Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with Macbook

MacBook Pro Battery Life Question

dbirchum — Fri, 03 May 2013 04:13:52 -0800

Greetings - I "inherited" a MacBook Pro last year. It was a Apple MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo 2.4Ghz from Spring 2008. So it was 4 years old when I got it and I was told that the battery was dead and as long as I kept it plugged in, it worked fine, however, I would need a new one. So last year, I purchased a new battery and installed it. However, I am still noticing that the battery life is horrible. It seems like when I am using it to type a document or check emails and surf the web, etc, I literally can watch the battery drain. I would assume that it might hold a charge of about an hour and a half maybe? Is there any way I can "test" it to see what my actual battery life if? To ensure there isn't something else going on? Any suggestions would be helpful. Thanks,

Why is my MBP running ML appending to the clipboard if I double cmd-C?

chazlarson — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 12:14:14 -0800

MacBook Pro Retina running Mountain Lion. In any application, if I hit cmd-C twice in rapid succession, I hear a click and the selection gets appended to the clipboard. For example, I have a BBEdit document that contains "some text".
I cmd-A, cmd-C, cmd-V and the document now contains "some text".
I cmd-A, cmd-C, cmd-C [click], cmd-V and the document now contains "some textsome text".

That double cmd-C is long ingrained in my muscle memory from the days that i was saving RAM by flushing the undo buffer by copying twice.

Before I go through the exercise of the binary search to ascertain the culprit, I thought I'd ask the hive in case anybody knew offhand what switch has been thrown.

My MacBook is dying, do I replace or go desktop?

FuckingAwesome — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 13:50:33 -0800

Hi there, I have a mid-2009 MacBook Pro, which is getting noticeably slower, the battery needs replacing and the fan is extremely noisy. All this has lead me to believe that this laptop is coming to the end of its "natural" lifespan and I will soon be due an upgrade (however I accept I may be wrong here). Coupled with this, I am about to move into a new place, meaning I will have a lot less need for a portable laptop, since I will be working from home most days. With this in mind, I was thinking about getting a desktop iMac as my "main" computer and using my old MacBook as and when I needed to. So my question is, should I... A) Attempt to prolong my MacBooks life by having it serviced / refurbished, and buy a desktop monitor to plug it into when I work from home. B) Buy a new MacBook Pro, and a desktop monitor (because this would be cheaper than the third option, which is to...) C) Buy a desktop iMac, and continue to use my old MacBook as a spare / portable option. Thanks.

Should my tablet match my phone or my laptop ecosystem?

midmarch snowman — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 07:18:11 -0800

I am getting a Tablet for work, either a Nexus 10 or an iPad. I'm pretty well versed on the features and drawbacks for both, and I feel like if my other devices were either all Apple or all Google/Windows I'd make the choice based on matching my current device operating system ecosystem. BUT right now, each device I use has a different OS, so is there a better device to match my tablet operating system with? An android phone will be my next smartphone. I used to have an old iPhone 3G and liked iOS, but decided not to stay with iPhones because money.

I still have an old MacBook as a home computer, and I am pretty committed to OSX operating system for that purpose.

Also, at work I will be using windows, naturally.

The work I'm doing on the tablet will almost entirely be reading and annotating PDFs and Google Docs. Although I like holding the nexus better, it sounds like people prefer the PDF apps for the iPad better.

Since most other feature comparisons are similarly a wash, I wonder if there is any benefit of having both my mobile devices in the same ecosystem? Or is there a benefit from having my tablet be in the same ecosystem as my laptop? Or does it even matter?

Why am I getting 3 beeps when booting up a brand new hard drive?

critzer — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 11:37:56 -0800

Would 1-year old RAM not work with a brand new hard drive on my Macbook? I am getting the dreaded 3 beeps when trying to boot the new drive. Basically I bought the machine in March of 2011. It became obvious last week the drive was failing. I bought a new drive and called Apple to order the proper OS disk. I swapped in the new drive but cannot get past the grey Apple screen. It just beeps.

