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Apple's service program for butterfly keyboard MacBooks, even out of warranty

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Re: Apple's service program for butterfly keyboard MacBooks, even out of warranty

#121

Post by gambiting »

karussell wrote: post #119
rogerhoward wrote: post #10

After months of suffering with this, with an out warranty 15" MBP 2016 that was relegated to desk duty with an external keyboard, I heard about this program. I made an Apple Store appointment for the next day (a Tuesday); they checked it, warned me it could be a week or more because of a holiday that week. Thursday morning I had a call that it was ready. Total cost: $0 (according to the invoice the parts were over $8…

So you go to a very specific store that is only available in a the big cities to repair your laptop ordered via Internet? Isn't their an on-site service for Apple? I.e. the repairer comes to your office or home? I find it hard to believe you pay so much money only to get a service of this kind and waste hours traveling to some special Apple store.

Also, what happens in countries like Poland, where Apple products are sold officially through Apple certified resellers(iSpot etc) but there are no official Apple Stores in the entire country?

Re: Apple's service program for butterfly keyboard MacBooks, even out of warranty

#122

Post by FireBeyond »

archy_ wrote: post #114

I'm impressed that Apple would continue to replace devices without a warranty. Really shows their dedication to their customers, not many other companies would continue to drop so much money on devices they don't have to support.

They're being threatened with/ have multiple class actions underway about these keyboards not being "fit for purpose", spent months, years denying that it was a problem. I'd slow down on the cheerleading just a little.

Re: Apple's service program for butterfly keyboard MacBooks, even out of warranty

#123

Post by bdowling »

karussell wrote: post #119
rogerhoward wrote: post #10

After months of suffering with this, with an out warranty 15" MBP 2016 that was relegated to desk duty with an external keyboard, I heard about this program. I made an Apple Store appointment for the next day (a Tuesday); they checked it, warned me it could be a week or more because of a holiday that week. Thursday morning I had a call that it was ready. Total cost: $0 (according to the invoice the parts were over $8…

So you go to a very specific store that is only available in a the big cities to repair your laptop ordered via Internet? Isn't their an on-site service for Apple? I.e. the repairer comes to your office or home? I find it hard to believe you pay so much money only to get a service of this kind and waste hours traveling to some special Apple store.

According to the link, one of your options is to “Mail in your device to the Apple Repair Center.”

Re: Apple's service program for butterfly keyboard MacBooks, even out of warranty

#124

Post by FireBeyond »

iamnotacrook wrote: post #24
cced wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I have 7 distinct repairs so far. Every one of these involves a back up, checking in at the Apple Store, explaining what the issue is, having the staff run “diagnostics” only to find nothing wrong with the computer, my having to tell them that this has become routine and that I want them to take my computer in for repairs, having them call me back a few days later with a repaired computer, retrieving the comput…

It sounds like the "diagnostics" are faulty. If they ended up fixing your problems (as suggested by your "distinct repairs" comments, so they can't have just sat on the device for a phone days then said "yep, we fixed it") then it sounds like they do further tests once they've accepted it for repair, and where those tests highlight a genuine problem, in which case they should probably do those tests initially instead…

I had a 2015(?) MBP with GPU issues, as (eventually) documented by Apple. On their support page they describe the error you might see in the console logs. There it was.

It passed Diagnostics with flying colors. So I showed the tech that I was able to reproducibly hard crash the laptop by playing a video on the Apple site in Safari, and after the force restart the same error would appear.

They still were "reluctant" to fix it under that program (though they eventually did).

Re: Apple's service program for butterfly keyboard MacBooks, even out of warranty

#125

Post by jm4 »

ulfw wrote: post #109

I would love to know how much this whole keyboard disaster has cost Apple, in constant replacement costs (material, man hours) and reputation/lost sales. The stubbornness to have stuck with this for half a decade is what fascinates me.

Can there be any doubt this is what precipitated Ive’s departure? This keyboard is a disaster. They ended up replacing the entire inside of my laptop when my space bar broke. Then I had the logic board replaced again a few months ago after it was bricked by an update. Worst computer I’ve ever owned and I’ve owned the likes of e-machines, gateway and cheap netbooks back in the day. Each repair exceeded the cost of AppleCare. I’m basically on my third laptop with the original case and I don’t think my situation is as bad as some of the other people complaining on HN. They’ve probably lost significant money on these MBPs in addition to the market share they’ve ceded to Dell and Lenovo.

