Not impressed with Apple service

-

As I mentioned on my previous post, my iMac needs a new RAM. I called the shop to be sure they have a technician on the shop and I was told they had one from Monday to Friday. As it was Friday afternoon I thought that if I was lucky they could double check Apple's diagnostic software diagnose: Faulty RAM. This way I could be back home with the iMac in the same trip.

I brought the iMac to the Apple shop I've bought it from, but I was told I had to leave it there (why am I not surprised?) and luckily they will call me next Wednesday. In hindsight I realized they should have stressed the "luckily" part.

Next Monday I've got a call from the "technician". The conversation goes more or less like this: Hi Sir, this is from the Apple shop. I'm trying to have a look at your computer but it is password protected so I cannot log in. I mentioned him that all that I did was to run Apple Diagnostic software and I've got a RAM error right away. Using the system, however, was sometimes successful for some minutes, hours or days till it started to fail. Yes sir, but I need the password so I can log in. I still do not see the need nor the convenience of giving a complete stranger the password but given the way the guy insist I decide to give in and gave him the password.

As some other passwords of services I use are in the Safari cache I did changed my Gmail account password just in case. I am not comfortable with other people messing in my system that contains family photos and other stuff. (I did a full back-up copy in case you are wondering).

As I have not complained about any harddisk problem and as the Apple Diagnostic software is started from a DVD and not from my system HD I cannot understand why they are doing this but let's assume they will fix my issue.

On Thursdaythey have not yet called me so I called them. It was determined my RAM needed to be replaced, both banks. I told them I only had 1GB on a single DIMM, that was the default configuration when I bought the system. I was told that they were waiting for new RAM and they don't expect it to have it available till next week.

I'm glad I have not hard deadlines on the horizon as a simple RAM replacement is going to take them around 10 days (if I'm lucky). Maybe the local hardware shop is spoiling me but they use to have stock of popular RAM formats.

I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Comments

Unknown said…
Miguel, welcome to the bad technical service in Spain...
The worst thing of Apple in Spain is the technical service...

It is a complete disaster, but this is not a new thing..It works in this way for always...

Jesus
10:42 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

VFD control with Arduino using RS485 link

-
Image
Variable Frequency Drives ( VFD ) allow the control of spindles so speed can accurately be controlled and a detailed acceleration profile for the spindle and reverse rotation can all be handled. In essence a VFD is an three phase inverter for three-phase AC motor. I am using a popular (I mean cheap) Chinese VFD and though the reference manual is not great, I could see there is a built-in RS-485 port. I usually control the start, stop and speed selection using the keyboard on the unit but I thought it will be more useful if I could control everything from the same Arduino is doing our CNC table control. Some cheap RS-485 off eBay and some lines of code later, I can start, stop and change the speed from an Arduino. What a cool thing to have! Some configuration of your VFD are needed before you can use it like that.  You need to set PD163=1 (I am using address 1 in the code). PD=164=1 (for setting serial to 9600bps) and PD165=0 (for using ASCII and 8N1 character format)
Read more

How to get sinusoidal s-curve for a stepper motor

-
Image
After some experimentation, and delving a bit into the math of motion, I realized there can be a significant difference on the motion of a machine by just making small changes. A common and popular approach to smooth one axis of motion is to use a trapezoidal speed pattern, where acceleration and deceleration are uniformly accelerated movements (aka constant acceleration motion) separated by a portion happening at cruising speed. The problem comes with the fact that, while that approach is simple to understand and to code, it does contain sudden changes in the acceleration, that show as spikes on the acceleration derivative, called jerk. These sudden changes in the acceleration translate into undesired vibration in our machines. Most of that can be eliminated by selecting a motion pattern that does not contain sudden changes of acceleration. If we chose a mathematical function for our speed whose second derivative is continuous, then we reduce system vibration quite a lot. One ma
Read more

Importing OpenSCAD designs into Onshape

-
Image
After using Onshape CAD software for a while I am really fond of it. So one natural thing to do, specially once they have released the Instructor's kit is to start using it in the classroom too. But one thing I was not so sure how to do was to use old designs I made using OpenSCAD. It does not mean I am completely quitting using OpenSCAD but suddenly I can see I can do assemblies in Onshape that will look quite nice for showing and documentation purposes if only I could easily import from OpenSCAD. I am glad to report that the route OpenSCAD --> FreeCAD --> Onshape worked brilliantly. Even more when a few tricks were applied. While some people suggest to import CSG files from OpenSCAD to FreeCAD, I have had more success by directly importing SCAD files into FreeCAD. One trick that worked well for me was to get rid of $fn references, so now circles become real circles (or cylinders) in FreeCAD. If a part keeps some $fn references then your cylinders or circles wi
Read more