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Apple has always tried to blame customers whenever they can. I remember when my MacBook pro 2015 started glitching and Apple voided the warranty by saying ther

Apple has always tried to blame customers whenever they can. I remember when my MacBook pro 2015 started glitching and Apple voided the warranty by saying there was liquid spillage/fluid damage. So apparently macbooks have these small stickers inside them which change color upon contact with liquids to help detect liquid damage but the issue with those stickers are that they also change color if you live in a humid area. They made me pay for that repair even though the customer support guy at the store agreed that the color could change because of humidity but it was company policy to charge for those repairs.

wizofaus 4y ago
A warranty that can be voided just because some little sticker a user can't access indicates moisture detection doesn't even sound like it should be legal. If you've done something obviously stupid like drop your monitor in the bath then you're hardly going to need such a sticker to detect "unreasonable use". It seems pretty reasonable to expect consumer goods to tolerate small amounts of moisture. In fact a monitor I just bought recently got water on it due to some dripping house plants above it. It was fine. So far anyway!
- eastbound 4y ago
  Most electronics including Apple mention that they’re rated for 35°C while working and 40°C while off. After a single year, most of Apple warranties void out.
  - geraldwhen 4y ago
    You use your laptop outside a lot?
    - notsapiensatall 4y ago
      Of course, portability is the point of a laptop. Absent precipitation, I'd rather use one in a park than indoors.
  - LtWorf 4y ago
    So if you live in a place where it will reach 41° in the summer, you won't have warranty! Neat! Also those seem very cool temperatures given how apple computers love to overheat.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  Those liquid damage indicators might need to be made illegal - water damage that would cause the machine to fail is readily visible without any stickers, and if it isn't visible then the machine is likely to work just fine.
- LtWorf 4y ago
  Apple seem to love to claim liquid damage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2r-g8EaTfY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2r-g8EaTfY He has more videos about it. Apparently they trigger very easily with humidity.
- amelius 4y ago
  Why aren't these things waterproof anyway?
johnbellone 4y ago
Those stickers are in nearly all of their devices.
- jjtheblunt 4y ago
  i'm pretty sure "their" removed gives a true statement also.
r00fus 4y ago
I know there was a class action in late 00s for that where I was compensated because I had a similar interaction with an Apple Store genius. I was of the understanding they changed their "liquid damage" policy due to that lawsuit.
MichaelCollins 4y ago
Several years ago I brought my Macbook Air to an Apple store to get the battery replaced under warranty. The computer worked fine otherwise, it needed a new battery. The 'genius' came back with my laptop after a few minutes saying it had water damage and trying to pitch me on a new laptop. After I refused and started insisting that the battery was under warranty he eventually relented and acted like he was doing me a favor to give me the new battery I was entitled to. Then when he finally came back with my newly batteried laptop, he mentioned my android smartphone and started trying to sell me an iphone. I'm never buying a computer from Apple again, it was a terrible experience. Assuming he wasn't lying about the water indicators being tripped (he may well have been, for all I know), the only way I can think that would have happened is from the humidity in the air. I never dropped any drink on the laptop, never used it in the bathtub or anything like that. I don't believe it was ever in contact with liquid water at all, only water vapor.
- radicaldreamer 4y ago
  That's a strange experience because I thought Apple Store employees weren't paid on commission.
  - scottydelta 4y ago
    They are not but they are encouraged to up sell. They tried to sell me a new MacBook by suggesting that I trade this one in to get a small credit. I would rather use that macbook as a paper weight than to give it back to Apple so that they can sell it to some poor guy.
    - wolpoli 4y ago
      I suspect there are some differences between regions. The staffs in the Apple Store in Macau are more aggressive than the staffs in Canada, in my experience.
- scottydelta 4y ago
  It was the same case with my MacBook. No water damage but the liquid damage indicator had tripped somehow. I was forced to pay for repairs.
ajb 4y ago
Maybe this is an urban legend, but: Sinclair Research made early home computers, well known in the UK, not so much elsewhere. These were tricky to set up, and often returned as broken. To cut their support costs, supposedly Sinclair, on first receipt of a 'broken' computer would simply add a sticker and send it back, 'repaired'. Often the customer would get it working on this second attempt. Only when a computer was sent in with this sticker already applied, would they actually investigate to see if anything was wrong with it.
- alliao 4y ago
  if 80% of cases were due to improper connection or EBKAC then this would actually be quite an elegant solution......
- briane80 4y ago
  Also there was a famous media interview by clive sinclair telling customers they could fix an issue with the a ram pack upgrade falling off with the use of blu tac
- linker3000 4y ago
