iSubstitute

For nearly two weeks now, I’ve been without my main computer, an iMac G5 with a 20“ screen. It’s remarkable what an annoyance that is.

I do have an iBook that’s a few years old, which mostly gets used for checking the IMDB when watching DVDs and for travel. It has a slow-ish G3 processor and a 12” screen. It’s also running the previous version of OS X (I fear it would have hard time keeping up with 10.4, so I haven’t installed that version). So I do have a computer, and one that would have been impossibly desirable a few years ago, but that now feels cramped, squinty, underpowered, and unfamiliar. I don’t like using it, and I spend much less time at it (my excuse for not blogging much lately). And while I do have backups of almost all my data, I haven’t tried importing most of it to the iBook. If I understand it correctly, there were file-format changes in basic apps like Address Book and Mail in 10.4 that probably wouldn’t be backwards-compatible. Plus the fact that this machine has a small hard drive that I want to keep clean, and the syncing issues I’d have when I do get my main machine back.

The whole repair saga—which hasn’t ended—has been an exercise in frustration. On the night of May 4, a Thursday, we had a major storm. After the first crack of lightning, I turned off my computer. I started the shutdown process on Gwen’s too, but a misbehaving app aborted the shutdown, so hers was running all night. I’ll also note here that both computers are plugged into the same surge protector, and it’s a pretty good one.

The next morning, I turned on my Mac and found it was randomly rebooting itself—sometimes after a few seconds, sometimes a few minutes. After exhausting all the various reset and diagnostic procedures I knew of, my next thought was to take it to the Apple Store, but Gwen and I were heading out of town for the weekend that day, and the Apple Store wouldn’t schedule a dropoff until late that afternoon. So I waited until Monday. On Monday, they told me it would be about 7 days before they could even look at it, but suggested that, since my model had a number of user-serviceable parts, and it looked like the inverter might be at fault, I could order that replacement part online, and that should only take three days.

It took Apple a week to deliver the new inverter. I received it yesterday and installed it immediately. The installation process is rather delicate, involving a total of five molex connectors—one in an inaccessible location—and some very snug-fitting parts and cable runs.

The inverter did not fix the problem. I knew that the diagnosis was a gamble. Oh well.

Unwilling to spend another week waiting for the Apple Store to get around to looking at my machine, I decided to explore other service options (this is warranty work). I found a place on South Congress and set up an appointment for tomorrow. They’re going to try replacing the power supply. I hope that does it.

The episode has been instructional, though. It’s reminded me of a hundred little things that I’ve set up on my main computer to make it work more smoothly—little things like a keystroke expander that automatically corrects “teh” to “the”—and which of those little things were important enough that I’ve gone to the trouble to set them up on the iBook. It’s also shown me how nice the screen on my iMac is, and how much my productivity is hampered by having a small screen with poor contrast. I’ve made friends with command-tab, which is especially handy when most of your windows are maximized.

Update: 17 May 2006

Took the iMac into a local shop, Mactronics. As is so often the case with these things, the technician could not reproduce my problem, but he took my description of the symptoms at face value and replaced the power supply anyhow. I’ve got it back now, and it’s working. He thought it was odd that the Apple Geniuses recommended I try getting an inverter replacement: he told me the inverter doesn’t do anything except power the screen’s backlight, and couldn’t possibly account for the problem I was having. It occurred to me that, in telling me to order a self-service inverter replacement, the Geniuses (funny how I can use that word both literally and sarcastically at the same time) at the Apple Store might have been telling me something that would get me out of the store and let me feel like I was doing something to improve the situation—even though it had no relation to what they may have known perfectly well is not the real problem.