Ghost in my MacBook
A first hand encounter of why brands matter!
Before I tell this story, you should know that my birthday falls on October six (feel free to send me birthday gifts).
So yeah, so my birth date is six, and I don’t much believe in supernatural phenomena, well I have seen horror movies like any other person but nothing beyond that.
Until this happened.
This is a technical horror story of a super cute USB adaptor I had, which looked something as shown in the picture but tinier.
And I keep it connected to my MacBook always so as to connect the monitor or the mouse with a USB nano receiver.
I know it’s getting a bit technical but stay with me, it’s worth it!
So yeah, I usually keep the connector attached to the MacBook and connect my mouse with it.
Now one day, I felt super productive and felt the need to give my home office a makeover and started moving things around on the table, here and there.
I needed to put the laptop a little higher so started looking for a box to put under it. It being a Sunday, my mother was also on a cleaning spree, she threw out all the Amazon boxes we had, and sadly I couldn't find anything to put under the laptop. Then I stumbled upon an old voltage stabilizer that is rectangular in shape and viola!
Grabbed it, put it under the laptop, now my screen is at eye level, can this day get any better?
Now when I turned on the system, it started making a weird noise, fearing that maybe the stabilizer’s magnet is causing an issue to the laptop. I removed it from under it and kept it back in the storeroom.
Checked the system, the noise was still there and now my system started typing on its own and it was continuously typing 6!!
Okay, what is happening? I restarted the system and then on the login screen, it started typing 6 again… 6666666666666666 and making a weird noise.
I disconnected the USB adaptor and suddenly the noise stopped. Then I narrowed it down that the USB adaptor is the culprit(maybe the stabilizer magnet has impacted this, I know physics, right!) and now I’ll need to buy a new one.
A week passed to this, and I thought whatever is in the adaptor must have gotten fixed, let’s try it again(man, I am an optimist). Again, it started typing 6, I thought to myself, well this tiny device sure knows my bday and decided to move on from it and buy a new one.
When I was looking to buy a new one, I asked my brother which brand it was and here the twist comes, he said: “Apple, obviously”. I don’t know not so obvious to me.
Then I thought, okay this is Apple, it would not have gotten useless so soon and started investigating and then it hit me!
The USB nano receiver that connects to the mouse also connects to a keyboard in the storeroom which I totally forgot about.
I went to the storeroom and when I checked there was a book over the 6 key, and I laughed and laughed and laughed.
The keyboard was connected to my system and I totally forgot about it. For a week I kept on blaming the magnet of the stabilizer, a dent in the connector cable, or just sheer luck but that’s the story of the ghost in my Macbook.
A book over the 6 key of the keyboard, the book was my ghost!
Well, brand matters, Indeed. If I had not known that the USB connector was Apple, I would have never investigated this but surely have cried later after buying an expensive connector.
Thank you, Steve Jobs!
Until next time,
JD
