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Apple Tried Charging the Price of a New MacBook Pro for a Screen Replacement

• chunsj 6y ago
  No one know why this is in the webarchive? Solved? Or...
• reallydontask 6y ago
  This reminds me of the old mechanic's trick of providing an overinflated quote to do work that they didn't really want to do.
  • afandian 6y ago
    They they should allow someone else to do it.
• Jonnax 6y ago
  A colleague of mine recently got a MacBook Pro, whenever they plug in an external monitor the fans are pretty much fully on when doing not much at all. They now loathe using it. These computers are so expensive. They seem to have a ton of issues with ridiculous repair costs. What's going on? The keyboard issue from before is another example. Clearly they have the profit margin to ensure their products work well. And not charge unreasonable prices for repair.
  • chrisseaton 6y ago
    Not sure you can extrapolate one user reporting an issue to 'a ton of issues'. If they 'recently got' it then it will still be in warranty and Apple will probably fix it for free.
    • sharms 6y ago
      This thread alone on Apples site, with no official response, is over 250 pages long: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250878229 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250878229
  • blkhawk 6y ago
    Louis Rossmann has something to say about the cooler design in the newest Macbook Aris. https://youtu.be/iiCBYAP_Sgg?t=46 https://youtu.be/iiCBYAP_Sgg?t=46 Not sure is the Pro is much better.
  • mgraupner 6y ago
    Ask your colleague if he is charging the MacBook on the left or right side, it may be the cause of excessive heat and therefore higher temperatures/fan noise. Source: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/363337/how-to-find-cause-of-high-kernel-task-cpu-usage/363933 https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/363337/how-to-find...
  • ubermonkey 6y ago
    Something is wrong with your colleague's machine, or something else in his toolchain, because that's not normal. The keyboard issues were really jarring precisely because Apple had, up to that point, a really great reliability reputation - in my experience, on par with the super-overengineered late-90s ThinkPads (IBM, not Lenovo). I retired several PowerBooks and MacBooks at 6 or 7 years old that were still physically fine, but no longer appealing to use for Moore's Law reasons. My wife's using my old 6 year old 13" Pro, and while I now find the keyboard weird, it's utterly capable of anything she needs to do with it -- which is pretty much a regular human duty cycle (ie, she's not running virtual servers on it like I was in its initial life). We then passed on the small Air she'd been using for like 8 years; it's in daily use at a friend's house now as a spare platform (which turned out to be a big deal, given quarantine). My guess is that Intel Macs are about to hit a gate with the shift to ARM, and you won't be able to get 8 years out of one purchased in 2020, but I could be wrong about that. (I mean, I definitely am if you have relatively simple needs -- even if you get stuck at the last rev of Intel-friendly OS X, there's software for you there that will keep working.)
    • andreasley 6y ago
      Actually, loud fans are a regular occurrence when using external displays with current high-end 15" MacBook Pros. It gets hot fast, especially when driving a 4K display and charging at the same time. The 13" MacBook Pro on the other hand is basically silent in most circumstances.
      • ubermonkey 6y ago
        I have a high-end current 15" Pro, use a high-def monitor, and do not have this problem.
  • dcx 6y ago
    I had this issue. I found people with the same problem up and down the web, across tons of MacBook models (examples: [1] [2]). Most people blamed it on bad drivers, GPU issues, bad graphics ports, firmware issues, and so on. What actually did the trick - opening the case up, flushing the dust from both fans using compressed air, and replacing the thermal paste on the CPU & GPU. My MacBook is totally silent now. I'm sure there is more than one possible root cause, but I feel this solution is not nearly as well known as it should be. Laptops generally run hot, and MacBooks have great fans, but they do trap dust. So there are a ton of people running around with old MacBooks which are being absolutely crippled by throttling. I ran some rough benchmarks and performance has approximately doubled. It's super noticeable. IMO Apple is incentivised to do a poor job in highlighting this (and say, setting up a service program), because when your laptop starts to feel slow after a few years, people tend to feel like maybe it's time to buy a new laptop... [1] https://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-computers/1322323-macbook-pro-16-quot-external-monitor-nonstop-fans-anyone-else.html https://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-computers/1322323-macb... [2] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2017-15-mbp-fans-run-w-external-monitor.2103793/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2017-15-mbp-fans-run-w-...
• dc1rjj 6y ago
  Well, dont buy apple...
  • extremeMath 6y ago
    I agree, but if you are a fortune 500 company, you don't quite get to say "no". You need to provide it to users anyway.
• SirensOfTitan 6y ago
  They’ve also quoted me more than a whole new pair to repair some AirPods Pro that I accidentally washed in the laundry. They didn’t tell me that was the case when I was on the phone with them. Apple uses a lot of customer hostile behaviors nowadays. Recently: * I canceled the Apple TV+ year trial that came with my iPhone. While, I believe, they require other apps to allow access until the trial ends, they ended my access immediately. * Apple Music pulls up a slow interstitial almost every time I open it up to try to get me to pay. I have like 4 albums on my phone I listen to, it’s incredibly annoying how they’ve broken the music app to upsell their services. I’m trying to get rid of most of my Apple devices in favor of anything else at this point.
