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My MacBook Pro had over 10k USD in repairs

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Re: My MacBook Pro had over 10k USD in repairs

#311

Post by chrisseaton »

fsflover wrote: post #308
chrisseaton wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This conspiracy theory doesn't even make any sense. Guess who has to replace these batteries? Apple. Why would they make it harder for themselves without a good reason.

What if I want to go to an independent repair shop to change my battery? Or even do it myself.

Apple will do it for you.

So this isn't an argument against repair - it may be an argument against repair by third parties if you want to suggest that? But then again why would Apple make a job that they have to do harder? Doesn't pass a common-sense test.

Re: My MacBook Pro had over 10k USD in repairs

#312

Post by Bud »

IncRnd wrote: post #293
Bud wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they do not, and that's an outrageous, silly, completely unsupported accusation. Apple also does not "intentionally throttle" older iPhones as a "feature of the update" for some sort of nefarious bullshit "planned obsolescence" reason. The opposite is true: Apple reduces the clock speed very very slightly on older iPhones, so that they can be used LONGER and have a LONGER service life. The alternative would be, w…

Hopefully, Apple learned from their experience. By the way, isn't it nice when the hardware manufacturer doesn't degrade performance on failing hardware but instead tells the user?

Honestly, I think the best alternative in this case would have been to degrade performance (btw, it's a very very slight degradation that most users would not even notice in routine use) and also inform the user.

But I agree with you, in that I do hope Apple has learned from this ordeal. I just wanted to speak out against what I see as very unfair, bad-faith attacks.

Re: My MacBook Pro had over 10k USD in repairs

#313

Post by dredmorbius »

zz865 wrote: post #282
coldtea wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's absolutely ridiculous that Macs don't come with a 3 year warranty by default. Government should mandate that, as in does in other countries. But many american consumers don't believe in government rules about consumer protection, lest some of this "innovation" we've witnessed is discouraged...

Which is a good reason why everything in US is cheaper. Sure, you get more service and better guarantee is you pay for it, there is no reason to force it.

Note that apparent cost and actual cost are not the same thing.

The purchase price is lower without a warranty, but the actual incurred risk cost is higher.

Absent a warranty, that's not only a risk shift from the manufacturer to the consumer, but a real cost shift, as steps which might increase reliability are not taken and the consequences of those decisions (made by the manufaucturer) accrue to the purchaser.

There is also the incidnece cost and the cost of liquidity or credit required to front a repair bill in the hundreds or thousands of dollars. Given that much of the US cannot meet an unexpected $400 expense in a month, this is a significant consideration. MacBook owners may represent a more affluent portion of the population, but a $10k repair bill over four years remains significant. That's a constant $208/mo reliability tax on that particular unit, for this owner.

Note that in this case, Apple did eat the cost as the repairs were covered under the AppleCare Protection Plan.

Re: My MacBook Pro had over 10k USD in repairs

#314

Post by taylodl »

Bud wrote: post #220
gambiting wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I refuse to accept that as an answer as to why the battery is glued in. It's just laziness by apple, there's is literally zero reason to use glue to hold the battery, and it means that if you want to ever replace it yourself you end up looking at a 50-steps long guide on ifixit where one of them is pouring solvent behind the battery - it's insane. Just have a system of tabs holding the battery packs in place, glue is…

No, it's not laziness. Nothing about the internal design of the Mac is due to "laziness". Apple has clearly decided that the battery is better held in place by adhesive than by a "system of tabs". This could easily be for durability or safety reasons. It's a big, big problem if a battery gets damaged. If your argument is that the replacement process has too many steps, this argument fails: you'd save at most one step…

It's probably being done for ease of manufacturing. The bots can handle glue better than tabs and straps. Also, they can put batteries in every dead space available in the machine to maximize system battery life. I agree it's ridiculous you need to use a solvent, carefully, in order to remove the batteries. I suppose this is the state of the art for now?

Re: My MacBook Pro had over 10k USD in repairs

#315

Post by jandrese »

slantyyz wrote: post #215
ubermonkey wrote: post #182

VERY misleading headline. The article makes clear all the costs were covered by AppleCare, so the story here is (a) he got a lemon, which happens in literally every product category and (b) the vendor stood behind the product and took care of him. So I'm honestly not sure what the point of this post is. The only laptops I've had that have handled the high-travel workload I traditionally subjected mine to remotely as…

> so the story here is (a) he got a lemon Well isn't that misleading too? The OP's experience includes two replacement computers, and the original "lemon" was replaced a little after two months after purchase. Depending on how you want to look at the replacements, OP got a total of two, or maybe even three lemons, since the second replacement computer appears to have had its share of issues too. Looking at the OP's i…

Several of the issues were with the keyboard, which on this model was the infamous butterfly model that has well documented reliability issues.

