Apple Store - too fast to blog!

So, on Friday the 25th of November, I took my iMac to the Apple Store in the Trafford Centre, Manchester. I was booked into the next available slot to see an Apple Genius, and after half an hour, had a nice chat and a couple of tests to confirm that the iMac was buggered.

The Genius decided that the first thing they had to do was replace the hard drive. A little disappointing, given that I've already had three hard drives in there, but then the Genius only had my word for that and it was the first time they'd set eyes on the machine. More encouragingly, they also planned to run extensive overnight tests after the repair to confirm that everything was at it should be.

To my astonishment, on Saturday I got an email saying that they'd tried to phone the office and wanted me to know that the iMac was ready for collection. ABC Digital Solutions (following text removed under threat of legal action).
I collected the iMac on Sunday, took it home and started re-installing software. I say I started, because my first install was X-code tools (developer stuff that you don't need to know about) from the Mac OS X Tiger install disk, and the iMac seized up. It was exactly the same fault as before: the machine couldn't boot up, and Diskwarrior (still the best disk repair utility out there) was reporting 'Speed inhibited due to disk malfunction'.

I took the poor broken bugger back to the Apple Store on Monday, booked my session with a Genius ( who turned out to be the same one who had repaired the machine the day before) and we agreed that the only thing to do was replace the logic board. Basically, given the highly condensed way that the iMac is built, that meant putting a new computer in the original chassis.

(You can probably guess what's coming next, but I'll continue regardless)

To my astonishment, on Tuesday I got a phone call saying my iMac was ready for collection.

I went straight over and picked it up, and I've been blithely installing software and running upgrades and syncing email and the like ever since. I've almost got the machine up to scratch now, with all my web development software installed and the studio up and running again.

Bliss.

By the way, you may remember, if you've been following this story, that I still had an open 'ticket' which had been logged through the Help Desk at ABC Digital Solutions before I contacted the Apple Store.

Well, to my astonishment, on Wednesday, ABC phoned me up. Sorry, I can't tell you what they said, because I'm under threat of legal action if I do.