  • freeqaz 6y ago
    I just swapped from Android to an iPhone for privacy concerns. The other side of the fence is pretty user hostile as well. Google makes you disable a lot of functionality on the phone if you try to get out of their invasive tracking. And they are constantly nuking apps that I use like Google Play Music and Google Inbox. Maybe check out PinePhone if you're interested in hacking something together!
    • extremeMath 6y ago
      Wait until you download all the same apps and get 0 privacy benefits. The problem is barely Google. The problem are the Apps you download and giving full permissions.
      • RealStickman_ 6y ago
        In terms of privacy you should be mostly fine if you stick to F-Droid and use microG instead of Gapps.
    • selfhoster11 6y ago
      You can deactivate pretty much all the Google apps you're not using. I use VLC, Firefox and K-9 Mail instead of the default Google apps and have been doing it for ages. Pretty much doesn't break anything, other than some banking apps that immediately assume you must have Gmail installed, so they direct you to that instead of your default email client. That's not a big deal, you can just open your email client by hand. A small price to pay for giving less space to Google on your phone.
• hs86 6y ago
  With the declining repairability of MacBooks (and other slim notebooks), I always have to think about this Pokémon comic: https://images7.memedroid.com/images/UPLOADED127/56473bf64a66a.jpeg https://images7.memedroid.com/images/UPLOADED127/56473bf64a6...
  • lexicality 6y ago
    Original: https://www.awkwardzombie.com/comic/hotspital https://www.awkwardzombie.com/comic/hotspital
• dvh 6y ago
  I don't see a problem with this. Lunar retro reflector is $1000 part but replacing it would cost the same as new lunar mission. Macbooks are made in factories mostly by robots in large volume. Replacing part requires hard specialized manual labor and doesn't scale. Thirdly, they are only asking for what people are willing to pay. My latest computer cost €205.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • dcx 6y ago
    But laptops are not supposed to be designed for trips to the moon! It is an extremely reasonable expectation that when a part of a laptop breaks or wears out, in most cases it should be possible to repair just that part. Not that you now have to throw out the whole laptop and buy a new one. Yes, they are produced by robots at scale. But Apple designs the product. And design for maintainability is a key part of good design. And they are not asking for what people are willing to pay. A reasonable user would not expect that a top-of-the-line laptop is completely unrepairable. Laptops have never worked like that. As such this would not be factored into the purchase price equation.
  • marcan_42 6y ago
    Except if you actually read the transcript and article, most of the cost is billed as parts, not labor.
  • yesplorer 6y ago
    How's that remotely comparable to a lunar mission? Is Apple sending a specialist to China to bring a one-off replacement screen?
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• mobilio 6y ago
  "Greed is good!" #sarcasm Now serious... first company with $2T valuation. Investors should be satisfied somehow. I'm long time Apple user and fan. But their latest products are went to other direction are too fragile. Previous generations was undying!
• ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  I'm not sure what's newsworthy, here. This is quite typical of any place, that both sells and repairs stuff. The cost of repair is calculated to be just below, or at, the cost of replacement. It's unusual, but not unheard-of, to have it more than the cost of replacement. I've encountered this with TVs, phones, VCRs, stereos, non-Apple computers, cars, and I have heard stories of this applying to buildings and homes, as well. And I find that infuriating, as it leads to waste.
  • dangelov 6y ago
    Not sure this is all that typical. While repair costs can get to a fairly large percentage of the purchase price and thus not making sense in some situations, it's not always the case. I recently repaired a Sony soundbar system for about 30% of the purchase price, so definitely not "at the cost of replacement". Replaced a phone screen for 10% the cost of a new one etc.
    • ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
      Depends on where the repairs are done. Today, I'm returning a leased car. I had a small crack in the front bumper (trailer hitch in a parking lot). It isn't one of the new sensor-packed bumpers; just a vanilla one. It cost $1,000 to repair, because they replaced the entire front bumper, and the paint cost more than the part. It also had to be done at the dealer, because of the lease requirements. The body shop down the road would have done it for half that. I have since found out that the dealer sends the car to a body shop anyway, and they probably only charged half, so the dealer pocketed the difference. I am never leasing a vehicle, ever again. This was my first, and last time.
      • fastest963 6y ago
        Which brand did you lease? I've leased Toyota's before and had no such restriction. I could go to any auto body shop they just had to use genuine Toyota parts for the repair. With my last lease I had to have the rear bumper replaced Toyota didn't care where I got it done.
• andyhmltn 6y ago
  I'm currently having to go through a home insurance claim for a similar reason. I stupidly took one of the keys off and bent a bit of plastic getting it back on. The damaged part of the key is on the keycap itself, rather than the mechanism underneath. Silly mistake but I imagine not super uncommon. Took it to an Apple store and was quoted £700 to fix it which is equivalent to almost half the cost of the laptop. For a single key. Absolute insanity.
