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

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

#151

I saw a video by Louis Rossman the other day that's relevant to this. He owns an independent repair shop that repairs Apple products, and he said that Apple has basically won the fight by locking down their supply chain. Independent repair stores now cannot get Apple parts anywhere, so your only repair option in many cases is to take the thing to Apple and pay the predictably just-below-used price to get it repaired.…

Wouldn't you also in theory be able to get a donor part from someone's laptop which is otherwise busted?

He addresses that in the video as well (I think he said it wasn't economical).

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

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AAC is just a different format, and a superior one at that. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding ) Maybe you're thinking of the DRM'd files that couldn't be played back by other players, and even iTunes on other computers without your iTunes store account. In that case indeed burning a CD and ripping it would be one solution. They stopped selling DRM'd files completely by 2009, though.

Ahh that was it. But yep that's how we bypassed it. I think I bought 6 songs before I found a better alternative. Reminds me how I had 1 iphone (6) and would never get one again.

The DRM was not a whim by Apple, it was demanded by the labels, though. At the time that was the only way they'd even permit an online music store. I don't think there were alternatives that weren't just as locked down, unless you're talking about sailing the high seas.

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

#153
In the last +5 years Apple has been very busy securing their monopoly on every bit or screw their machines have.

In certain models you simply cannot plug another ( Apple original ) screen, it will not work. Also many "regular/mundane" chips are not available to anyone but Apple.

Apple not only doesn't support any repair initiative, it actively sabotages anything they see as a threat. Their Authorized Service Provider Program is a complete joke done in a way to keep other people busy but set for failure and to give Apple lawyers some leverage they can work with.

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

#154

I saw a video by Louis Rossman the other day that's relevant to this. He owns an independent repair shop that repairs Apple products, and he said that Apple has basically won the fight by locking down their supply chain. Independent repair stores now cannot get Apple parts anywhere, so your only repair option in many cases is to take the thing to Apple and pay the predictably just-below-used price to get it repaired.…

And customers are fine with it.

He addresses that in the video, customers are fine because Apple sabotages repair shops and then blames them for the failures.

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

#155

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.

And at least in Germany, Berlin is full of these fixer shops that'll do a great job fixing your Mac. Usually in the neighborhoods with large arabic minorities.

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

#156

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…

If it only were that simple... I'd gladly abandon Apple ecosystem long time ago.

For a lot of professional people it's mostly a matter of time vs cost. I am a developer, mostly working with ruby & python these days. What my options are? Mac, Windows and Linux.

Let's sum it down:

- Windows. Took them like 20 years to figure out how to make a working Terminal so no, really not a good candidate for people like me. I am glad they are catching up, but who knows when they will get stuck for 20 years on another important piece (not to mention their WSL is a prerequisite for a lot of work, and basically a VM)

- Linux. Good on paper but man, it's such a time sink. Dependency hell: you want to upgrade your httpd so you must upgrade 175+ other packages, one of which will break something. UI: clumsy but works if you have little expectations. Hardware: A mess, sleep never works, gfx performance is silly, at the end of the day mostly closed-source stuff that companies do not care about making it unreliable at best.

- Mac: Expensive? Kinda, yes, but not that much if you compare to similar hardware from other vendors (ie. Dell) assuming you do not compare apples to oranges (same cpu, same general performance, same form factor & quality). Does it break? Yes it does and it sucks. It shouldn't - not for that price, not for environmental reasons since they try to be so "green". Had my issues with Apple hardware more than once, but thank god they were not as serious as this.

Saying that linux is a good replacement for mac is like saying that k8s is good for everyone. Yes, you can deploy your blog on k8s but it will cost you a lot of time & energy. Same with linux - yes, I can work on linux, but its just sooo much faster and cheaper for me to just go and buy another MBP if my current one were to break. Some people (me) still like to play with k8s, others like to dig into linux stuff (not me).

What I am angry about with Apple is how they approach their failures rather than the failures themselves. I can understand mistakes that you cannot do anything about - famous iPhone 4 antena. They made tens of millions of devices that have an issue with antena in some edge conditions, well, shit happens, what can you do - it's not like they are going to replace all of them.

But MBP keyboards? Giving 4 years of free replacements is not the solution, a solution would be to create a replacement keyboard that would not break - and use that each time it gets replaced. Because 4 years old MBP is still a great machine that can do what's it supposed to very well, there is no reason to trash it.

If there were a law to force manufacturers to repair known defects (examples like that keyboard, screen laminate etc) for at least 10+ years, I would be first to vote for it. It's way to common for things to break after a couple years, things that could - and should - work for much more. And this is what I'd expect from companies like Apple, which would justify their green PR and prices bullshit.

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

#157

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…

Some years ago I had the tech at the Apple store replace a single damaged key on my laptop for me completely free, he had a drawer full of keycaps, it took him five minutes, he was just like, no problem, bye. Times have changed. :(

It’s not that support has changed, it’s the butterfly keyboard. You can’t replace keys with butterfly keyboard, the whole thing has to.

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

#158
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, about 7 years ago I spilt liquid on my MacBook Pro. They let me off the repair costs (significant, new motherboard etc..), just said be a bit more careful. Have recounted this story many times since, sad to hear things may have changed.

I had a similar anecdotal story just a couple of months ago. I've spilled a few drops of juice on my 16" MBP keyboard, which was enough for three keys to become sticky. They've replaced the keyboard and whole top case chassis for free without any comment and I got my laptop back in three days. It was the best tech support experience I've had in my life.

I wonder if this boils down to which level of support contract you buy?

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

#159
post #3

A colleague of mine recently got a MacBook Pro, whenever they plug in an external monitor the fans are pretty much fully on when doing not much at all. They now loathe using it. These computers are so expensive. They seem to have a ton of issues with ridiculous repair costs. What's going on? The keyboard issue from before is another example. Clearly they have the profit margin to ensure their products work well. And…

Something is wrong with your colleague's machine, or something else in his toolchain, because that's not normal. The keyboard issues were really jarring precisely because Apple had, up to that point, a really great reliability reputation - in my experience, on par with the super-overengineered late-90s ThinkPads (IBM, not Lenovo). I retired several PowerBooks and MacBooks at 6 or 7 years old that were still physicall…

Actually, loud fans are a regular occurrence when using external displays with current high-end 15" MacBook Pros. It gets hot fast, especially when driving a 4K display and charging at the same time. The 13" MacBook Pro on the other hand is basically silent in most circumstances.

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

#160
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 Labour?
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