As a Mac user, AppleCare is one of your best investments. Every Mac I’ve encountered needs AppleCare sooner or later.
Recently Apollo, my MacBook Pro, began to kernel panic via a sudden black screen, hiccup in audio, and require reboot. At first, I had a few isolated incidents, but by the end I was seeing two even three kernel panics per day. Seemed to be triggered by graphics, Expose most often. Perhaps playing StarCraft II before the Snow Leopard Graphics Update helped to produce a ticking time bomb. Certainly starting StarCraft had become a sure way to cause a panic in the kernel. Time for AppleCare.
Before taking Apollo in for service, I switched to Bloom, my iMac. With DropBox syncing all of my relevant files, the switch only took a few installs. I needed to update Xcode, copy .p12 private key for iOS app signing, install RVM for sensible Ruby management, port install mongodb, gem install bundler, bundle install, ready to go.
Apollo was fixed within a week, just in time for me to drop off a friend’s MacBook Pro which was experiencing dreaded display issues. AppleCare saved him the over 1000 USD of a non-certified repair shop. Since displays seem to be a the most common problem with MacBook’s, his was ready within two days.
How did Apollo work out? Alas, after an hour of “testing” StarCraft, the screen went blank again! This time I was out of battery.