I woke up this morning, made coffee, let the dogs out and got on my computer. I moved the mouse a little bit to get it out of sleep mode, but nothing happened. The screen stayed black.. the case button kept doing it’s pulsing/glowing thing. So i held down the power button to force a shutdown. Then i hit the power button to start up. I got the chime but still a black screen and a pulsing case button. I did this a few times and decided that maybe the lcd crapped out as i never really got beyond a pitch black screen.
Made an appointment at the genius bar. Just got back. The guy tried hooking it up to an external monitor.. but no dice, same thing. Chime, Pulsing, and Black. He says it’s probably the logic board. My computer is out of warranty and i didn’t get apple care… so i’m paying a flat-rate repair which turns out to be $300 and they fix the hardware issue no matter what the problem is. The guy said the logic board costs like $800, so if thats the problem, this flat rate service is a bargain. A new macbook pro starts at $2k, so let’s leave that out as an option.
Sucks… i have most of my files on a separate HD, but i still feel lost without it. Hurry home macbook.. techy says 5-6 days before macbook comes home and i’ll be picking it up at the store that i dropped off at.
So maybe this post helps someone else.. let’s review
- macbook is out of warranty and no apple care
- logic board possibly fried (worth $800)
- apple now has a flat rate repair service for $300 that covers any hardware issue
- repair service takes 5-6 days.
Also – they do make you sign a paper saying they’re not responsible for your data. backup, backup, backup