4 ms·

Gosh. I hate Apple’s right to repair BS, but to this day Apple remains the only consumer electronics company that has provided a consistently positive technical

Gosh. I hate Apple’s right to repair BS, but to this day Apple remains the only consumer electronics company that has provided a consistently positive technical support experience for me. It’s so hard to step out the Apple ecosystem when these other manufacturers have consistently screwed me over with repairs. I’m specifically calling out Dell, Samsung and LG here. All were utterly terrible experiences. Dell was the absolute worst though. They sold me a $1,700+ XPS notebook that months later had a non-functional trackpad, and they refused to do anything to rectify the situation. With an investment that large I need certainty that I can get support, and thus far Apple is the only PC OEM that has provided that. If anyone can suggest non-Apple OEMs that at least provide a competitive support experience, I’m all ears.

_nalply 5y ago
An alternative to have a company fix your expensive gadget is to do it yourself. I think about the Framework laptop. In your situation even if the company declined payment (then I wold be disappointed), I would have sucked it up and ordered a new trackpad and installed it myself. It's not the same but at least the consequences would not be so distastrous.
- LilBytes 5y ago
  Yeah agreed, can't wait till they're available in Australia.
- scarface74 5y ago
  How does the battery life compare to my M1 MacBook Air? How does the performance compare to my Air? How bad is the fan noise compared to my fanless Air?
  - bee_rider 5y ago
    Worse in every way I'm fairly sure. Framework shipped their first product in 2021. Let's give them a bit before comparing them to an extremely matured product from one of the richest companies ever. If they survive long enough to make a version 5.0, it'll probably still be worse than the MacBook due to the lower level of integration, but modularity is a definite perk. Edit: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/07/frameworks-new-lightweight-modular-laptop-delivers-on-its-promises/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/07/frameworks-new-light... Actually the CPU looks decent.
    - scarface74 5y ago
      It’ll still be a worse computer in every way but it will have modularity. Or “Other than that, how was the play Ms. Lincoln” Have you ever thought Apple got to be the richest company in the world from almost being bankrupt a little over 20 years ago by not shipping sub par hardware? Well there were the butterfly keyboards…
  - amcoastal 5y ago
    Sounds like you care specifically about the few things apple does well. Congrats you found a laptop for you!
    - scarface74 5y ago
      You mean most people don’t care about the battery life of a portable device? You don’t care when a laptop sounds like a 747 when you are working under load?
      - fphhotchips 5y ago
        Personally I don't care what it sounds like, so long as it can work under load, and my Macbook Pro can't. It throttles when ambient temperature is over 25 degrees C, and I haven't unplugged my Macbook Pro more than a couple times in the last 2 years. In short, I'd take a two inch thick Clevo that sounds like a 747 and only lasts for 2 hours if it meant not having to worry about turning my HVAC on when I want to do a screenshare.
- MathCodeLove 5y ago
  Im a software engineer, the last thing I want to do is take days waiting for X part to arrive, then spend hours figuring out how to remove/install X part without breaking my machine worse. If I wanted to tinker, I'd buy a Raspbery PI. I want to get work done while giving as little thought as possible to the hardware I'm using to facilitate the work.
  - Brian_K_White 5y ago
    Lenovo. With whatever level of support you want to pay for. If speed and downtime and hands-off are the most important features that trump all others, then this whole post about the cost of a bad warranty policy wasn't for you in the first place. You don't have time for warrantys! You just pull out the spare laptop you got at the same time as the one that broke, or your old one wich is only 1 year old and still more than good enough to work on while the new one is down. Or you just immediately go down to Staples or BestBuy or Microcenter and buy a new one. Apple is not a magic better option where you can have your cake and eat it too. They routinely deny warranty or even reasonable paid repair for things they shipped defective. I have several unfortunate friends with laptops and all-in-ones over the years with dead video cards that Apple refused to repair, and they are not self repairable because even for the desktop model the video card is non-standard so you can't just replace it, and thanks to Apple's unique actions wrt getting the government to seize things at the border, no one else is even allowed to make a replacement either. And those keyboards...they stopped making them, yet did they ever make good on all those people they sold those models to? Apple routinely, routinely, absolutely screws over people who believed the marketing about how great the support is. That high premium you pay for the device goes to sending high paid lawyers to every small town to make sure they win in court against petty warranty suits from ordinary individuals. They spend $10k just make sure that a warranty for a $50 part does not win in court. That is not better than the article's terrible Samsung experience.
