UPDATE 9/20/2011
After a bit of mulling, and some research, I was left with trying to get in to see the genius one more time. The machine was still crashing, and i was still frustrated. I called Apple, and to make a long story short, when I asked to speak to a supervisor, i got cut off.
After more research, i decided to follow the lead of a couple more individuals, and send off an email to Apple CEO Tim Cook. I spent a bit qccrafting the letter, and after making sure it was appropriate i hit the send button. I was a couple of hours i got a reply (not from Tim) that promised to check with the engineering group, and to get back to me. The next day, i got a call, and a committment to repair.
Today, the machine went to the Apple store to get the logic board replaced.
(that would make this entry the first from the iPad, as I am currently without an actual computer)
I’ve had nothing but love for Apple hardware since I made the switch form the Windows world. They have done nothing but “just worked”. Well, that seems to have changed a bit as of late, you see, I own a “mid 2010″ version of the Macbook Pro. Those of you dealing with them, know what I am about to launch into. The dreaded black screen o death. The Mac equal to the Blue “FU” screen that Windows users have to get used to if they run Windows long enough.
I had no issues with my machine, and as I have done in the past, I gambled with Applecare extended warantee. I thought “Nothing wrong by now? I should be good”. Well, that was my mistake. Things took a turn after the update to 10.6.8, I would occaisionally get a completely black screen crash while I was working on something. It acted like someone hit the power, and all went black though the keyboard lights would stay on, and the power light would also stay lit. The only recovery was to manually power cycle the machine, and hard reset.
Then came the final update to 10.6.8 (the pre lion update), and things got worse. Now when I tax the machine hard, it will do it in what seems like a “predictably random” fashion with the same error report being generated. They all begin with “panic(cpu 1 caller 0x9f55b1): NVRM[0/1:0:0]: Read Error 0×00002080: ” and again, I reboot. Frustrating to say the least, and nearly impossible to depend on the machine as a photographer.
I made the genius bar appointment, and took the machine in this afternoon. Much like a car making a noise, I could not for the life of me get the machine to fail while at the Apple store. They ran a set of diagnostics, and gave it a clean bill of health, and on my way I went.
I am now back home with a machine I have little confidence in, with no answers in sight.
Anyone know anything about the causes or a solution to this one?