  Back in the days of the Toshiba laptops with the orange plasma screens (T3100 and T3200), a small batch had out of spec panels that were thicker than the right ones. These panels were under more tension in the bezel and had a tendency to shatter. I worked for a Toshiba dealer/repair centre and the first we knew about the problem was when a Tosh came back with a screen that looked like it had taken a bullet. The owner swore that the screen just went 'bang'. The crazy thing was that it still worked! We checked with Toshiba and they basically said 'Yep, replace it' and so it began. We didn't see a lot of these screens, but it was a notable problem.
ValentineC 4y ago
> Apple has always tried to blame customers whenever they can. +1 to this. Apple has never admitted fault for their shoddy MagSafe 2 charger (and older Lightning) cable insulation, many of which have ended up disintegrating and spewing blue stuff all over my furniture. I've had multiple cables flake over the years, and every time I bring one of the chargers to a Genius bar (so far: Australia, Japan, and Singapore), they've always fallen back to "policy" and blamed it on me for not taking care of it properly.
- HideousKojima 4y ago
  Apple doesn't want to do proper strain relief on their cables because it's ugly and unaesthetic. Apple has basically always prioritized form over function.
  - geoffeg 4y ago
    Apple wasn't always like that, just the current iteration of Apple. Back in the 80s and 90s Apple was more focused on longevity and building really great user interfaces than purity of design. Their Human Interface Guidelines were some of the best in the industry and they spent a lot of time and money on human factors research.
    - freemint 4y ago
      80s Apple computer were not speced for a long, useful life.
      - geoffeg 4y ago
        I don't mean the specs but the quality of the hardware design itself.
      - kurupt213 4y ago
        80s apple computers were highly upgradeable. Multiple expansion slots and 3rd party options. It was a completely different ecosystem, but it was when Woz was making design decisions on the apple II
seiferteric 4y ago
My wife had a MBP with support plan years ago. The track pad started failing and it wouldn't always click even after you felt it depress and was slowly getting worse and worse. I took it in and the guy basally said there was no problem and I was just not pressing hard enough or something... It was very noticeable after using it for a while... Anyway I ended up ordering a new track pad online and replaced it myself and of course it fixed the issue. Still bothers me today.
- scottydelta 4y ago
  It's impossible to do self repairs on macbooks these days. Apple intentionally solders all the components together to prevent self repair. Even the battery is soldered to the system. https://9to5mac.com/2019/07/12/2019-13-macbook-pro-teardown/ https://9to5mac.com/2019/07/12/2019-13-macbook-pro-teardown/
  - kayodelycaon 4y ago
    Technical quibble here. The batteries are glued to the case, not soldered to anything. The power cables still use connectors and can be easily popped off.
  - foldr 4y ago
    They solder components to save space and increase the reliability and power efficiency of the connections. Apple doesn’t care about self repair, but they aren’t using solder instead of connectors as part of a scheme to actively thwart it.
    - scottydelta 4y ago
      Apple is literally known for their anti-right-to-repair stance. There is a youtuber named Louis Rossman(1.7 million followers) fighting Apple on this since more than a decade. Here is his channel: https://youtube.com/user/rossmanngroup https://youtube.com/user/rossmanngroup
      - 4y ago
eecc 4y ago
Heh, the punk at the Amsterdam Apple Store had the audacity to guilt trip me for a complaint I had within the mandatory EU warranty. According to him, I had exposed an iPhone to excessive humidity despite the sensing sticker remaining white. His reasoning was that if the connector was growing copper corrosion it must have been humidity and therefore my fault (not a bad batch of connectors.) I chuckled and asked him how could that happen if I always keep the thing in my pocket and he said “well that’s a humid environment and the phone is not designed for that.” The fact that he also called a security guy before lecturing me about my warranty expiry was a clear indication of the sort of narrative and treatment I’d receive if I insisted, so I walked. Other times I was given red-carpet treatment and expensive replacements without a peep. I guess it really depends on whether Cupertino acknowledges the defect, until then Genius KPIs must include how many customers they successfully subdue and kick out. SMH… but I guess you get assholes everywhere
- aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
  >I chuckled and asked him how could that happen if I always keep the thing in my pocket and he said “well that’s a humid environment and the phone is not designed for that.” Lol.
  - amelius 4y ago
    Reminiscent of "you're holding it wrong".
- enqk 4y ago
  I've witnessed an interaction like this in the main Apple store in Berlin, where a woman came (with a friend) because she had an issue with having forgotten her password and wanting to get her photos back, which wasn't possible. The security guard was extremely fast to show up behind her back as soon as despair could be heard in her voice. That gave me a very different image of Apple all of sudden..
legitster 4y ago
Meanwhile, my Thinkpad has built-in drainage holes.
mnd999 4y ago
Yep, it took them a very long time to admit that the GPU problems on my Core 2 Duo were a design problem.
mr_toad 4y ago
Condensation can damage electrical equipment quite easily. Bring a cold metal laptop into a humid environment at your own risk.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
wnevets 4y ago
> Apple has always tried to blame customers whenever they can. Jobs on iPhone 4 antenna: “avoid holding it in this way”

