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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

#261

Post by jp0d »

plow-tycoon wrote: post #250
jp0d wrote: post #163

I must say that all the Apple products my wife and I have used so far, have been very reliable. They're expensive but when you consider the quality and durability they usually have better value. But their repair service can be utterly rubbish sometimes. A few years ago my wife spilled some beer on her MacBook Air and the keyboard stopped working. She took it to the Apple Service centre and told her that it was a faul…

I've been using MacBooks for 10 years, and while they've recently been less reliable, I have had good experiences for at least 60% of the time. So if you can get them repaired for a reasonable price, and they don't break that often, I still don't see many good alternatives. Especially if you still like the OS

very true. I've used several other brands of laptops, mostly because they're cheaper. None have lasted more than 2 years. I've had Compaq, Fujistsu, HP, Asus and a ThinkPad. Only the ThinkPad still works. I had one of the early Intel Core 2 Duo Macbooks and it lasted 6 years before I sold it. It was still working. My wife's Macbook Air is 6 years old and has only 4 gigs of RAM and it still supports the latest OS and works. Even the battery last 4 to 5 hours easily. I've tried working with Linux on some other laptops but I'd to deal with a lot of support issues. Macs just work. I'm using a 2017 model Macbook Pro with 16 gigs RAM, from work. The keyboard is not the best so they gave me a Magic Keyboard. It's just a stress free computer.

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

#262

Post by plow-tycoon »

jp0d wrote: post #261
plow-tycoon wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using MacBooks for 10 years, and while they've recently been less reliable, I have had good experiences for at least 60% of the time. So if you can get them repaired for a reasonable price, and they don't break that often, I still don't see many good alternatives. Especially if you still like the OS

very true. I've used several other brands of laptops, mostly because they're cheaper. None have lasted more than 2 years. I've had Compaq, Fujistsu, HP, Asus and a ThinkPad. Only the ThinkPad still works. I had one of the early Intel Core 2 Duo Macbooks and it lasted 6 years before I sold it. It was still working. My wife's Macbook Air is 6 years old and has only 4 gigs of RAM and it still supports the latest OS and…

I can feel all of that. I went from a custom gaming PC, which was ok aside from having to re-install windows once every few months, then to a 2009 MBP 13" which lasted 4 years until I sold it for a ridiculous sum, then a late 2013 13" MBP which I used until 2018 until it was stolen. I then went to a 2017 non-touchbar model, which was just... fine, but had the keyboard issue, delamination, and an insanely hard to troubleshoot deep-sleep/wake from sleep issue which led to it being replaced by Apple under warranty (when I finally re-produced the issue 100% of the time) for my current 2019 MBP 13" w/ 16gb of ram.

Other than that, my impression of Thinkpads is that, while they seem a bit clunky for me, they are at least in the top tier of non-MBP laptops. Likewise, my brother just picked up a 2019 XPS 13" which has earned some praise from HN folk and seems to be pretty solid. I'd personally like a gaming rig of some kind, but if I'm realistic, I won't get that much use out of it until the rainy season.

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

#263

Post by shoo_pl »

fooker wrote: post #235
shoo_pl wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>you want to upgrade your httpd Which is something more or less impossible on the other systems you have mentioned.

Why would you say that?

On macOS, I can easily upgrade my nginx homebrew package, (same with httpd) each of them have like 2 dependencies and I don't think I ever had a conflict when doing so. Granted, not easy on windows, but see my comment about terminal ;-)

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

#264

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

plow-tycoon wrote: post #253
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #13

I'm not sure what's newsworthy, here. This is quite typical of any place, that both sells and repairs stuff. The cost of repair is calculated to be just below, or at, the cost of replacement. It's unusual, but not unheard-of, to have it more than the cost of replacement. I've encountered this with TVs, phones, VCRs, stereos, non-Apple computers, cars, and I have heard stories of this applying to buildings and homes,…

I agree, but would suggest that it's newsworthy simply by virtue of it not being unusual (as well as the current holes Apple seems to be digging deeper into). Everyone will read the post with a different set of eyes, so there could be any facet that stands out to someone. One of those is that they seem quite happy to do a specific repair as long as it's under warranty, and will replace literally every major component…

Good point. I always get AppleCare, and, unfortunately, have needed to use it, quite often.

In one case, I had a laptop that developed a few, simultaneous problems. It had the notorious "stickyyyy keyyyyyyboard" issue, as well as a loose Thunderbolt port, and issues with the EFI system.

They basically replaced the entire computer. The only thing that didn't change was the screen.

Since it was under warranty, it didn't cost me a dime, but the report said it was about two grand's worth of repairs.

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

#265

Post by spronkey »

brokenmachine wrote: post #258
richiebful1 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still insane that parts + labor costs £700 for a keyboard. I bet the part costs £70. I highly doubt labor could be reasonable valued at £630. Edit: currency is not American

>parts + labor costs £700 for a keyboard. I bet the part costs £70. Lol, why? I have expensive keyboards and they are nowhere near that much for a single key. Is there any other keyboard on the planet that has such expensive keys (except maybe that one with OLEDs on every key)? What are they sprinkling these things with to make people parrot such tripe?

They are riveted to the aluminium top case, that also contains the trackpad and a battery glued in on top of it. So... you're forced to buy all that for a keyboard - a part that is likely to fail in the lifespan of the machine.

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

#266

Post by aphrax »

emeraldd wrote: post #158
shantara wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

For what it's worth I had no additional support outside of a standard warranty..

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

#267

Post by canofbars »

userbinator wrote: post #142
nvrspyx wrote: post #124

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…

I believe Louis Rossmann had a video of something similar, where a loose/unseated display cable was quoted by Apple as a motherboard replacement.

He also has a video where the apple store person didn't plug the battery cable all the way in after looking at it and just blamed it on the machine being broken.

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

#268

Post by canofbars »

fareesh wrote: post #147
StavrosK wrote: post #67

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?

Apple started to crack down on this by burning an ID in each part with a security chip that will brick the laptop if it detects a part changed and only apple can reset it so it works again.

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

#270

Post by ProZsolt »

richiebful1 wrote: post #184
HatchedLake721 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's still insane that parts + labor costs £700 for a keyboard. I bet the part costs £70. I highly doubt labor could be reasonable valued at £630. Edit: currency is not American

They actually changing the full top case with battery and trackpad included.

Makes sense? No. Costs more than £70? Yes.

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