In Hong Kong and right on the day when I was leaving for Hong Kong – I noticed a bug in my Macbook Pro’s screen. A real insect yes!

This was irritating. Hard to know how it actually got inside but may be from bottom side of laptop which was missing two screws for a while which I recently bought from UK and added. Apple support couldn’t answer on how it got there. Furthermore I was facing a problem of screen showing pink/green lines after turning on for almost 1.8 years now. They used to show up when laptop was turned on and used to go away after 15-20mins. Over time the issue increased and now it was taking as much as 40-50mins for lines to go away. Since I was visiting Hong Kong for HKNOG 3.0, I booked an appointment with Apple store. Fixing time went quick (over phone call with Apple support) and I was at Apple store in HK right on next day after an overnight flight to Hong Kong.

They dropped bill bomb by quoting me $5600 HKD / $720 USD / 48k INR !!!

While they told me of the amount they kept on running built in diagnostic tests to see if something else had any issue. I was there trying to count whether it makes sense to spend $720 USD on repair or rather just buy a new one. New one was 3x price of that and in current config I quite existing one. There wasn’t any other major reason to buy new one except screen issue. Furthermore re-sell value would be just zero for a laptop with insect inside screen. This is my three years old laptop and I used it almost for 12-16hrs every day on each day in last 3 years.

In meantime Apple store advisor told me (as part of regular diagnostic) they would check my screen for any issues with top coating and if they found any issue they would replace screen for free as Apple covers screen replacement for damaged coating even for devices outside warranty program and I was lucky it was. 🙂

So the good news for me was free replacement of screen and that would get me rid of bug inside screen beside green/pink lines but sad part was 3-5 days time they quoted for replacement. In real it took just 3 days and they were read with device by 3rd evening (a few hours ago – when I got my device back). You can read more about free screen replacement / Apple screen coating issues in this post and I can very much confirm that this is applicable. That saved me a hell lot of money and the hard choice of putting $720 on three year old device Vs new one.

Also I realised this was first time in three years when I was without laptop.

Day 0 – This was day when I deposited laptop. This day just went as I was deadly sleepy after a 9hrs non-sleepy flight and bit of travel inside HK.

Day 1 – This was HKNOG 3.0 conference day. I was on way in HK MTR (metro rail) to conference venue. I checked and edited my slides on my Nexus 5 smartphone in Google Sheets. It was OKish experience. Worked but definitely not fun. I very much missed laptop at that time. Did not miss laptop in daytime as was busy with conference. I could surely have worked during event and email replies could have been bit faster! But not much beyond that. Conference day usually goes busy in meeting people, and discussing about various things.

Day 2 – This was day when I checked out of hotel and checkin to hostel and terribly missed laptop. I did strained my eyes a bit while waiting for rain to stop outside by watching Suits Season 3 on my Android phone on Netflix. I even thought to download wordpress app on Android and post on my blog but realised I have done bit of fencing on blog to make it hard to connect! I did roamed around nearby in electronics market and even explored option of cheap laptop to run Linux and have it as backup laptop but I usually prefer single device and that stays very well customised and personalised.

Day 3 – It was Sunday and I roamed around a bit and had some serious plans while I cancelled as soon as I read email from Apple store with subject: “Your product is ready for pickup” and I just rushed to Apple store (which happens to be open on Sunday as well here). Collected laptop and started working on restoring OS (an hour of task via Time Machine backup).

For now laptop seems fixed and has got a new screen.

Here’s what bill says:

With that being said time to look at BGP routing table 🙂