RutSum

MacBooks Are Evil

I realised this when I had to deal with a problem in the Super Drive (That’s what the slot load DVD writer in a MacBook is called). I really think that all the hardware integration is amazingly elegant, and it makes you feel good. But the locking down of hardware makes you pay hard.

I burned a data DVD on my PC, using K3B and something went horribly wrong, the DVD was spinning really, really fast and making sounds which could give you heart attack. Nevertheless, K3B displayed a ‘Success’ sign after the DVD burn process was over. I ejected the disc and reinserted it to check if the burn process was really successful. I got nothing. The system was unable to detect the DVD. I decided to check the disc on my MacBook.

I inserted the disc in my MacBook while it was running Mac OS X (I also have a copy of Windows Vista using Boot Camp and Ubuntu over that using Wubi) and the disc began spinning at unbelievably high speeds in the Super Drive. This along with the fact that it was unable to read the disc. Now I was stuck with a problem. You can’t eject a disc from your MacBook unless it is detected by Mac OS X. Only then do you get an option to eject a disc. This problem coupled with a non functional keyboard and trackpad (yes the problem was solved temporarily but it is back again. A long post on that problem when it gets solved) became a nightmare because I am using a USB Keyboard and Mouse which does not have the eject button that the MacBook keyboard has (I later learnt that pressing F12 for 2 seconds does the same thing but it didn’t work and the disc was still stuck).

Adding to the problem is the fact that the new Super Drives don’t have a hole (which are meant for emergency removal of discs by inserting a pin inside the hole and manually triggering the ejecting mechanism).

I didn’t lose heart, I decided to try another way suggested by Apple to remove a stuck disc. That is to hold down the trackpad button when your MacBook is booting. This was again a problem because my trackpad along with its button is currently COMPLETELY non functional, and so pressing the button would have no effect. I thought that pressing the left mouse button of the external USB mouse would have the same effect. I kept the mouse button pressed on boot, and I think it did work as a forced eject command. But here’s where Apple’s dumb controlling philosophy comes in. Even in the forced eject mode, a disc is not ejected until its contents are read at least once. Any MacBook user would know this because even when you do a forced eject, the disc spins up completely (you can tell that by the spin up sound and time taken), then spins down and is then ejected. Since this DVD was totally fucked up, the forced eject command put it into an infinite loop of trying to read the disc and it got stuck on the white boot screen. I left it for 15 minutes thinking it would give up, but the heat sink fans were screeching like hell and I was afraid that the processor would melt down if I didn’t shut the MacBook down.

I then used my PC to search for answers on how hard-eject a stuck disc from a MacBook Super Drive. Fortunately, I found the answer on somebody’s personal blog. It states the obvious ways to get out a stuck disc first, but then states some seemingly drastic methods.

Since the disc is being read in an infinite loop, you can try using a small cardboard or even a name card and stick it in until it touches the disc to stop it from reading. Press the Eject key few times. An example of a good cardboard is a battery pack cardboard.

I used a visiting card, inserted it inside the Super Drive slot, adjusted its alignment until I could feels it touching the disc from above and then tilted the card so as to put sufficient pressure on the disc and stop it from being read. I held the card in position, booted my MacBook, and pressed and held the left mouse button. I could hear the Super Drive groaning, trying really hard to read the disc, but I increased pressure and completely ruined all efforts to make the disc spin. This went on for about a minute when it gave up and spitted out the disc.

I was relieved, and simultaneously disgusted. You don’t need to be a genius to figure out that I’m shifting from the Apple fanboy to Apple-hater phase.

If you liked this post, or found it useful, don't forget to subscribe to my RSS feeds. Or you can get my posts delivered to your inbox directly, by subscribing to my feeds by email. Or maybe you'd like to know what I'm doing right now, by following me at Twitter.