I love my MacBook. I rarely leave home without it. It is my radio. It is my DVD player. It is my portal to friends scattered throughout the world.

And it’s going to need a new plug. ASAP.

I was sitting here with it plugged in because I’d all but drained the battery power earlier, and I noticed the screen flicker and dim. I thought, maybe I knocked the plug out. With the magnetic plug, I frequently seem to pull it out by accident. I checked the wall and it was still in, so then I checked where the plug goes into my computer, and I almost had a heart attack I couldn’t get it out of my computer fast enough.

My plug is melting. How does that happen?! Luckily, it seems I caught it early. It’s not frayed, no wires exposed or burn marks or anything. Nothing to compare to some of the photos I just found in a quick “macbook plug melting” Google search.

Those photos are enough to sufficiently freak me out, however. And as soon as I finish this post, I’m going to figure out a way to get Apple to replace it ASAP because this is not cool. No pun intended.

When I first got my MacBook last summer, I don’t think disappointed could possibly describe how I felt when it arrived, in their terms “dead on arrival.” It worked spectacularly, if you overlooked the fact that the combo drive wouldn’t read CDs. I couldn’t, so after waiting most of the summer to save every dollar I could afford to from my internship to purchase it, I had to send it back and wait another week for a new one to arrive. (And the delivery fiasco that resulted in me driving back to Findlay a week after leaving and then up to Toledo to pick it up was only the cherry on top.)

Since then, other than the occasional “mooing” from the fan and the fact that some of the plastic around the edge where my hands rests came loose, it’s been pretty indestructable. Until now. I can overlook a lot, but not a piece of equipment melting, especially when it is attached to a machine that took a whole summer of savings to afford.

I think I’ll just go easy on using it this week and take it to work and borrow one of our MacBook plugs there to charge during the day so I can get a few hours use each night.

UPDATE: I got a new plug. Apple was pretty reasonable. After explaining to the first woman what had happened, she sent me over to the safety department, which asked a bunch of questions about “How long did the incident last?” and “Was there any other property damaged?” Either way, they sent me out a new plug Monday (it was late Saturday when I called) and it arrived Tuesday. Seems to be working fine. Though I’m still a little creeped that my plug melted.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 16th, 2007 at 4:32 pm and is filed under Offline, Technology, WTF. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.