It's hard to believe that if you had any Apple laptop crap out after 18 months that if you approached them nicely, they wouldn't bend over backwards to help you. I've always been pleased with Apple's customer service. Of course, we had purchased dozens of iMacs over the years running our accounting firm...
I know the frustration, though. We bought an Acura MD-X and it had a known faulty transmission that switched gears constantly on the freeway. I took my erroneous repairs over the years to the dealer and took a ride with the regional manager to demonstrate the fault. He looked over my iffy repairs and nodded as we were jolted around while driving on the freeway.
Then he said, You can afford it. Buy a new one. And that was that. I asked about the repairs and he said they were fraudulent. My jaw was hanging open at this point. My mother was there, helping with my boys. We got back to the dealer and I went inside and said, Hey, your regional manager just said all these repairs are fraudulent and that he agrees that Acura knows about the transmission and I'm supposed to buy a new one or go pound sand.
The dealership was a little nervous but the regional manager wasn't. He just looked at me and said that anything I pursued would have to go throw him and the discussion was over. I tried to write letters, make phone calls, hassle customer service at Acura...and it just died. I lost energy, sold the car, and now just have this good story to tell.
Sometimes you win and sometimes a big fat bastard tells you to pound sand.
How did the plaintiffs ever think they could win this? Even if Apple knowingly sold faulty hardware (which is highly doubtful) how on earth do you plan on proving that in a court of law?!
It was filed in Texas court. Glad it was dismissed considering how jacked up Texas courts are.
So is this a case of righteous indignation about the working conditions in China or because your Mac died because of supposed planned obsolescence?
First of all, Apple (all other OEMs too) can't guarantee perfection. The best they can do is replace under warranty or replace due to a very common issue even after warranty*. A lot of Apple's products come out with issues. Some get a firmware update. Some get replaced immediately upon arrival. Some get recalled altogether and re-released upon solving the issue. I had a 2007 MacBook C2D that I owned for 7 years. It worked well and only the HD died four years in requiring a DIY replacement which took a mere 5 minutes. I also replaced the screen bezel and the keyboard/palm rest top-case due to the common "plastic chipping" issue (*later, I found out that Apple was supposedly replacing these for free but some said they paid for it out of warranty and others claim they were replaced for free). I replaced the discolored (from heat) hinge/clutch cover. Was all that planned obsolescence? No. Most of it was just a combination of age and design defects.
Otherwise, I loved that little computer. I sold it cause I was finding myself doing more with my iPad and Apple no longer supported it with OS updates past Lion...and it was getting slower with Lion. Was I pissed that Apple stopped supporting this computer and deemed it EOL? No. Maybe I was hoping it would get a little more love, but 7 years and 4 versions of OS X (Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion) were plenty for that little computer. Most cheap Windows machines fail pretty quickly too. Is that planned obsolescence? Could be (gotta make up for razor-thin margins), but nobody cares cause they only spent a couple hundred dollars and it isn't Apple.
Plus one plaintiff got his MacBook replaced under warranty? They gave you a new one! They lost money on it! How is that planned obsolescence? How does Apple put up with all this BS? What's next?
Plaintiff: "I bought an iPad 1 and was led to believe it was capable of magic as per Steve Jobs' words. It has yet to produce unicorns and rainbows as I was led to believe. Plus it is no longer supported meaning I have to blow more money on a newer iPad because of planned obsolescence due to Apple no longer supporting the device. I have one other person who agrees that this is outrageous!"
Apple legal team: "Does your iPad 1 still work properly 5 years after it came out?"
Plaintiff: "Yes, but..."
Apple legal team: "Planned obsolescence suggests the device no longer functions after a short period of time, usually outside of the warranty period. It also suggests that the only solution is to buy a newer device. I ask the court to dismiss the claims of "Planned Obsolescence". Also, the use of the word "Magical" was purely for marketing purposes and the iPad was stated as something being like magic or providing a magical experience compared to other offerings at the time. It was never stated anywhere that it would produce actual magic. Your honor, I rest my case."
