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

luketully.ca

131–140 of 286 posts

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

#131
post #28

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 ac…

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!

I used Play Music and Inbox as well, and also just switched (3-ish months ago?) to an iPhone.

The YouTube Music app is not that bad, but definitely missing a feature or three that I used a lot on Play. It also seems to need to be manually started every time my phone connects to Bluetooth whereas Play would start automatically if it was the last thing that was playing on that BT connection.

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

#132
post #123
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What does "work for P+L" mean?

parts + labor

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

#133

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…

Anyone in Eastern Europe should know to contact a local fixer, not attempt an official repair of which the closest location is Germany.

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

#134

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…

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.

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/), 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.

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

#135
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

For these rasons I use two phones. Apple for banking and communications involving personal data and Android for Gmail, music and ebooks.

Which one do you use the calls/texts?

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

#136

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.

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.

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

#137
post #123
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What does "work for P+L" mean?

Parts and Labor

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

#138
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.

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

#139

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 trackpa…

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.

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

#140
post #28

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 ac…

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!

>I just swapped from Android to an iPhone for privacy concerns.

Understandable, if Apple's claim on Privacy is to be trusted, then it does seem to be a better alternative to android when it comes to privacy; But for a power user android ecosystem offers more without rooting, is not dependent upon 'trust on a company alone' and there's no separate power-user level ecosystem for iOS without jailbreaking.

e.g.

• AOSP, so there's LineageOS as aftermarket alternative, /e/ with e foundation phone or Fairphone, dozens of other alternatives.

• Firewall VPN for android are more refined e.g. Netguard (open-source) even allows selective blocking of connections per address/ per app; this is the closest thing to Little Snitch on macOS.

• Tasker allows automation to such an extent that, several things which required writing apps can now be performed by creating tasks. Tasker is Siri shortcuts on steroids without Siri.

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