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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

#431
post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. EDI…

None of that is true. The battery cells are the rectangular black pouches. They can be glued in, placed in with a ribbon cable, put inside a plastic outer casing, or any other variation; but the batteries themselves are exactly the same form and function. Given the hard metal body construction with screw fasteners, there's no reason for gluing the battery packs themselves.

> but the batteries themselves are exactly the same form and function.

They are exactly not the same form:

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

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

One is a big brick and the other is a set of 4 pouches carefully laid out to let connectors route to various parts of the motherboard. That is precisely NOT the exact same form.

Look at how intricate the battery replacement is for the newest MBPro:

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Touch+Bar+2...

There are various terminals that weave in and out of the batteries. That simply is not possible to maintain the same weight and thickness by just carving out one big removal brick as in the previous generation of the MBPro.

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

#432
post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yea…

I would like to upgrade my disk while keeping the OS version (clone?). Could you please tell me how did you do?

Not GP, but as others have described here, you can clone your entire disk to an external one (using an application like SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner), upgrade the internal disk, and the restore from the external clone.

When it comes to hardware upgrades of the DIY kind, iFixit (https://www.ifixit.com/) is a great resource with detailed instructions, photos and even videos on how to do them for different devices. The site also sells tools and parts, but you don’t necessarily have to buy from there. For SSDs, OWC (Other World Computing, https://eshop.macsales.com/) has tested parts available for many older Macs.

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

#433

> As much as I don’t want to buy another Mac in the future, I have a feeling that I probably will. If my laptop has 13 repairs over the first 2 years of use (and under "very well treatment"), I would consider the laptop a scam and never buy from that manufacturer. But since the machine got an Apple logo on it, somehow all the problems become material for praising their repair services. If this is not symptom of Stock…

I think hardware quality is overall good with Apple, but sometimes there are rough patches over years where widespread problems are neither acknowledged nor solved. One such patch, which I fortunately managed to avoid, was from 2016 or so till now. It remains to be seen how good the Apple Silicon Macs work over the next several years.

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

#434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The newer butterfly keyboards got all the bad press (for good reason) but a while back I had to use one of the early aluminum models from when they were still thick enough to hold disc drives, for the first time in many years, and damn, I'd forgotten just how much worse the original slim driveless models' keyboards were, than those. Those were basically perfect, for a laptop.

Yeah that's exactly what this 2009 model is, the nice thick keys that actually move quite some distance when you press them. So satisfying and tactile! Now when I try the latest MacBooks in an Apple Store it's like typing on nothing. Very strange feeling.

I know it sounds crazy but you will get used to it if you use it for a day. I'm picky about keyboards and I thought I would hate it, but after a couple years I type as comfortably and quickly as I do with the cherry browns on my Das Keyboard

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

#435
post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that is true. The battery cells are the rectangular black pouches. They can be glued in, placed in with a ribbon cable, put inside a plastic outer casing, or any other variation; but the batteries themselves are exactly the same form and function. Given the hard metal body construction with screw fasteners, there's no reason for gluing the battery packs themselves.

> but the batteries themselves are exactly the same form and function. They are exactly not the same form: https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/vlCsffdOoZSTCyJy.med... https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/btDJQp5CYXdILTOO.med... One is a big brick and the other is a set of 4 pouches carefully laid out to let connectors route to various parts of the motherboard. That is precisely NOT the exact same form. Look at…

These battery cells have the same physical structure. They can be shaped however is needed, whether it's one big block or several little ones connected by wires.

The same capacity requires roughly the same weight and thickness, although several smaller cells will mean more packaging material and less collective capacity, but obviously allows for more flexible placement within the chassis.

However, none of this requires gluing the battery to the system. That was the topic here. Why would you think using glue instead of just letting the back plate hold the batteries in place makes such a big difference?

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

#436
post #52

It's absolutely ridiculous that Macs don't come with a 3 year warranty by default. I've bought maybe a dozen macs in the last 15 years (for myself and the family) and while some have lasted many years without issues, some have died on me on the second or third year. Because the initial investment is so high you're practically forced to add extra Apple Care to protect it because there's a 20-30% chance you will have p…

> a 3 year warranty by default come to australia, consumer guarantees give you a 3 year warranty. In fact my MacBook Pro gave up the ghost a few weeks after the 3 years had expired, Apple replaced the bits under warranty.

Yep and they still try to push applecare+ onto customers.

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

#437

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…

"Apple should stop nagging you to upgrade the OS if your hardware wasn't built to support the newer versions." When Apple introduced OSX I refused to upgrade a G4; I stayed on OS9. I never connected that computer to the internet, it was only used as a DAW. This "upgrade the OS" nonsense is an old trick. Microsoft made it infamous. I had Windows computers back in the day, late 90s, where I only upgraded the hardware,…

>Not that I know what other users want, but I want stuff that works reliably, does not slow down and does not need constant fixing. I prefer software that stays the same over software that is constantly changing. I like software that keeps doing what I installed it to do and nothing more.

This is exactly how I feel.

I think there are two camps - some people like shiny stuff for the sake of shiny stuff.

I want to perform the tasks I'm trying to perform as quickly and efficiently as possible. Often that means cli and custom scripts, if I need to use a GUI it's using the keyboard as much as possible and avoiding the mouse, and if I must use the mouse, then I have a lot of custom buttons mapped and/or ahk scripts.

When I see people entering username/password and not knowing that you can tab to get to the next field, I die a little inside. These are people who work on a computer every single day, but they never thought to look into increasing their efficiency on said computer, even for the most basic of tasks that they might do 50x per day.

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

#438
post #268

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…

Sometimes I feel like an alien with my late 2013 MBPr working all the same with the latest os.

Yeah, same here. I am using 2012 rMBP and usually upgrade OS and update quickly after release. No significant issues with the machine. It is still chugging along on Catalina. Only issue in last 10 years was replacing battery once.

But I am waiting for Mx version of 15”+ MBP to upgrade, just need more storage and memory at this point for heavy duty work.

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

#439
post #294
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.

IntelliJ: Thats your problem. Everytime i tried to run their IDE's on mac os i gave up because the abysmal typing/scroll performance. I think textmate broke my brain back in the day, can't stand any editor that can't run at 60fps. (unless it's vim/nano on ssh)

Hmmm.. I run IntellJ IDEA on my 2013 MBP and I don't experience system-wide text-entry latency. Though, to be fair my version of IDEA is pretty old (2016.2)

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

#440
Posts like these make me afraid of upgrading my macbook. Every time apple released a new macbook, I would wait to see how reliable it is, and eventually got discouraged when I see a lot of people complains about various issues. I ended up still using my 2012 macbook due to this, though with upgraded ram, ssd and battery replacement.

The M1 has significantly less people complaining about hardware issue, so maybe it's finally the time to upgrade as my 2012 no longer receive major macos updates anymore.

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