One year ago, i was fresh out of school, hyped and excited to head to college. I had decided to pursue CS. It was time to retire my hardworking Lenovo, and I had been on the research for a new machine. Because of its stellar build, performance, excellent battery life, etc etc, I gravitated towards the M2 MacBook Air, which was newly released at the time. There were several caveats for me, eg the smallish screen, the limited ports and small storage on base variant, and the OS unfamiliarity. The starlight Color was shining way too bright in my eyes, so i decided to ask my parents for one. It was a fairly expensive purchase for us. After looking around for other options, nothing else seemed to float my boat. The spicy gaming laptops were a tantalising package: rgb, real gaming prowess and that cool factor. They were pretty short on battery and high on heating issues, both of which were a sore pain in my Lenovo, so i finalised the mac. There was, till the last point, my parents’ suggestion that i should get a windows machine.that voice was even in my head, telling me to stick to what i know. But i wanted a taste of the other side. I suppressed the voices and went ahead with it. And boy, for the longest time i was glad i did.

The insane battery life. The amazing, godly form factor. The silence. The screen, the keyboard, the touchpad, the speakers, literally everything. Ok, 256 gigs needed a little time to swallow, but once i did, i was very, very happy with it. Very proud. I loved it. Everything was sunshine and rainbows. I couldn’t play games i had more time to work. I couldn’t run ms word/powerpoint excel, but i was fine without them too. It made me happier than anything else i ever owned before. It was truly amazing.

One fine day, exactly one month after the warranty was over, it decided to not wake up. I plugged it in, even when i was certain I’d left 50% + battery in it, with no running processes. The beautiful MagSafe cable refused to light up. That’s when i began to panic. Later, it was stuck at a state where it was turning on, but was not letting me use the trackpad(no haptics) or keyboard. I took it to the nearest apple authorised service center. I believed it was a software issue. They charged inr 3k just to tell me wtf is wrong with it. Which was, they needed to change the motherboard and the Touch ID sensor. For inr 55k. Sensibly, i next took it to a trusted 3rd party repair shop. They told me that the PMIC/apple APL/109C/34s00554 power management. They said it would cost inr 8k. I was somewhat relieved. 8k is still a lot, but i coughed it up. They game me back my mac, which ran perfectly for 10 days. Again, it was the same issue. I took it back to the guys, who said they couldn’t do anything. I looked around in a lot of other shops, and everyone said that they are not yet recieving the scrap parts for the m2 model macs.

i thought back to everything i did to it. In no way shape or form, did i mess with the device. I never placed fluids near it. I never left it charging while sleeping. I never used it while charging. I charged it with the adapter and cable that came in the box, plugged into a single to multi port extender, the ones that are like 2x8x1inches with 3-4 ports. Rare light games(asphalt 9, mine craft for at max an hour, medium settings.). Never ran it to a very high heat level. I am pursuing CS, so it is an indispensable tool to me. I can’t replace it. The only solutions are: sell this and get a windows machine; get a new motherboard; go to Delhi and hopefully I’ll find the chip i need. I’ll be going to Delhi in a couple months. Till then, is there nothing i can do? I am also trying to not put much hope into that route, to not disappoint myself. Is my h tryst with macs at an end? Or is there a solution? I’m feeling really mad at apple for not supplying parts/ having competent service centers. Also mad at why this happened to me. But that’s unrelated. All i ask of you all is a solution. Any inputs? Anything at all?