HOLLYN-wood (Norman, that is)

I’ve had to hit the Genius Bar twice in that last few months, once each for two different computers. Before I went the first time I was warned that they would diagnose my MacBook Pro’s problems as “logic board” (the screen had turned completely wonky). Sure enough, that’s what they said. They then took it in and, five days later, had it repaired. They had not replaced or done anything to the logic board — they replaced the malfunctioning screen and installed a new hard drive.

Last week I brought in my daughter’s G4 Power Book, which wouldn’t boot most of the time. What was their diagnosis? Sure enough, logic board. They’d fix it for over $1000. To test it, they moved the RAM chip into a second, open, slot.

Result, the laptop has run fine ever since and we’re saving ourselves either a $1000 logic board repair, or buying a new laptop.

I can’t say that I’m really impressed by their diagnostic capabilities there.

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Now that I have my MacBook Pro back, I can tell you what happened.

One day two weeks ago, I started up my new (bought in April) laptop and saw the screen completely tricked out in pink, with wavy lines. It was almost impossible to view for more than ten minutes without my eyes going buggy and the top of my head exploding.

This happened the evening before I was going on a business trip so, needless to say, I was Not Happy.

I brought it into the Mac Store (there’s one five minutes from my house, thank God) and the geniuses at the Genius Bar told me that it was probably the logic board and they’d be happy to take my laptop from me fro 5 to 10 business days to send it out for repair.

Of course, I didn’t do that I took it to Albuquerque and just toughed it out. I had to keep putting the top of my head back on, periodically, but at least I had connectivity.

When I got back, I brought it back into the store and watched them pack it away.

In the meantime, my wife’s ancient iBook went kerfloooey. The Geniuses told her that it was the logic board and would cost $400 to replace. They advised we grab the hard drive out of the puppy and use the rest of the iBook as a giant skipping stone at the park (or a reef, along with the hundreds of other retired iBooks).

We were suffering from logic board nightmares.

We haven’t dealt with her problem yet, but I got mine back yesterday in great shape and much faster than ten business days. Total time without laptop — six days, including Saturday and Sunday. The ticket packed in with the repaired Mac said that they got it in on Monday and fixed it the same day. It was shipped back out and — voila — life is good.

Interestingly, when I read further in the ticket I noticed that there was no mention of a replaced logic board. In fact, they replaced the screen and my hard drive!!

Luckily, I had Super Dupered my content, so it was easy to get it up and running again except for one thing — my PC partition had completely disappeared. And that was where I had my Avid application. So, right now, no Avid. I’ve got FCP back (along with the rest of the suite) but no Avid.

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You know how you’re moving back and forth between Final Cut and Avid, and the keyboard shortcuts are different and how you’re always typing the wrong thing because your mind has standardized on one or the other and then you forget that you’ve moved into the other and things just get all wacky and crazy (just like this run-on sentence).

Well, here is the answer to your prayers, from Art. Lebedev Studio. It’s a keyboard, called the Optimus Maximus, possibly the biggest and best April Fool’s Joke around (okay okay, it may not be a joke, but if it isn’t, it should be). It’s a keyboard in which each and every key is actually a tiny little display that shows the key function. Here is picture of it.

Pretty cool. And it better be, at a price of 43,990 rubles. For those of you without handy access to a calculator, that’s $1565. Oh, you’ll have to wait until December 20th to get one.

It makes the Red Camera seem like a real bargain.

Happy April Fool’s Day!!

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