Forums claim it's a RAM problem. The RAM was bought a year ago and obviously worked fine with the old drive. Is there a reason it wouldn't work with this new drive? It's seated fine. Is there anything else it could be?

Macbook Pro booting OS X to black screen.

Dipsomaniac — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 10:21:02 -0800

I have a Macbook Pro, model 5,1, that will now boot OX X 10.8 only to a black screen. The BootCamp install on the laptop, with Windows 7 Pro installed, boots normally and is usable. When I boot into OS X, I get the chime, the screen lights up and shows the grey apple, then it goes black but continues to boot. Volume keys work, keyboard lights work, but the screen is black - not black like the brightness is turned down, but completely black. Brightness keys have no effect. Also, when I type any letters, the computer dings for each one. I can shut it down with power button and "Enter", and it sleeps when the lid is closed, but the screen is still black when it wakes back up.

What I've tried:
NVRAM reset. No joy.
Can't boot off a USB install drive - that also goes to a black screen, as does the Recovery partition, as does booting to Safe or Single User mode. Before a Verbose boot goes to black screen it's not showing any hardware fails.
The Apple Hardware Test does not start - it eventually just boots to OS X or Windows.

I do not have a dongle to try an external monitor, and I can't try booting from the DVD because it hasn't worked in 2 years. I suspect that wouldn't work in any case. The machine isn't worth enough to make replacing the logic board feasible.

If there are no other procedures to try to get the video working properly again, can I simply delete the HFS partition and expand Windows to use the space?

How do I sell my Macbook Pro without getting screwed on the price?

Cybria — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 23:49:04 -0800

I've gone to some of those sell-your-laptop websites and I always get a quote for half the original price of my Macbook Pro. It's a 13 inch Macbook Pro in perfect working condition with no defects or damage to the screen. There are a few scratches and a couple of barely noticeable dents. But other than that, it works just fine. These sites seem to be geared at people who need money really fast so they're willing to sell it for that much, but I'd rather take it somewhere where I'll get a fair offer. Any ideas?

Should I upgrade to Mountain Lion from Lion in March 2013?

michaelh — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 00:27:33 -0800

I have a late 2008 MBP, 8GB RAM, with an SSD, running Lion without problems. Should I upgrade to Mountain Lion right now? Have the battery life and other issues been resolved? I'd like to upgrade because I've finally encountered a program that requires Mountain Lion and I'd like to use it. The $20 is not a factor; it's purely about the quality of the OS.

Apologies if this has been asked before and I missed it, but due to the way Apple fixes new OSes I think even asking a few months later can result in a different answer.

Also, is there a software equivalent of MacRumor's Buyer's Guide that would be a go-to for questions like this? I haven't found one yet.

Mountain Lion, New SSD - what's destroying my battery life?

running order squabble fest — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 08:53:08 -0800

So, I've made the fatal mistake of performing several upgrades at once, and I could do with some advice on where to go now... is my problem with charging time and battery life my new SSDs, my new OS, or something else entirely? Generic snowflake details to follow: Recently, I've been experiencing excessive hard drive spin noise in my (Early 2011) 15" MacBook Pro, along with what felt like excessive fan spin-up. Hoping to kill two birds with one stone, I decided to swap the HDD out for an SSD. After due consideration, I bought the Samsung 840 basic model (500GB).

Then, since I was going to be taking the bottom off the laptop anyway, I thought why not also put an SSD in the little-used optical drive bay? I had a 256GB Crucial M4 SSD kicking around from the death of my last laptop, which had up until that point been doing duty as a very expensive sneakernet solution, so I bought an OWC OptiBay drive caddy and installed that also.

To save time, I cloned my old 500GB HDD onto the 500GB SSD using SuperDuper, and did a straight swap.

So far so normal, but when I booted back up, after a long and slightly terrifying pause, it booted as normal, indexed the new drive and I was back in business.

