Snap Crackle Pop
What could be worse than having one hinge fail on my Macbook Air? Well, 20 days later I have the answer. I was planning on taking the thing into the local Apple Store and engaging in hand to hand combat with the hipsters manning the advice desk there, so I copied most of my home directory over to my other Macbook (the ancient 13" one that my mother gave me several years ago, which was my main workstation when I did my more-portability hack to git (not for the Mac, of course – Apple has drunk the FSF flavor-aid and has the latest and greatest not-quite-C compiler and toolkit – but for the SLS Linux system that I use for most of my serious development these days)) and attempted to close the Macbook Air so I could put it into a box for safely carrying down to Pioneer Place.
Well, that was not a good plan. There was a terrible plasticky ripping noise and the other hinge shattered, which levered the plastic hinge cover far enough up to foul the now-closing lid, with the result that it started to tear the entire lid off before I stopped and quickly flopped the lid open the other way.
My Macbook Air now opens up to 180°, and will close to about 90° before the shattered hinge area fouls the lid. That’s quite an impressive bit of engineering, Apple – I hope that the subsequent generations of the Macbook Air have that area redesigned.