- _fat_santa 5y ago
  Eh. The reason I buy Apple is I just know the thing will work, and if it doesn't, I can take it down the street to the Apple store and have it replaced. It's not that I don't like to tinker, I love tinkering with things. But things like my primary phone or primary computer I need to "just work", and I need them to work all the time with minimal downtime. At least for me, Apple's selling point of "just let us take care of it" is very appealing, I'm already dealing with a ton of things every day, I don't need to add "fixing my phone" to that list.
LilBytes 5y ago
To add as a counter point, I've only had positive experiences with Dell. And that's over 10+ years at work and personally. It's never been more complicated than the normal: 1) "make sure your BIOS is upto date" hogwash, which I troubleshoot prior. 2) Acknowledge it's a hardware issue 3) Get a field tech to call me 4) Wait a day or two at most for parts, if not the same day 5) Tech comes out and replaces any parts at my place of work or home 6) Fixed And this has been over years and years with Precision and XPS laptops.
AtlasBarfed 5y ago
The warranties are that worthless? We really have no consumer protections in the US anymore.
feupan 5y ago
> months later had a non-functional trackpad, and they refused to do anything to rectify the situation How is that not covered by the standard, mandated 1-year warranty? Did they pull the same BS described in the article? Apple is no saint for this kind of stuff either though, I still remember the red humidity marker in the headphone jack that denied repairs to many people because of “water damage” (which was actually just sweat, probably)
viktorcode 5y ago
> I hate Apple’s right to repair BS It seems they've concluded it's unavoidable and announced their program for selling parts, tools and providing repair manuals to anyone interested.
fmajid 5y ago
Apple’s customer service record with the butterfly keyboard fiasco was abysmal.
NorwegianDude 5y ago
And for me Dell is the OEM I trust the most as if something goes wrong with my XPS laptop Dell will happily spend the cost of the laptop just to get someone here by tomorrow to fix it. Nobody else I know of stands behind their laptops like that. If a company by default bets money on their own products then that's reassuring. Is the product any good? Prove it, like Dell. Not that XPS laptops don't fail, cause they do, but at least it's rare enough that Dell is willing to spend large amounts on on-site next business day repair.
eitland 5y ago
> If anyone can suggest non-Apple OEMs that at least provide a competitive support experience, I’m all ears. Here in Norway it used to be (at least with HP) that if you bought the professional line you'd get professional service. I had a personal nc6320 bought some 17 years ago and they would literally come to my desk and replace the monitor free of charge. (No, I didn't have a paid support plan, this was included in the purchase price and I had bought it myself, not through a company.) Around the same time, trying to get a consumer grade HP repaired was just painful.
- HPsquared 5y ago
  If they have a professional line with good support, there is an incentive to ensure the consumer products get moderately bad support.
  - eitland 5y ago
    Good observation, but then wouldn't they also want to broadcast this? I was totally surprised when I called them and they asked me to call business support and business support just asked where they could find me and when I wanted them to be there. I can't remember a single clue pointing in this direction before I called customer support for home computers. (Then again: I should stop getting surprised by companies that waste fantastic marketing opportunities.)
lnxg33k1 5y ago
But to be honest I agree with people having mixed experiences, like for me Apple has been awful, a macbook of just few months was not fixed because I allegedly caused the issue (I had horizontal lines on the display, that happened by itself just while I was watching a 4k movie), so I kinda have adopted the policy that I don't buy anything unless it's extremely needed, so like I have had a oneplus for few years now (since it came out?) and have some bluetooth issues, every now and then I just go on some ecommerce website to try to scroll around for smartphones but to be honest after a while I just leave because I start thinking about customer service specifically, if I have to spend money but then I have to factor in the price the time to solve issues, to be ignored by customer service, to see like all the hidden and minuscule written points in the terms of service that are there just to make you regret buying something, I just get demotivated and think that it's probably better to think about keeping the bluetooth issue rather than be frustrated after having spent a sum of money to have new issues, I am not sure vendors care, but sometimes I feel like that they as a whole are just alienating customers
whatch 5y ago
Lenovo delivered a replacement charger for my entry-level ThinkPad really fast (it was the next day I believe). And for free, after a couple of questions on the phone.

