Apple Care – Part 4 – back for more repairs (ALS broken)

Well, I must say that I have been getting to know Apple Care a bit more that I really would have wanted to. Where I last left off, Apple had totally “styled me out” by fixing my case with new parts…however, it looks like they forgot to connect the Ambient Light Sensor (ALS) when they put it all together.

For those who don’t know about the ALS, it basically allows certain Powerbooks to have a back light keyboard light up under dark environments (e.g., typing in bed when you are supposed to be sleeping – grin – ). Normally, there is a setting on the Keyboard System Preferences that allows you to tell the machine to control the keyboard lighting. Mine was missing. So, I did some pretty diligent troubleshooting before calling up Apple Care again. Once again, searching through support threads on the web, I did the following:

• – Created a new admin user. Checked the Keyboard preferences –> No setting
• – Deleted the com.apple.bezelservices.plist from myusername/Library/Preferences (for admin and normal user) as well as from computer/Library/Preferences and rebooted. Checked Keyboard preferences –> No setting
• – Installed an app called Lab Tick which is supposed to allow you to manual control the ALS through a top panel dropdown menu. By running that app, I got the message “Failed to find backlit keyboard. Your Macintosh does not seem to have a backlit keyboard”

After all of that, I was pretty much convinced that they neglected to hook up the ALS when they put the case back together. With this knowledge, I figured that I would call Apple again and get it all fixed for one last time. After being on hold and speaking to various reps (one who ran through a barrage of scripts that I knew wouldn’t help including resetting Power Settings at boot and zapping PRam), I was transferred to a specialist who was very nice and basically said that they would ship me out a new repair box. So, the process begins again…