My Fiance has a Macbook, and it's having about 95% of all the issues listed here. However, I believe I've come to a solution with regards to the "Bluetooth Not Available" problem. Let me describe my experience a bit.
The laptop first started having issues when I had hounded her to do updates to OSX (she normally ignored the dialogs). She started installing them, including 10.4.9 updates and firmware updates. Well, after that, her bluetooth stopped working. She didn't notice, but I did, as I was using her Macbook to transfer picture off my bluetooth phone. Well, there were several other problems going on, and I decided it would be a good idea to wipe her computer, re-install OSX and dual boot Linux. It took me a couple of weeks before I could get around to that. While I was procrastinating, I found out that a good solid thwack to the bottom of the MacBook would fix the bluetooth temporarily. Since most people don't go around hitting their stylish investments, I can understand why this was overlooked.
Well, fast forward several weeks, and I wipe OSX. I stick in my 10.4 retail cd... only to find out that it doesn't support intel Macs. So, I put in my XP disk, and installed that instead. To my shock and amazement, I got it working perfectly (without bootcamp) and she's been so much happier with it. I figured this was an excellent time for me to try hacking my phone with the windows only tools. Well, guess what? The bluetooth wasn't working in windows either! (in fact, when it would stop working, windows claimed there was an unrecognized usb devide and pop up a tooltip about ever 5 seconds... very annoying.) Well, I was convinced this was a hardware issue. So, out came the screw drivers.
First, I have to say that as a student of engineering, the Macbook is a nightmare. Macbooks weren't engineered, they were 'designed'. That's where most of the problems come from. I could gn on a rant about why the case cracks (including really geeky ASCII diagrams) but I won't. I'll just say that my appreciation for Apple as a hardware company evaporated. Anyone who's taken a basic engineering mechanics course, and understands about stress and material strength would instantly recognize the Macbook's case as failure waiting to happen.
Moving on, after sitting in stunned silence for about ten minutes, I plowed into the guts of her very expensive fashion statement (that was how I was viewing this misbehaving computer in the moment). I couldn't located the bluetooth device, though I know they are sometimes part of wireless cards, or modems (my thinkpad has the bluetooth in the modem, even though it claims it's on a usb port). Now, I admit I didn't strip the computers, as I was fearful I could put it back together again without permanently stressing the plastic into crumbling bits. So, on a hunch, I removed the airport card, and reseated it. Viola! Bluetooth's been happy ever since. So, my advice is to open the thing up, and reseat the airport card. Let's see if we can't move this bug to 'Resolved'.
Oh, and I was a bit unsure about how to report this, so I decided to post it on the discussion page... I hope people find this.
--Morgul
