Mac Forum / General / Portable Macs / July 2005

Hmm, for some reason this post did not show up in "portables" NG, I
hope this does not result in a double posting of the same thread.

Some time ago I erroneously reported a "workaround" in these forums,
for a chronic hardware "bug" that afflicts all  _recent_  year 2005
powerbooks.  (NOT iBooks)

The workaround was originally reported in MacFixit, however the
workaround does not work, at least for me.

The Bug:

At startup, when the option key is held down in order to get the
volumes select screen, the bug becomes apparent.

"stroking" the trackpad at normal finger speed, the cursor refuses to
move at all.

Bug only afflicts the trackpad, not any mouse.

With rapid stroking of the trackpad, the cursor can be made to move a
short distance.

It takes anywhere from 10 to 15 rapid stroking movements to move the
cursor to the desired icon on the screen, very frustrating.

After a month of battling Apple about this bug, I have the impression
that they do not intend to do anything about it, because it might
involve a gigantic recall of many thousands of powerbooks.

...so we Mac users are screwed, and just have to put up with small
annoyances like this, and other minor bugs which fall into the same
general category.

The main problem, as I see it, is that Apple just has too many irons in
the pot.   They can't clear up all the faults that afflict hardware and
software, so they concentrate on major problems and completely ignore
the minor problems.

So be it, I can live with that.    My Macs are  _still_  a lot better
than my PC alternative hardware, which I only use rarely, for
specialized purposes like speech-to-text dictation, for example.

Mark-