So Apple *finally* fixed my laptop.  Correctly.  Under warranty.  Only took disrupting my schedule for a total of 4 days.  Here’s what happened:

Awhile ago, my MBP keyboard had a few keys stop responding.  I’ll not get into how it happened, but let’s just say it wasn’t a manufacturer defect.  I took the topcase off, took the keyboard out, disassembled, and cleaned everything with rubbing alcohol and canned air where appropriate.  I put the thing back together, still doesn’t work.  At this point I’m sure the keyboard’s PCB is shot, so I take it into the Apple store (which requires a genius bar appointment).  They look at it, give me the “yup, it’s busted”, and they order parts for me.

That Saturday, I got a voicemail from them telling me my parts were in, and I made, yet another, after work “genius” bar appointment.  They tell me that I can drop my laptop off at that point and be without it all night.  To those of you that know me, that is simply unacceptable.  I can’t be without my laptop all night.  So after enough arguing they assure me that if I bring it in the next day at 10 when they open, they can take care of it, same day.  Fortunately, that fell on the same day my Mom was getting her new TV delivered, so I was taking half the day off anyway.  Again, not too bad.

The next day, I drop it off at 10am, and they tell me it should take a few hours and they’d call me.  Why this is, I have no idea, since I can disassemble and reassemble the laptop in 20 minutes flat, a “trained” technician should be able to do it as fast or faster.  Anyway, 12 rolls around and I can’t reach the techs at the Apple store to get my laptop status, so I go to work.  I call them before I leave work, and they tell me it’s been done since something like 11.  Nice, guys.  I pick it up on the way home, check it out at the store, everything *seems* just fine, so I leave the store quasi-happy.

I get it home that night and find the ambient light sensor that controls they keyboard backlight and screen brightness doesn’t work properly.  It flashes in a pattern that is great if you’re hammered, but bad if you want to get work done.  I turn off the backlight and set the screen to fixed brightness.  Done.  The backlight isn’t a feature I use often anyway, and is something I decide to address later.  Next thing I notice is that the touchpad button doesn’t work as well as it used to…particularly when dragging.  It would interrupt and cancel my drag.  Again, something I can live with since I usually tap-drag with the touchpad anyway.

Finally, a few days later, I realize that my battery life *sucks*.  The computer will just shut down when it thinks the battery is at 20 percent.  This was the last straw for me.  I scheduled a “genius bar” appointment for this Monday and took it in.  For once, Apple did something correctly, and just gave me a new battery on the spot.  That battery works fine now.  I walked them through all the other issues I was having, and they just *happened* to have the parts on-hand to fix it.  So I set it up to get fixed Tuesday.  They were to replace the keyboard, topcase, and ambient light sensor.  I left the laptop and went to work.

Tuesday after work I pick my laptop up and notice the repair order and the final repair order are different; the latter is missing the AL sensor.  I ask why, and they tell me that the light sensor was fine, it was just installed improperly last time.   Hmm.

Everything appears to work fine now.  I’ve yet to diff the system profiler pre/post output to see what they changed, but so far, so good.

I hope I never have to deal with this again.