Mumbling Again

Short Short Long: AppleCare and Cinema Display Woes

Let this be a lesson to the wise: Don't try to troubleshoot problems yourself when the warrantee is at stake. My 20" Apple Cinema Display and/or the video card on my workstation started acting strange about 6–8 weeks ago. The backlighting was not full strength and the power light started blinking in a pattern of short, short, long. I consider myself a power-user so I went to the Apple Support site to solve the problem. I followed the advice, and re-seated the ADC connection with a restart. Problem solved, that was easy! Good thing I didn't waste my time calling AppleCare—wait maybe not.

Unfortunately the same thing came back again a couple weeks ago. Now I'm starting to think that it could be a problem. I depend on this workstation for my livelihood, and leaving it at the Genius Bar for a sleep-over isn't a very appealing proposition. Besides I've got an AppleCare package and its still got a couple months... right? Anyway, it's another quick fix by re-connecting and restarting.

Today it happened again.

Crap! This thing only needs to last until November. Then I'll get a new Mac Pro. Here's the catch 22: I would get a new display now but my current computer can't drive the 30" Studio Display I want. I want to upgrade my computer now and get a Mac Pro to drive the 30" display but the Adobe applications don't run as Universal Binaries yet. Creative Suite 3 will solve the problem and should come out in late 2006 or early 2007. Indeed, getting a new computer before that and running Photoshop under Rosetta doesn't sound very productive. I need to take the tax deduction this year but I would be wise to hold out as long as possible. So now I've got a bunk machine, and buying a new one would be horrible timing.

Ok, lets get this fixed. I call AppleCare and the hold message tells me to have my serial numbers ready. Digging thought my files I find the serials on my AppleCare certificate. My heart sinks—it expired about 4 weeks ago. Damn, I should have called at the first sign of trouble. I expect the worst in about 14 minutes when my call is answered by the next available representative.

I give [James]* the serial number of my display and after punching a few keys he tells me that my AppleCare is expired and it will cost me $49.99 for phone support. I try to explain the whole story going back to the first time and how that was while the warrantee was still in effect, but its futile. He repeats his line from the manual about the $49.95. I try to stay calm. It's not James' fault right? Calmly, I ask to speak to his supervisor. James agrees.

I'm on hold again.

What seems like another 14 minutes later James is back. He's connecting me to [Kathy]*. Kathy lets me tell my story. I say that I just need to know if its hardware or software and she agrees to help. About an hour, a PMU reset and one kernel panic** later things seem to be fine.

Unfortunately that lasted only a couple hours and now its blinking again. The only choice I've got now is to take it in to Apple for some more diagnostics. Hopefully its the video card because that's probably the cheapest thing to fix. A new ATI Radeon 9000 AGP card will only set me back about $175.

I'll post updates as the drama unfolds.

*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.
**Induced by unusual use of the video card. Kathy told me to plug in another monitor just after the PMU reset while the system was still booting. I haven't had a panic since 2003 before this.