However, I then got cocky, and decided, since I was making changes, to upgrade the OS as well, from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion, right after booting up.

This all happened yesterday. Everything was fine until I unplugged the laptop, at which point it registered one hour of battery life (although actually it lasted for more like two, and that figure jumped up to 1:24 and froze in place at various points). Although the Early 2011 Pro is not supposed to have a user-replaceable battery, and thus also is not supposed to need calibration, I let it run down overnight (using Caffeine) and am now charging it - a process which the system is telling me is going to take a full day (it's at 32% now, and saying it will be 3 1/2 hours until the charge is complete, but again that needle is sticking and jumping - in fact, a few hours later, it is at 65% but still saying 3 hours, so...).

I don't know what the run-down time will then be, because I want to give it a full charge before I try it, but at this point I'm not optimistic.

Now, because I used SuperDuper I still have the (bootable) mechanical Hard Drive, with Snow Leopard and all my files, currently one day out of date. I am wondering if it would be sensible to either admit defeat and swap that back in, or to swap it in, reclone the HDD onto the SSD and then swap the drives again (thus rolling back to pre-Mountain Lion, since it seems impossible to roll it back without restoring the cloned HDD), leaving me with the SSD in the machine. However, because I was an idiot and made three changes without stopping and benchmarking, I am not sure where the problem lies, and I'd like to minimize my corrective steps. I'm also wondering if this is something weird about SSDs, and I would be better off with a clean install and the back-aching procedure of redownloading and installing my applications from there...

So, does anyone have experience of this kind of issue? What is most likely to be the issue, and is there any chance it will sort itself out over a few charges? I expected that taking the HDD motor out of the system would _increase_ battery life, but am I missing something obvious? As it is, I figure the problem is logically either the new hardware, the new OS or (outside chance) failing to reconnect the battery properly (but I can't see how that would cause this, rather than a total failure to power up). There seem to be a number of complaints online about Mountain Lion borking power management, and because I bought it a while ago and never got around to installing it I am on 10.8.1, but 10.8.2 would need to be a dramatic update to make this workable... does anyone have experience/secret knowledge of this kind of situation, before I start making and testing further system changes?

(Further totally generic snowflake addenda - the battery is a standard came-with-the-machine Apple battery, which originally had 6900 mAh, and is now registering 6199 after 342 cycles, according to Battery Health. The MBP is a 15" unibody: was on 10.6.8, now on 10.8.1. Both SATA connectors are Intel 6 Series, enabling 6 gigabit throughput, and both SSD are 6 gigabit models.)

KVM for MBP and Mac Pro (DVI and Mini Displayport)

Joleta — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 06:20:19 -0800

How can I best share a monitor, keyboard and Magic Trackpad between a Mac Pro and a MacBook Pro? I've got a 2009 Mac Pro with a DVI out and just got a 2010 15" Macbook Pro with Mini Displayport. The Mac Pro is connected to an Asus 24" monitor's DVI port, but the monitor also has a VGA port (which I've read is not as "good" as DVI) and an HDMI port. I also have an Apple wired keyboard and a Bluetooth Magic Trackpad, as well as a regular Apple wired mouse around here somewhere.

My company gave me the MBP and wants me to get all my work stuff off my personal computer. I want to hook up the MBP so that I can leave it closed and use the same monitor and keyboard (and hopefully, the magic Track Pad) that I use for the desktop machine, switching back and forth during the day. The VGA KVM switch that the guy at Best Buy tried to sell me obviously won't work, at least not without a lot of adapters. I'm used to Apple stuff being easier to integrate than this.

What combination of switch and cables do I need? Price is a consideration, but not the most important one.

I have a 250 gig MacBook Pro with only 40 gigs of free space left...