Judge: "Court finds for the defendant. Case dismissed."
tl:dr: Stuff happens. Apple isn't perfect but I'm 100% sure they're not doing this on purpose. Class-Action lawsuits are mostly frivolous. Plaintiffs are idiots. Lawyers are greedy.
It's amazing to see so little appreciation and so much ignorance around the statistical backing that supports reliability engineering for electronic products. When people start saying things like Apple "only designs their products to last a bit longer than the warranty period" they're showing their complete lack of understanding for how reputable manufacturers design products that are intended to last a long time. All of the components that go into Apple products have reliability data like MTBF (mean time between failures) and MTTF (mean time to fail) associated with them. This is all statistical data which means it has variation across the population of produced components. Just because a memory manufacturer says its part has a MTTF of one million hours doesn't mean that your part in your machine will last that long before failing. It just means that there is a failure rate distribution for that part and the mean is one million hours. Apple uses this data to predict the cumulative predicted reliability of their total assembled product.
Electronic components have long exhibited a failure rate that resembles a long "U" shape, or what's called a bathtub curve. There are early higher failure rates (infant mortality) followed by a very long period of low failure rates, and finally at the end of life the failure rate starts to climb again due to component degradation, wear-out, and other factors. This pattern applies to the total product as well but there are also system level factors like assembly, layout, cooling, power surges, ambient temperature, duty cycle, and expected normal usage that come into play. What doesn't come into play is physical abuse like hammer blows and submersion in toilets.
Reputable manufacturers like Apple use the reliability data and predictions as part of their warranty assertions. The initial warranty is largely driven by a recognition that some infant mortality will occur, some assembly related issues will occur, and some component failures will occur that are several standard deviations removed from the mean (average). This is very much a data driven process and not a colonoscopy inspired decision. However this is still statistical data with variation and there are also times when the reliability data from component vendors is way off from their predictions and the product/system reliability suffers as well. Sometimes probability is not your friend and sometimes your friends lie to you. Your system may fail long before the predicted mean. Component vendors (video cards, electrolytic capacitors, etc.) may be way off on their reliability predictions.
The point here is to recognize the reliability process and its basis in statistical data that has variation. If you drive a stake in the ground either on one extreme or the other, e.g., an unusual early failure or an unusually extreme long life and try to cast the entire population of products into that narrow scope you are completely missing the point or you are trying to redefine probability to meet your own personal agenda. The fact that it's sunny today in Tulsa doesn't mean it's sunny every day in Tulsa.
How did the plaintiffs ever think they could win this? Even if Apple knowingly sold faulty hardware (which is highly doubtful) how on earth do you plan on proving that in a court of law?!
Exactly!!
They would have to prove that apple's management had data prior to shipment, that this failure mode exist and did nothing to addressing it prior to selling them. The fact people posted msgs after the fact and as time passed they seen a problem does not mean Apple had prior knowledge of the issue, they probably found out at the exact same time we all did when the failures occurred.
Knowingly shipping defective product is hard to prove, now maybe they should have known based on the specific failure that it was a likely outcome, but should have known is not intentionally doing something wrong. Products fail and fail all the time, it is almost impossible to make an electronic product which never fails specially when you make millions on them over time.
So the time limit of expecting a working machine is 18 months?
I'm not sure how this plays out legally, but if my MacBook died after 2 years I'd be mad too.
(For the record my Macs have lasted much longer than 2 years - some going 6 years.)
I agree. Apple is generally high priced compared to the competition and I expect their machines to last a long time and I would be absolutely pissed if it failed after 2 years. And their computers always have lasted an incredibly long time for me. I had a G4 tower that I kept for 9 years (!) and it was still working fine when I got rid of it - it was just too slow to process photography or play video. I'm writing this on a late 2008 MacBook Pro, also still absolutely fine and still looking brand new, although again, it's not quite powerful enough to edit video with high accuracy, so I might replace it one of these days.