wizofaus 4y ago

A warranty that can be voided just because some little sticker a user can't access indicates moisture detection doesn't even sound like it should be legal. If you've done something obviously stupid like drop your monitor in the bath then you're hardly going to need such a sticker to detect "unreasonable use". It seems pretty reasonable to expect consumer goods to tolerate small amounts of moisture. In fact a monitor I just bought recently got water on it due to some dripping house plants above it. It was fine. So far anyway!

eastbound 4y ago
Most electronics including Apple mention that they’re rated for 35°C while working and 40°C while off. After a single year, most of Apple warranties void out.
- geraldwhen 4y ago
  You use your laptop outside a lot?
  - notsapiensatall 4y ago
    Of course, portability is the point of a laptop. Absent precipitation, I'd rather use one in a park than indoors.
- LtWorf 4y ago
  So if you live in a place where it will reach 41° in the summer, you won't have warranty! Neat! Also those seem very cool temperatures given how apple computers love to overheat.
Nextgrid 4y ago
Those liquid damage indicators might need to be made illegal - water damage that would cause the machine to fail is readily visible without any stickers, and if it isn't visible then the machine is likely to work just fine.
LtWorf 4y ago
Apple seem to love to claim liquid damage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2r-g8EaTfY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2r-g8EaTfY He has more videos about it. Apparently they trigger very easily with humidity.
amelius 4y ago
Why aren't these things waterproof anyway?

johnbellone 4y ago

Those stickers are in nearly all of their devices.

jjtheblunt 4y ago
i'm pretty sure "their" removed gives a true statement also.

r00fus 4y ago

I know there was a class action in late 00s for that where I was compensated because I had a similar interaction with an Apple Store genius. I was of the understanding they changed their "liquid damage" policy due to that lawsuit.

MichaelCollins 4y ago

Several years ago I brought my Macbook Air to an Apple store to get the battery replaced under warranty. The computer worked fine otherwise, it needed a new battery. The 'genius' came back with my laptop after a few minutes saying it had water damage and trying to pitch me on a new laptop. After I refused and started insisting that the battery was under warranty he eventually relented and acted like he was doing me a favor to give me the new battery I was entitled to. Then when he finally came back with my newly batteried laptop, he mentioned my android smartphone and started trying to sell me an iphone. I'm never buying a computer from Apple again, it was a terrible experience. Assuming he wasn't lying about the water indicators being tripped (he may well have been, for all I know), the only way I can think that would have happened is from the humidity in the air. I never dropped any drink on the laptop, never used it in the bathtub or anything like that. I don't believe it was ever in contact with liquid water at all, only water vapor.

radicaldreamer 4y ago
That's a strange experience because I thought Apple Store employees weren't paid on commission.
- scottydelta 4y ago
  They are not but they are encouraged to up sell. They tried to sell me a new MacBook by suggesting that I trade this one in to get a small credit. I would rather use that macbook as a paper weight than to give it back to Apple so that they can sell it to some poor guy.
  - wolpoli 4y ago
    I suspect there are some differences between regions. The staffs in the Apple Store in Macau are more aggressive than the staffs in Canada, in my experience.
scottydelta 4y ago
It was the same case with my MacBook. No water damage but the liquid damage indicator had tripped somehow. I was forced to pay for repairs.

ajb 4y ago

Maybe this is an urban legend, but: Sinclair Research made early home computers, well known in the UK, not so much elsewhere. These were tricky to set up, and often returned as broken. To cut their support costs, supposedly Sinclair, on first receipt of a 'broken' computer would simply add a sticker and send it back, 'repaired'. Often the customer would get it working on this second attempt. Only when a computer was sent in with this sticker already applied, would they actually investigate to see if anything was wrong with it.

alliao 4y ago
if 80% of cases were due to improper connection or EBKAC then this would actually be quite an elegant solution......
briane80 4y ago
Also there was a famous media interview by clive sinclair telling customers they could fix an issue with the a ram pack upgrade falling off with the use of blu tac
linker3000 4y ago
Back in the days of the Toshiba laptops with the orange plasma screens (T3100 and T3200), a small batch had out of spec panels that were thicker than the right ones. These panels were under more tension in the bezel and had a tendency to shatter. I worked for a Toshiba dealer/repair centre and the first we knew about the problem was when a Tosh came back with a screen that looked like it had taken a bullet. The owner swore that the screen just went 'bang'. The crazy thing was that it still worked! We checked with Toshiba and they basically said 'Yep, replace it' and so it began. We didn't see a lot of these screens, but it was a notable problem.

