Apple MagSafe failure prevents work from getting done
I have had an Apple MacBook Pro since April of 2006 and a couple days ago I noticed the insulation on the A/C adapter cable at the end that attaches to the MagSafe connector starting to seperate. I was on a business trip to Florida and needed to keep using the MacBook Pro and every day the cable condition worsened. And today when I arrived home from work and tried to use my MacBook I found that the computer was dead and the MagSafe adapter refused to charge at all. I called Apple support and was told I would have to bring the adapter into my local Apple store to see what they could do for me and I plan to stop by tomorrow. I hope they replace the adapter because I should not have to pay US$79 for another adapter when the failure was no fault of mine. As anyone who has purchased or seen my gear, I take pristine care of everything and never pulled on my cable to remove it so this is definitely a defect. After looking into the issue some more I actually found feedback on the Apple Store site where the problem seems to be quite popular. There are also several reports of the MagSafe melting.
On this same business trip last week I brought my 1st generation iPod shuffle to use while I went running. I plugged it into my computer to charge it and just saw the dreaded green and orange flashing lights. I tried everything mentioned in this forum and it looks like my shuffle is dead. You will find several discussion threads, like this one on the Apple website so this seems to be a very common issue. I only listened to it for about 100 hours over the last couple years and think this is unacceptable. My daughter also had an iPod mini that was used for a total of about 20 hours when the motherboard died. I paid US$99 to replace it and then a month after that the hard drive died and I broke some small piece trying to replace it myself. My willingness to purchase Apple products is definitely soured by my latest experiences and at this time it is highly unlikely I will make an Apple iPod purchase anytime soon.
UPDATE: I made my appointment with an Apple Genius and stopped by my local Apple store. The good news is that the adapter is under warranty, but the bad news is they did not have any left in stock due to others who also had failures. I should hopefully be back in action with my MBP in 1 to 3 days and already miss the Mac OS X on this sweet laptop.