Back around 1998-2002, I was working in a place that gave us IBM laptops. The acid from my skin wore off the paint where I place my palms and all of those machines would pretty much stop working after a year or so. We'd each get new machines every year. I gave one to my mother, but even after reformatting the hard disk and starting over, it barely worked.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ECats
This lawsuit was nuts. If they just went for a high defect rate rather than an obscure conspiracy theory about planned obsolescence it might have gone somewhere.
Involving child labour as an ad hominem red herring is nothing more than trying to strong arm the company into settlement.
I firmly believe something should be done about these laptops, but this case had a thick coat crazy all over it.
Correct in every respect.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jfc1138
And one of the two plaintiffs had his replaced by Apple under warranty????
That's priceless.
Absolutely. He sued a company for doing the right thing?
Quote:
Originally Posted by jameskatt2
I also have this laptop. When it failed after 3 years and was out of warranty, I took it to my Apple Store and asked for Apple's flat rate repair program. For only $299 Apple will replace anything in the laptop that is not working to spec. They replaced the entire screen, the video board, the mother board, the expansion card cage, and even the RAM memory. It is an amazing deal that made my MacBook Pro 17" 2011 essentially brand new. You get a new 90 day warranty. My MacBook has been working fantastically since then.
I recommend Apple's flat rate repair program. It is an absolute bargain.
I've used it also on my MacBook Pro 17" 2008. And it too has been going on strongly since.
That flat rate program is good to know. Back in the day, my son-in-law had bought a G5 tower, but the power supply kept failing. Apple repaired it several times under warranty and after the third time, he told them that if it failed again, he wanted a new machine. It did fail again, but by that time, his model was no longer being sold. Apple gave him a brand new machine of the latest model at no charge.
About ten years ago, a toddler reached over and pulled back the screen on my daughter's laptop and broke the hinges on the screen. Apple said the price to fix it was practically the price of a new laptop. The machine worked, but they had to put something behind it to support the screen. But then the video failed. So she brought it to Apple to have just the video fixed, which she was willing to pay for, but Apple repaired the entire computer, including the broken hinges and video at no charge whatsoever.
Apple's become so big that they probably wouldn't provide that level of customer service today, but those two incidences really confirmed for me how great a company Apple was at the time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jameskatt2
M
The plaintiff could not have charge fraud since his or her laptop was still under warranty at 18 months.
Interestingly, most car warranties last only 3 years. Then you are on your own. You have to pay for everything wrong that wears out. And cars cost a heck more than computers.
----
Some people have become so neurotic however about their Macs that they expect perfection when such a thing doesn't exist.
I was under the impression that most car warranties today are five years or 100,000 miles, whichever comes first. Decent cars today don't require the first tuneup for 100K miles. Aside from the battery, tires and break linings, I can't remember the last time a car of mine needed a non-covered repair, except that my 11-year-old Honda does apparently need lower control arms. But you know what? I'm actually pissed about that. I only have 70,000 miles on that car - they should have lasted longer.
I do expect perfection from my computer hardware, especially now that computers have no moving parts except for the fans. It's not like a $79 Blu-ray player that's not that big a deal to toss if fails after two years - a decent Mac laptop still costs $2500. If Apple maintains that it produces machines with such high quality, at the very least, they should expand the base warranty to two years. Three would be even better. AppleCare can kick in after that. Back in the late '90s, Acura had so few claims under its warranty program that they gave everyone an extra year at no charge. That confidence certainly builds customer loyalty.
My daughters early 2011 MBP with i7 and AMD 6750M only works if it never goes to sleep, usually. This model is the worst Mac we've ever purchased and there's no way to fix it. A replacement board might work or might not. Am I upset, yes. What can I do now? Probably nothing. The MBP lasted 3 years and a few months, not a great result for Apple products that usually last for a lot longer than this.
I have this exact same model and have had no problems at all with it and it still runs flawlessly. Admittedly I have upgraded the RAM and HDD but I run multiple clients for a game I play and it handles it pretty well given the needs of the game.
Our last issue with a Mac was the iBook G3. My daughter's iBook failed at least four or five times. One time in the Apple shop for well over a month. The last time the logic board failed, they told us it was out of warranty. I mentioned the endless repairs and sitting in the shop and they gave us a new one.
