzing was the known screen inverter problem.

The verdict? “Send in the MacBook Pro for the display buzzing and hopefully everything else will magically get fixed as a side-effect.” Uh, yeah right. So I explained again as cordially as possible that I understand the process a little bit, and if I’m just going to end up sending it straight back in to Apple for further repairs, it might save us all a lot of time and money if she can emphasize my desire to get the other issues addressed.

In the end my tactic didn’t really work. After almost an hour total spent on the phone, I was given a dispatch number which would be used to track the repair process. Oh well. I’m really pessimistic that anything but the screen buzzing will be fixed on this round, but at least that will be a start, and marks the beginning of my due diligence in letting Apple repair the defects of this computer.

An hour or two after the telephone call, I got an email confirmation, summarizing the gist of my complaint as “Customer Sensory Issues.” This was the same assessment Tom had received, and I think the fact that more than one of us has gotten this assessment betrays Apple’s failure to own up here. Maybe chalk this one up as another case of “unfortunate use of language,” but the problems here are not “customer sensory issues.” True, there would be no problem if I didn’t have senses, but if that were true I would also have no credit card. And $2000+ from that credit card would also not be sitting in Apple’s bank account right now. These are “MacBook Pro Noise Issues” – not customer sensory issues!

Pickup and Delivery

To Apple’s credit, they pay for all the shipping costs to and from the repair center, but the amount of time I had to dedicate to being at home just to make this happen I think embodies the reasons people hesitate to embark on the process. First, I had to wait for the delivery of the empty box. It was shipped “overnight” but I found out that it really means “within 2 business days.” I was so eager to be here for the delivery of the empty box, that I practically didn’t leave the house for the whole next day after calling AppleCare. Missing the box would mean an extra day of waiting! The first day passed and no box. Shucks! Fortunately, on the second day the doorbell rang at around 11:30AM and I ran down to make sure I took possession. Since I’m up on the third floor, it’s not unheard of for delivery people to give up and rush off before I’m even able to make it down there (we don’t have a buzzer or intercom). I raced down the stairs, my heart pounding, and thrust open the door.

The box was sitting alone on the porch. A yellow DHL truck revved off down the street.

Ah, quaint, trusting Somerville. I guess I didn’t have to be here at all. Hope they don’t leave it on the porch when it’s full! I took the box upstairs, opened it up, gave my MacBook Pro a final kiss goodbye, and packaged it according to instructions. I was especially impressed with this little tablet of individual packaging tape slices. Neat! My future best friend lay waiting in the box, now all I have to do is call DHL back and get them to pick it up!

I was hoping that maybe because DHL had just been here moments before, they might still be in the neighborhood to come back and pick it up. I guess it doesn’t work that way. I called at around 12:30AM and got an estimated pickup time of “by 6:00PM.” OK. that’s kind of a huge chunk of my day, but hopefully they’ll come early.

I sat around (working, but sitting around) all day waiting for that door bell so I could once again make the sprint down the stairs, this time with the precious cargo in tow. Hours passed and no doorbell. I occasionally feared that somehow I’d missed the doorbell, so I went downstairs to check for any sign of a stealth visit. No signs.

At 6:00PM – pretty much on the dot – I called the DHL number to see what was up. I didn’t particularly have anywhere to be, but I had postponed things like taking a shower all day so I could be present for this process. I’d just as soon out of “being DHL’s lap dog” mode, and back into my normal daily routine.

“Hi I’m just calling to check on the status of a scheduled pickup I made for today.”

“The system shows that the driver is on schedule to make the pickup by 7:00!”

“7:00? Oh, I must have misunderstood earlier. Hmm. Thanks.”

I hadn’t misunderstood. But I was trying to be nice. I didn’t want any chance of this pickup guy getting angry with me and purposely mishandling precious. Anyway, it was just another hour so I figured I’d wait it out and finally be done with it. When 7:00 rolled around, I starting getting irritated again. What the heck. This time I waited until 7:15, pacing around the living room and peering up and down the street for signs of the yellow truck. I called DHL again – I just wanted to make sure the driver didn’t check out for the day without picking up my package.

