Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Macbook Air 13" - Crash-a-holic

I was hella stoked when I got this new macbook air.  It's got the 2.13ghz processor, 4gb ram, and 13" screen.  Sweet.  Worked like a champ for about 2 weeks, then all of a sudden, shite.  Here's what happens:

- Flash crashes on all browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox).  Firefox won't run at all.
- iMovie fails to launch, claiming I don't have the required Quartz graphics chipset.
- iPhoto fails to launch - "iPhoto quit unexpectedly"... but it never launched.
- Skype fails to launch - "Skype quit unexpectedly"... also never launched.  Further, "Click Reopen to open the application again.  Click Report to... send a report to Apple" doesn't work.  Clicking Reopen fails the same way.

It seems as though either the graphics system has suffered a hardware failure, or that part of Snow Leopard is corrupted somehow.  The computer worked perfectly for about 2 weeks and now is nearly useless.  See attached screenshots.



iLounge offers a couple suggestions on fixing this problem, and they seem to have worked for some people, judging from the (extensive) comments.  I tried 'em both, and no dice.  Check out the article.

For my part, I have an appointment with the Genius Bar at the SF Apple store.  I plan to bring home a new computer.  This one is frucked.