NotQuiteLeet.com

Apple Store
CRABTREE VALLEY MALL
RALEIGH, NC.

I was called on the 21st of May by Apple to come pick up my Macbook Pro after having it repaired.

Why was it repaired? Here is the short back story.

I had a cracked LCD screen a few months ago. I paid nearly 1400 bucks to have it fixed and repaired (which included the top and bottom assembly). A month after I got it back I noticed that the display would not latch properly, not without my forcing it shut. I also noticed separation between the plastic lining and the metal assembly on the top and bottom of the chassis. This was also noticed on the display. At the time I needed it for school and for work setting up a few websites, making money etc. Semester was over, caught a break in work and met the tech at the Genius bar to address the issues on the weekend of the 12th of May. Genius tech agreed it was flawed, sent it to Apple Care to be fixed at no cost to me.

Went to pick up the laptop the first time on or around the 17th of May. I refused to accept the repair because there was still a large bulge between the lining and bottom assembly from the audio port to the back of the laptop. I could easily get my thumbnail in it. It was still present on the other side of the laptop but less prevalent. The display was never replaced so the condition on it still existed. The genius tech said he sees a lot of laptops come in with this “condition” and it seems to be typical. He said he couldn’t guarantee anything, but he would send it back to Apple Care. He also said they may send it back without touching it.

Well here we are on the 22nd of May and this time its MUCH worse. Though I was optimistic, I still couldn’t accept the repair. The top and bottom assemblies looked great, no issue there.

My issue was now the display itself. It has what I would say is a horrendous U bend when closed and latched.

Please let me know if I’m being a little over sensitive, here are the pics (click for 6 MP version):

I was helped by Khalil Smith, the General Manager of the Apple Store at Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh, NC. I told him that I was not comfortable accepting the laptop in this condition.

I told him the assemblies and plastic lining looks great but I was concerned about the bend in the display. I asked him to send it back to Apple Care.

He said, “I will not authorize any more work on this laptop”!

I asked again that he send it back to Apple Care since I did not feel confident in the integrity of the display due to the large bend.

He replied that, “The repair falls within our specs.”

I asked to see the specs.

He said, “They are confidential”.

I almost lost it at this point. He then said if I refuse to pick the laptop up, they would follow their abandonment procedure where I would be called at a regular interval for 60 days. I picked up the work authorization paper work and said that I would like this as a record of the repair on it. He forcefully snatched it out of my hand and said “that is only if you pick it up”. I asked him to make a copy of it, twice if not three times, before he went to the back and did it. He didn’t copy the itemized repair page that showed exactly what was repaired.

So if you could let me know if I’m just being a little too sensitive about this Id appreciate it. They know perfectly well how much we spend on these machines, and at that price we deserve to have it looking and functioning perfectly, especially right out of a repair depot.

I worked for the Apple Store at Southpoint Mall in Durham, NC. for about 10 months (approximation) or so when I was in College, this being about 2 years ago. I left when I was offered and internship at a Fortune 100 company where I currently work now as full time Engineer.

Given the experiences Ive been through the past 2 weeks I’d like to thank Apple for disowning one of its “own”.

Not only do I feel discriminated against, I am thoroughly disgusted, and deeply offended by the way Khalil Smith, a General Manager handled the situation. I have no confidence in the Management of the store to do what’s right. My trust in Apple has been violated. My enthusiasm as an advocate of Apple and its products is substantially degraded. I also have little faith now in the Depot, nor any repair entity of Apple to fix this machine properly.

After all, the more time I have to wait for the Macbook Pro to get fixed the more money I lose. That isn’t good.

It also seems that this is a long, on going problem. A thread on Macoshints forums took a poll of the Macbook Pro display warpage.

Apple Inc, Digg, Slashdot, Consumerist, Reddit, MyBiggestComplaint, MacOsHints, will someone please help me?

To further understand exactly how MPLS works you must understand how the control plane and data plane compliment each other during the forwarding process in a Label Switch Router. This process is slightly different depending if you are on a PE or P device. Below is a graphic to help illustrate those slight differences.

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First we will start with the “bogus” benefit.

In the mid to late 1990’s, after the transition from bridging to switching, and the beginning of MPLS, people thought that switching IP packets was a slower process than just switching a label on top of an IP packet. This isn’t necessarily true. Technologies like Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC’s) brought switching to an entirely new level. ASIC’s were pretty much solely responsible for multiport bridges, effectively what switches are. The term “switch” came around due to a marketing twist on the technology. Marketing of these remarkable “switches” had suggested bridges were too slow for emerging technologies. Thus this reformed multi-port bridge was re-branded and called a switch.

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Basic Configuration of an MPLS network

The configuration of a basic MPLS network is actually very simple and only requires a few basic steps. The requirements of such a network are the following:

1. Enable CEF: CEF is essentially what allows the imposition and disposition of labels in an MPLS network. You must make sure it is enabled globally, as well as on the specific interfaces participating in the MPLS network. How to enable CEF globally and on interfaces will be shown later. When possible enable CEF in distributed mode, which is largely platform dependent. Unfortunately it does not to pertain to the platforms used in this lab.

2. Configure IGP routing protocol: Interior Gateway Protocols are routing protocols such as RIP, IGRP, EIGRP, and OSPF. In this case OSPF was used on all the routers. The configuration of this relevant to the lab will be shown later. IGP routing protocols are needed to populate the routing tables, which CEF operation takes over and label binding ensues.

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What is its MPLS’ place in layered communication?

It is a niche all its own with no other competitors, MPLS has a complete monopoly in layered communications. Often referred to as switching at layer 2.5, MPLS uses a shim header that contains information that helps move frames from hop to hop.

A shim header is a 32 bit header placed between the layer 2 header, and layer 3 payload as shown in the picture below. In certain applications like MPLS VPN and MPLS TE, the shim header can contain enough information to define a path through an entire network, not just to the next hop. The standard shim header has 4 fields, of which the functions are defined below.

The 4 fields are:

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