ValentineC 4y ago

> Apple has always tried to blame customers whenever they can. +1 to this. Apple has never admitted fault for their shoddy MagSafe 2 charger (and older Lightning) cable insulation, many of which have ended up disintegrating and spewing blue stuff all over my furniture. I've had multiple cables flake over the years, and every time I bring one of the chargers to a Genius bar (so far: Australia, Japan, and Singapore), they've always fallen back to "policy" and blamed it on me for not taking care of it properly.

HideousKojima 4y ago
Apple doesn't want to do proper strain relief on their cables because it's ugly and unaesthetic. Apple has basically always prioritized form over function.
- geoffeg 4y ago
  Apple wasn't always like that, just the current iteration of Apple. Back in the 80s and 90s Apple was more focused on longevity and building really great user interfaces than purity of design. Their Human Interface Guidelines were some of the best in the industry and they spent a lot of time and money on human factors research.
  - freemint 4y ago
    80s Apple computer were not speced for a long, useful life.
    - geoffeg 4y ago
      I don't mean the specs but the quality of the hardware design itself.
    - kurupt213 4y ago
      80s apple computers were highly upgradeable. Multiple expansion slots and 3rd party options. It was a completely different ecosystem, but it was when Woz was making design decisions on the apple II

seiferteric 4y ago

My wife had a MBP with support plan years ago. The track pad started failing and it wouldn't always click even after you felt it depress and was slowly getting worse and worse. I took it in and the guy basally said there was no problem and I was just not pressing hard enough or something... It was very noticeable after using it for a while... Anyway I ended up ordering a new track pad online and replaced it myself and of course it fixed the issue. Still bothers me today.

scottydelta 4y ago
It's impossible to do self repairs on macbooks these days. Apple intentionally solders all the components together to prevent self repair. Even the battery is soldered to the system. https://9to5mac.com/2019/07/12/2019-13-macbook-pro-teardown/ https://9to5mac.com/2019/07/12/2019-13-macbook-pro-teardown/
- kayodelycaon 4y ago
  Technical quibble here. The batteries are glued to the case, not soldered to anything. The power cables still use connectors and can be easily popped off.
- foldr 4y ago
  They solder components to save space and increase the reliability and power efficiency of the connections. Apple doesn’t care about self repair, but they aren’t using solder instead of connectors as part of a scheme to actively thwart it.
  - scottydelta 4y ago
    Apple is literally known for their anti-right-to-repair stance. There is a youtuber named Louis Rossman(1.7 million followers) fighting Apple on this since more than a decade. Here is his channel: https://youtube.com/user/rossmanngroup https://youtube.com/user/rossmanngroup
    - 4y ago

eecc 4y ago

Heh, the punk at the Amsterdam Apple Store had the audacity to guilt trip me for a complaint I had within the mandatory EU warranty. According to him, I had exposed an iPhone to excessive humidity despite the sensing sticker remaining white. His reasoning was that if the connector was growing copper corrosion it must have been humidity and therefore my fault (not a bad batch of connectors.) I chuckled and asked him how could that happen if I always keep the thing in my pocket and he said “well that’s a humid environment and the phone is not designed for that.” The fact that he also called a security guy before lecturing me about my warranty expiry was a clear indication of the sort of narrative and treatment I’d receive if I insisted, so I walked. Other times I was given red-carpet treatment and expensive replacements without a peep. I guess it really depends on whether Cupertino acknowledges the defect, until then Genius KPIs must include how many customers they successfully subdue and kick out. SMH… but I guess you get assholes everywhere

aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
>I chuckled and asked him how could that happen if I always keep the thing in my pocket and he said “well that’s a humid environment and the phone is not designed for that.” Lol.
- amelius 4y ago
  Reminiscent of "you're holding it wrong".
enqk 4y ago
I've witnessed an interaction like this in the main Apple store in Berlin, where a woman came (with a friend) because she had an issue with having forgotten her password and wanting to get her photos back, which wasn't possible. The security guard was extremely fast to show up behind her back as soon as despair could be heard in her voice. That gave me a very different image of Apple all of sudden..

legitster 4y ago

Meanwhile, my Thinkpad has built-in drainage holes.

mnd999 4y ago

Yep, it took them a very long time to admit that the GPU problems on my Core 2 Duo were a design problem.

mr_toad 4y ago

Condensation can damage electrical equipment quite easily. Bring a cold metal laptop into a humid environment at your own risk.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

wnevets 4y ago

> Apple has always tried to blame customers whenever they can. Jobs on iPhone 4 antenna: “avoid holding it in this way”