TwilightKid — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 07:49:25 -0800

I have a 250 gig MacBook Pro, which is about 3 years old. I have approx. 115 gigs of music stored in my Itunes library. All duplicate MP3 files were deleted. That leaves 135 or some odd gigs of space. I keep a large majority of my documents and files in a cloud service. I maybe have 5-10 gigs of random files I keep on my HD. That leaves approx. 125 gigs of space... I know that the computer uses (and I'll guestimate 25 gigs for the OS & random program files I have on my system)... That still leaves about 100 gigs worth of space un-accounted for.... When I open my 'finder', it tells me I have approx 50 gigs of space available. I have downloaded Disk Inventory X which is suppose to give you a break down of where all the space is being used. I have also read about a program called DaisyDisk. Both seem to be reputable and popular. I d/l'ed DIX first cause it was free..It did the analysis.... But....While I have somewhat of an idea of computers, I am not sure what is safe to delete, what should't be touched....What if I delete something that has specs attached to files that shouldn't be deleted...Neither utility really gives me an idea of what is safe to delete and what should not be touched. I know I must have a large cache of files and stuff that could be deleted....Image previews, etc.... I just don't know where to look. What is safe to get rid of.....Not sure what to do..... Thanks!

Where can I get a classic Mac desktop theme for my new MacBook Air?

Avenger — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 09:23:57 -0800

I recently got a new MacBook Air and I love it. Sometimes, however, I'm struck by an overwhelming sense of nostalgia for the Apple II I had as a child. Are there classic Mac desktop themes that I can download to rock my Air old skool style?

Speeding up Lightroom on Mac Pro

Admiral Haddock — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 09:39:47 -0800

I use a mid-2009 Mac Pro for photo editing / cataloging in Lightroom. Performance has been increasingly unsatisfactory. Looking for your advice re: upgrades to the Mac Pro, or perhaps getting a new Macbook Pro. Specs inside. The Mac Pro is a 2 x 2.26 quad core Xeon running 10.6.8 with 14 GB of physical RAM (I can't remember how the sticks are configured--but it's not perfectly matched (maybe 2 6s and a 2gb?)). Main hard drive (i.e., where applications reside) is a 640 GB 7200 RPM WD Caviar Blue. All my drive bays are filled (one with a Time Machine volume, and the other two with drives for the Lightroom catalog). I'm running LR 4.1 (build 829322).

I'm editing full-size RAW files output from a 5dMKIII. Maybe 25MB+ each. I increased the size of LR's cache, but I can't remember to what. I have LR set to render full size previews.

LR is really laggy, whether switching between images in the catalog, using the mask brush, the spot healing tool--really anything. It's getting really annoying.

Obviously, I haven't upgraded to the newest OS or the newest version of LR. I've been reluctant, given that each version of LR has gotten (IMO) progressively laggier.

What's the best way of getting some (go on, say it) snappiness back? More RAM? Increase the size of the LR cache? Upgrade to LR 4.3? SSD (and if a SSD is the way to go, do you have a particular model to recommend for a desktop)? Or is this just throwing good money after "bad," given that this is coming up on a four-year old machine, and should I just get a new retina Macbook Pro?

Thanks!

Why is my MacBook losing hard drive space so fast?

mlle valentine — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 16:17:25 -0800

Lately I have noticed that my MacBook (5 years old) seems to be losing hard drive space without me adding any additional files to it. What's going on? I know that the amount of available space was down to dangerously low levels (~125 MB) so I cleared out a bunch of stuff and got it back up to 5.19 GB. Now it is down to 4.25 and in fact dropped from 4.75 to 4.25 a couple of minutes ago. What's going on? Could there be some sort of background program that's making it lose space? Obviously, I am a computer noob. Thank you.

Should I buy a new or refurbed MacBook Air?

aka burlap — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 08:17:14 -0800

Time for a new (to me) laptop! I know this isn't that complicated, but I hate computer shopping. Please give me your wise advice on what to get and where to get it. I'd like a MacBook Air, but not sure whether to go with a new or refurbished one. I want something that's in good condition and is relatively recent model. I'm willing to pay for a new one, but might as well save some money if a refurbished recent model is just as good. So two questions: 1) are Apple refurbs just as good? 2) any tips for buying one, or tips on particular vintage to get?

