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I feel like Apple has apolicy that anything with red water indicators needs to be replaced. Since they charge a fixed price for labor and guarantee the repair t

I feel like Apple has apolicy that anything with red water indicators needs to be replaced. Since they charge a fixed price for labor and guarantee the repair they are protecting themselves from giving a faulty device to the customer. A third-party technician can bend back the pin, and ignore anything else because they are allowed to partially repair the device to a lesser standard. The same thing goes with cars, the dealership will only replace OEM parts and usually won’t offer to repair something. A local mechanic has more freedom to give you the option of repair the part for less money even if the part is now less reliable.

Sytten 8y ago
Yes, but that is not really the issue here. To take your analogy, you have the RIGHT to go to a local mechanic who can get parts for your car. Apple is trying as hard as they can to kill the 3rd party repair shops and make there life difficult. This behavior should be illegal since they provide a valuable service as your local mechanic does.
- ntsplnkv2 8y ago
  Car companies are trying just as hard to make third party repairs hard as well. So many things can only be replaced now anyway. It's not just Apple, which is why we need a law.
kbenson 8y ago
> The same thing happens with cars, the dealership will only do repairs with OEM parts and won’t attempt to weld anything back together instead option to replace it. No, but they might be willing to rotate your tires without requiring you get a new transmission, even if they really recommend it. Now, if the dealership was also the manufacturer, and had a way to prevent repair materials from reaching the public, then perhaps they would be a but more strict about requiring all-or-nothing repairs...
Patrick_Devine 8y ago
I could see how that was their policy, however, they could have explained to the customer their options. Either have it repaired here and Apple will guarantee it, or take it to an independent repair shop and potentially get it fixed for much cheaper. I realize they're not obligated to do that, but I certainly would think a lot more highly of Apple if they did that.
soneil 8y ago
That does appear to be where some of their more outlandish pricing comes from. They'll either do a repair that brings the machine up to snuff (bar normal wear), or they won't. So that bent pin is now a substandard, weakened part. If that pin's in a socket, the socket oughta be replaced. But Apple don't expect local techs to be soldering things, so the socket doesn't get replaced, the whole subassembly does. Next thing you know, you're getting a whole motherboard for that bent pin. And they were stupidly expensive even before they started soldering ram (& storage?) to them. If that wasn't expensive enough, the liquid indicators play hell with this, for exactly the same reason. If they actually believe there's liquid damage, the list of subassemblies that need to be replaced to bring the machine up to par, gets very spendy very quickly. I don't know if there's really an easy way to change this. The more you try to standardise the operation, the less flexible it gets. Overkill is great when it's on Apple's dime, and shocking when it isn't.
- xbkingx 8y ago
  So you're saying that a Macbook Pro isn't up to snuff if they replace a single broken keyboard key. They need to replace the battery, too. I mean, the user might have pressed on the key slightly harder than normal to determine it was broken, which would flex the case slightly and put a non-stardard pressure on the battery, weakening the casing. Stop justifying their terrible policies. Their decisions are purely economic and magical thinking about technology lets them get away with it. A bent data pin on a connector doesn't lead to a catastrophic cascade of system-wide failures. If it does, then Apple shouldn't be making computers. I guarantee that at some point in the production line those connectors were heaped in a bucket. Maybe a standard bucket, but a bucket nonetheless. Anecdote time. I got curious about some old PC parts I had in the basement and decided to throw them together. Motherboard, 1st gen Core 2 Duo (with heatsink and original thermal paste), Nvidia 6800GT, etc - pieces from 10+ years ago that I rode hard sat unprotected in a milk crate for over a decade and were moved across the country 3 times. I've been using them as a NAS for the last 6 months (powered 24/7) with no problems. It isn't even in a case. I use a scissors to short the power leads directly on the motherboard to boot it. And that's far from the first time I've janked a computer together. Perhaps a better example, I volunteer regularly at a computer recycling place and regularly see 5+ year old laptops that were given to people that must have used them for fighting off bears and stirring soup. We clean em up, test em, and put them up for resale. Sure there are occasionally broken ones, but they're surprisingly rare. No one there has ever seen a computer even remotely resembling the condition of the Macbook brought in by the lady in Louis's follow up video. If you really believe that a tiny dent in a corner of the chassis leads to irreparable, functional damage to an Apple computer, why on Earth would you continue to buy them? And if you don't believe that, why do you allow them to cloud your logic to the point where it's even defensible? And while I'm ranting, you don't need moisture indicator stickers. Is there corrosion? Is there evidence of arcing/shorts? Are there water stains or bits of debris? That's all you need. Instead, companies put bright stickers that change colors so that it looks impressive and irrefutable to customers and so they don't have to train their technicians to identify water damage. It isn't just Apple, but companies love to follow Apple's lead in all the wrong ways, so if people don't start pushing back on these anti-consumer moves, we'll all end up trying to convince ourselves that notches on phones aren't the dumbest design choice of the last century. Anyways, sorry for ranting. The whole situation just bothers me.

