Now a day later … Thursday June 12th … I was again working on my computer, when the whole 24″ display went black! No warning. No dying wheeze. Nothing. Blackness. Wow … the screen went to sleep? No. The MacBook Pro screen was NOT black. Panic time!

I reached deeply into my troubleshooting repertoire and tried everything within my powers to resuscitate it … but it was DEAD JIM! I tried zapping the PRAM (holding the “Command”, “Option”, “P” and “R” keys while restarting) 4 to 5 times. Nothing. I searched the Apple Support site and Apple Discussions. Some similar issues, but not results, other than replacement. I tried starting up from one of my multi-partitioned external USB drives which have clean installs of both OS 10.5 and OS 10.6. No go. Still blackness. I reached into the depths of my Library folder and trashed the Users/xxxxx/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.windowserver.xxxxx.plist and did a restart. Still nothingness.

It was time to admit the problem. My 16 month old, our of warranty, no AppleCare extended warranty, 24″ LED Cinema Display was gone. History! After about 10 minutes of shock, anger, and grieving, I went online to the website of the Seattle University Village Apple Store and made an appointment with a Genius.

Fast forward to my appointment. The Genius hooks up the display to his MacBook …. and … nothing! Black! He tells me it’s out of warranty and that it will cost $600.00 to replace the LCD panel. Though he will wave the $160.00 per hour labor fee. WTF!!!! More Shock (anger) and not much awe! I grabbed my display and went home. I WAS PISSED!!!!!!!

After only 16 month of use on a $899.00 display, and that’s it? I expected much more. Oh … like a replacement, and an apology? This isn’t the Apple I knew and loved. I was angry and depressed. After dinner that night, I cleared my desk, and reorganized it to work without the 24″ display. I was ready to move on.

Friday morning I woke up and was pretty much resigned to my fate. Not having enough money to repair or replace the display, I had to make due without it. So I started my morning ritual. Start the MacBook Pro & check mail. Wouldn’t you know …. a survey from Apple. “How did we do?” Oh boy … I get to unload! Of course there were the rate-us-questions. Fail! Fail! Fail! And finally, do you have any comments? With razor tongue I was ready to slice, dice and julienne! But then I had a “What Would Chris Do” moment. Chris being my partner, and the more business savvy person in this relationship. I heard him say, “…leave the anger and emotion behind. Give the facts. And don’t berate.” So I composed a letter.

In the letter I spoke of my disappointment that Apple didn’t stand behind a product that was only 16 months old. I spoke of how I had been purchasing and using Mac computers since 1986 and expected longevity in all their products. I stated that I was Mac consultant and would now have to think twice before recommending Apple displays without the caveat of buying AppleCare on all Apple products, because they don’t last as long as they once did. I also commented that I would have thought Apple would have replaced the display without even a second thought. That was the Apple I knew and loved.

At the end of the survey, I was asked if I would like someone from Apple to call. So I left my number etc. And sure enough … I got a call from Kelii Moreau, the Senior Manager of the University Village Apple Store just a few hours later. He told me that he read my eMail and I was right. Apple should have replaced my display. And if I stopped in later today, they would! It was music to my ears! I was told to box up my old one, and ask for a manager when I entered the store. A brand new fully (1 year) warrantied display would be waiting for me to swap for my old one.

After finishing my morning errands, I was at the Apple store with my defective and boxed display. I asked for a manager, handed the greeter the eMail from Kelli … to eliminate repeated explanation. Within a minute I was greeted by a salesperson and he went off to retrieve my new display. The entire team had already been briefed. Another manager Jennifer Dance came out to greet me and thank me for my letter. She said (and I paraphrase) ” you are a bit of a celebrity here. Everyone on the team got to read your letter. It reminded us all of what Apple has been and what we need to strive to be. You made an impression! And you did it without getting angry. Thanks you for that too.” Really? Wow! Cool! Thank you!

And that was that. I got my display replaced and went home to set it up.

Thank you Apple. And thanks to all the Apple managers and staff at the University Village Apple Store, for stepping up, and doing the right thing.