_nalply 5y ago

An alternative to have a company fix your expensive gadget is to do it yourself. I think about the Framework laptop. In your situation even if the company declined payment (then I wold be disappointed), I would have sucked it up and ordered a new trackpad and installed it myself. It's not the same but at least the consequences would not be so distastrous.

LilBytes 5y ago
Yeah agreed, can't wait till they're available in Australia.
scarface74 5y ago
How does the battery life compare to my M1 MacBook Air? How does the performance compare to my Air? How bad is the fan noise compared to my fanless Air?
- bee_rider 5y ago
  Worse in every way I'm fairly sure. Framework shipped their first product in 2021. Let's give them a bit before comparing them to an extremely matured product from one of the richest companies ever. If they survive long enough to make a version 5.0, it'll probably still be worse than the MacBook due to the lower level of integration, but modularity is a definite perk. Edit: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/07/frameworks-new-lightweight-modular-laptop-delivers-on-its-promises/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/07/frameworks-new-light... Actually the CPU looks decent.
  - scarface74 5y ago
    It’ll still be a worse computer in every way but it will have modularity. Or “Other than that, how was the play Ms. Lincoln” Have you ever thought Apple got to be the richest company in the world from almost being bankrupt a little over 20 years ago by not shipping sub par hardware? Well there were the butterfly keyboards…
- amcoastal 5y ago
  Sounds like you care specifically about the few things apple does well. Congrats you found a laptop for you!
  - scarface74 5y ago
    You mean most people don’t care about the battery life of a portable device? You don’t care when a laptop sounds like a 747 when you are working under load?
    - fphhotchips 5y ago
      Personally I don't care what it sounds like, so long as it can work under load, and my Macbook Pro can't. It throttles when ambient temperature is over 25 degrees C, and I haven't unplugged my Macbook Pro more than a couple times in the last 2 years. In short, I'd take a two inch thick Clevo that sounds like a 747 and only lasts for 2 hours if it meant not having to worry about turning my HVAC on when I want to do a screenshare.
MathCodeLove 5y ago
Im a software engineer, the last thing I want to do is take days waiting for X part to arrive, then spend hours figuring out how to remove/install X part without breaking my machine worse. If I wanted to tinker, I'd buy a Raspbery PI. I want to get work done while giving as little thought as possible to the hardware I'm using to facilitate the work.
- Brian_K_White 5y ago
  Lenovo. With whatever level of support you want to pay for. If speed and downtime and hands-off are the most important features that trump all others, then this whole post about the cost of a bad warranty policy wasn't for you in the first place. You don't have time for warrantys! You just pull out the spare laptop you got at the same time as the one that broke, or your old one wich is only 1 year old and still more than good enough to work on while the new one is down. Or you just immediately go down to Staples or BestBuy or Microcenter and buy a new one. Apple is not a magic better option where you can have your cake and eat it too. They routinely deny warranty or even reasonable paid repair for things they shipped defective. I have several unfortunate friends with laptops and all-in-ones over the years with dead video cards that Apple refused to repair, and they are not self repairable because even for the desktop model the video card is non-standard so you can't just replace it, and thanks to Apple's unique actions wrt getting the government to seize things at the border, no one else is even allowed to make a replacement either. And those keyboards...they stopped making them, yet did they ever make good on all those people they sold those models to? Apple routinely, routinely, absolutely screws over people who believed the marketing about how great the support is. That high premium you pay for the device goes to sending high paid lawyers to every small town to make sure they win in court against petty warranty suits from ordinary individuals. They spend $10k just make sure that a warranty for a $50 part does not win in court. That is not better than the article's terrible Samsung experience.
_fat_santa 5y ago
Eh. The reason I buy Apple is I just know the thing will work, and if it doesn't, I can take it down the street to the Apple store and have it replaced. It's not that I don't like to tinker, I love tinkering with things. But things like my primary phone or primary computer I need to "just work", and I need them to work all the time with minimal downtime. At least for me, Apple's selling point of "just let us take care of it" is very appealing, I'm already dealing with a ton of things every day, I don't need to add "fixing my phone" to that list.