I felt my iPhone a couple of years ago wasn't performing well and they gave me a new one, no questions asked.
We had a MacBook with a logic board was faulty and known by Apple, but computer was out of warranty. Apple fixed it. No problem at all.
Anyway, they have, in the past, been pretty generous, to a level that even I thought was excessive, however, no complaints.
As someone has said, the flat rate program is pretty good. The price is reasonable and Apple is pretty insane about getting the computer back to new. When that one MacBook failed, they sent it in for repair for free AND gave us a new keyboard and top panel, so the baby looked like new.
Typing this on a 6 year old MacBook Pro...looks like new.
I also have this laptop. When it failed after 3 years and was out of warranty, I took it to my Apple Store and asked for Apple's flat rate repair program. For only $299 Apple will replace anything in the laptop that is not working to spec. They replaced the entire screen, the video board, the mother board, the expansion card cage, and even the RAM memory. It is an amazing deal that made my MacBook Pro 17" 2011 essentially brand new. You get a new 90 day warranty. My MacBook has been working fantastically since then.
I recommend Apple's flat rate repair program. It is an absolute bargain.
I've used it also on my MacBook Pro 17" 2008. And it too has been going on strongly since.
This is actually really awesome to learn and I'm going to bookmark this post so I remember it. That pretty much right there seals the deal that my next computer will be a Mac when my current Wintel finally bites the dust, since I was already on the fence.
Leave the platform if you’re that upset. Why would you not? I won’t ever buy Firestone tires again because of something that happened over thirty years ago. You could give me a set of Firestone tires and I would hand them back to you.
Do the right thing and buy a Dell with Windows 8.1. Bid Apple farewell.
Not the original poster but...
I am an Apple investor and a long time Apple owner and I have this problem as well. The unit is still usable but going downhill (graphics hickups). I have bought three macbook pro's in a row and this one ($2300) will probably be my last. I can take a $800 dell breaking after three years but not a $2300 Apple. First of all, the Dell would actually be fixable for a lot less, second Apple has never made a 'proper' replacement board. The replacement boards all have the problem of the original.
So my replacement will probably be a Dell unit, with either Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 with a third party GUI fix. A shame. Apple is still a stock buy due to the iPhone and IOS but quite disappointed by the OSX hardware now.
So my replacement will probably be a Dell unit, with either Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 with a third party GUI fix. A shame. Apple is still a stock buy due to the iPhone and IOS but quite disappointed by the OSX hardware now.
Maybe a shame for you. Nobody else cares. Tired of listening to the bitching.
Pretty clear that Apple has been selling defective nvidia video boards, integrated into the MacBook logic boards for years. Nvidia has had feeble recalls and people have posted personal stories about the same problems over and over, MacBook generation after MacBook generation
Maybe a shame for you. Nobody else cares. Tired of listening to the bitching.
Well Ikrupp, I've bought an MacBookPro 15" SSD etc. for roughly 4,000 US$ here in Asia and worked with it for 1 1/2 years when the screen started to get crazy. Went to the supplier but got the feedback: Sorry out of warranty and we know about the problem from many other people. You state "bitching". I'm not bitching on Apple at all but being told to throw out 4,000 bucks through the window really pissed me off.
I'm not the only one who experienced this problem there are about 25,000++ people out there. Personally I'd expect that a company like Apple should do something about this but as we all know now this didn't happen yet. No offer on a free replacement etc. I've exchanged my MBP with a Vaio 13 Pro, costs for the new one was exactly the price of a mainboard MBP replacement. I won't buy any Apple products anymore. Because I'm really pissed off.
Hmm.. I have mixed feelings about this one. Being an owner bit me on this one, I even emailed Steve Jobs telling him that sometimes even Apple Engineers can be wrong. His quick response was "Sometimes they can be right."
Sorry Steve. (Though I adore the yacht. REALLY adore it.)
Where were you when I was crying to Apple. I can say Apple has changed everything for me, and I am both humbled and in adoration of said company. Mibad.
