
$10k Later, an Apple Store Genius Diagnoses a $0 MacBook Pro Problem - jonny_eh
https://9to5mac.com/2019/06/11/macbook-pro-problem/
======
aphextim
In high school we had a P.C. tech class where we learned how to build
computers which were donated to the school from various churches and
businesses doing upgrades in the area.

All the hardware was about 3-4 years behind current tech at the time
(2001-2002, so computers were from 1998ish), however it was a great way to
learn the fundamentals and this was back when you could fry a motherboard by
connecting the PSU to it incorrectly.

Long story short as one of the exercises we would break workstations that
other students would then have to troubleshoot and fix.

Some were annoying, pop off keyboard keys and put back in proper positions.

Others were simple but annoying when you are learning such as finding the
jumpers in the wrong spot on a hard drive.

One kid in our class definitely did this 'trick' where they turned the Monitor
brightness off. It was the last workstation to finally get fixed that day and
this story reminded me of that day I had forgotten about.

~~~
acheron
_this was back when you could fry a motherboard by connecting the PSU to it
incorrectly._

In 2001? From what I remember, everything was using ATX power by the late 90s,
which could only be connected in one direction. I thought the possibility of
connecting power incorrectly was more of an XT/AT 80s/early 90s thing.

I could totally be misremembering though.

In any case, that does sound like a fun class. Kind of stuff I had to learn on
my own. Speaking of connecting things incorrectly though: my ongoing issue was
that every time I disconnected the ribbon cable to the floppy or hard drive, I
would inevitably reattach it backwards, no matter how much I told myself to
make a note of the correct direction.

~~~
aphextim
We live in a small town of 8,000 or so. Our electronics were behind the times
a few more years.

Most of the computers we worked on first year I believe were 486 machines
because as people were learning they would ruin them and it wouldn't be a big
deal.

I remember an entire closet filled with old components/computers stacked on
shelves to the ceiling with the yellow cigarette tar faded color on
everything.

I Googled a 486 motherboard for fun and this is what I remember working on
where the PSU had a 2 part connector for the motherboard which if you did
wrong you would smell burning pretty fast.

[https://www.picclickimg.com/d/l400/pict/163311603533_/Vintag...](https://www.picclickimg.com/d/l400/pict/163311603533_/Vintage-486-Motherboard-
PCCHIPS-CHIP-11-with-CPU.jpg)

I do remember all of them did not even have an AGP slot for graphics and most
of the machines we experimented on were much older than anything we would use
for the software side of the class. (Almost all only ran DOS or Windows 3.1
maybe a win 95 outlier)

I remember when we went to build 'modern' computers it was much easier than
the older machines we were working on because of the dummy proof ATX boards
and AGP slots for graphics cards, notched IDE cables etc.

I haven't messed with anything that old in a while I just remember a tip my
teacher said. "Make sure that the red stripe was on the same side as the PSU
connector"

When looking at the back of a floppy drive if the power connector is left of
the IDE cable slot make sure the red stripe is on the left side. If the power
connector is on the right side of the IDE cable slot make the red stripe face
right. (Not sure if this works 100% of the time but it was the method I used
and it got me through the class).

Now everything has dummy notches so at least putting computers together
nowadays is as simple as building a Lego house in my opinion.

I remember that teacher was amazing, in part probably because of my bias
towards liking the class anyway.

Teacher notices all kids would play this RPG maker thing in their 30 minutes
of free time (2 hours class, 1 hour hardware, 30 minutes test on what you
learned, 30 minutes of free time).

Assigned a project where everyone in the class had to make a playable RPG and
listed components needed such as 5 triggered events, 10 battles etc.

We all got to play each others RPG's live in class to show them off.

Best RPG was from this one kid who seriously must have spent 80 hours +. It
had every person in the class in it, started with the kid waking up at home,
going to school with battles on the bus ride. The character attended the PC
Tech class with the final battle being fighting Captain (The Teacher) There
was even a decent story about the teacher using the students to program a
virus that would shut down the entire worlds infrastructure - and the one kid
that was the main character of this RPG discovers this fact, eventually takes
on the teacher and when it was over the Game Over / Credits screen was a silly
little animation symbolizing the protagonist zeroing out all the hard drives.

A teacher who sees what the kids are interested in and then ends up creating
an assignment based around that is a good teacher.

