The Beast

If you didn't know yet, I like to call my MacBook Pro "The Beast". This thing can devour data like you've never seen and turn it into polished gold.

Yesterday I took The Beast to Primary to show the video I made for I Love To See The Temple. Everything was going fine. Took it home, checked my Facebook and email before shutting the lid and putting it into sleep mode for some much deserved rest.

Last night I came back to the computer, but when I opened the lid, the desktop didn't come back on. I checked everything, but nothing was working. I held the power button down and hard booted the computer. It tried to start but couldn't get past the indicator lights turning on before it shut down again.

After using the "pull the battery out to reset" trick, it still was giving the same problem. Thankfully, I have my HP Windows laptop, so I pulled it out and went to the site for my local Apple Store and made an appointment with a genius.

I went today, and found out it was the power supply card that regulates the power to the machine. I've seen these go out before, and they are fixable, but I was worried that since I purchased my laptop in 2008 they wouldn't fix it. I looked online, and with my educator discount it would still cost me $2500 to buy a new laptop, and it wouldn't have the features I've enjoyed with this one.

Thankfully, they can fix it and they are. It's no longer under warranty, so it will cost me between $300 to $1,100 to fix, but it's still better than having to spend $2500 to buy a new laptop and the amount of time it would take for me to re-install all of the software.

Now if you're wondering why I'm not freaked out about losing the stuff on the laptop?

It's because I bought and use a Time Capsule in my home. It not only handles the wi-fi in my home, but also has an external hard drive that does automatic backups of my laptop. Since I didn't do much work on it on Sunday, there isn't much that would have been lost if I had to replace The Beast.

But, all in all, I'm so thankful that I will be getting The Beast fixed and it will hopefully last a while longer to continue to devour more information. In the meantime, the PowerPoint I was going to make is going to have to wait until I get the laptop back. Hopefully it should only take a few days.

Yep, There Is Now An App For That

You probably don't remember this, but I put in a request to Apple more than a year ago about an idea for a new Apple iPhone/iPod App. Here's the blog: Apple Adventures

Well, I am THRILLED to say, there is now an App for that! :)

Apple Store App

Thank you, Apple!

Apple Adventures

This morning I had an appointment with an Apple Genius. If you don't know what these are, these are the people who you speak with at an Apple Store when you have a technical issue with one of the Apple products.




Please see the video above for a better explanation.

Secretly, I think I want to be an Apple Genius. It just looks like so much fun to me. But, what a surprise, I am a geek.

So I go down to Chandler Fashion Mall this morning for my Genius appointment. My iPod touch has not been able to access the internet for the last few months, and it's less than a year old.

The Genius got the wi-fi working again, which was something I was able to accomplish with some work on my own, but the Safari would not pull up web pages, saying it was not connected to the internet. This was something between a hardware or programming problem. After resetting the network and the entire iPod, it finally worked, but when we restored it to the factory settings, it quit again. The Genius realized this was going to be an ongoing problem so it was switched out for me. Since I had bought this at Fry's Electronics, I also purchased from Apple an extra year of service on this, in case something else goes wrong with it.

I spent roughly an hour there, and thankfully I was smart enough to bring my macbook along for the ride in case I needed to do any synchronizing of my iPod. I'm glad I did, and the Genius indicated he was also thrilled that I had brought it. Who thinks to bring their laptop along for an iPod problem? Yeah, the geek.

The really funny part, though, came at the end. I asked the Genius about the workshops that the Apple Stores have, and he gave me some basic information on how to get in on one, and answered my question that yes, there would be classes offered during the summer. Then I asked about the widget that Apple has (and I have downloaded on my macbook) that lists for a week the classes coming up for the store. I asked if there was an app for this for the iPod Touch/ iPhone to also do this. The lightbulb went off and he gave me the biggest grin. He said "no, no one had thought of that". I asked him if he could recommend this through Apple, but he told me Apple listens to the customers more than they do the employees, and very strongly encouraged me to submit the idea. He was impressed!