“The driver is running a little late today but it still shows he’s scheduled to make your pickup at 7:30”

MMmmmmmmkay. I guess a six hour window isn’t enough time to work with when picking up packages. I wouldn’t mind so much if they would just narrow it down a little or give me updates throughout the day. Like “there’s no chance in hell we’ll get there until after 5:00 so feel free to go out for lunch.” Even the DMV does a better job than this. At this point I’m pissed but still being polite on the phone. What if I had dinner plans or something? DHL is not winning my affection.

Finally at 7:45 (only 15 minutes late!) the driver rings the bell. I sprint down the stairs faster than ever, making as much noise as possible on the way. This is how I let the delivery guys know that I am not only home, but I’m completely insane. When I get to the door and open it, I see the driver wielding a portable bar-code reader. I rotate the box so that the scannable label faces him.

“I see you’ve done this before!” he says cheerfully.

“Heh.” I say, trying to remain upbeat and not knowing how to phrase “No, I’ve never done it before but I’m incredibly brilliant and I know what those magic guns you use are capable of.”

I continue making smalltalk, offer my sympathies to the driver as he complains that he still has several more pickups to make. He complains that there are too many one-way streets around here and he keeps getting lost. I feel sorry for him, but I also feel sorry for the several people after me on his list, who are also dancing around looking for yellow trucks to appear on the horizon.

Optimizing for Success

As I said earlier, the outlook is not great for my getting a completely repaired MacBook Pro. I got good lip service about the problems, but they were more eager to offer workarounds like “maybe you can make sure the micorophone is far away from the computer” when I offered reasonable circumstances in which the noises make the computer a less than Pro offering. Since the well-trained telephone staff seemed eager to dismiss all but the completely undeniable defects, I decided I better try to appeal to the techies themselves. So prior to sending off the MacBook, I made a few notable preparations.

First and foremost, I backed up every single bit of data that was in any way important to me. They can incinerate precious if they want to, as long as they send me a new one without noise. I am psychologically separated from that machine in particular. I never even installed the extra 1GB RAM I ordered, because I wanted to be sure it went into a machine that would be mine for a long time. If these noise issues are not fixed, I will be demanding a refund or a replacement. In the worst case scenario, I guess I’ll be stuck with 1GB of RAM and no laptop to use it in.

After archiving my own stuff (I left an encrypted copy of my home directory on the disk, for my convenience if I do get the same one back), I went to setting up the “optimum techie user account.” When you’re on the phone with Apple, they’ll ask for your login and password. Instead of giving it to them, just ensure them that you’ve set the machine up to auto-login when it boots. I added an account “apple” with password “apple” and hint “The password is ‘apple’.” I set this account up as the auto-login account. There. A fresh clean space for the techie to enjoy my laptop’s flaws in.

After setting up the techie account, it occurred to me that I might improve my chances of success if I improved the odds of the techie observing the heinousness of the problem. In particular, the CPU whine seems to be the most disputed of flaws by Apple. Reports across the web paraphrase Apple as basically dismissing the noise as “within Apple spec.” My earliest hack at quieting the noise was a little program called “QuietMBP,” which utilized the CPU at varying levels such that the noise was eliminated or extremely diminished. Now, a side-effect of QuietMBP is that you can also adjust the slider “the wrong way” and hear the noise. But when the slider is midway, it turns out there is a sweet spot of pain, where the noise is even worse than it is when the machine is completely idle. This demonstrates the “worst possible scenario.” It’s not exactly realistic that the machine will always be in this state, but then again it’s not exactly unrealistic. It’s just a program using the CPU. There’s no reason to think that Photoshop or some other program might not use the CPU with such a pattern as to maximize the noies.

I decided to set up QuietMBP in “noisy” mode, and configure it to start automatically with the “apple” account logs in. In place of the usual text in the QuietMBP dialog, I added a direct plea to the techie. I explained what the program was there for and suggested that until the slider can be moved from one extreme to the other with no audible noise, the machine was still defective. I also made it clear that I would be returning any machine that didn’t pass this obvious test of “fixedness.” As bitchy as this may sound in the blog, I was a bit more tactful in the actual text.

