The black screen of death

I couldn’t believe what happened this past Tuesday. After I woke up I was going to do some work on an assignment for the Advanced Flash night course that I’m taking. When I went to my iMac, the screen was all black, and the little white light was on. I figured that it was just asleep. I moved the mouse around and nothing happened. Then I held the power off button until the white monitor light turned off, then tried to start my computer again, but only the white light turned on (the hard drive whirred a bit) but then nothing else happened.

I tried all the things they suggested in the starter manual, but nothing. I called Apple care and had no wait to connect, but the only thing the support guy could suggest was the old unplug, wait, and replug. When that didn’t work, he said it was a hardware problem and gave me the name of an authorized service place. I went promptly over and dropped off my precious iMac into their hands. It’s still there right now (one day later) and they are not certain what the problem is yet.

Maybe I’m just overly anxious because of recent health issues of my own, but I feel so sad that my iMac is in the shop. I don’t want to doubt the sterling reputation for reliability that Apple has, but I can’t argue with the fact that my own is in the shop. Waiting for a call back from the shop has been like waiting for a call from the hospital. I keep wondering if I would have had the same reaction if this had been my PC rather than my Mac.

Frankly, despite having numerous PC problems over the years, I never had anything like this. I guess that’s the problem with the “closed box” computer: its problems seem much more mysterious. It’s a lot more like the human body: I need to rely on the opinion of an expert because I have no insight into the symptoms. I think if this happened to my PC, I might be tempted to write it off (but if it were still under warranty, I’d probably get it fixed). It might not have been as much of a shock, though. I half expect PCs to fail (especially fail me), but when my iMac stares prettily back at me and refuses to start up, it just seems that much more tragic.