Jumping Ship

After reading through my last post, I realized that I made it sound like I’ve had a pretty flawless Mac transition, which is not entirely true. While it has certainly been easier than I thought, it has not been without it’s bumps.

In terms of software failure, I have one instance that I can recall in my week’s ownership thus far involving iTunes. I have between 3500 and 4000 tracks that I keep in (loose) rotation, via my ipod and my primary machine, and after many hours of searching prior to my MBP getting here for solutions on how to transfer playcounts and other playlist data, I came to the realization that I was going to have to rebuild my database by hand. I looked at this as an opportunity to weed out all the tracks I didn’t really listen to anymore, and up until today I had filtered through about a third of my collection. When I opened up itunes today, I noticed that all of my tracks had disappeared. I found that I could still play them through shuffle, meaning that my tracks and their paths were intact, but I was unable to continue with my reconstruction. I tried repairing permissions, a common method of fixing random system anomalies, but to no avail. Unable to find any other tips after a brief search on Apple’s itunes forums, I went ahead and reinstalled itunes. Experience told me that if itunes worked that same in OSX as it did in Windows, all of my playlist data would be preserved, even if I reinstalled the program. Sure enough, a reinstall fixed the problem, so no real harm done, other than a little inconvenience.

I have also had a hardware issue that required the assistance of Apple directly involving the Magsafe Power Adapter. The adapter itself is unique from other power adapters in the sense that it attaches to the laptop via a magnet (hence its name), and safely detaches in the event someone trips over the cable. Also, the adapter has a visual indicator for charge, informing the user when the laptop battery is completely charged. My problem arose roughly 3 days into my usage, when I found that the adapter would not charge my MBP and made a rather unusual hissing sound, much like cassette tape feedback. I tried all sorts of suggestions, even to the point of resetting the PRAM and System Management Controller, to no avail. Finally, I found this article on Apple’s website that led me to believe that I had a loose seal on my power adapter (see the picture by step 7 in the link). After speaking with an Apple rep over the phone, they agreed to send me a new power adapter free of charge in about a week, which was an agreeable outcome. Of course, the adapter hasn’t given me any trouble since then (typical of Moore’s law of tech), but it’s nice to know that I’ll have a fresh adapter to use in time for the school year.

So that’s been the worst of it, and compared with the two power supply failures and hard drive failure (a week before finals, I might add) in the time I used my windows desktop, I’ll take an easily replaceable power adapter as an issue. Granted, it doesn’t make it perfect out of the box, but it doesn’t overshadow the sheer usefulness of the product on the whole.

Hopefully that balances things out an makes my review a little more objective; I’ll be sure to post any more experiences, good or bad, as I come across them. Also, keep an eye out for my first review in the next week of a mac-only app that is truly in a class by itself! Cheers!