4 ms·

I know it's just my experience, but it looks like this thread (as the article) is all about personal experiences. I had four time the same issue with a MBP 201

by tuxone 7y ago

I know it's just my experience, but it looks like this thread (as the article) is all about personal experiences. I had four time the same issue with a MBP 2011, the HDD cable was failing again ad again. First time they replaced it, next time they replaced the cable plus the HDD, third time they replaced cable plus logicboard, fourth I got a new MBP 2013. All for free, without Apple Care. Every time I got my laptop back in less than 4 business days (also the replacement unit, I received it at home even before they had picked the old one). This is true heaven if compared to my nightmarish experiences with DELL, ASUS or ACER (as a private customer, not business). About the repeated MBP issue, I blamed my way of carrying it around (with a passport bag) and the fact that the cable was directly in close contact with the unibody shell.

ilikehurdles 7y ago
I had great experiences with their device support. Replacements, repairs, their folks seem to err on the side of cover the claim rather than deny the claim when the cause of the problem seems ambiguous. I don't have a complaint about support yet, but I can tell my keyboard on my current-gen macbook pro is going to start failing soon (the semicolon key no longer clicks when pressed, the tab key is inconsistent) and from what I've heard from others is that it will require turning my laptop in and waiting days or weeks until it gets fixed. This is a company machine and I can't simply "not work" for 3+ days because I'm waiting on Apple HQ to blow dust out of my keyboard. Instead of taking it in, I'm looking at usb-c adapters so that I can plug in my external kb and use that instead. The _vast_ majority of engineers at my company uses some kind of external keyboard on these machines.
- brewdad 7y ago
  Your company doesn't have a backup machine you can work on for a few days? Even if you are a one person shop, you should have some sort of plan for hardware failure.
  - ilikehurdles 7y ago
    The majority of our company, especially on the engineering side, is remote employees. Honestly not a bad idea to ensure there is an employee hardware failure plan in place.
megous 7y ago
HW design, that fails 3 times in a row in the same place (and ultimately even destroys the logic board - probably because of the short on the exposed cable wiring), and the service that fails to prevent that, I'd hardly call a "true heaven". It's terrible. Say, they failed to make the cable protected enough in the initial design. During the first service, they should just not replace the cable, they should also add the protection, so that the issue doesn't happen again for that customer. If you google around, you'll see that this is a known problem and some people were even modding their MBPs proactively, to avoid this specific cable issue, caused by wrong design, to happen at inappropriate time.
- BoorishBears 7y ago
  Do you know how many Dells, Acers, and Asus laptops have known problems that affect the vast majority of units but will still take shipping your computer on your dime and being without for weeks at a time? My mother can afford a Macbook, I've told her this, but she insists on buying cheap Dells on sale. In 3 years she's gone through 3 200-300$ Dells. Every time they break Dell comes back with some untenable repair arrangement and off she goes. She could have bought a used Macbook Pro 3 years ago, and today it'd be worth more than all of those Dells put together, and odds are it'd be in working condition unlike the 3rd one which she's telling me is picking up a flickering screen issue. If something broke she could go to the Apple store and get it fixed within a couple of days. Even out of warranty she'd be better off than Dell out of warranty, which is like Apple's out of warranty support... except more expensive and slower.
  - megous 7y ago
    Are you seriously comparing MBP to a $200-300 laptops?
    - BoorishBears 7y ago
      Expensive laptops have the same exact known issues. My last windows laptop, the HP Spectre x360, was about as much as a MBP had a track record of failing motherboards. My old Zenbook, also in MBP pricing range was known to have the hinge fail. You're making the same mistake that my mother makes, assuming a "dollar's worth" of laptop is fungible. If you spend 400$ on a laptop, it's not enough that it only be at least 1/3rd as reliable as a 1200$ Macbook Pro. Every time a laptop fails there's a cost outside of just getting a new laptop, like transferring all your stuff, not having a laptop, etc.
perfect_wave 7y ago
Hard drive cables are a known issue in 2010/2011 MBPs. They were once acknowledged by Apple and replaced for free, but not anymore... Luckily they cost $10 on Amazon and can be replaced in 10 minutes with a small phillips screwdriver. I managed my school's computer repair room for IT and replaced at least a hundred of these cables while I was in school.
rosseloh 7y ago
Nah, it wasn't you. Those cables are a very common failure. We keep them in stock at our (not apple) computer store. Normally it's just the cable. Sometimes it's the cable and the OS needs a reload (because whatever goes wrong with the cable causes the drive itself to get corrupted, but not actually physically fail).