Comments
It's hard to believe that if you had any Apple laptop crap out after 18 months that if you approached them nicely, they wouldn't bend over backwards to help you. I've always been pleased with Apple's customer service. Of course, we had purchased dozens of iMacs over the years running our accounting firm...
I know the frustration, though. We bought an Acura MD-X and it had a known faulty transmission that switched gears constantly on the freeway. I took my erroneous repairs over the years to the dealer and took a ride with the regional manager to demonstrate the fault. He looked over my iffy repairs and nodded as we were jolted around while driving on the freeway.
Then he said, You can afford it. Buy a new one. And that was that. I asked about the repairs and he said they were fraudulent. My jaw was hanging open at this point. My mother was there, helping with my boys. We got back to the dealer and I went inside and said, Hey, your regional manager just said all these repairs are fraudulent and that he agrees that Acura knows about the transmission and I'm supposed to buy a new one or go pound sand.
The dealership was a little nervous but the regional manager wasn't. He just looked at me and said that anything I pursued would have to go throw him and the discussion was over. I tried to write letters, make phone calls, hassle customer service at Acura...and it just died. I lost energy, sold the car, and now just have this good story to tell.
Sometimes you win and sometimes a big fat bastard tells you to pound sand.
It was filed in Texas court. Glad it was dismissed considering how jacked up Texas courts are.
I wonder what impact this will have on the faulty GPUs lawsuit.
First of all, Apple (all other OEMs too) can't guarantee perfection. The best they can do is replace under warranty or replace due to a very common issue even after warranty*. A lot of Apple's products come out with issues. Some get a firmware update. Some get replaced immediately upon arrival. Some get recalled altogether and re-released upon solving the issue. I had a 2007 MacBook C2D that I owned for 7 years. It worked well and only the HD died four years in requiring a DIY replacement which took a mere 5 minutes. I also replaced the screen bezel and the keyboard/palm rest top-case due to the common "plastic chipping" issue (*later, I found out that Apple was supposedly replacing these for free but some said they paid for it out of warranty and others claim they were replaced for free). I replaced the discolored (from heat) hinge/clutch cover. Was all that planned obsolescence? No. Most of it was just a combination of age and design defects.
Otherwise, I loved that little computer. I sold it cause I was finding myself doing more with my iPad and Apple no longer supported it with OS updates past Lion...and it was getting slower with Lion. Was I pissed that Apple stopped supporting this computer and deemed it EOL? No. Maybe I was hoping it would get a little more love, but 7 years and 4 versions of OS X (Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion) were plenty for that little computer. Most cheap Windows machines fail pretty quickly too. Is that planned obsolescence? Could be (gotta make up for razor-thin margins), but nobody cares cause they only spent a couple hundred dollars and it isn't Apple.
Plus one plaintiff got his MacBook replaced under warranty? They gave you a new one! They lost money on it! How is that planned obsolescence? How does Apple put up with all this BS? What's next?
Plaintiff: "I bought an iPad 1 and was led to believe it was capable of magic as per Steve Jobs' words. It has yet to produce unicorns and rainbows as I was led to believe. Plus it is no longer supported meaning I have to blow more money on a newer iPad because of planned obsolescence due to Apple no longer supporting the device. I have one other person who agrees that this is outrageous!"
Apple legal team: "Does your iPad 1 still work properly 5 years after it came out?"
Plaintiff: "Yes, but..."
Apple legal team: "Planned obsolescence suggests the device no longer functions after a short period of time, usually outside of the warranty period. It also suggests that the only solution is to buy a newer device. I ask the court to dismiss the claims of "Planned Obsolescence". Also, the use of the word "Magical" was purely for marketing purposes and the iPad was stated as something being like magic or providing a magical experience compared to other offerings at the time. It was never stated anywhere that it would produce actual magic. Your honor, I rest my case."
Judge: "Court finds for the defendant. Case dismissed."
tl:dr: Stuff happens. Apple isn't perfect but I'm 100% sure they're not doing this on purpose. Class-Action lawsuits are mostly frivolous. Plaintiffs are idiots. Lawyers are greedy.
