spacing hack

yelyah

solo piano 20101211

I, for once, am going to nip this new problem in the bud before it becomes a chronic problem that I put up with.

I've got a trackpad problem on my non studio mac laptop. Every few hours it either becomes really jerky and unpredictable or the cursor just stops responding altogether. In either scenario, the button continues to work though.

I think I've exhausted all the software fixes and have basically narrowed it down to it being a hardware problem. In case other people have problems that can be resolved through software, here's what I've tried:

  • reset PRAM
  • reset SMC
  • put to sleep/wake up (when the cursor goes completely dead, this will actually half fix it - i.e. it puts it back to just being jerky instead)
  • log out / log in with another user account
  • reboot
  • make sure there is no debris on the trackpad

I haven't timed it, but my impression is that the trackpad is acting up once every few hours and will stay screwy for anywhere from like a minute to a half hour. However, I have to clarify that I found out that sometimes the cursor will appear to be back to normal but things like drag&drop will not work predictably. So, basically, for all those occasions where I thought the problem had resolved itself quite quickly - there may have still been a problem after all.

So I've decided to take it in now and see what Apple says before I get any more "comfortable" with it being unreliable.

Other than the hassle of being without the laptop for however long, the other big reason I've wanted to procrastinate is the fact that the nearest Apple store is a non-trivial distance away. I think I have local repair options (so-called AASPs), but my concern is that they might have a backlog of repairs and I might end up having to wait way longer than it would take Apple themselves to fix it. So it makes the drive worth it, assuming that this is the only time I have to drive there for this. Fingers crossed.

In studio news, I've got a different ever-more-chronic issue happening: the mbox2 will stop outputting audio. I'm pretty sure this one is a software/OS issue because:

  • a reboot fixes it
  • it happens after launching a browser

Or at least, that's how it's behaved so far. So luckily, I haven't been forced to reboot in the middle of a studio session, so long as I don't open a browser.

Just gotta stay off the internet!