  • ChuckNorris89 6y ago
    Damn, what a rip-off. Why not stop giving them your money and stop buying any more of their products and services? Hit them where it hurts, their sales and bottom line. Just complaining about it doesn't get you very far as long as you still keep shoving money in their pocket. These days there are plenty of quality alternatives that are not Apple and lowering their sales should send a clear message to their board.
    • arkitaip 6y ago
      It is unfortunate that you are getting downvoted for stating the absolute most sane option. Apple isn't doing anything illegal here, so consumers aren't going to see a change in their behavior. Unless they opt out of Apple's offerings completely.
      • CogitoCogito 6y ago
        Another option of course is to change what's legal. Society could legally force Apple to allow and cooperate with real independent repair shops. It seems quite clear this would be a more efficient and fair system. But yes we can also strive towards both goals simultaneously. I personally will never spend any money on Apple's products. I've inherited a few of them, but I keep myself as loosely tied to the ecosystem as possible.
    • pilsetnieks 6y ago
      It will send a message but I'm not sure it's clear at all. I always see the suggestion to vote with your wallet but how does it even work with a product with usable lifecycle of 5 or even 10 years? By the end of 2025 Apple will see a sales slowdown over the past few years. At that point I'm not sure it's even possible to pinpoint specific reasons, like "customer couldn't replace keycap on a 2017 model computer" which may or may not have been solved for years already. If you have complaints and you want them to be fixed, tell them (https://www.apple.com/feedback/ https://www.apple.com/feedback/), unless you've given up completely on the company and won't ever return to it. Simply voting with your wallet is the equivalent of ghosting in commerce.
• jonwinstanley 6y ago
  This is not surprising at all, the retina screen is one of the most expensive parts of the laptop. Lots of household appliances are similar to this too. If you have to repair one of the main parts of a washing machine or a dishwasher a new one will be a cheaper option. Same for a car, a friend of mine flooded his engine by driving through water that was higher than expected. His insurance company just wrote the car off as it was much more expensive to replace an engine than to get a new car.
  • vbezhenar 6y ago
    Does your country have unofficial repairs? I can't imagine destroying a car just because of failed engine. In my country I would spend around $1k to repair engine if it's still possible and around few thousands dollars to buy used engine and replace it. Actually I would repair it myself for a few hundreds of dollars, but if someone does not want to spend time, those are the options.
    • owenmarshall 6y ago
      > I can't imagine destroying a car just because of failed engine They didn't: they wrote the car off because it was flooded. That can ruin electrical systems, motors, pumps, engines, the body, and everything else the water touches. In the US, when you contact your insurance company and say "I damaged my car driving it through water" and their appraisers agree, they're going to contact the state DMV and let them know. The DMV will mark your vehicle as flood damaged/impaired/salvaged. It's now worth the cost of scrap until you rebuild it to the satisfaction of your state laws to get a clean title.
  • cbmuser 6y ago
    You normally get a rebuilt engine as a replacement, not a new one. So, it’s normally not that expensive.
  • phonon 6y ago
    How do you figure? The screen costs Apple roughly $200. So they don't have to hire skilled technicians, they replace the whole top of the laptop, so some backlight, cover, wiring, case...still well under $500. The actual reason is they don't want Macbook components floating around on the grey market, so they make the pricing for significant repairs impossible to justify.
• polote 6y ago
  the url should be: https://luketully.ca/macbook-screen-replacement-costs-as-much-as-a-brand-new-model/ https://luketully.ca/macbook-screen-replacement-costs-as-muc...
  • dang 6y ago
    We changed to that from https://web.archive.org/web/20200914113323/https://luketully.ca/macbook-screen-replacement-costs-as-much-as-a-brand-new-model/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200914113323/https://luketully.... Thanks.
• awinter-py 6y ago
  the right to repair movement is fascinating because it has no political alignment (it includes city folk + farmers, for example), has passed legislation in a lot of states, and implicitly comes with a bunch of other digital rights (because repair is power) it's also easy to understand -- there's no generation gap. Unlike privacy, the harms are immediate and most people have experienced them. repair.org is IMO doing as much good as EFF / ACLU on a way thinner budget
  • markdown 6y ago
    Unfortunately, going by Louis Rossmann's latest video, the right to repair means nothing if you don't have access to the parts you need to fix Apple products. And of late, Apple have been preventing their suppliers from selling parts to third parties.
    • awinter-py 6y ago
      not saying it's not a fight
    • bubblethink 6y ago
      The notion of ip is so deeply ingrained in the US, that I doubt you'll see the kind of Chinese bazaar that you really need. The US will only adapt when China gets significantly ahead.
      • markdown 6y ago
        > I doubt you'll see the kind of Chinese bazaar The point is that that's what you had (admittedly on a much smaller scale) in the US, but that it's now disappearing, seemingly in response to the push for Right to Repair. Watch his latest video.
