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Apple's support

How do you rate Apple's support people?

  • Good

    Votes: 5 29.4%

  • Bad

    Votes: 3 17.6%

  • Ugly

    Votes: 3 17.6%

  • Haven't needed to use them, yet, and hope to never need to.

    Votes: 7 41.2%
  • Total voters
    17
AlphaTech

AlphaTech

macrumors 601
Original poster
Oct 4, 2001
4,556
0
Natick, MA
I just placed a call to Apple since I have been experiencing some issues staying connected to my base station (from my new TiBook). After making sure that the person on the other end of the phone understood the situation, they are sending me out a replacement airport card. The fault is not at the base station, since it has been online for over 80 hours since the last reset, but I have dropped off of the airport network a few times today alone (requiring a reboot to get back to the network, logging off solved nothing). I expect to have the card on Tuesday, and will send the old one back to them as soon as I have pulled it from the laptop. Since I have it shipping to the office, I will probably bring my laptop (and tools) in on Tuesday to do the change.

I did trouble shooting on my end before placing the call, including resetting the open firmware and running the hardware test cd. I am about to burn a new MacTest Pro cd for this generation TiBook and run that as well. If it comes up with any additional issues, I will contact them again.

This experience is pretty much par for the course. I have mostly good experiences with Apple support, with only one or two bad calls (where I had to beat into them the issue and what I know to be the solution). Considering how many calls I have placed for repairs on both my own laptops as well as for hardware at work, one or two problem calls is not bad at all.

I also found out that Apple has instituted a new policy for repairs in that they ask people about anything additional about the system before it goes in for repair. They are no longer doing just what is listed as the issue. It's about damned time too. :D
 
Hmmm....

I think I have had that problem also. I will be surfing the net via airport, and all the sudden I loose signal. Now I am in clear sight of the base station, only about 40 feet away!

I have to log out, and log back in to fix it...
 
I am under 10' from the base (more like 6') with the base being a little higher then the laptop. Logging out didn't do squat for fix my connection, only a reboot/restart would.

I can be online for hours without issue, or under 30 minutes. No reason for the time change, but it happens. My airpor network would disappear from the menu selection, requiring the reboot. So far, the base has been online for 89 hours 43 minutes since the last restart of the base station. Before that, it was in the hundreds of hours.

I am going on an hour since the last restart at the moment... Considering I went online at about 12:30 today, and have already been forced to restart three or four times, I don't expect to stay online until I go to bed tonight (without a restart that is).

I just hope that the change of airport card resolves the issue.
 
I just had to restart to get back onto the airport network. That put the time that the card would stay online at one hour (give or take a couple of minutes). The base has been connected for almost 90 hours, so the issue isn't with the base loosing it's internet connection.
 
Interesting...no problems here on my Airport.

Any phones or other machines operating in the same frequency range? I know that cordless phones aren't supposed to interfere, but something else might.

It's odd that it just started with the new TiBook.

At least Apple was quick to send you a new card.:)
 
One portable phone at the same frequency, but not being used. I haven't used that phone in a few days. I have had the handset on the cradle for a couple of days now, and it didn't do this until a short time ago.

It didn't actually start happening until after I tried sharity... Which could be what damaged the card... I would suggest to anyone with an airport card to NOT use sharity, period.
 
Considering I only starting having issues after I had given sharity a shot, and how there are other people running Airport and 10.1.5, I suspect sharity as being the culprit.

If the problem doesn't go away with the new card, then I will just back up my system and reinstall everything fresh. Either way the issue will be resolved.
 
Apple support is GREAT!

One day I connected my iPod to my iMac, let it AutoUpdate, and then I left. On my way to school, though, I noticed that there were no songs on my iPod! None! No playlists or nothing!

So, when I came back home, I checked to see if my iTunes had gone blank. Nope. it was just the iPod. I tried to reconnect, but then it didn't even recognize my iPod! It was creepy. So, I call up Apple Support, and conveniently they have English support, too. That's practically a first here...

