Posted Thursday, November 10, 2005

I'm Having the "Audio Echo" Problem with My New PowerBook

In a previous dispatch, I've written that I haven't encountered any of the problems that some buyers of Apple's new 15-inch PowerBook are reporting: screen "stippling" or flashing, hard drive vibration, and so on.

Except for one.

I have encountered the "audio echo" problem that some Macintouch correspondents are reporting. When I'm playing music (whether in iTunes or GarageBand), the computer will, on rare occasions, go into a wacky loop in which a snippet of audio plays over and over until I stop playback.

I've probably heard this problem three or four times in the couple of weeks that I've had the computer, and I'm doing a lot of audio work with it. I wouldn't say the problem surfaces frequently, but it exists.

I'm still a happy spender, but I'll be just that much happier when Apple fixes this problem.

And to the Apple phone-support representative who told a Macintouch reader that the problem was feedback from the internal microphone: you're fired.