How loud can a fan be?
Another event in the Hostetler House this week — the MacBook Pro got a new fans put in. Because one of them was badly, badly broken.
It actually started a couple weeks ago when I went into Leah’s account and got Safari to run in Rosetta (Why? Because NickJr.com requires Shockwave. ) After that, when Leah had been playing for a while, the MBP would make this awful noise. But, generally after Leah was done it would stop — maybe not right away, but soon. I figured it was a fan because Safari in Rosetta would tax the CPU, thus make the fan run that much harder.
Well, when I started using Parallels it got worse — much worse. Sometimes it would take 15 minutes after I was done before the fan would quite down. Then we got a game for Leah from some leftover Christmas gift certificates that said they worked in OSX, but didn’t. But there was a Windows version with it, so I installed that in Parallels. That kicked it — the machine was sometimes unusable for two hours after that. Not just because of the noise but because of the MBP was pretty much unusably slow. I just set it in the kitchen and let it go.
Well, we were still on warranty, so it was time to take it to the local Genius Bar to fix it. I was nervous about taking it in — because I was afraid that they would ship it off to fix it, and who knows what would happen to my hard drive then? And since I had just spent a lot of the weekend doing some Django stuff that wasn’t backed up yet, so I was nervous.
When I took it in[1], I was surprised that they could fix it there (yes, they noted there was a problem!! 
But the Genius said it just made sense to replace both fans and they only had one in. They took my number and said they would call me when it was in. Also Tuesday night they called and said the fan was in.
The plan was that Gina was going to drop it off Weds morning and I would go and pick it up that evening. Gina had an appointment cancel that afternoon, so she wasn’t as rushed as she had planned. When she and Leah got to the local Apple store, the Genius said it would only be twenty minutes or so. Well, two hours later it was finally done. The Genius did not give her any updates during this two-hour wait but just, “It took longer than I thought.” No apologies or anything.
Well, the MacBook Pro is now quiet, but I’m not impressed by the service they gave to my wife and young daughter. If it’s going to take longer, that’s fine — just tell them! Let them do other shopping then just wait or play with your Macs!! I’m also not impressed that this is the second time we’ve had to use our warranty in the past month. Why is the hardware so weak? [1] Ironcially, I sat next to Matt Payne at the Genius Bar. I always seem to run into him in the oddest places . ..