Sneak extra question: what configuration specs do you recommend? I'm a light user - no gaming, just standard web surfing, office applications, music-listening, etc.

To give you some idea of where I'm coming from, my current computer is a hand-me-down 2006 MacBook with a busted internal wireless card, an occasional refusal to eject CDs, no battery life, a chipped case, and a keyboard on which both the zero key and the open-apple key don't work. So, yknow, I don't exactly have high standards.

There are plenty of similar previous questions, but obviously the laptop market changes from year to year. Thanks for the advice!

How do I download a folder of emails in Hotmail to my mac?

Brian Lux — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 08:28:53 -0800

I've been using Hotmail for ages and I have a bunch of important emails going back two years which I need to organise and print out. Hotmail isn't very good at opening up multiple emails or printing them out so I'd like to download them to my macbook. They are currently sitting in their own folder in my Hotmail account. How do I download this folder and what software should I use?

Replace a Mac MD313LL/A 12" Macbook Pro keyboard

Samizdata — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 19:31:41 -0800

Replace a Mac MD313LL/A 12" Macbook Pro keyboard for a handicapped neighbor and I know very little about recent Mac tech. I am helping a neighbor out. She spilled soda on her MacBook Pro 13" keyboard (the late 2011 2.4Ghz MD313LL/A model). I am having trouble tracking down notes on replacing her keyboard. I don't know enough about MacBooks to make any assumptions, so I want to move safely. I need to track down how to replace it and where to get a reputable replacement part.

I know MeFi's often love Macs, so I thought it might not be a bad idea to ask here.

Is to help, please?

MacBook Pro i5 vs i7 -- Prius body with Lamborghini guts

jadepearl — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 08:38:19 -0800

Which one to get: Macbook Pro i5 duo core, i7 duo core or i7 quad core Mr. Jadepearl has decided that my evil aura should not be near the house desktop machine that is also the media server so, I must get a laptop.

I want a refurb and wonder which to choose: i5 duo core, i7 duo core or i7 quad core. No retina display due to upgrade issues.

Now, I don't think that I push machines that hard but I am intolerant of lag on either my software or hardware. I do normal things: surf, research, use Adobe CS for class and only occasionally need to convert file types. I want a refurb so I can do the following:

max out the ram to 16GB

swapout the hard drive to a SSD

swapout the optical drive to a hybrid SSD

I will have this machine for 4 years and assume that I will be selling it so I want that happy confluence of price, performance and resell value.

Yes, I plan to get Apple Care. Yes, it will be the upgradable 2012 model. Yes, I plan to have a larger monitor (two preferred). Yes, I will be using an external hard drive for back-up as well as holding my 3TB of entertainment.

I have read all the other what macbook Pro threads but they are slightly old or the uses were not close to mine.

So hope me.

Will these Macs play nice together?

broadway bill — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 19:21:11 -0800

I have an iMac desktop running OS X 10.6.8 and a newly acquired MacBook Air running 10.8.2 and I want to make them be as friendly with one another as possible. Can you hope me? Mostly, I want to know what the most seamless way to make my mail work between the two is. I've been using Mac Mail on the iMac (with my riseup.net account) and it works well. On the air, I've been using Thunderbird with the same account. I think I like Thunderbird more than mac mail. I would love it if the two instances of Thunderbird (one on each machine) could operate in tandem; I delete an email on the iMac, it is automatically deleted on the air, etc.

Is that possible, or am I the tech idiot I have always thought myself to be?

What other cool things can I do with these things?

Also, I rather like the version of OS X on the air. Can I upgrade the iMac to that version for free or cheap?

Boy, I'm really bad at getting computers 'putin.

Please help me get all of my a/v equipment to play nice with my new hdtv.