------
mrguyorama
The fact that you can't change your brightness before logging in is pure
stupidity on Apple's part

------
gnode
> You’re not going to believe it: The screen brightness was turned all the way
> down (not merely dim, but off).

Funnily enough, this is the first thing I suspected, given that it's happened
to me (under Ubuntu in my case).

Although even if experience didn't lead you to suspect a software issue, I
would have expected one of the first diagnostics given these symptoms to be to
shine a bright light into the screen to see if there was anything being
displayed. Jumping to replacing logic boards is just clutching at straws.

~~~
karmakaze
This has happened to me multiple times because I use an external monitor
mirrored with the laptop display dimmed to zero because there is no 'don't use
this display' setting for it. The first time or two I hard power-cycled it,
because by the time I have the laptop at another location I've forgotten the
context where it was last used. Then I realized it's just the brightness.

------
jjwhitaker
This sort of happens with Ubuntu installs on HP laptops, at least in my
experience. The default brightness is 0 so you can install Ubuntu, restart to
log in, and the screen will come up black. External displays work fine, caps
lock toggles on, fan noises and everything are fine.

You just need to increase the display brightness using the F keys and it's
fine.

------
villgax
Something along the same lines where mine wouldn't light up because I kept it
on top of my magnetic sleeve case & the MBA thought it was folded because of
the false magnetic reading from a lid being closed was replicated by the case
on top of which the laptop was put. Freaked me the heck out.

------
sharkmerry
>>> So he routinely leaves the machine open, but turns down the screen
brightness to zero (backlight fully off) to avoid distraction.

Did he tell the apple people about this fact? It doesnt mention it, but I am
not sure how he couldve forgotten that

------
xen2xen1
And that's why having remote control software on your computers is invaluable.
You can always check to see if it's reporting to your app and that can answer
many, many questions.

------
spiznnx
Everyone likes to complain that android devices are too bright when booting,
but at least they'll never have this problem :)

~~~
RenRav
This reminds me of being stranded in another country trying to charge my
smartphone via solar. If I still had power, I could charge it, because I could
enable energy saving, airplane mode, turn off the screen, etc. It would slowly
charge up.

But if it was completely empty? It would permanently set the display at max
brightness politely informing me it was charging, that I had to wait, and
would actually drain more power than the solar panel could provide.

I eventually had to pop off the back case and physically detach the display
cable to get it to charge up.

I always wondered why it displays anything at all when out of power, just a
flashing pattern of the LED would have been enough, many portable chargers use
that exact method to read out the charge, usually in 25% increments.

------
User23
I used to turn the brightness down to 0 on my mac 512ke when I wasn't using
it. That was a physical knob. Since it was convection cooled there wasn't any
noise, and it saved the not inconsiderable time of booting from a double sided
floppy.

------
eerikkivistik
Yeah, so this happens to me about twice a week. Most recently yesterday
morning. Don't need a flashlight anymore though, got used to the gesture of
blindly moving my pointer to my avatar and clicking on it.

~~~
kingnothing
You can also type the first letter of your username then hit Enter.

~~~
zeristor
alt-command down works for me, I had an monitor that took a minute to warm up,
actually I grew to like the cyberpunk vibe.

I got to learn how to log in blind since my 2010 MBP takes a few minutes to
settle down once started.

------
duxup
Those series of complicating factors are quite interesting.

I wonder what the reasoning is for no brightness adjust when in recovery mode
or similar situations.

------
dfraser992
TLDR: Apple's QA processes need improving?

FYI: I have a 2010 iMac and it still runs great. I am behind a few OS
versions, but it does not matter for what I do. I do wish they would release a
fix for this "Recent Items" issue but am not willing to upgrade. I plan to
never upgrade actually, until I really need the latest Linux box for some
reason. I'm not thrilled with the slow decline of Apple over the years, but it
happens to every large corporation.

PS: I've been in QA for years, so my initial reaction was ... ok.... It is
such a strange problem that I would try to see if I could remote login vs/
replacing motherboards.

------
roflchoppa2
doesn't PRAM reset address this on the following boot? Why was that not done
before/after running Apple Service Toolkit?

~~~
dcohenp
> 7\. The Apple troubleshooting guides are out of date. They do not note that
> if you have a firmware password on a T2 Mac, you cannot reset PRAM as
> expected and therefore cannot resolve screen brightness issues this way. You
> also cannot run diagnostics due to the black screen.