Apple sacrificed durability for thinness and it came back to bite them in the ass with many many AppleCare claims. On the plus side it probably didn't cost Apple a full $400 each time they had to replace a keyboard.

Re: My MacBook Pro had over 10k USD in repairs

#316

Post by fouc »

robertlf wrote: post #127

As long as we're having a big bitch-fest here, I'll throw in my $.02. Other than expanding batteries, my laptops have generally been trouble-free. But the problem I do have is that the older my MBP, the slower it becomes when I upgrade the OS. When I upgraded my 2015 to Big Sur last year, it essentially became unusable because it ran so slowly. It now sits in my closet. Apple should stop nagging you to upgrade the OS…

You should downgrade it back to MacOS 10.x version range. I'm still on 10.13 myself, I don't feel any strong urges to upgrade to Mojave or Catalina. If I stopped using homebrew and started using macports or pkgsrc I'd probably be even less bothered by needing to upgrade. (homebrew is pretty shitty with older OSes)

I'm also on a 2015 MBP that's still going strong. It's snappy and I'm happy. I upgraded the SSD last year, and that made a dramatic difference as well. Upgraded to 1TB, write speed jumped from 282 MB/s to 1321 MB/s, read speed jumped from 964 MB/s to 1505 MB/s. (2015 is the last year that Macbook Pros had upgradeable SSDs)

Re: My MacBook Pro had over 10k USD in repairs

#317

Post by amatecha »

nathanwh wrote: post #277
zzt123 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fresh is "fresh but with IntelliJ and a large project open", but without all the background NGINX etc installed. Once one app starts lagging, they all lag. Terminal, TextEdit, Safari, Notes, IntelliJ, everything. I'm well north of 130wpm, but I don't think that matters for the issues that my Macs have had to deal with, as I used to be well below 130wpm and still experienced such issues.

How did you increase your typing speed so much? I’m sitting at around 70ish wpm and would like to increase it

For me, chatting online for hours on end since ~1997. My impatience to get a message out naturally resulted in typing faster.. I also played piano since childhood which I'm sure helped.

Re: My MacBook Pro had over 10k USD in repairs

#318

Post by jandrese »

riffic wrote: post #135
masklinn wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple is basically the BMW of computers at this point. > it's a shame, it would be nice to go back to a point where there was more quality/durability inherent in the product. reply Apple has always had hardware reliability issues. The unibodies had suicidal GPUs (pretty much every dGPU model between the 2007 and 2013 had a service program at one point or another) as well as battery issues, the retinas had delaminat…

68k macs were pretty solid though.

My parents still have the Mac LC that boots fine although I think the 40MB HDD is starting to have issues.

The hardest part is getting data off of the machine since all of the I/O options are obsolete. I had to use floppy disks last time.

Re: My MacBook Pro had over 10k USD in repairs

#319

Post by amatecha »

jwdunne wrote: post #221
amatecha wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I got a 2009 MacBook Pro for free (or like $10 or something, I forget), and it's now running the latest FreeBSD. BSD, GNU/Linux and other open source OSes typically run great on MacBooks, and give them new life. Try it out!

Exact same situation. Couldn’t upgrade macOS whatsoever and it was slow as anything. Whacked Ubuntu on there and it’s running as good as new, outside of slow disk reads.

Yeah! I actually dropped an old secondhand SSD in mine and it makes a huge difference. You'd never guess the machine is over a decade old other than the slightly bulkier form-factor and mediocre resolution, haha (and in fact I actually really like the keyboard compared to newer models!)

Re: My MacBook Pro had over 10k USD in repairs

#320

Post by mbesto »

sudosysgen wrote: post #284
spullara wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To make the computer smaller and lighter.

Permanently glued batteries are not any smaller and they are no lighter than strapped batteries with easily removed adhesives. It's a move to prevent repair.

Disagree.

You can see for yourself:

Glued https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/noPvQ2CLs1jptX2p.med...

Removal battery https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/btDJQp5CYXdILTOO.med...

You get better battery performance, with higher CPU performance, better graphics, etc. etc. and save 8oz. in weight and nearly half the width.

Moore's law has tradeoffs. I think you can make the conclusion yourself with the facts.

EDIT: For the record - it financially benefits Apple to have an unremovable battery, but that doesn't mean its the only motivation.

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