I just wanted to make a quick post about an update I was eagerly awaiting. Plus it seems like a good opportunity to write something positive about Apple. Regardless of the other articles written here I will praise any company that does good and flame them when they do bad. This time Apple has done good!

For all of you that were on 2.x prior to 2.1 you will know it just plain sucked. It was buggy, laggy and crashy! I’m happy to say 2.1 is none of those and it also introduces some nice little touches:

• Pause app install by clicking on the app icon
• Triple clicking to go to the previous track
• Genius playlist
• Option to wipe data after 10 incorrect passcode attempts
• iTunes now displays ‘Apps’ space usage
• On UK English set iPhones holding ‘.com’ on the keyboard presents you with other domains

I thought it pertinent to make a summary post of all the current Apple issues I have suffered from this year. I moved to Apple in the days of the iBook, it was solid, reliable as was the OS (Tiger). Today solid and reliable are no longer two words I would associate with Apple. ‘Customer Beta Testers’, ‘Cheap’, ‘Uncaring’, ‘Profiteering’ and ‘Unhelpful’ are now all words that I think suits them much better. Which is a shame as I do love Apple. Steve, seriously, can you not see what’s going on?

The following list summarises the list of issues I have had this year (some maybe missed):

1. First UK iPhone had 12 dead/fully lit pixels, Apple Genius at Manchester Arndale Store refused to replace it!
2. OS X Leopard 10.5.0, beta testing Guinea pig anyone?
3. 10.5.2, potentially has caused the sleep from wake issue. Either way introduced a raft of bugs.
4. iPhone 3G, screen does not sit flush with the body (Couldn’t be bothered to speak to Apple about it as they didn’t care about 12 dead pixels).
5. iPhone 3G software (Up until 2.1) has sucked big time. Frequent crashing, phone needing to be completely restored every time I tried to install an application. Keyboard lag, generally so poor I almost decided to give up and get a Nokia.
6. iMac and Macbook Pro’s not waking from sleep. It is becoming increasingly apparent that Apple Engineering are about to wash their hands of this and the Apple store wouldn’t even get their hands dirty with it. Add to this the single 1 minute visit from Apple following my second letter to Steve and it’s easy to see they would rather ignore the issue than deal with it - Bravo! 

Sleep issues can be seen here, here, here, here, here and here - with hundreds more all over the net and Apple’s discussion forums.

7. MobileMe. This has sucked since day one, I appreciate they have been big enough to acknowledge the issue, which is what we want for the waking issues Steve, but the support I am receiving (or not as the case maybe) is nothing short of appalling.
8. Macbook Pro battery failure. There is another issue I believe Apple has, which of course is “Not a reported issue” and that is Sony laptop batteries from 12-14 month old Macbook Pro’s. I can actually think of over 50 people that I have contact with who’s batteries all around the 12 month mark have all either suddenly lost battery life or would mysteriously cut out at a specific remaining battery percentage. I had the latter and the Apple Genius told me there was nothing wrong with my battery. 3 hrs later when I forced him to let me stay at the Genius bar and prove it, he admitted he was wrong and I finally got a battery. That was after the 5-7 people with battery and wake/sleep issues that were all sent away as ‘not being able to prove the issue’. Some links can be seen here, here, here and here. There are hundreds more on the Apple discussion forums.
9. And finally, Apple so called “Geniuses” who are trained to tell people that problems on the internet and forums are not real problems because angry people on the net are emotional and can’t be trusted. WTF!?

I know they are taught to say it because multiple geniuses have used the exact same phrases. But seriously Apple come on! Angry, upset or nuts… stating that your iMac or Macbook Pro will not wake from sleep or that your MBP battery suddenly cuts out every time at a certain percentage is something called FACT. It either happens or it doesn’t, emotion or anger does not jade these facts.

So far Apple has viewed my site but decided to not help me or contact me, I will continue to try and speak to them but I am not holding out much hope. If you too have suffered from any of these problems please do comment below.

Alongside my iMac and Macbook Pro problems I have been having real issues with MobileMe. These have existed since day one, and still exist to this day to some degree. MobileMe transition was rocky, whilst this shouldn’t have occurred it doesn’t bother me. I was then one of the ‘2%’ of affected mail users, strangely though when this issue was apparently ‘resolved’ I was still having issues.