LilBytes 5y ago

To add as a counter point, I've only had positive experiences with Dell. And that's over 10+ years at work and personally. It's never been more complicated than the normal: 1) "make sure your BIOS is upto date" hogwash, which I troubleshoot prior. 2) Acknowledge it's a hardware issue 3) Get a field tech to call me 4) Wait a day or two at most for parts, if not the same day 5) Tech comes out and replaces any parts at my place of work or home 6) Fixed And this has been over years and years with Precision and XPS laptops.

AtlasBarfed 5y ago

The warranties are that worthless? We really have no consumer protections in the US anymore.

feupan 5y ago

> months later had a non-functional trackpad, and they refused to do anything to rectify the situation How is that not covered by the standard, mandated 1-year warranty? Did they pull the same BS described in the article? Apple is no saint for this kind of stuff either though, I still remember the red humidity marker in the headphone jack that denied repairs to many people because of “water damage” (which was actually just sweat, probably)

viktorcode 5y ago

> I hate Apple’s right to repair BS It seems they've concluded it's unavoidable and announced their program for selling parts, tools and providing repair manuals to anyone interested.

fmajid 5y ago

Apple’s customer service record with the butterfly keyboard fiasco was abysmal.

NorwegianDude 5y ago

And for me Dell is the OEM I trust the most as if something goes wrong with my XPS laptop Dell will happily spend the cost of the laptop just to get someone here by tomorrow to fix it. Nobody else I know of stands behind their laptops like that. If a company by default bets money on their own products then that's reassuring. Is the product any good? Prove it, like Dell. Not that XPS laptops don't fail, cause they do, but at least it's rare enough that Dell is willing to spend large amounts on on-site next business day repair.

eitland 5y ago

> If anyone can suggest non-Apple OEMs that at least provide a competitive support experience, I’m all ears. Here in Norway it used to be (at least with HP) that if you bought the professional line you'd get professional service. I had a personal nc6320 bought some 17 years ago and they would literally come to my desk and replace the monitor free of charge. (No, I didn't have a paid support plan, this was included in the purchase price and I had bought it myself, not through a company.) Around the same time, trying to get a consumer grade HP repaired was just painful.

HPsquared 5y ago
If they have a professional line with good support, there is an incentive to ensure the consumer products get moderately bad support.
- eitland 5y ago
  Good observation, but then wouldn't they also want to broadcast this? I was totally surprised when I called them and they asked me to call business support and business support just asked where they could find me and when I wanted them to be there. I can't remember a single clue pointing in this direction before I called customer support for home computers. (Then again: I should stop getting surprised by companies that waste fantastic marketing opportunities.)

lnxg33k1 5y ago

But to be honest I agree with people having mixed experiences, like for me Apple has been awful, a macbook of just few months was not fixed because I allegedly caused the issue (I had horizontal lines on the display, that happened by itself just while I was watching a 4k movie), so I kinda have adopted the policy that I don't buy anything unless it's extremely needed, so like I have had a oneplus for few years now (since it came out?) and have some bluetooth issues, every now and then I just go on some ecommerce website to try to scroll around for smartphones but to be honest after a while I just leave because I start thinking about customer service specifically, if I have to spend money but then I have to factor in the price the time to solve issues, to be ignored by customer service, to see like all the hidden and minuscule written points in the terms of service that are there just to make you regret buying something, I just get demotivated and think that it's probably better to think about keeping the bluetooth issue rather than be frustrated after having spent a sum of money to have new issues, I am not sure vendors care, but sometimes I feel like that they as a whole are just alienating customers

whatch 5y ago

Lenovo delivered a replacement charger for my entry-level ThinkPad really fast (it was the next day I believe). And for free, after a couple of questions on the phone.