• seb4433 6y ago
  Recently my iPhone XR stopped working after only a few months of usage. I thought it shouldn't be much of a problem since the device still had warranty. But I was very wrong... dealing with Apple Support (Germany) was one of the most frustrating customer support experiences I've ever had. My local Apple Store sent the phone to the repair facility 3 times but it always came back with the comment "Couldn't replicate issue" although the issue was clearly documented and reproducible by me and the Apple support staff. After a lot of phone calls, email back and forth, the manager of my local Apple Store said there's nothing they can do about it, the only option that I have left is to trade-in the defective device to get a gift card and then use it to buy a new iPhone 11. Since I need a iPhone for my job (software-testing), that's what I did. I was tired to fight for my right to get a replacement device or a repair. It's completely ridiculous. Apple's "warranty" is basically useless. But somehow they can get away with it.
  • levosmetalo 6y ago
    If you are still in Germany you should report them to Verbraucherzentrale.
  • aosaigh 6y ago
    Did you try going via your consumer rights instead of their warranty? Completely anecdotal I know, but I had a Apple Pencil fail on me outside of warranty. On the phone they refused to fix or replace it. Once I mentioned my consumer rights (which cover 6 years in Ireland https://www.apple.com/ie/legal/statutory-warranty/ https://www.apple.com/ie/legal/statutory-warranty/ - I'm sure it's similar in Germany) they put me through to a separate phone line and sent me out a new pencil.
    • currysausage 6y ago
      6 years? This is amazing! In Germany, it's 2 years of statutory warranty (Gewährleistung), but there's a shift in the burden of proof (Beweislastumkehr) after 6 months, so if the retailer insists, it's up to you to prove that a defect was actually present when you bought the item. We talk a lot about the throwaway society and about planned obsolence, but six years of statutory warranty could actually change something.
• PaulHoule 6y ago
  Be careful. If you have "infinite" prices in your mind (e.g. a Mac is always better than a Dell) a rational Apple is going to soak you for all your are worth and try to get you go into debt too.
• bluedino 6y ago
  iFixit sells the screen for $599 if you want to repair it yourself. PowerBook Medic will replace the screen on a 15" Retina Pro for $449 USD. I'm sure smaller shops would do it even cheaper.
• emsy 6y ago
  At this point it’s as if Apple is begging to be regulated. Absolutely disgraceful. To be clear my issue is not with the price of the repair but with the lack of alternatives due to Apple’s replacement part policy. I’m pretty sure if the EU were to regulate them they’d still enforce their customer hostile policies onTo their other markets.
  • extremeMath 6y ago
    I wonder if this is the end goal. If they are regulated, they can expect permanent life at the expense of taxpayers subsidizing the company. Be extremely anti consumer and anti developer, advertise to make up for the negative behavior and loss of users.
  • arkitaip 6y ago
    What Apple is doing isn't different from what manufacturers have been doing for centuries. Expensive repairs and parts have always been a way to earn more money at the expense of the consumer. I'm not saying their behavior is acceptable, just that it's very unlikely that laws are a solution to this problem.
    • emsy 6y ago
      I think the issue is that faulty hardware isn’t actually that common. I have more than 20 Apple devices in my family circle without any issue. But if there were to e failure it would going to be costly and strenuous to repair. So I don’t think customer choice will solve this issue. We need lawmakers to protect the few unlucky ones from these customer hostile practices.
• StavrosK 6y ago
  I saw a video by Louis Rossman the other day that's relevant to this. He owns an independent repair shop that repairs Apple products, and he said that Apple has basically won the fight by locking down their supply chain. Independent repair stores now cannot get Apple parts anywhere, so your only repair option in many cases is to take the thing to Apple and pay the predictably just-below-used price to get it repaired. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFA3szW9nWk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFA3szW9nWk
  • imglorp 6y ago
    You can mail a mac to Rossman's company and they'll work for P+L without the Apple upsell woo. Contact is on the about link above.
    • spuz 6y ago
      What does "work for P+L" mean?
      • nAwYz 6y ago
        Parts and labour cost
      • ThePowerOfFuet 6y ago
        the cost of parts and labour.
      • chadash 6y ago
        parts + labor
      • kellenmurphy 6y ago
        Parts and Labor
      • zo1 6y ago
        Parts and Labour?
      • deleted 6y ago
• dwighttk 6y ago
  I’ve also recently had some issues with Apple chat and phone support. Seems like some of them are poorly trained.
• fxtentacle 6y ago
  I'm sure they will argue that they are protecting consumers by preventing potentially untrustworthy repair shops from buying authentic replacement parts. This is what an anti-competitive monopoly looks like. You cannot even choose where to get your laptop repaired, so there is no possibility for anyone else to offer, for example, a cheaper price for the labor. And the consumer pays the forcibly higher price. Those shops that attempted to offer cheaper repairs were retaliated against by Apple...
• apetresc 6y ago
  The title and initial blurb of the article makes it sound like the rep tried to somehow disguise the cost or downplay it. But if you read the transcript, it's the exact opposite. The rep warned them the repair would cost more than a replacement before he even quoted them a price, and tried multiple times to explain why. He acted completely professionally, and the situation itself is totally unremarkable too.