First stop was the Apple online chat facility setup especially for those of us that were affected. The agent was very helpful indeed (Full points Apple). We got to the point where he realised that it needed to be escalated to an engineer and so on the July 20th 2008:

Apple Support Guy: okay, heres the situation: as you know the Senior Specialists have approved the escalation of your case based on the information I provided. Because you were affected by the email outage, and because of the circumstances of the case, they have approved this as an “Urgent Escalation” You will be hearing back from the Specialist who is assigned to your case in the next 24-48 hours with more information. Of course this is after they investigate the issue further
Apple Support Guy: oh it was my pleasure David. I’m just sorry we couldn’t get it fixed

In addition to being happy at how nice and helpful he was, not only did I see light at the end of the tunnel but they had given me 12 months free! All good!! Or was it?

I let the days roll by until the 3rd August 2008 when I had decided Apple were starting to poke fun at me:

Apple Support Women: Hi David, how can I help today?
David Moore: i was here 4 days ago, my mobile me account is pretty much useless at the moment. It was approved for escalation to your engineers, i was told i would hear from them within 24-48 hrs
David Moore: i’ve heard nothing
Apple Support Women: OK, I do know we’ve been receiving a larger than normal volume of escalations which is resulting in the delayed response. I’m sorry we haven’t been able to answer your request in that time frame. I do know that the specialists are working quickly to answer them in the order they are received and will be answering you as soon as they can.
David Moore: i don’t mind it not being fixed, however, i would have at least expected an email from them acknowledging that the issue has been pasted forward to them etc
David Moore: that was all i was expecting from them within the quoted 48hrs, in stead its been twice as long, my issues have got worse and i haven’t even had an email of acknowledgement
Apple Support Women: Sure, I can understand that. I’m sorry that we are unable to do that as that would also increase the amount of time it would take to answer the requests.
Apple Support Women: I can see that your escalation has been created though.
David Moore: ok, well i guess there is nothing i can do but wait
David Moore: thanks for your help
Apple Support Women: I’m sorry David, but thank you for your continued patience. I do wish you a speedy resolution to this. Have a great week!

So what….. had the first agent lied to me? I don’t trust Apple with my email (I use Gmail mainly) so I wasn’t loosing too much by waiting - though the synching between my iMac, Macbook Pro and iPhone being so buggered was really annoying….. I’m patient I’ll wait…..

So I let thew best part of a month pass with no replies or anything from Apple, now I am really starting to get annoyed so on the 25th August 2008 I return to the online chat for a 3rd time:

Apple Support Guy: Hi David. What can I do for you?
David Moore: i had an issue i reported last month that was escalated to your engineers
David Moore: i was told i would hear back from them within 24-48hrs
David Moore: i haven’t
David Moore: and my account is still not usable
Apple Support Guy: Let me see if I can get you a case number, just a moment.

[Idle chatter etc]……..

Apple Support Guy: I understand your inconveniences, I have spoken with escalation and was trying to give you steps if you haven’t already tried this (It’s not the run of the mill Reset Sync Data measure). I have received word that they have sent an email to your alternative email account at “**@gmail.com” but have not received a response. I have spoken to *Apple Support Specialist* who will be handling your inquiry. You should receive a response from him sometime in the morning through email support.

At last only one month after I was meant to I might actually speak to someone who can help! But I will say at this point, what utter crap that I didn’t respond. They either didn’t email me or hand typed the address in wrong as I check that email account every 5 mins, and there was no spam.

No email from the support specialist from the close of business Cupertino time, back to chat again on the 26th August whre I was told it may take him another day to reply to me! At the end of that business day I eventually received an email from the Apple Support Specialist.

Hello David,

My name is *Apple Support Specialist*, I am a MobileMe Support Specialist. Your case was forwarded to me for resolution.

I understand you have been in contact with a specialist, but have not received contacts recently. I’m sorry you have not received the emails which have been sent previously.