The moral of this story …. be the squeaky wheel! Use all the avenues available to obtain what you think is a fair result. No anger. No animus. Just honesty and fact. Leave hyperbole home. You may end up getting more than you bargained for.

Thanks again to everyone at Apple who helped achieve this result!

With so many rumors flying, no one knew what to expect. Would Steve start with something innocuous, the new iPhone OS (which didn’t happen) or a new iPhone (which also didn’t happen) and then at the last moment …. oh … just one more thing. No. He launched straight away into setting up and introducing the new iPad.

There will be those that will rip it apart for what it doesn’t do. No phone. No Camera. No Verizon. No multitasking. But as a consultant, I need to talk about what it does do. And the possibilities it brings. Oh. And the joy!

Hello iPad: Let’s start with the obvious. It looks like a large iPhone. But it’s not. You can’t make a call from it even with the Wi-Fi and 3G package (unless you have Wi-Fi & use Skype … but that’s just theoretical … I digress). Looking at the icons on the front screen, it looks very much like an “exploded” or “expanded view of the iPhone desktop. Only four icons across, and four in the dock. If more will fit in the dock, will remain to be seen when the first Wi-Fi versions of the iPad ship in 60 days. Though 60 days from today Wednesday January 27, 2010 is Sunday, March 28, 2010. So maybe the 29th? Guess we’ll have to wait for the official date from Apple. Who knows what version of the OS it will finally ship with … iPhone/iPad OS 4.0?

Apple Inside: Apple has taken a bold step in it’s evolution with the iPad. It runs a new 1 Ghz Apple A4 processor. Apple’s chip also includes onboard video processing. No Intel inside. No Qualcomm inside. No NVIDIA inside either. Apple bought P.A. Semi back in 2008. It’s the first time they have used their own silicon in an Apple device.

eBooks: We wanted them. We got them! Plus a new iPad application called iBooks. Like iTunes you can buy eBooks directly from Apple via iBooks. The interface is simple, slick, and well designed. There have been other iPhone books apps that have looked similar, but Apple is not one to shy away from “quoting” another programmers work & calling it their own.

Apple announced partnerships with five major publishing houses, including Penguin, Macmillan, and Simon & Shuster. With more to come. All books on the iPad will be in ePub format, which is the most used open book format in the world. So in theory, any ePub book can be read on the iPad. iBooks is going to be yet another cash cow for Apple … and the publishers. Look out Kindle and Nook.

Mail: Mail on iPad has been redesigned. It’s use of popup contextual menus is well designed. The virtual touch keyboard for composing new eMail looks almost like a real keyboard. It seems that big too. Turning the iPad in landscape gives you a screen with your Inbox and folders on the left. select a piece of mail and flip iPad to portrait, and the inbox goes away and you eMail fills the screen. Sadly I can’t tell you much more than what I’ve gleaned from photos and the iPad Video on the Apple website.

iPod: Dream alert! Imagine if you will, an iPad landscape car dock. Now imagine if you will the ability to use iPad with my car stereo. I could use iPod.app for the first time in iPod history, to see album images on the screen large enough, that I could use as my music interface for my car. In landscape, I would imagine, iPad’s version of iPod.app uses cover stream. No more searching on a single line of text on my “iPod compatible” car stereo for songs buried deep within a playlist somewhere. I may have to build this thing myself if I have to!

It will also be nice to see what iPad developers do with the new screen real estate … all 9.7 diagonal inches. Plus the new iPhone SDK that will give them access to all the new menuing and other iPad specific features. It will be another summer of exciting new iPhone and iPad apps! As of now all current iPhone apps will run on the iPad AS IS. No updating needed. Plus you can run the current iPhone apps in “double” pixel” mode, which makes then fill the entire screen. Pretty thoughtful on Apple’s part!

I could go on about each redesign of each app, but Apple.com has done it best. Whether it’s Safari, Calendar, Contacts, Notes, Maps … they all have been redesigned … and they look and function great.

Now I can’t wait to get my hands on one to test for myself. Apple did a great job of making the entry level 16 GB Wi-Fi iPad only $499.00. I’m like a kid waiting for early Christmas! Oh gee …. is it 60 days yet???!!!