Voenix Rising

Conundrum

Since it doesn’t make fiscal sense to have my Mac repaired—the estimate being only a couple hundred dollars less than the cost of a new machine—I am now faced with finding a replacement.

At the time I bought it four years ago, my machine was the top of the line: 3 GHz i7, 8GB RAM, and a 512GB SSD…so obviously I’m going to want something similar.

Apple is still offering all models of the 2015 MacBook Pro (MagSafe, multiple ports, retina display), but with a refresh imminent, it’s hard to say for how long they’ll be available. With Ben’s education discount, I can get a 2.7 GHz i5/8/512 for $1559. If I want to bump that up to a 3.1 GHz i7, the price jumps to $1829. Both of these are custom orders, so I can’t just walk into an Apple Store and go home with one.

And this is where the conundrum comes in.

I can get the 2016 non-Touchbar model (2.4 GHz i7/8/512) for $1899. This would also be a custom order.  For the same price I can get the Touchbar model with a faster processor (2.9 GHz i5/8/512)…and it’s in stock.

When the Touchbar Macs came out last year I was immediately enthralled, but despite the “cool” factor, I still do question the ultimate usefulness of the feature. And then there’s the whole loss-of-ports thing. How much of a problem that would ultimately be for me is probably overblown since the only items I connect via USB A/B are my Time Machine and occasionally my phone—and USB C to USB A/B adapters are readily available.

It’s all kind of academic at this point since I can’t do anything about this for a couple weeks. Let’s just call it a birthday present to myself.

Thankfully I have Ben’s old 2010 MacBook to use in the meantime. After several extremely frustrating hours I think I’ve finally beaten it into enough submission that it’s now properly syncing messages with the phone and only occasionally prompting me to enter my Apple password to validate a piece of purchased software.

At Ben’s recommendation, instead of taking it to Apple, I took the Mac into a local, highly-recommended shop today.

Worst case scenario is the system board. $900 including labor. (Better than what I was reading about Apple.)

Best case, $50 to simply clean the thing out.

The tech told me it might also be a simple matter of the power button being hosed. If that’s the case, it’s an upper case/keyboard replacement (because both items are apparently sealed to each other) at around $300, including labor. (The fact the charging light came on was a good indication the system board wasn’t fried.)

Should hear something from them within 24 hours.

Fingers crossed.

UPDATE: Worse than Worst Case. Pretty much everything except the display is shot and needs replacement. Time to buy a new Mac.

At least Gazelle is giving me $185 to offset the cost of a new one a bit…

I’m going to blame Sonic and their goddamned thin-as-fuck Route 44 styrofoam cups.

Last night I went to pick my drink up. As has happened a dozen times before, the top came loose, my thumb went through the side of the cup, and 44 ounces of iced tea exploded. Unfortunately this time, it exploded over my open and powered on Macbook.

I suppose I’ve been lucky. I’ve been a laptop user going on nearly ten years now and have never had an accident like this.

I immediately powered it down, drained the liquid out and removed the back.I propped it up in front of a desk fan overnight, hoping against all odds that I got it turned off quickly enough. Apparently I didn’t. This morning it’s completely dead.

So tomorrow night it’s off to the Apple store and probably a thousand dollar repair, since I can’t afford to buy a new one.

In the meantime I thankfully have Ben’s old 2010 Macbook to use. It has no battery, it’s got half the RAM and hard drive capacity of my machine, but at least it will get me through until mine is repaired. I was amazed that when I went to do Internet Recovery it actually loaded (and is running) Sierra. My most recent Time Machine backup was yesterday morning, so I really didn’t lose much of anything, but I wasn’t able to restore iTunes (too big for the size of this hard drive), and I’m belatedly discovering that not all settings get transferred when doing anything other than a complete restore.