What if you turned on your Mac and nothing happened? This very scenario greeted me when I returned from vacation over the weekend. I pressed my PowerMac G4’s power button, which would glow only so long as I kept pressing it, but other than that, nothing. No startup chime, no whirring fans, no hard drive noises. Not good.

I did the standard check of the power cables. The UPS (uninterruptible power supply, a battery and surge control unit that protects your computer gear from power surges while supplying several minutes of juice during an outage so you can finish and save open documents) was fully charged and providing power to several other devices. My fear was that the power supply inside the Mac had died. I’m tech-savvy enough to replace it, but dreaded the prospect nonetheless.

Then it occurred to me that I should first check to see if something else – something easier to fix – could be causing the problem. And that brings us to this morning’s featured item: Apple’s online support documentation. Yes, I know it’s not a piece of software per se, but it is free and loaded with vital information on every Apple product, from the new iPhone to the Classic Mac operating system (a.k.a. OS 9). And it has saved my bacon on more than one occasion, including this weekend.

Fortunately I could use my MacBook to access the Internet and search Apple’s support area. Within minutes I found the document describing my problem: “My computer won’t turn on” and followed a link to a page targeted to the PowerMac series of machines. As it happened, there was indeed a possible, relatively painless way to revive my Mac. Pushing a tiny button inside the machine on the motherboard called the SMU (system management unit) would reset it and, with luck, bring my G4 back to life. I unplugged all the cables and popped the machine open (Note: Apple has different methods for resetting the SMU on Mac models that are harder to get into, such as its laptops). I pressed the SMU button, plugged everything back in and – voila! Success.

The alternative to this quick and easy fix would have been calling Apple tech support (which would have cost me) or taking the Mac into an Apple Store (which would have cost me time as well as money).

Though I need it rarely, Apple’s support site almost always has the answers I’m seeking. When it doesn’t because the problem either is too new or unusual to appear in the knowledge base, I turn to a related resource: Apple’s discussion boards, where users can post their problems and seek help from fellow users or Apple’s forum moderators.

Last summer I had a daunting problem with my then-new MacBook, and could find nothing on Apple’s support site. Sporadically the MacBook would boot into a blank grey screen. Resetting the PRAM fixed it temporarily, but the problem kept recurring and was very annoying. Browsing through Apple’s MacBook forum, I soon found several posts offering solutions. All one need do was reset the display preferences. That problem, caused by the OS X 10.4.7 update, was resolved in the 10.4.8 update. It got its own article in the knowledge base shortly afterward.

One last thought: while I commend Apple for its comprehensive online support documentation and active forums, the company does have a reputation for periodically pulling posts that discuss problems Apple finds embarrassing. That shouldn’t happen. In almost every case the whitewashed problem becomes a widely known issue that Apple inevitably must deal with. Instead of using its control of the discussion boards to blot out posts concerning potentially damaging problems, Apple should view them as an early warning system to help it get out in front of these issues so it can start to rectify them before the customer backlash gets out of control. For a company that routinely receives high marks for its customer service, you’d think this wouldn’t be such a tough concept. Nobody’s perfect, I suppose.