  • eptcyka 6y ago
    Does it matter if you're being told to fornicate yourself in a professional manner? The tone of the conversation is irrelevant if the matter is ridiculous. And don't try and frame it as though it wasn't. An independent repair shop would be able to replace a screen for far less. That is of course, if the screens were available for purchase freely.
  • plow-tycoon 6y ago
    I suppose the tone is open to interpretation, but I didn't try and mischaracterize the interaction. Both of us were incredulous as to the responses we were getting. When asking the same questions in a store, especially before agreeing to anything, I'd expect and have received clear answers or documents that do that. Likewise, though I didn't mention this in the post, the first few emails Joe sent were not quotes, but payment requests with no further detail as to what was happening. I've gone ahead and updated the post.
• coldtea 6y ago
  For what is worth, I had an iMac 27" out of warranty and Apple replaced the screen for free. It had started having an issue (condensation) after 3-4 years of use and apparently the part number was from a run that could display was issue and had free repair even if out of warranty. The iMac cost like $3500 (corresponding local price), and the repair part was listed as costing $750 but given for free. Another good experience is when they fixed a MBP (charging adapter) from free in a totally different country than the one purchased. Bought in Europe, fixed in an Apple Store in the US. That said, the first case is 7 years ago, and the other is 6.
  • eptcyka 6y ago
    It's cool that you've had a good experience. Maybe if more people spent 3'500$ on a computer, they'd get similar treatment.
    • coldtea 6y ago
      You'd be surprised. Thought that should have been 3500
  • plow-tycoon 6y ago
    I think that's worth something. That's what I was generally happy with around the same time, and tried to emphasize that in the post. Buying an Apple product generally meant that you didn't need to worry, and hopefully you'd get some help for that investment when something did go wrong. Though I would say that I've never had a completely out-of-warranty major repair done. Ironically, the only out-of-warranty repair I had was when I ripped the SATA cable in my 2009 MBP. They sold me a new one and I was on my way.
• millzlane 6y ago
  This price looks incorrect. Tier 4 damage would only be accidental damage that the customer caused. Delamination of the screen doesn't count. Tier 4 would be liquid damage. I think the rep was new to the internal tools that apple provides. A cracked display in a MBA retina 13in 2019 cost the customer $489.94 total.
  • merridew22 6y ago
    Phew! Thank goodness someone finally mentioned this. The next step is to ask to speak to a manager and I bet this conversation would have gone a lot better.
    • plow-tycoon 6y ago
      > The numbers Joe suggested in this conversation are either entirely fabricated, or belong to the cost of replacing the entire machine if its experienced catastrophic damage. But, after clarifying numerous times about what the numbers actually represent and comparing to previous repair bills for the same issue, my belief is that the rep used a false and obscured repair order to persuade me to replace my girlfriend's minimally damaged screen with a new computer.
      • millzlane 6y ago
        I have misquoted a repair before. Either I clicked the wrong box. Because either I didn't do my do diligence or because I was scatter brained and copied and pasted the wrong number. Regardless this is still a reflection of the way apple trains the agents and QC team not catching this agents mistake. You might want to call back and mention the delamination repair program. If you're still within the 4 year purchase period it should be fixed for free.
        • plow-tycoon 6y ago
          I definitely accept that mistakes could be made, and do plan to follow up. It's not within the repair window, but I'll see what can be done.
• pkorzeniewski 6y ago
  I can't wrap my head around Apple customers, most of the people I know that use mainly Apple products had a surprisingly amount of major issues with them but continued to buy Apple stuff only, it's like an addiction.. For example screen stopped working in a 3-year MacBook so what did the guy do? Bought new one because fixing was too expensive. Another one had a problem with the keyboard in MacBook which is one of the most important things in a laptop, his solution - do not part with a can of compressed air and wait to buy new one. Next example - brand new iPhone was randomly loosing WiFi connection so the guy sent it for a repair and had to wait 2 months (note that this was in eastern Europe but anyway) to get it back. I could go on and on with such examples and I can't believe that people pay so much money and don't see a problem here. I never had any major problems with any devices I use and they all cost several times less than Apple equivalent.
  • _qulr 6y ago
    For many people, the hardware is simply a container for the software. If you prefer Apple's operating system, then there's unfortunately little choice, except perhaps Hackintosh.
  • spuz 6y ago
    The answer to "why do people spend so much on Apple hardware?" used to be that they would offer fast easy and sometimes free repairs and replacements at their genius bar stores even when the product was out of warranty. I guess those days are over?
    • parasubvert 6y ago
      Those days aren’t entirely over (my out of warranty iMac is getting great care, my out of warranty iPhone had AppleCare and they waived the screen fee even though it expired a couple months prior - this was in 2019), but they’re at the scale that it is hard to please everybody at a profit and easy to blog about being upset.