by tuxone 7y ago

ilikehurdles 7y ago

I had great experiences with their device support. Replacements, repairs, their folks seem to err on the side of cover the claim rather than deny the claim when the cause of the problem seems ambiguous. I don't have a complaint about support yet, but I can tell my keyboard on my current-gen macbook pro is going to start failing soon (the semicolon key no longer clicks when pressed, the tab key is inconsistent) and from what I've heard from others is that it will require turning my laptop in and waiting days or weeks until it gets fixed. This is a company machine and I can't simply "not work" for 3+ days because I'm waiting on Apple HQ to blow dust out of my keyboard. Instead of taking it in, I'm looking at usb-c adapters so that I can plug in my external kb and use that instead. The _vast_ majority of engineers at my company uses some kind of external keyboard on these machines.

brewdad 7y ago
Your company doesn't have a backup machine you can work on for a few days? Even if you are a one person shop, you should have some sort of plan for hardware failure.
- ilikehurdles 7y ago
  The majority of our company, especially on the engineering side, is remote employees. Honestly not a bad idea to ensure there is an employee hardware failure plan in place.

megous 7y ago

HW design, that fails 3 times in a row in the same place (and ultimately even destroys the logic board - probably because of the short on the exposed cable wiring), and the service that fails to prevent that, I'd hardly call a "true heaven". It's terrible. Say, they failed to make the cable protected enough in the initial design. During the first service, they should just not replace the cable, they should also add the protection, so that the issue doesn't happen again for that customer. If you google around, you'll see that this is a known problem and some people were even modding their MBPs proactively, to avoid this specific cable issue, caused by wrong design, to happen at inappropriate time.

BoorishBears 7y ago
Do you know how many Dells, Acers, and Asus laptops have known problems that affect the vast majority of units but will still take shipping your computer on your dime and being without for weeks at a time? My mother can afford a Macbook, I've told her this, but she insists on buying cheap Dells on sale. In 3 years she's gone through 3 200-300$ Dells. Every time they break Dell comes back with some untenable repair arrangement and off she goes. She could have bought a used Macbook Pro 3 years ago, and today it'd be worth more than all of those Dells put together, and odds are it'd be in working condition unlike the 3rd one which she's telling me is picking up a flickering screen issue. If something broke she could go to the Apple store and get it fixed within a couple of days. Even out of warranty she'd be better off than Dell out of warranty, which is like Apple's out of warranty support... except more expensive and slower.
- megous 7y ago
  Are you seriously comparing MBP to a $200-300 laptops?
  - BoorishBears 7y ago
    Expensive laptops have the same exact known issues. My last windows laptop, the HP Spectre x360, was about as much as a MBP had a track record of failing motherboards. My old Zenbook, also in MBP pricing range was known to have the hinge fail. You're making the same mistake that my mother makes, assuming a "dollar's worth" of laptop is fungible. If you spend 400$ on a laptop, it's not enough that it only be at least 1/3rd as reliable as a 1200$ Macbook Pro. Every time a laptop fails there's a cost outside of just getting a new laptop, like transferring all your stuff, not having a laptop, etc.

perfect_wave 7y ago

Hard drive cables are a known issue in 2010/2011 MBPs. They were once acknowledged by Apple and replaced for free, but not anymore... Luckily they cost $10 on Amazon and can be replaced in 10 minutes with a small phillips screwdriver. I managed my school's computer repair room for IT and replaced at least a hundred of these cables while I was in school.

rosseloh 7y ago

Nah, it wasn't you. Those cables are a very common failure. We keep them in stock at our (not apple) computer store. Normally it's just the cable. Sometimes it's the cable and the OS needs a reload (because whatever goes wrong with the cable causes the drive itself to get corrupted, but not actually physically fail).