So I said to the woman... my iPod is broken. And she said "Okay, what is wrong with it?" And so I told her. She said "Okay, may I please have your name, address, your iPod's serial number, and your Warranty card number." So I told her. She said "Okay, please send your iPod, nicely packed in the original case, to this address."

So, I did. She gave me a number which I could use online to see the status of my order. And two days later, it came back, totally like new, and it has been working perfectly since then.

Apple support is practically the only support people I have not had ANY trouble with...

You should hear what happened with my satellite service people.. aw man. hehe. But THAT's for another time.




irmongoose
 
maybe something was wrong with your PowerManagment features, and the TiBook just decided to turn it off to save power? dunno, but some people were having the same problem with the new Toshiba e740 Xscale(400mhz) PocketPC, with its built in WiFi(has dual slots, CF type II, and SD IO), when they disabled Power Managment(cuz the software and drivers havent been updated yet, they say monday so...) the WiFi would stop dropping its signal.
 
Originally posted by jadam
maybe something was wrong with your PowerManagment features, and the TiBook just decided to turn it off to save power? dunno, but some people were having the same problem with the new Toshiba e740 Xscale(400mhz) PocketPC, with its built in WiFi(has dual slots, CF type II, and SD IO), when they disabled Power Managment(cuz the software and drivers havent been updated yet, they say monday so...) the WiFi would stop dropping its signal.
Click to expand...

You have no clue what you are talking about, at least with the issue with MY airport card. I don't allow my system to go to sleep, period. I also don't allow it to do anything to conserve battery power, since I typically have it plugged in. :rolleyes:

On the TiBook, there are not even any options to turn off the airport card, even if I wanted to, which I don't. It drops offline during times of activity, so energy saving is not even a factor. The PMU settings are just fine on this unit. I even went and reset the open firmware, which didn't resolve the issue. Judging by the Apple support person's reaction to everything I did, and the fact that he is shipping me a new card, this is not an unheard of issue. IF it was, I would wager that they would want the laptop to check it out.

I ran the Apple Hardware Test cd (comes with all Mac's) and everything came back clear. I even ran the MacTest Pro cd (available to AASP's only :p) and it came back clear. Which leads to a faulty card that doesn't always fault-out. About every hour, or so, last night, the card would simply go stupid and not be able to find my base station. AFTER a full system restart, it worked again.

BTW, there is not a PMU button on the back of the new TiBooks, as there was in the previous models. They moved it, since people were erroneously using it as a fix for too many things.
 
If sharity was a woman, then it would be a vast improvement. At least when women suck, it's usually a good thing. :D Sharity is an application that is supposed to allow you to connect to a shared folder on a peecee...

I have installed the new Airport card, about an hour ago, and all seems fairly well. If it doesn't behave, then I will be going for a reinstall of OS X (hope it doesn't go that far). There might be a few other tricks I can try before resorting to that. I just hope that I can stay online all night.
 
I know my father has had to contact Apple a few times...they weren't nasty or anything. Even when my father and I gave Apple the wrong serial number for the Cube (I have already posted about the wierd issue with it earlier; ask and I'll post it again), and they didn't seem to upset with it.

Overall, I think it's an above avg. service. :)
 
The problem came back even after installing a fresh Airport card. I reinstalled OS X off of the single install cd that came with the TiBook but that only offered temporary relief.

Earlier tonight I did a restore, via the three cd's that came with the TiBook. I have since run most of the updates (didn't do the iPod one, yet), and it is behaving much better. Considering how it wipes the drive before installing everything that was on the laptop before I recieved it, I hope this fixes it. If the issue returns, I might have to ship the laptop to Apple. At least, that is if they cannot send me some other hardware to replace. Then again, since I am certified, I might be able to do the installs myself (not counting on that though).
 
Wonderful Tech Support!

I worship Apple tech for being so good. I had some problems early on with OS X dying, and I was really afraid. Fortunantly I was connected with a kind tech person, and after a long phone call everything was sorted out. They were so patient, and understanding. This is why I own an Apple.
 
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