The Card Cheat — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 10:58:18 -0800

Please help me get all of my a/v equipment to play nice with my new hdtv. Based on past AskMe threads and Consumer Reports, my wife and I bought a Samsung 32" 1080p 60Hz LED Smart TV. I got it set up last night, it looks good and it's connected to our wireless network and antenna (we don't have cable, and don't want it), so that's fine.

The issue is that this is the first non-CRT I've ever owned, so I'm ~~pretty~~ completely clueless about the best way to get all of my a/v devices hooked up to the thing.

Here's what we have:

- a 2009 or 2010 MacBook running Snow Leopard
- a Wii
- a non-Blu Ray DVD player
- an iPad 2
- an early-2000s-era stereo

What is the most efficient way to get everything attached? At the moment we have three different cables that hook up to the yellow video input at the back of the TV that we have to change every time we want to switch between the iPad, the Wii and the DVD player, but I assume there's has to be a way that doesn't involve plugging and unplugging cables.

The Wii we'd like to use for Netflix, the iPad and MacBook for streaming YouTube/Vimeo and movies we get from iTunes. My understanding is that the MacBook and iPad will run Mountain Lion and therefore Apple TV, but since we can use the Wii for Netflix and hook the iPad up to the TV I'm wondering if that would be worth spending the money?

Anyway, any guidance you can provide this old n00b would be greatly appreciated.

To buy or not to buy...

singinginmychains — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 10:38:46 -0800

Do I purchase a 2007 MacBook or not? My Dell laptop from 2009 is on its last legs, and I'm in the market for an inexpensive computer to use for basic word processing, Internet exploration, and the storage of smallish amounts of data (music, photos, etc.). A friend of mine recently upgraded to the newest Macbook, leaving her 2007(she thinks this is the year, anyway...) Mac gathering dust. In the past year, I have obtained the most recent iteration of the iPad and an iPhone 4, so this MacBook would make it easy to sync everything together.

Here are some basic stats:
OS X 10.5.8
2 GB memory
Intel Core 2 duo processor
2.4 Ghz
Battery is only six months old

Asking price of $250.

Should I go for it?

MacOSX: Create a new user, move safest bits over from my old user?

sdis — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 08:47:03 -0800

MacbookProFilter: I migrated my old user onto my new macbook, and carried with it a bunch of problems (slow startup, rapid battery life loss, etc.). Is there a clever, systematic way to migrate chunks of my user account to a new user? I don't exactly need to find the culprit(s) that are causing all the issues; I just want a machine that works well, but I'd rather not just delete all my preferences and passwords and start over from scratch completely if it's not necessary. Is there some app or guide that shows precisely which parts of a user account are 99% safe to migrate?

Knife the Mac

mudpuppie — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 16:04:49 -0800

The Apple Store Genius fixed my Macbook's problem while I was in the store, but now that I'm home again I'm back to square one. Help. My computer battery drained overnight and I couldn't get it to start this morning, even after it was plugged in for an hour. (Tried removing the battery, resetting the SMC, doing ctrl+opt+P+R, nothing worked.) Took it to the Apple Store ~30 minutes away. It was unplugged and not charging for that travel time.

When I got there, Genius plugged the computer in, pushed the power button, and it started right up.

His explanation, which I only partly remember, is that removing the power cord and letting it sit for a while essentially 'reset' the power supply. Or something like that. He did a bunch of other diagnostic stuff -- 45 minutes worth or so -- and sent me home.

Now that I'm back home, I can't get the computer to start.

What did he do that worked, and how can I boot it up again? (Already tried all the same things I listed above.)

Help my poor dead Mac?

dance — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 12:54:42 -0800

Sooo...my newish MacBook Pro is dead and I have a question about whether or not I can salvage the HDD and stick it in the new MacBook Pro to save a whole world of time. Suffice to say, electronics don't much care for tonic water. Or gin for that matter. But what's done is done. Those of us that are not so delicate and are thus still alive need to move on as best we can.

I've opened up the back of my 2011 MacBook Pro and fished out the hard drive. It wasn't at all wet so I have high hopes for it. What I'm wondering is to what extent is it possible to stick it in the new machine and have it boot and recognise things are different but just deal with it and not freak out.