I have reviewed your case history and see you are having difficulty syncing with your MobileMe account. I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

To be able to investigate this issue, I would like you to send me a copy of the affected data. Before I explain how to do that, let me assure you that Apple takes your privacy seriously. The files you send to us will be used only for the purposes of troubleshooting your issue, and all of your data will be carefully protected….. [Instructions on how to complete etc]…..

So I followed the instructions and sent him the info he wanted, all minutes after he had emailed me. An automated response came through saying they would respond within 72hrs. This is good as I have given a guy I don’t know full access to my account (They made me change my online password for them to gain access). Five days pass!

Here is the response to an email I sent after the 72hrs had passed telling them I was revoking their password and resetting my own. On the 31st August the following arrived:

Hello David,

I apologize for the delay in response. For some reason your reply was separated from the primary request and just arrived with me. I have modified the case so this should not happen again in the future.

Please ensure any reply you send to me has this follow-up ID (without quotes) in the title: “; Follow-up: 52XXXXXX”.

I will be testing your data and searching for the cause of the issues. I may not be able to follow up with you again until tomorrow, but I wanted to let you know I received the data.

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you. You may receive an AppleCare survey email; any feedback you provide would be greatly appreciated.

I reset the password back to the Apple one, emailed him back to acknowledge him and to let him know he could once again access my account. The survey arrived, nothing else. To this day, half a month on, despite two more emails to my “support specialist” I have heard nothing back from him!

And as of typing I have tired logging in to MobileMe to be told it’s broken and I should try again later.

Are any of you having any problems with MobileMe or Apple Support? Please comment below and let me know.

Following the Letter to Apple’s co-founder, Steve Jobs, on the 28th August 2008 there has still be no reply from Apple. It’s nice to know they care. You spend years of your life and thousands upon thousands of pounds on their products, not to mention the now hundreds of thousands all the people I have recommended to Apple have spent on them to get no reply for help after the lower echelons of Apple have been about as much use as a chocolate teapot. The concept of the letter was the hope the Apple executive relations would get the Apple Store to accept the machine for a proper inspection or I may get assigned an Apple Product Specialist to work through this with. Currently if your logs show no issues and you can’t demonstrate the fault at the genius bar then your machine will not be admitted for service.

That’s a fat lot of good when the problem only occurs after the machine has slept after a large number of hours and there is no sleep/wake log showing in the logs. Apple engineering gave me the following steps to try:

1.  On iMac, type the following command on a terminal window    
   sudo nvram boot-args="debug=0x14e io=0x880"
2. On the logging Mac, connect to the iMac using firewire cable. Then type "/usr/bin/fwkpfv" on terminal.
3. Reboot the iMac, and do a sleep/wake to trigger the problem.
4.  Please send us the entire output from fwkpfv command.

Recently I posted about the installation of applications rendering the iPhone a brick. I thought the interim solution was probably found in that post until today when I had downloaded the “Movies” app from the app store. I was installing via iTunes sync when the phone just went into what looked like a reboot to confront me with that well known screen:

So, yet another reset required. This time I will not be installing any applications until at least version 2.02 of the software which we hope is due in September.

It appears I am not the only one having to carry out multiple resets! R-Fly from Razorian Fly has commented:

it’s not just you - I’m counting - 15 restores since July 12th.

Let’s hope Apple does address this issue in the next update.

No doubt most people that land on this page are here because they are suffering the same issue, well I thought I would share my letter to Steve with you about it (dated 26/08/08). I will update this post or create new ones to let you know what happens, if you too are suffering from this issue please leave a comment as I will be referring Apple to this post when the time comes.  

Steve,

First, I hope your well.

I am having a consistent issue with my girlfriends iMac that is frankly getting beyond a joke. Her iMac is the first of the 24″ aluminium iMacs, it was bought on launch day. It started off fine but rapidly the issue appeared, if put to sleep for an extended amount of time (ie overnight) the machine will not wake from sleep. This carried on for a few weeks before i submitted a bug via the developer connection bug reporter with my ADC account. The engineers requested I send them the logs, which i did, they didn’t show anything. No sleep or wake event was in the logs when this issue occurred. They then asked me to SSH into the iMac via my laptop set up several lines of terminal commands sleep the iMac and then wake it up taking a snapshot of any data. Nothing happened, when this issue occurs there appears to be no bus power, the keyboard is rendered useless so how would the firewire port be any better!?

