SD 338–351: Well I’ve survived another two weeks of pandemxistence. Sadly, my iMac Pro has not.
Woke up last Saturday to a very, very slow computer. Restarted which didn’t seem to really fix things. GPU usage was high and opening any programs caused it to slow to a crawl. Did a system diagnostics check that didn’t turn up any issues (though my first attempt froze). Did Disk Utility and everything appeared normal. Tried to boot into Safe Mode and things got really crazy looking.
There was also a fun slow window shade animation effect happening when the screen refreshed. Tried to restart and do a PRAM reset and… the screen stopped coming on entirely. Eesh. Called Apple Support and they seemed a little incredulous that the screen wasn’t coming on. Unplugged it and let it set and tried turning it on again. Still no luck so called Apple Support again and got a repair appointment setup at MicroCenter for the following Thursday.
In the meantime switched my desk setup to put my monitor front and center so I could swap out my 2016 laptop I recently got back from Dane and my work laptop as needed. Then bought Final Fantasy XIV for the fourth time on PS4 so I could maintain that addiction while my computer’s out of service.
Luckily performance on my laptops seems fine and my workflow is online enough that I haven’t really missed any files from my iMac yet. I was very anxious about my service appointment with having to haul the computer to MicroCenter during a global pandemic and all. And then… my anxiety turned out to be semi-warranted!
The service counter wasn’t able to verify my AppleCare+ as being valid and therefore said my device was out of warranty. So got very stressed and called Apple support. First support person said everything looked fine on their end and weren’t sure what was going on so passed me up the chain to another person. That person also said everything looked fine on their end and had me hand my phone to the service person to say it all looked good on their end. But without an active status in MicroCenter’s system, they wouldn’t be able to order any parts for the repair… so that wasn’t going to work. Second Apple person passed me up the chain again to a third person who talked to the MicroCenter rep for a minute and was immediately able to flip some switch and get the issue resolved. Ugh. I’m not happy that it caused me to have a trembling, anxiety-ridden “AppleCare told me…!” moment. Everyone was very nice and understanding. Just an annoying stressful situation.
Also there was a giant line outside MicroCenter for some sort of graphic card release I think?
Anyway, two masks, two Uber rides, and an hour later, I was back home. Now let’s see how long the repair takes. Oh! The most exciting/fortunate/stressful part is my AppleCare+ protection expires Tuesday. So the timing is either perfect or disastrous. We’ll see! The repair should either be fully covered or else $299 if they discover accidental damage. One Apple support person said the sudden failure sounded like water damage, but the computer was fine when I went to bed and nothing was spilled on it in the night before I woke it up the next morning. Ugh. This is karmic punishment for buying a more expensive computer than necessary. Or it’s fine! Shut up. This is all banal and tedious but that’s the point of this blog that no one reads except for maybe me some day but more likely not.
Hi future self if you ever come back here.
At least I look cute from my new webcam angle.