A Mac disaster with a nice ending

I'm an idiot.

Last night I was working by my fireplace in an overstuffed chair--my typical evening location--and when the fire needed poking, I carefully set my MacBook Pro laptop on the wide arm of the chair, something I have done hundreds of times. My iPhone was plugged into the USB port, so I gingerly placed it on the laptop next to the trackpad. With my back turned to the chair, poking at the fire, I heard my wife gasp from across the room as she watched the Mac begin to fall. I heard a sickening thud as it hit the floor, and I whipped around to see it lying on the floor, with a colorful, chaotic display of lines on the screen. There was a spot near the lower left corner of the screen that almost looked like broken glass.

(The image at right is not my computer, but it looked something like that. Photo credit: Jared.)

I surmised that what had happened was the laptop slipped and fell, and my iPhone, tethered to its USB port, followed with a jerk and smacked into the screen, effectively shattering the fragile liquid crystal. There was a strip of undamaged area on the right side of the screen that allowed me to see that my Mac was still alive and working, but the rest of the screen was gone and wasn't coming back.

I bought AppleCare when I bought my Mac, but unfortunately, AppleCare doesn't cover accidental damage. I knew that I was going to have to cover the replacement cost myself. My first instinct was to schedule a Genius Bar appointment at the nearest Apple store--about 35 miles away. There was one morning slot available for today, so I booked it. Then I went to my office at the church, where I had a spare LCD monitor, hooked up my Mac to the monitor and to a 500GB USB drive, and began doing a full backup with Time Machine, Apple's back-up program.

While I was backing up the machine (which took several hours), I did some research into what sort of repair costs I might be facing, and what I learned was disheartening, to say the least: several posters in the Mac forums were saying that I could expect to have to pay up to $900 to get my display replaced. That seemed ridiculous to me, so I briefly entertained the notion that perhaps I could do this repair myself. The LCD screen was available from at least one supplier for less than $300. I even found a series of videos that showed how to disassemble the MacBook Pro and replace all of the major components. But the longer I watched the videos, the less confident I became that I could actually do this repair myself without inflicting further damage or otherwise botching up the job. So I resigned myself to biting the bullet at the Apple Genius Bar.

So this morning I drove to Lenexa, Kansas to the Apple Store there, waited in line until the appointed time, explained the situation to the guy who helped me, and was told that (1) they would have to send the machine to a repair center for a few days, (2) my AppleCare coverage would not cover this repair, and (3) the total cost would be $1255.

I stood there, literally in shock for a few moments, and pondered what to do. I had just browsed the tables at the Mac store, and had seen a brand-new 21.5-inch iMac selling for $1199--less than the cost of this repair. It seemed insane to me. The upside was that if I had Apple do the repair, my AppleCare coverage would be "reinstated," so to speak. But there were 1,255 downsides.

The genius at the Genius Bar told me that there were other non-Apple repair shops in the area who could do the repair, probably for a lot less, but that he wasn't allowed to actually recommend one to me. I briefly considered just springing for a new MacBook Pro, which would definitely be cool, but which I definitely could not afford. So I returned, dejected, to my car and sat in the parking lot for a few minutes, thinking over my situation, and praying that God would help me choose wisely what to do.

So I fished for my iPhone, the very instrument that (combined with my stupidity) had caused the damage to my laptop screen, and fired up the Safari browser. I Googled "mac repair lawrence ks" (I live in Lawrence, KS), and found DoctorDave's site, and decided to give DoctorDave a call. He was absolutely great--he said he could probably do the repair in a day or so, if his supplier in Olathe could get the part to him quickly. He said he'd call me right back, which he did, and he suggested I just take the machine directly to the shop where he got his parts--Mission: Repair, in Olathe, Kansas. It would cost a third of Apple's price, and they could do it while I waited. He had called ahead, verified that they had the replacement part, and then he texted me their address and phone number. Dave was careful to explain that this repair would void my AppleCare coverage, but unless I was willing to fork over $1255 to Apple, my AppleCare coverage was useless for my accidentally-damaged machine, anyway. I did the math, and decided it made sense to skip the Apple solution.

I called Mission: Repair, and they said that they could do the repair for $350, plus about another $50 to do it while I waited. They told me how to get there from the Apple Store in Lenexa (I was still sitting in the parking lot), and I drove over there, and they fixed it right there and then. It took a while--more than an hour--which didn't surprise me a bit, after I saw the repair videos. The total bill, with tax, was $413.38, about a third of what Apple wanted to charge me, and done in a few hours instead of a few days. I'm typing this on my repaired machine, about 18 hours after my laptop crashed to my floor.

I'm amazed. I'm humbled, also, that God made a way for me to get this repair done for a lot less than I thought it would cost, and I'm so grateful for DoctorDave's kindness in recommending the Mission: Repair shop to me. He went out of his way to help me out, and that is very cool.

I share this, partly out of gratitude towards the people who helped me get my Mac back into working condition, and partly to encourage you in case you ever face a similar situation. Just because Apple says it's $1255, don't assume that's your only option.