So, My MacBook Air Died (Premium)

When Apple finally announced a new MacBook Air in late October, I ordered one immediately. Like many MacBook Air owners and fans, I couldn’t understand why the firm had let the product languish for so long. But the new Air is controversial for a number of reasons. It utilizes Apple’s unreliable “butterfly” keyboard and a strangely underpowered Intel Core i5-8210Y processor.

In use, however, I didn’t have an issue with either. As I noted in my review, the MacBook Air is mostly excellent. Performance has been excellent in typical day-to-day tasks. And that keyboard? I can’t vouch for its reliability but I actually like the typing experience. Weird, I know.

Anyway. When Apple announced macOS Catalina last week as part of its WWDC 2019 keynote, I knew I’d install it immediately on my MacBook Air. I don’t use it a lot, go figure, but maybe more to the point, I own the thing specifically so I can test what’s happening over in Cupertino. This was always going to happen. And I’ve had great success with previous Apple betas across Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

The problem was, I was traveling last week and was short on time. Apple announced the first prelease macOS Catalina version on Monday, and I was flying to Amsterdam overnight between Tuesday and Wednesday. So, on Tuesday, I downloaded Catalina, triggered the install, and continued working on my PC as is normal.

If you’re not familiar with installing new versions of macOS, it works much like it does on Windows, though the process is more old-fashioned. There’s an online part which happens while you’re still using the Mac desktop, and then you have to reboot so most of the install (in the Mac’s case) can happen while the machine is offline, from outside of macOS. On the Mac, this is accompanied by a highly inaccurate progress bar.

And it takes a while. Especially on the MacBook Air with its low-powered Y-series processor. That processor may be fine for day-to-day tasks, as I’ve seen. But when you’re installing a new macOS version, the fan kicks in and never stops. It was blowing air, loudly, for hours.

Literally. Too many hours. As the time for my departure for the airport approached, I started to worry that the install process wasn’t going to finish. And as two hours turned to three and more, I also worried that something terrible had happened to the Mac. So finally, regrettably, I turned off the machine by holding down the power button.  The fan noise stopped and the machine was idle.

And then it wouldn’t turn on again. It was dead.

Eventually, I had to leave for the airport, so I resolved to figure out the MacBook Air when I got back. Flash forward four days, I was home again, the weekend had arrived, and I finally had a chance to see what I could do. The Mac wouldn’t turn on, as before. And none of the online research I did uncovered any method for bringing it back. So I went to Apple’s support site and scheduled a Genius appointment at the local Apple Store, which I had never visited.

I’ve had mixed success with my Apple Store appointments. By which I mean that most of the time, I’m kept waiting while Apple doesn’t honor my appointment time and I get progressively more aggravated.

But that’s not what happened this time, and even my wife, who accompanied me and cannot stand the weird cult-like Apple Store experience, admitted that it went really well. Apple confirmed that the system was dead and not just not booting correctly; there was no fan noise or diagnostic output at all. So I was told it would be shipped out to Apple, fixed, and returned to me. I agreed that deleting the data on the machine would be OK if required, because it was.

That was Sunday. On Tuesday, I traveled to Washington D.C. for a work event. And then this morning (Wednesday), I got an email from Apple: My MacBook Air was being shipped to my home today. I alerted my wife so she could sign for it.

What I was most curious about is what had happened. So, I asked my wife to open the box and see if there was some explanation.

There was.

First of all, the MacBook Air was fixed by “Apple-approved” technicians at Flextronics, not at Apple.

It was fixed for free under warranty. The fix would have cost $550 had I not been under warranty.

Flextronics clean installed the latest macOS version on the MacBook Air, so my data was gone.

But the actual fix? The firm replaced the logic board—the symptom being “no power/light, power adapter OK”—and the Touch ID board (i.e. the power button), which had “no Touch ID functionality.”

So, neat. It was fixed. And for free, as it should be, the system is only 6 months old.

But that’s the thing. The system is only 6 months old. And … the logic board failed? That’s a bit alarming.

I’m not sure what to think about this, exactly. But I at least wanted to let you know about it. And will obviously be keeping an eye on this thing moving forward.