Sytten 8y ago

Yes, but that is not really the issue here. To take your analogy, you have the RIGHT to go to a local mechanic who can get parts for your car. Apple is trying as hard as they can to kill the 3rd party repair shops and make there life difficult. This behavior should be illegal since they provide a valuable service as your local mechanic does.

ntsplnkv2 8y ago
Car companies are trying just as hard to make third party repairs hard as well. So many things can only be replaced now anyway. It's not just Apple, which is why we need a law.

kbenson 8y ago

> The same thing happens with cars, the dealership will only do repairs with OEM parts and won’t attempt to weld anything back together instead option to replace it. No, but they might be willing to rotate your tires without requiring you get a new transmission, even if they really recommend it. Now, if the dealership was also the manufacturer, and had a way to prevent repair materials from reaching the public, then perhaps they would be a but more strict about requiring all-or-nothing repairs...

Patrick_Devine 8y ago

I could see how that was their policy, however, they could have explained to the customer their options. Either have it repaired here and Apple will guarantee it, or take it to an independent repair shop and potentially get it fixed for much cheaper. I realize they're not obligated to do that, but I certainly would think a lot more highly of Apple if they did that.

soneil 8y ago

That does appear to be where some of their more outlandish pricing comes from. They'll either do a repair that brings the machine up to snuff (bar normal wear), or they won't. So that bent pin is now a substandard, weakened part. If that pin's in a socket, the socket oughta be replaced. But Apple don't expect local techs to be soldering things, so the socket doesn't get replaced, the whole subassembly does. Next thing you know, you're getting a whole motherboard for that bent pin. And they were stupidly expensive even before they started soldering ram (& storage?) to them. If that wasn't expensive enough, the liquid indicators play hell with this, for exactly the same reason. If they actually believe there's liquid damage, the list of subassemblies that need to be replaced to bring the machine up to par, gets very spendy very quickly. I don't know if there's really an easy way to change this. The more you try to standardise the operation, the less flexible it gets. Overkill is great when it's on Apple's dime, and shocking when it isn't.

xbkingx 8y ago
So you're saying that a Macbook Pro isn't up to snuff if they replace a single broken keyboard key. They need to replace the battery, too. I mean, the user might have pressed on the key slightly harder than normal to determine it was broken, which would flex the case slightly and put a non-stardard pressure on the battery, weakening the casing. Stop justifying their terrible policies. Their decisions are purely economic and magical thinking about technology lets them get away with it. A bent data pin on a connector doesn't lead to a catastrophic cascade of system-wide failures. If it does, then Apple shouldn't be making computers. I guarantee that at some point in the production line those connectors were heaped in a bucket. Maybe a standard bucket, but a bucket nonetheless. Anecdote time. I got curious about some old PC parts I had in the basement and decided to throw them together. Motherboard, 1st gen Core 2 Duo (with heatsink and original thermal paste), Nvidia 6800GT, etc - pieces from 10+ years ago that I rode hard sat unprotected in a milk crate for over a decade and were moved across the country 3 times. I've been using them as a NAS for the last 6 months (powered 24/7) with no problems. It isn't even in a case. I use a scissors to short the power leads directly on the motherboard to boot it. And that's far from the first time I've janked a computer together. Perhaps a better example, I volunteer regularly at a computer recycling place and regularly see 5+ year old laptops that were given to people that must have used them for fighting off bears and stirring soup. We clean em up, test em, and put them up for resale. Sure there are occasionally broken ones, but they're surprisingly rare. No one there has ever seen a computer even remotely resembling the condition of the Macbook brought in by the lady in Louis's follow up video. If you really believe that a tiny dent in a corner of the chassis leads to irreparable, functional damage to an Apple computer, why on Earth would you continue to buy them? And if you don't believe that, why do you allow them to cloud your logic to the point where it's even defensible? And while I'm ranting, you don't need moisture indicator stickers. Is there corrosion? Is there evidence of arcing/shorts? Are there water stains or bits of debris? That's all you need. Instead, companies put bright stickers that change colors so that it looks impressive and irrefutable to customers and so they don't have to train their technicians to identify water damage. It isn't just Apple, but companies love to follow Apple's lead in all the wrong ways, so if people don't start pushing back on these anti-consumer moves, we'll all end up trying to convince ourselves that notches on phones aren't the dumbest design choice of the last century. Anyways, sorry for ranting. The whole situation just bothers me.