Mac OS 10.8.2 Audio Issue

[RRunner]

Hi Everyone,

I know that there are a lot of Mac users on here so I thought that I would post about a problem that I am having in the hopes that someone may have an answer.

My Macbook Pro (late 2011 model) with OS 10.8.2 is behaving oddly. If I plug in any audio plug into the headphone jack such as the earphones that came with my iPhone 5, everything works great. But after unplugging the headphones, the built in speakers don't work. The audio icon in the tool bar is greyed out and going to the system prefs shows no option for audio. Plugging the headphones back in and audio works there. Sometimes plugging and unplugging the headphones eventually clears this up but most times it does not.

After leaving the headphones unplugged for a while (30 minutes... overnight... or sometimes after the computer is put to sleep and revived) the built in audio starts working again.

This has been bugging me for a while now and I was hoping that someone here might have run into this and know a solution.

Thanks.

[RRunner]

Switch inside the headphone jack to detect when something is plugged in?  Could be as simple as blowing it out with some compressed air?

I thought that too at first but a Google search seems to indicate that this is a "known issue".

Evidence seems to point to a software problem, not hardware. Some people have said that having the sound prefs open as well as pressing the volume up button at the same time as you remove the headphones prevents the problem. Others have said to have iTunes running and playing a song when you remove the headphones. More adventurous solutions involved opening a terminal window and making some changes to the sound config files.

Unfortunately, none of these have worked for me.

[RRunner]

I have the exact opposite problem on my MBP.

The internal speakers work fine, but when i plug external speakers into the headphone jack I get no audio output whatsoever.

Happens whether I'm booted into Linux or OSX.

Thanks for the response. Further investigation suggests that it is a hardware issue. From what I have read, there is a micro switch inside the audio jack that gets stuck. Some have suggested that you can use a toothpick to prod it loose. I'm still under warranty so I'm going to just take it in for repairs.