I have to preface everything I am about to say with the fact that in my lifetime of 26 years I have ONLY ever used Macintosh computers. We got our first mac when I was 5 in 1989 and I got my own mini mac in the early 90's. Since those beginnings I have become not just a macuser, but an adamant shopper with Apple. I have purchased 4 iPhones from them (3 full price), 2 computers, endless software and updates, and an iPad. I have always loved their customer service and felt good about the relationship I was developing with them over the years. I own a successful photography company and am at the point where I am expanding every year, and a big part of that is purchasing more hardware like computers and other products Apple offers, but I am at the point that I'm starting to believe the expense and "customer service" are not really what they say them to be.

My first complaint goes back to a few months ago. My DVD drive - which as a photographer who needs to burn images for clients - I use often, and it just suddenly quit on me. I sent it into apple in January and I did not test it right away when it came back — because I assume that anything I send to Apple is going to come back fixed when they say they have fixed it, and I do not need to test for shoddy workmanship. This was not the case. And during my slow season in the early spring I did not realize I had a problem until a few weeks ago. I was receiving the same error and having DVDs rejected (regardless of the make, I have many different brands in my house) and it was only working about 25% of the time. I got one to burn finally and sent it to my client, who later called to complain that the DVD he received consisted solely of corrupted JPGs which upon loading in the finder crashed his whole computer. I called Apple, prior to hearing about the corrupted DVD, and was told, "You just need to burn the CDs and DVDs at a lower speed." Okay - so I purchased a 3 year warranty and your answer to me is that the computer has capabilities listed that I actually shouldn't be trying to use? I have to say also that the man I spoke with, who was a supervisor, was incredibly curt with me and I felt a little slighted that that was his response. However, I don't really have time in the summer with weddings and graduations to send my computer off to be fixed for two weeks, so I just hoped that this would work. It hasn't, and I can't even burn a CD in iTunes at the lowest speed. I called AGAIN and reluctantly I was told by another supervisor who made me feel like she was doing me a huge favor by letting me resend something in that never was fixed, that I could once more send my computer in and she would kindly email me her contact information. I WAS NEVER CONTACTED POST-PHONE CALL. Which means in the midst of making phone calls to clients and the likes I have to call Apple back again, wait for an available supervisor, and deal once more with a rude personality that acts like I'm somehow trying to take advantage of the system.

In addition, I rarely keep projects I'm working on or music on my hard drive on my computer, but use an external drive. I noticed that there was about 40GB of space that I could not account for. After running DiscInventory there was a folder listed as "private" which did not appear in the finder. I was able to safely delete the files I needed to from there with a little work around. Two weeks later the same problem has happened again. I don't understand why my computer would be generating log files that large or that quickly. But I ran DiscInventory again and moved the files to the trash. One of those files was "VAR". APPARENTLY within those files is the log for the administrative password, a log which is activated in order to put the folder in the trash in the first place. However, once the folder has been moved to the trash, the only way to restore it is with an administrative password, which means running the log file for that which is currently in the trash and cannot be run. Do you see the vicious cycle?

I have looked everywhere all over the internet and I cannot find any responses on how to solve this problem, even through the terminal. The only "possible" option is to reinstall and backup your data. FUNNY STORY I can't activate time machine on the hard drive I need to use WITHOUT an active administrative password.

In the meantime I'm going to be receiving a call from Apple first thing in the morning. Who wants to bet I have to pay the $30 for the phone call?