On a Windows box I know this wouldn't work. Would it work with the more Unixy Mac OS X?

The alternative is to hook up the hard disk to the new Mac as a USB device and attempt a manual transfer of settings and files but I know which route I'd prefer if it's feasible!

Many thanks!

Graphics Problem with Macbook Pro/Ubuntu

Yiggs — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 14:34:53 -0800

I recently set up my old late-2007 Macbook Pro to dual boot OS X and Ubuntu. I'm very new to Ubuntu, and while mucking around I think I seriously screwed something up with my graphics card. Is there any way to fix it? Despite the problems these older Macbook Pros have with graphics cards, I am almost certain it is not hardware-related. I was able to set up the dual boot system fine and installed rEFIt and Ubuntu 12.10. The dash home screen was not rendering properly in Ubuntu, so I found a recommendation to install nvidia-current drivers (sudo apt-get install nvidia-current) then reconfigure them (sudo dpkg-reconfigure nvidia-current) (from here). I rebooted and this seemed to work great; the dash rendered fine and I was able to use Ubuntu and OS X perfectly.

However, at this point, the trackpad in Ubuntu was a little sticky and unresponsive, so I found a solution (here) to improve it. I navigated to /etc/X11 and no xorg.conf file was there. So I created one in gedit by copying and pasting the example file from that link.

I tried saving this to /etc/X11 but I did not have permission to write to the directory. So I looked up how change the permissions to the directory using chmod. I think this is where I made the biggest mistake. I thought I wanted to allow permission to "everyone" to read/write, so I set permissions to "666" for the directory and everything in the directory. I was then able to copy xorg.conf to the directory.

sudo chmod 666 /etc/X11
sudo chmod 666 /etc/X11/*
sudo cp xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf

I restarted and after selecting Ubuntu from rEFIt, I was taken to the terminal screen and the Ubuntu desktop never loaded. I realized I screwed something up at this point, so I tried to reverse what I did before:

sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf
sudo chmod 755 /etc/X11
sudo chmod 755 /etc/X11/*

I then rebooted and the Ubuntu desktop loaded fine, including the dash. However, after a few minutes it froze. When I rebooted, the apple screen was covered in a blocky green and pink grid pattern, and rEFIt did not load - it went directly to OS X. This worked for a few minutes, but soon gave a kernel panic.

After multiple reboots and kernel panics, I decided I should reformat and start again, and booted from the OS X (10.6) dvd. I wiped the hard drive and reinstalled a fresh copy of OS X. However, while setting up the user settings, I encountered two kernel panics, but eventually got through it. I was also able to complete a software update, then an upgrade to 10.8 and another software update. So currently my OS X software is all up to date. However, I am still getting the green and pink grid when I first boot up, and frequent kernel panics. Most commonly, I will be using OS X fine for ~15 min., then there will be a brief flash, after which the computer is totally unresponsive (however the cursor still moves). The screen will then flicker white every minute or so. At this point I'm forced to do a hard reboot.

I've tried resetting the NVRAM, which seems to have no effect. I've tried booting into single-user mode and performing /sbin/fsck -fy. This gives "The volume appears to be OK", while the text turns green and pink and distorted. Unfortunately I don't have the 10.6 Install Disc 2, so I can't run Apple Hardware Test; however, considering the problem seems directly caused by my mucking around with the X11 permissions, I really doubt it is a hardware issue.

In my naiveté I thought anything I may have screwed up changing permissions in Ubuntu would at least be reversible by reformatting the drive and reinstalling the OS; however, obviously this is not the case, and I've clearly messed up something deeper. Is there anything I can do at this point? Everything I can find online says you have to replace the logic board with these symptoms, which can't be the case if I've only messed something up on the software-side of things... right?

Here are the specs:
Macbook Pro 15-inch (late 2007)
Processor: 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory: 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT 128 MB