It's amazing to see so little appreciation and so much ignorance around the statistical backing that supports reliability engineering for electronic products. When people start saying things like Apple "only designs their products to last a bit longer than the warranty period" they're showing their complete lack of understanding for how reputable manufacturers design products that are intended to last a long time. All of the components that go into Apple products have reliability data like MTBF (mean time between failures) and MTTF (mean time to fail) associated with them. This is all statistical data which means it has variation across the population of produced components. Just because a memory manufacturer says its part has a MTTF of one million hours doesn't mean that your part in your machine will last that long before failing. It just means that there is a failure rate distribution for that part and the mean is one million hours. Apple uses this data to predict the cumulative predicted reliability of their total assembled product.
Electronic components have long exhibited a failure rate that resembles a long "U" shape, or what's called a bathtub curve. There are early higher failure rates (infant mortality) followed by a very long period of low failure rates, and finally at the end of life the failure rate starts to climb again due to component degradation, wear-out, and other factors. This pattern applies to the total product as well but there are also system level factors like assembly, layout, cooling, power surges, ambient temperature, duty cycle, and expected normal usage that come into play. What doesn't come into play is physical abuse like hammer blows and submersion in toilets.
Reputable manufacturers like Apple use the reliability data and predictions as part of their warranty assertions. The initial warranty is largely driven by a recognition that some infant mortality will occur, some assembly related issues will occur, and some component failures will occur that are several standard deviations removed from the mean (average). This is very much a data driven process and not a colonoscopy inspired decision. However this is still statistical data with variation and there are also times when the reliability data from component vendors is way off from their predictions and the product/system reliability suffers as well. Sometimes probability is not your friend and sometimes your friends lie to you. Your system may fail long before the predicted mean. Component vendors (video cards, electrolytic capacitors, etc.) may be way off on their reliability predictions.
The point here is to recognize the reliability process and its basis in statistical data that has variation. If you drive a stake in the ground either on one extreme or the other, e.g., an unusual early failure or an unusually extreme long life and try to cast the entire population of products into that narrow scope you are completely missing the point or you are trying to redefine probability to meet your own personal agenda. The fact that it's sunny today in Tulsa doesn't mean it's sunny every day in Tulsa.
My vaio died within three years of purchase and I never thought about suing Sony.
How did the plaintiffs ever think they could win this? Even if Apple knowingly sold faulty hardware (which is highly doubtful) how on earth do you plan on proving that in a court of law?!
Exactly!!
They would have to prove that apple's management had data prior to shipment, that this failure mode exist and did nothing to addressing it prior to selling them. The fact people posted msgs after the fact and as time passed they seen a problem does not mean Apple had prior knowledge of the issue, they probably found out at the exact same time we all did when the failures occurred.
Knowingly shipping defective product is hard to prove, now maybe they should have known based on the specific failure that it was a likely outcome, but should have known is not intentionally doing something wrong. Products fail and fail all the time, it is almost impossible to make an electronic product which never fails specially when you make millions on them over time.
So the time limit of expecting a working machine is 18 months?
I'm not sure how this plays out legally, but if my MacBook died after 2 years I'd be mad too.
(For the record my Macs have lasted much longer than 2 years - some going 6 years.)
I agree. Apple is generally high priced compared to the competition and I expect their machines to last a long time and I would be absolutely pissed if it failed after 2 years. And their computers always have lasted an incredibly long time for me. I had a G4 tower that I kept for 9 years (!) and it was still working fine when I got rid of it - it was just too slow to process photography or play video. I'm writing this on a late 2008 MacBook Pro, also still absolutely fine and still looking brand new, although again, it's not quite powerful enough to edit video with high accuracy, so I might replace it one of these days.
Back around 1998-2002, I was working in a place that gave us IBM laptops. The acid from my skin wore off the paint where I place my palms and all of those machines would pretty much stop working after a year or so. We'd each get new machines every year. I gave one to my mother, but even after reformatting the hard disk and starting over, it barely worked.