Re: Apple's service program for butterfly keyboard MacBooks, even out of warranty

#126

Post by kd5bjo »

luckydata wrote: post #85
kolbe wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple really is good about taking care of problems. It's easy to complain about the price, but when my Samsung screen stopped working, I had to buy a new phone. When my iPhone screen started glitching, I got it fixed for free in less than two hours. Things like that make paying the "Apple premium" a little more palatable.

Unless your product is affected by an issue they decided to never recognize, which in that case you can merrily go fuck yourself because Apple won't lift a finger. Happened to me with an old iMac that developed dust smudges inside the LCD panel due to faulty sealing of the screen.

I owned an Apple Watch for about 2 months before the screen separated from the watch body. The front-line service rep didn’t know what to do about it and took it into the back to show a store manager, who decided it was impact damage and thus not covered by warranty; a fix would have cost something like 70% of the list price for the watch.

Instead of the repair, I bought a $20 Timex that’s served me faithfully ever since.

Re: Apple's service program for butterfly keyboard MacBooks, even out of warranty

#127

Post by ctrl-j »

gruturo wrote: post #118
unicornfinder wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I reckon it's at least in part down to how busy the particular store is. The one near me is always absolutely rammed and to be honest the service there isn't exactly great.

It's also down to how potentially dangerous something can be. Depending on what actually fails, a charger could electrocute you, and it's cheap to both make and replace ("here's a new one"). A butterfly keyboard won't kill you and it's hell to replace.

A wall charger is exceedingly unlikely to electrocute you.

Far more likely to burn your house to the ground. Which will still get lawyers and executives to pay attention.

Re: Apple's service program for butterfly keyboard MacBooks, even out of warranty

#129

Post by cletus »

jacknews wrote: post #5

Add to that, that the keycaps break. They have teeny-tiny clips on the top edge, which just break after a while, and they just lift off, sticking to your finger, or just shift slightly, enough not to 'click' when you press them. I'm not a particularly heavy typist (though it sounds like it on the butterfly keyboard, compared to my previous 2013 macbbok pro), but I've now had about 8 keycaps replaced in the lasst year…

Serious question: how much force do you type with?

The reason I ask is that I see many, many people stab laptop keyboards with a ridiculous amount of force. It actually bothers me like someone is banging on my skull, particularly for the bad keyboards you have (which includes the latest MBP).

I learned to touch type in high school. At first, believe it or not, it was with manual typewriters. These actually require a lot of force, so much so that once you go to a computer keyboard (or even an electronic typewriter) there's really no going back.

Low-profile keyboards (including laptops) need the lightest amount of touch to register a tap. Low profile also needs very little travel.

At my best I could probably type at 70+ wpm. I haven't measured in awhile but it's probably worse (with sufficient accuracy). Coding uses a lot of symbols that a QWERTY keyboard just isn't optimized for (and typing speed doesn't tend to be the limiting factor anyway).

In years and years of coding and typing on computer keyboards I've had almost zero problems with RSI or carpal tunnel or any of that. When I was typing much more (vs coding) with standard keyboards, I actually did get a little sensitivity/soreness along my ulna and the outer edge of my hand (going up to my pinky finger). It had the feeling of being inflamed (in that something cold on it relieved it). But after decades of typing that's it. And I haven't had that in years. That's pretty good.

Anyway, bringing this back around... I wonder how many keyboard reliability and RSI issues can be attributed to essentially "bad" typing habits like too much force.

Re: Apple's service program for butterfly keyboard MacBooks, even out of warranty

#130

Post by savoytruffle »

gambiting wrote: post #121
karussell wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you go to a very specific store that is only available in a the big cities to repair your laptop ordered via Internet? Isn't their an on-site service for Apple? I.e. the repairer comes to your office or home? I find it hard to believe you pay so much money only to get a service of this kind and waste hours traveling to some special Apple store.

Also, what happens in countries like Poland, where Apple products are sold officially through Apple certified resellers(iSpot etc) but there are no official Apple Stores in the entire country?

There will be Apple Authorized Service Providers in Poland, although nowadays Apple makes it hard to search for somebody else.

https://locate.apple.com

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