Today marks the official release of Apple’s new pet, OS X Leopard, into the wild. However, that cat may not be properly trained, as one dejected and frustrated college student has already learned.

John Colonna, a 5th year student at Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA, was just as excited as all the other Apple faithfuls who have been waiting in anticipation of receiving their copies of Leopard. Opting to skip the lines at his local Apple store, Colonna pre-ordered OS X Leopard from Apple’s website so as to receive it at his home today.

As he installed Leopard, his anticipation built; however, about half-way through the process his trusty MacBook displayed a troubling message and yellow “yield” sign, informing him the disc was unreadable and instructing him to contact the software manufacturer. Not one to be easily flustered, John restarted his MacBook and attempted the install again, and again the error message appeared. A third time he attempted the install, and a third time the error occurred.

Then troubled, Colonna called Apple and explained his situation. He and an Apple rep went through a painstaking process of hardware resets and fixes; however, no solution was reached. Hoping to simply return the faulty disc to Apple, Colonna tried to eject the disc. To his dismay, the faulty install had completely disabled his hardware functionality.

Then, without hardware functionality and stuck between operating systems, Colonna expected the Apple representative to offer that handy return box so he could send his disabled MacBook to Apple for repairs, as his MacBook was still covered under the one year Applecare hardware warranty.

What the Apple representative told him both shocked and appauled him: because the hardware problem arose from a faulty software install, Apple would not send out a box it considered a “software” issue, even though Apple provided the disc that disabled the covered MacBook. Because Colonna had not purchased the extended Applecare plan that involves complete support as well as phone support for 3 years, they claimed they could not provide him support for an issue that, though completely rendering his hardware unusable, was software-based.

The Apple rep recommended John visit a local Apple-authorized retailer to evaluate and fix his hardware; however, it will not be covered under the hardware warranty. Colonna said, “I just don’t know what to do. I guess I’ll take it to the local Apple retailer and see how much it is to fix it…but I don’t think I should have to pay for it. This really wasn’t what I was expecting from [Apple].”

He visited his local Apple-authorized retailer, who agreed the issue was decidely hardware and therefore covered under warranty; the retailer also didn’t understand why Apple would deny service on the grounds of a software issue.

If Apple distributed one bad OS X Leopard disc, there is little doubt that was only one of batch that could disable hundreds if not thousands of users’ hardware; hardware that, though protected under Apple’s one year hardware support, might very well be disabled…to be fixed only at the user’s expense.

Why, on the day that is being heralded as Apple’s biggest release yet, would Apple completely abandon its customers to the wolves (or leopards, as the case may be)? If faulty discs are responsible for corrupting hardware, discs that Apple is distributing to faithful customers, should Apple not hasten to remedy the problem?

For one disgruntled college student, Friday, the 26th of October, isn’t as bright as he’d hoped. He’d be happy to still have that older cat, Tiger, purring peacefully on his MacBook.

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Entry was posted on Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 5:49 pm under Apple, Legal, Opinion, Science and technology.

Read more entries by Triston McIntyre.
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