  • dangoor 6y ago
    FWIW, I have owned _a lot_ of Apple products over the past decade. They have been almost universally reliable and overall pretty great to use. I _did_ have to send my 2018 MacBook Pro in for the dreaded & common keyboard repair. We also have a 2014 MacBook Pro that recently has had its battery inflate, but that was after years of service. The keyboard thing was a real (and sucky) problem that Apple should not have let go on as long as they did. But the very small number of problems I've had through the years of using Macs, iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, AirPods, iPods, etc. gives me an overall good impression of their products. Apple's customer satisfaction rating is industry-leading: https://www.theacsi.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=149&catid=&Itemid=214&c=Apple&i=Personal+Computers https://www.theacsi.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=ar...
• helsinkiandrew 6y ago
  I wonder if we should be surprised at this. Modern devices (phones and laptops) are designed to be small and cheap to produce in bulk in countries with cheap labour. Very few people will buy a more expensive, larger device that might be easier to repair or extend in a few years time. Doing bespoke repairs in high labour cost countries is always expensive. More so when devices are small. It's probably cheaper to get a lower skilled worker to replace the whole board than a higher skilled worker to fix a board involving soldering that could cause further issues. Do we really think that it's going to be cost effective to take apart and fix airpods? If you want something that is more easily repairable, extendable, and recyclable then a desktop/tower is the answer.
  • _ph_ 6y ago
    That a repair of a modern device can be expensive is one thing, but here they charged more than the machines worth for the replacement part. That is just silly. The quoted labor costs were 150, which is still a lot but reasonable. But more than a few hundreds for a new screen sounds off.
• nvrspyx 6y ago
  About 4-5 years ago, my MacBook Pro's trackpad would randomly stop working and I would have to restart my laptop a few times to get it working again. Sometimes it would work for a few hours, sometimes a few minutes. I also dual-booted Linux at the time and the funny thing is the trackpad never had an issue under Linux. After quite a bit of researching, it led me to believe that the ribbon cable connecting the trackpad to the motherboard was faulty due to macOS never trying to reconnect to the trackpad if it loses a connection for even just a moment. I brought it to the Apple store and explained that I had tried everything possible to resolve the issue without opening up the laptop myself, such as resetting NVRAM, completely reinstalling macOS completely, etc. I explained that I think that the ribbon cable is simply faulty and that it probably just needed a replacement. The Genius said that they're going to bring it in the back to do every single one of the things I mentioned that I already did. I come back 4 hours later to pickup my laptop and they tell me that the issue is the motherboard and that replacing said board would cost $800. I asked how they determined it was the motherboard and not simply a faulty ribbon cable to the trackpad, but they wouldn't answer the question directly. After requesting their superior and restating my question a few more times, they told me that they don't have access to replacement ribbon cables and that my only option was a motherboard replacement, which itself would take about a week because they needed to order the board. That was enough for me to take my laptop and leave, even though they still didn't answer the actual question of how they determined what the actual issue was or even confirm my hunch that the issue was with the ribbon cable. I bought a $5 replacement cable from Amazon, took about 10 minutes to swap it out using an iFixIt tutorial, and I'm still using that laptop as my main machine years later. In other words, they spent 4 hours to quote me an $800 fix that would take about a week to be done for something that was actually only a $5 fix that would take no more than 30 minutes. I've been hesitating to buy a new laptop for years because of that experience as well as the downhill quality of MacBooks as of late, such as the keyboard (although fixed now), touch bar, initial Catalina bugginess, etc.
  • cooljacob204 6y ago
    Yup, that was a common issue. This is exactly what happen to a friend of mine. Tried to sell him a new motherboard, he decided to just buy a ribbon cable and replace it himself. Another friend had his motherboard replaced because he had the common issue with the old keyboard where keys would randomly stop working. Of course it didn't fix it, only wasted a month of his time. Luckily his was still covered under warranty and they managed to get it right and replace the keyboard the second time around.
