pulled it, shoved their fingers in their ears, and starting chanting "la-la-la" Talking to Apple's tech support about this issue is like trying to convince my 3 year old son to eat his string beans....
Except you can always open their mouth and shove it in. Haven't yet found a way to get satisfaction out of Apple (other than sitting and waiting and hoping that some future update might fix the issue - assuming it's software).
Unfortunately, while I can out-wait a 3-year old (have lots of experience there), Apple usually out-waits me. On my last several hardware issues, Apple has only admitted fault, agreed to fix the issues, and taken responsibility 1 to 3 years after I gave up on the machine and dumped it (for hardware issues that they refused to fix previously).
My most recent issue with them was with movies I purchased not playing (iTunes couldn't authorize them - thanks to DRM protection).
I paid good money for those movies. I went through every article on the Internet trying to find a solution. I contacted Apple, and all they did was direct me to the same articles. To humor them, I tried all the same things over again (hoping that it would just work that time). Still wouldn't work.
So, there I sit with a few hundred dollars of videos that iTunes will not authorize to play. And, no solution from Apple (who is responsible for the DRM being in the videos to start with).
But, no matter what, the iTunes store wouldn't authorize my machine to play the movies.
In the end, they had no solution that worked. But, they invited me to call their support team on the phone and pay the per call fee.
I gave up. I'm not paying them to still tell me they don't know. I went through all the levels of free support. But, no resolution from Apple. Well, there was one resolution... My wife's Windows PC would authenticate
What I believe happened, is that one of the recent software updates made something go "wonky" (yes a technical term). Because I had recently had updates to my system from Apple, and after a few weeks of fighting the computer, and Apple, and getting nowhere, Software update found a new batch of updates. I went ahead and ran it, and then suddenly my machine would authenticate and play my movies again.
To this point, the only reason I've stayed with OS X and Mac's has been the video features in iLife. But, I suppose that's coming to an end. I haven't been pleased with iLife '08 at all. And, don't plan to upgrade to iLife '09. I'm still using iMovie HD 6 (since it actually does what I want).
So, most likely I'll be keeping a machine set up with whatever will run iMovie 6 and iDVD. Probably lost most incentive to buy new (Apple) machines now since I won't feel compelled to keep up with the system requirements for iLife's future updates.
Aside from iLife, a Windows PC can meet all my needs. So, Macs might get relegated to a corner and single purpose if Apple doesn't bring back the style and workflow style of iMovie HD 6.
I've been using Macs primarily just because it made sense to just use my video machine as my main machine (consolidation). But, with my many Apple issues of late, and the software going a different (and not so great) direction, I'm feeling less compelled. So, this may be the last Mac I buy. I'll keep using it, but when it's day comes, I may not be as stuck on Apple as I once was.
iMovie pretty much had me locked into Macs through version 6. It made a Mac an absolute must have for me. But, since iLife '08, I'm not so excited about iLife. I just keep using the old software, and for that, and older machine is just fine.
