3 ms·

VERY misleading headline. The article makes clear all the costs were covered by AppleCare, so the story here is (a) he got a lemon, which happens in literally e

VERY misleading headline. The article makes clear all the costs were covered by AppleCare, so the story here is (a) he got a lemon, which happens in literally every product category and (b) the vendor stood behind the product and took care of him. So I'm honestly not sure what the point of this post is. The only laptops I've had that have handled the high-travel workload I traditionally subjected mine to remotely as well as Apple were pre-Lenovo ThinkPads. The keyboard thing was distressing, but it happened entirely between purchases for me so I didn't directly experience it; however, a good chunk of the outrage over it was precisely because of how rock-solid the products had traditionally been.

Johnny555 5y ago
I wasn't mislead, his story is pretty much what I thought it would be -- I didn't think that someone would pay out of his own pocket repair costs that are 3X what the laptop cost to buy new. I'm kind of surprised at the number of problems he's had, my 2018 MPB has has zero issues, despite a lot of travel in addition to bouncing around my bike's pannier on the way to work. The battery life is getting pretty short, but since I've been WFH for the past 18 months, staying close to a charger isn't an issue, no need to go to crowded meeting rooms where I can't plug in.
JoBrad 5y ago
My take is that the article is about this person's reliability issues with their MBP. Regardless of which party actually paid for the repairs, the fact that so many repairs/replacements were required doesn't speak well for Apple.
- ubermonkey 5y ago
  Well, maybe it does and maybe it doesn't. Literally every manufacturer of anything complex is going to have customers whose whole experience goes sideways for whatever reason. You can't take away from this story that "gee, Apple has a quality problem" if the broad market doesn't experience the same kinds of failures. Honestly, with this sequence of events one wonders if there's just something about this GUY. My experience is that Apple makes the best laptops I've ever used short of glory-days-of-IBM Thinkpads. Observed reliability in our org is that they perform DRASTICALLY better than equivalently high-end Dells or whatever.
- slantyyz 5y ago
  Well, at least Apple took care of that person. That is a way better experience than many of us who had the infamous early-2011 15" MBP with overheating issues had.
driverdan 5y ago
I downvoted you because it was clearly not a single lemon. There were two entire computer replacements, both of which also had issues.
- lukelunchbox 5y ago
  Possibly from the same store and batch?
slantyyz 5y ago
> so the story here is (a) he got a lemon Well isn't that misleading too? The OP's experience includes two replacement computers, and the original "lemon" was replaced a little after two months after purchase. Depending on how you want to look at the replacements, OP got a total of two, or maybe even three lemons, since the second replacement computer appears to have had its share of issues too. Looking at the OP's issue history in the post, that seems to be a LOT of issues to have in that time span, no matter how good the AppleCare service is.
- jandrese 5y ago
  Several of the issues were with the keyboard, which on this model was the infamous butterfly model that has well documented reliability issues. Apple sacrificed durability for thinness and it came back to bite them in the ass with many many AppleCare claims. On the plus side it probably didn't cost Apple a full $400 each time they had to replace a keyboard.

Johnny555 5y ago

I wasn't mislead, his story is pretty much what I thought it would be -- I didn't think that someone would pay out of his own pocket repair costs that are 3X what the laptop cost to buy new. I'm kind of surprised at the number of problems he's had, my 2018 MPB has has zero issues, despite a lot of travel in addition to bouncing around my bike's pannier on the way to work. The battery life is getting pretty short, but since I've been WFH for the past 18 months, staying close to a charger isn't an issue, no need to go to crowded meeting rooms where I can't plug in.

JoBrad 5y ago

My take is that the article is about this person's reliability issues with their MBP. Regardless of which party actually paid for the repairs, the fact that so many repairs/replacements were required doesn't speak well for Apple.

ubermonkey 5y ago
Well, maybe it does and maybe it doesn't. Literally every manufacturer of anything complex is going to have customers whose whole experience goes sideways for whatever reason. You can't take away from this story that "gee, Apple has a quality problem" if the broad market doesn't experience the same kinds of failures. Honestly, with this sequence of events one wonders if there's just something about this GUY. My experience is that Apple makes the best laptops I've ever used short of glory-days-of-IBM Thinkpads. Observed reliability in our org is that they perform DRASTICALLY better than equivalently high-end Dells or whatever.
slantyyz 5y ago
Well, at least Apple took care of that person. That is a way better experience than many of us who had the infamous early-2011 15" MBP with overheating issues had.

driverdan 5y ago

I downvoted you because it was clearly not a single lemon. There were two entire computer replacements, both of which also had issues.

lukelunchbox 5y ago
Possibly from the same store and batch?

slantyyz 5y ago

> so the story here is (a) he got a lemon Well isn't that misleading too? The OP's experience includes two replacement computers, and the original "lemon" was replaced a little after two months after purchase. Depending on how you want to look at the replacements, OP got a total of two, or maybe even three lemons, since the second replacement computer appears to have had its share of issues too. Looking at the OP's issue history in the post, that seems to be a LOT of issues to have in that time span, no matter how good the AppleCare service is.

jandrese 5y ago
Several of the issues were with the keyboard, which on this model was the infamous butterfly model that has well documented reliability issues. Apple sacrificed durability for thinness and it came back to bite them in the ass with many many AppleCare claims. On the plus side it probably didn't cost Apple a full $400 each time they had to replace a keyboard.