• braythwayt 6y ago
  There are two completely separate issues here, and they need to be disentangled to have a productive discussion. First, there is the question of the right-to-repair and to what extent Apple is hostile to the existence of a viable second-party and third-party repair ecosystem, neutral to it, or actively supports it. Second, there is the question of the relationship between the costs of the product and the costs of the things needed to repair the product, like replacement screens. The two are not entirely orthogonal, because many strategies for reducing the costs of the product or increasing the utility of a working product have consequences with respect to the costs of components and the ease of third-party repair. An example discussed on HN many times is the choice between user-removable batteries and building a battery in. When it's built-in, engineers have more options for miniaturization or increasing battery size and product life. The consequence, of course, is that batteries are now expensive to replace, and the batteries themselves are harder to get in a third-party ecosystem because there is little standardization: Every device might have a different battery optimized for that device. If batteries were standard sizes as they are for many consumer devices with removable batteries, engineers have less flexibility to increase battery life, reduce weight, or reduce device size. The same reasoning extends to replacing screens and keyboards. Supporting a vibrant and viable third-party ecosystem means making engineering compromises that have a distinct effect on the product's price and competitiveness in a world where every review discusses device weight, size, battery life, &tc. The very best thing for a third-party repair ecosystem is to have fewer device-specific parts, fewer proprietary connectors, fewer components hard-wired into place, fewer components that change from device version to device version, &c. The more different parts there are, the more that are introduced for a model or two and then discontinued, the harder it is for the viability of a third-party ecosystem with affordable options. I feel that there's a deep and challenging tension between repairability and the immediate, out-of-the-box product value. In some industries, consumers value the ability to wrench their own product higher than in others. In bicycles, for example, there is a great deal of conservatism around engineering. For all the bragging about new technology, the bicycle industry doesn't really advance very quickly. What do we have now, twelve-speed rear clusters? Whereas when I raced in the 80s, there were seven speeds back there. Whup-dee-doo, where are the internal gearboxes? And the other big innovations are disc brakes and electronic shifting? Compared to the advances in telephones, this is nearly nothing. When I had a mechanical seven-speed rear mech, I also had a physical phone hard-wired into my car. That was "mobile communications" back then. I'm not defending Apple, it's up to everyone to decide for themselves which choices they think Apple should make. But we should accept that any choice for making things repairable has an impact on the out-of-the-box value of the device itself. And if we want right-to-repair to be a viable and profitable business choice, something has to change about the marketplace itself, namely: 1. Get consumers to repair their devices far more often than they replace them, and; 2. Regulation. I prefer regulation, personally. Yes, it's the bogeyman of "regulated marketplaces." But it also creates a level playing field, so that repairable devices do not have to suffer product reviews complaining about their price, weight, size, lack of differentiation from other devices sharing common standards, &c.
• jonwachob91 6y ago
  I hope Luke Tully is around and reading these comments, the only contact he has on his site is the twitter and he looks inactive on it. But his 2015 MBP delamination is covered by an Apple Recall from many years ago! He doesn't have to pay a dime to get that issue fixed. I first took my 2015 MBP to Apple a few years ago for the delamination problem and was told it was covered under a recall notice, but at the time I didn't have up to 2 weeks of service time to be without my MBP, so I just dealt with it. This Spring I finally called up Apple and told them I wanted to get my delamination issue fixed. The Apple rep was completely lost about the recall I was talking about, but about 15 minutes of looking around he found the recall information. 1 week later I had my MBP back from the service center looking b-e-a-utiful :)
  • plow-tycoon 6y ago
    Yep. I haven't updated the site much lately, and quit twitter years ago. Oddly, in the interaction with customer support I posted, there is one comment missing, and that's where the rep says the laptop is outsode the repair window (4 years). On my personal machine, I used the repair program multiple times because the screens are just so vulnerable to delamination and damage. To elaborate, when I experienced the issue on my machine in 2018, I also couldn't let them ship it out for a week. I believe they made a note on my file, which worked out in the end, but no subsequent technicians were able to rely on that note and had to do their own inspection
    • millzlane 6y ago
      I just saw this. Even if you are beyond the 4 year purchase window. The repair should only be considered a "display only replacement" I suspect if display somehow got "fried" and failed the repair wouldn't not be a tier 4 repair. You also have an option of just removing the anti-reflective coating using solvents like 90% ISO or stronger.
      • plow-tycoon 6y ago
        I've seen people literally scrub off the coating, but it's not quite at that point yet. Thanks for the suggestion though. I was just expecting to either be told whether or not it's in the repair window, or what the display replacement and battery would cost, if it did become unusable. Oddly, the one comment where the support person confirms that it's not in the window was removed from the transcript.
• PedroBatista 6y ago
  In the last +5 years Apple has been very busy securing their monopoly on every bit or screw their machines have. In certain models you simply cannot plug another ( Apple original ) screen, it will not work. Also many "regular/mundane" chips are not available to anyone but Apple. Apple not only doesn't support any repair initiative, it actively sabotages anything they see as a threat. Their Authorized Service Provider Program is a complete joke done in a way to keep other people busy but set for failure and to give Apple lawyers some leverage they can work with.
• jp0d 6y ago
  I must say that all the Apple products my wife and I have used so far, have been very reliable. They're expensive but when you consider the quality and durability they usually have better value. But their repair service can be utterly rubbish sometimes. A few years ago my wife spilled some beer on her MacBook Air and the keyboard stopped working. She took it to the Apple Service centre and told her that it was a faulty motherboard. They asked for nearly 60% of the price of the laptop. She then took it to an independent repair shop and they did it for a fraction of the cost.