I also decided the techie might not be familiar with my blog and the work I’d done to get to the bottom of these problems. So I configured Safari to automatically launch as well, and positioned its window so that it would appear next to (not obscuring) the QuietMBP window. A perfect little “entree” to the problem at hand. Since I couldn’t rely on the techie being connected to the web, I downloaded a local copy of just the main summary page, and set that as the “home page” for Safari. Et voila:

(Click for full size view)

If everything goes well, the techie will be staring at the above screen while also noticing a hideous high pitched chatter coming from the left side of the machine. If the techie cares at all, he or she can also pursue the questions raised in my blog, after connecting to the internet or on another machine. It may not make the slightest bit of difference, but I figure there’s at least a small chance that the techie will be touched by this problem, and become independently dedicated to making my MBP well.

Please, Apple Techie! Fix my MacBook Pro! Heck, fix them all!

Hopefully nobody noticed, but over the past week I was gradually staging the site for a move to a new host. For several days now the backing databases have been running from DreamHost, and I just flipped the switch that puts the slow nameserver change propagations into motion for the complete site move-over. Chances are by the time you read this it’s being served from DreamHost, and that’s a good thing.

Why is it a good thing? Well, I’ve been testing DreamHost on a separate, much smaller domain for several months and have been very happy with them. I had heard people rave about how affordable and reliable they were, so I wanted to put them to the test as a possible backup host for red-sweater.com.

The preparation paid off because my bandwidth unexpectedly exploded over the past couple months, after rising steadily since I started the blog last year. And my friendly neighborhood ISP wasn’t set up to handle it without passing on significant costs to me. I ended up with a $50 surcharge for March and am already looking at a $30 surcharge for April. Ouch! This blog shares a domain name with my business, but it’s a labor of love!

DreamHost gives me a whopping 1100+GB of bandwidth per month, unlimited domain names, 75 separate shell accounts, one-click installs, AFP/SMB mounting, Subversion support, easy MySQL setups, etc, etc., etc. – and all at just about their lowest price point: I’m only paying $8/month. Did I mention that I can make accounts and hand out shell access to my friends, and host their domains on my site, too? As long as it doesn’t exceed the 1100GB total we’re in good shape.

So I’m excited to make the transition, and while doing so, I can’t resist pointing out that if you happen to be looking for a new host, you could do a lot worse than DreamHost. One of DreamHost’s charming policies is a generous reward for new customer referrals. So if you’ve been looking for a new host or just want to experiment with an inexpensive domain aside from your existing one, consider signing up with DreamHost. You’ll get a great service and I’ll get a nice donation to encourage driving my bandwidth usage up even higher!

If you sign up after clicking the DreamHost link above, you’ll be automaticaly donating to this blog. But to sweeten the deal, DreamHost gives affiliates the ability to “give back” part of their referral bonus in the form of a discount. Use the referral code RSB123GO when you sign up and you’ll get $20 off whatever plan you choose. Don’t like discounts? Just sign up after clicking the above link and I’ll get the entire bonus for myself. Or strip off the number at the end of the URL and let DreamHost keep all the money for themselves.

Apologies for the blatant promotion of my own pocket-book, but I think you’ll agree it’s been rare on this blog. You’ll notice there are no ads here – I just like to share my knowledge and opinions. And in this case I feel 100% confident in endorsing Dreamhost. I’ve been doing it casually to friends for months without even bothering to ask for a referral. What schmuck!

In closing – I hope the new site works to everybody’s satisfaction – if anything is broken it’s probably a configuration error on my part. Please let me know about it!

Update: One other nice thing about DreamHost is how their support works. They are like JetBlue in this way in that they just “get right” something so obvious. When you submit a question or problem to them they have a little popup that asks you to rate your own expertise on the subject. This is like a nerd’s best friend. You can pick from a range of attributes like “I basically know this stuff but I’m rusty,” to “I totally am hot shit and I know this stuff backward and forward” (both paraphrased). And it’s not just lip service. I had a minor issue to get ironed out tonight so I submitted a request identifying myself as “comfortable with the technology” I was writing about. The response came within two hours to tell me it was fixed, gave an explanation only a nerd could appreciate, and was clearly hand-written.