Mostly Musings about Apple and the Mac

I took delivery of my new MacBook Pro (15″ 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 GB RAM, 150 GB HD) on Friday 8th December. Now, just nine days later, I’ve decided to send it back to the Apple Store and to get a refund. I never, ever thought I’d see the day when I’d do anything like this or be so disappointed with anything that came from Apple. But these past nine days have been a constant tale of woe and frustration, and I just can’t take any more of the hassle I’ve had to go through.

I’ve already covered some of the initial problems over at Jim’s Rants, my other weblog, but what I’ve said there was principally to do with customising the new machine so that it brought me as close as possible to the computing experience I’ve been used to on my trusty 14″ iBook G4. As I explain there, this was mainly concerned with organising access to my iTunes music library, whose music files are stored on an external Firewire drive which I access over Airport. After two Erase and Installs I finally got that aspect sorted out, used .Mac syncing to bring over my Bookmarks, Calendars and Contacts, and settled down to put the new machine through its paces. Sad to say, by the time I brought the MacBook over to Carl’s place to show it off to him just two days later, I was already less than enthusiastic.

The two big problems which had come to light were (1) an unreliable and sometimes totally unuseable Airport connection which led to desperately frustrating internet and local network experiences, and (2) annoying problems with the trackpad. When I was over with Carl, the trackpad situation had got to the stage that I’d given up ever hoping to be able to use the MacBook Pro’s trackpad in the way I’ve become accustomed to with the iBook (I prefer to enable clicking and dragging, but the MacBook was forcing me to disable this and to have to click in all circumstances). I’ve since sorted out trackpad clicking and have it behaving as I’d prefer (this seems to be a matter of leaving the settings for Tracking Speed and Double-Click Speed at their defaults), but there are still other annoying little quirks about this machine’s trackpad which get my back up. The main cause of annoyance at this stage is a tendency for the cursor to stall on-screen on occasions, most especially after entering text in a web form or similar.

But the trackpad behaviour isn’t the killer — that’s the quite abysmal Airport performance which is quickly becoming a major problem. I’ve spent hours on the relevant forum over at Apple Discussions, and on this thread in particular. To a certain extent it’s reassuring to learn that I’m not the only one with this problem, but it’s still terribly sad to see the size of this thread (over 20,000 views and 250 replies) and to read of so many MacBook Pros which are performing so much below par when it comes to wireless connectivity.
      I’ve struggled with this on and off since I got the new machine. When it works it’s great, but it’s becoming more and more of a chore and less and less of a pleasant experience to use it in the environment it’s meant for. All the more galling is the fact that sitting right beside it is my good old reliable 14″ iBook G4, which transfers files across the network at reasonable speeds despite the fact that the iMac’s 802.11b card must inevitably bring down overall performance, constantly connects to my AirPort network at full strength and effortlessly streams my iTunes music to my stereo speakers without a single interruption.

Sorry, Apple. This is the worst €2500 I’ve ever spent. I regret to say it, and never thought it would come to this, but this MacBook Pro is going back where it came from and I’m asking for a full refund.