  • plow-tycoon 6y ago
    I've been using MacBooks for 10 years, and while they've recently been less reliable, I have had good experiences for at least 60% of the time. So if you can get them repaired for a reasonable price, and they don't break that often, I still don't see many good alternatives. Especially if you still like the OS
    • jp0d 6y ago
      very true. I've used several other brands of laptops, mostly because they're cheaper. None have lasted more than 2 years. I've had Compaq, Fujistsu, HP, Asus and a ThinkPad. Only the ThinkPad still works. I had one of the early Intel Core 2 Duo Macbooks and it lasted 6 years before I sold it. It was still working. My wife's Macbook Air is 6 years old and has only 4 gigs of RAM and it still supports the latest OS and works. Even the battery last 4 to 5 hours easily. I've tried working with Linux on some other laptops but I'd to deal with a lot of support issues. Macs just work. I'm using a 2017 model Macbook Pro with 16 gigs RAM, from work. The keyboard is not the best so they gave me a Magic Keyboard. It's just a stress free computer.
      • plow-tycoon 6y ago
        I can feel all of that. I went from a custom gaming PC, which was ok aside from having to re-install windows once every few months, then to a 2009 MBP 13" which lasted 4 years until I sold it for a ridiculous sum, then a late 2013 13" MBP which I used until 2018 until it was stolen. I then went to a 2017 non-touchbar model, which was just... fine, but had the keyboard issue, delamination, and an insanely hard to troubleshoot deep-sleep/wake from sleep issue which led to it being replaced by Apple under warranty (when I finally re-produced the issue 100% of the time) for my current 2019 MBP 13" w/ 16gb of ram. Other than that, my impression of Thinkpads is that, while they seem a bit clunky for me, they are at least in the top tier of non-MBP laptops. Likewise, my brother just picked up a 2019 XPS 13" which has earned some praise from HN folk and seems to be pretty solid. I'd personally like a gaming rig of some kind, but if I'm realistic, I won't get that much use out of it until the rainy season.
• i_miss_unix 6y ago
  Sadly, this kind of thing with Apple has become the norm. I've experienced similar myself and heard anecdotal similarities from friends and family. My next mobile will likely be a PinePhone, and my next laptop will be from System76. I'd rather roll my own private ecosystem anyway, as I don't do anything in the "cloud". Between teaching my children on the Raspberry Pi and mucking about with this and that, it's far less expensive and more sane to stay out of anyone's ecosystem. I get that for a lot of people, it's all about the apps. I guess I'm one of those odd, rare people who don't use a single app. I just can't be bothered and I see no value in giving up what little privacy I have remaining.
• AniseAbyss 6y ago
  There are literally hundreds of repair shops that cropped up the last few years. Problem is you never know if the shop is actually good. Apple guarantees quality- at an absurd price. Lesson: treat your expensive electronics well. Or be like my brother with a permanent cracked screen on his iPhone.
• rograndom 6y ago
  I have a iPhone 5s that I only replaced because of battery issues. It's been sitting in my drawer for a couple of years and thought it would be good to hand off to one of the kids as a mp3 player or something. When Apple was running a deal on battery replacements I sent it in for that. I got a call saying that it has water damage and the main board was inoperable. I could have it repaired for $600 or they could recycle it for me for $25. Sending it back to me was not an option. It took 2 escalations to get someone who could authorize returning it as I was unwilling to pay for either of those options. It's now back in my desk.
• locallost 6y ago
  Had the same issue with delamination and because they admitted to it being their fault, took it to an Apple store just to see what they'll say. They said that it is a known defect but, wait for it, not for my model and so in my case it's my own fault by default. The person literally said yes it's delaminating but it's a different type of delamination. There was another comical scene involving googling by the employee which I will spare. It's not a big deal because I wasn't in my hometown anyway and couldn't leave it for longer than 3 days, but still. That company is simply ridiculous, and I hope I don't have to deal with them too much in my lifetime.
  • plow-tycoon 6y ago
    The first time I experienced this, I was travelling through the U.S in 2018, in what seems like a similar event. I almost didn't get them to agree to do it, but it was up to their discretion and they obliged. However, the kicker was that they had to mail it away and it'd be gone for at least a week. I tried numerous Apple stores on our way up through California. Some said they did do MB repairs in store, but their hands were tied, they'd have to mail it away. Insane.
• plow-tycoon 6y ago
  Thought I'd add here that all the values are in CAD, and that the one comment missing from the official transcript is where the rep states that the computer is out of bounds of the repair program window. It's an odd ommision, but that's how it was downloaded.
• KiDD 6y ago
  You should be able to request refund. Call AppleCare.
• jasoneckert 6y ago
  There was also a CBC documentary two years ago that investigated similar complaints about Apple repair practices: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XneTBhRPYk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XneTBhRPYk Essentially, this blog post reinforces the findings from the CBC and indicates that little has changed over the past few years regarding Apple's repair practices.
• donseenu19 6y ago
  Had similar experience with Apple watch. For a broken screen replacement, they quoted more than the cost of a new Apple watch (same model and color). I pointed it out and called it ridiculous. They kept repeating the same bullshit with forwarding me to 3 different teams for 1.5 hours. Finally I got fed up and ended the call.
• yinka 6y ago
  Apple claims on privacy is a joke, they only use that angle when it suits them and especially to get one up up on Google. Apple fan boys are very vocal and therfore help amplify the "Apple and Privacy" message way more than it is in reality.