I tried in vain for weeks to get this to work and nothing, in the end I had to tell them that I couldn’t get it to work and the bug was closed! Despite the issue not being resolved! Anyway, I tried all matter of things, PRAM and SMC resets, changing the sleep modes, clean installs…. the list goes on…… making her follow procedures of ‘unplug this’ and ‘do it in this order before sleeping it’. Not surprisingly that was all to much for her. She isn’t tech savvy, she switched from windows and got a mac because she wanted it to ‘Just Work’. However the few days where she had followed my advice at this point seemed to pay off. It was waking from sleep again! This lasted a month or so before it started again.

Just 2 weeks ago I was staying at hers watching TV with EyeTV on her mac and boom, the machine powered off and rebooted. There was no proper shutdown procedure it just clicked off and rebooted. It did this twice in as many hours before we shut it down for the night. The next morning she was using it whilst i was out at University and the machine died, this time it would not power on. Upon hearing this i presumed the logic board had died. I booked us and appointment at the local genius bar and in we went. It was accepted straight away for repair no problem and out 7 days later with a new logic board and a new 24″ screen!! (The screen was fine before). In total, off the top of my head) I think the repairs came to £750-850! That’s fine as you picked up the tab thanks to the 3 year warranty.

The first time the repaired machine was put to sleep it wouldn’t wake from sleep again! So here we are now with me writing this email. I am writing you this email before I waste my time and money getting this machine to a genius bar to be told they won’t accept the machine as nothing shows as an issue in the logs, and i’ll be honest, despite the fact it happens every single time I know they will turn around and say it cannot be reproduced! You only have to look at the iMac and Macbook Pro discussion forums to see this, hundreds of people are suffering from this issue Steve, and I saw loads of them in the Apple store being told to go away (in a polite way) when they told the genius their macbook pro or iMac is not waking from sleep. The genius looked in the logs and said ‘there is no events in there there is nothing wrong’!! That is so not true! This issue does not for some reason show up as a sleep wake event or as anything else in the logs! My Macbook Pro has this issue! There is nothing in the logs, and funnily enough I saw most of these people when I was at the genius bar trying to convince the genius to give me a new battery since mine was clearly faulty, I had to sit there for 2.5hrs whilst my battery ran down to 30% full and powered off in front of him and then let him test it in another machine before he would believe me! Anyway, I digress….

I am writing to you because I want this issue resolved. I want my girlfriends iMac to work as it should, she paid enough for it and she is wanting to buy one of your notebooks and an iPhone, though is hanging fire on the notebook due to this issue. It costs us a lot of time and money to take the mac into one of your stores Steve (its not easy to carry either), I appreciate that these things happen, its the nature of technology. However, this machine was already meant to be fixed once, its clearly not the case, it has the same issue (though not dead yet!) and we can’t keep expending time and money going round in circles either being told the problem doesn’t exist, it can’t be reproduced or getting replacement parts after replacement parts and having to keep taking it in. I’ve seen the attitude of the geniuses in our local store and I know this is how it is going to pan out.

I’d appreciate a response from you or one of your staff regarding this issue. Given the contact i have with macs both with the machines themselves and the number of others i know that have contact with them I think this is a fairly serious widespread issue. I am tending towards faulty SMC’s but I can’t be sure and I don’t want to play a guessing game. The best outcome for us would be a direct instruction from above for the apple store to carry out a thorough (not an ‘it doesn’t exist’ or ‘it can’t be reproduced’) investigation and a replacement of the relevant parts (Probably logic board and PSU) OR a better solution is a complete replacement machine and you take this one and send it to your engineering department so they can play with it to their hearts content to find the issue and try and find a fix for the hundreds or thousands of others that have it. The later option would also cost you less as replacement of all the parts again is going to cost almost the same as a replacement machine!

Regardless, I want to work with you on this one to get a resolution for us, but also maybe to help you find out what is causing it. What i don’t want is to be fobbed off by Apple geniuses and have to commute with the machine backwards and forwards multiple times. It costs us over £30 per trip so you can understand why having just had it repaired we are not thrilled at the prospect of another round trip to the Apple store!

Kind Regards,