This lawsuit was nuts. If they just went for a high defect rate rather than an obscure conspiracy theory about planned obsolescence it might have gone somewhere.
Involving child labour as an ad hominem red herring is nothing more than trying to strong arm the company into settlement.
I firmly believe something should be done about these laptops, but this case had a thick coat crazy all over it.
Correct in every respect.
And one of the two plaintiffs had his replaced by Apple under warranty????
That's priceless.
Absolutely. He sued a company for doing the right thing?
I also have this laptop. When it failed after 3 years and was out of warranty, I took it to my Apple Store and asked for Apple's flat rate repair program. For only $299 Apple will replace anything in the laptop that is not working to spec. They replaced the entire screen, the video board, the mother board, the expansion card cage, and even the RAM memory. It is an amazing deal that made my MacBook Pro 17" 2011 essentially brand new. You get a new 90 day warranty. My MacBook has been working fantastically since then.
I recommend Apple's flat rate repair program. It is an absolute bargain.
I've used it also on my MacBook Pro 17" 2008. And it too has been going on strongly since.
That flat rate program is good to know. Back in the day, my son-in-law had bought a G5 tower, but the power supply kept failing. Apple repaired it several times under warranty and after the third time, he told them that if it failed again, he wanted a new machine. It did fail again, but by that time, his model was no longer being sold. Apple gave him a brand new machine of the latest model at no charge.
About ten years ago, a toddler reached over and pulled back the screen on my daughter's laptop and broke the hinges on the screen. Apple said the price to fix it was practically the price of a new laptop. The machine worked, but they had to put something behind it to support the screen. But then the video failed. So she brought it to Apple to have just the video fixed, which she was willing to pay for, but Apple repaired the entire computer, including the broken hinges and video at no charge whatsoever.
Apple's become so big that they probably wouldn't provide that level of customer service today, but those two incidences really confirmed for me how great a company Apple was at the time.
M
The plaintiff could not have charge fraud since his or her laptop was still under warranty at 18 months.
Interestingly, most car warranties last only 3 years. Then you are on your own. You have to pay for everything wrong that wears out. And cars cost a heck more than computers.
----
I was under the impression that most car warranties today are five years or 100,000 miles, whichever comes first. Decent cars today don't require the first tuneup for 100K miles. Aside from the battery, tires and break linings, I can't remember the last time a car of mine needed a non-covered repair, except that my 11-year-old Honda does apparently need lower control arms. But you know what? I'm actually pissed about that. I only have 70,000 miles on that car - they should have lasted longer.
I do expect perfection from my computer hardware, especially now that computers have no moving parts except for the fans. It's not like a $79 Blu-ray player that's not that big a deal to toss if fails after two years - a decent Mac laptop still costs $2500. If Apple maintains that it produces machines with such high quality, at the very least, they should expand the base warranty to two years. Three would be even better. AppleCare can kick in after that. Back in the late '90s, Acura had so few claims under its warranty program that they gave everyone an extra year at no charge. That confidence certainly builds customer loyalty.
My daughters early 2011 MBP with i7 and AMD 6750M only works if it never goes to sleep, usually. This model is the worst Mac we've ever purchased and there's no way to fix it. A replacement board might work or might not. Am I upset, yes. What can I do now? Probably nothing. The MBP lasted 3 years and a few months, not a great result for Apple products that usually last for a lot longer than this.
I have this exact same model and have had no problems at all with it and it still runs flawlessly. Admittedly I have upgraded the RAM and HDD but I run multiple clients for a game I play and it handles it pretty well given the needs of the game.
Actually in Texas that is the law. If you file the suit and lose, you have to pay both parties' legal bills.
Our last issue with a Mac was the iBook G3. My daughter's iBook failed at least four or five times. One time in the Apple shop for well over a month. The last time the logic board failed, they told us it was out of warranty. I mentioned the endless repairs and sitting in the shop and they gave us a new one.
I felt my iPhone a couple of years ago wasn't performing well and they gave me a new one, no questions asked.
We had a MacBook with a logic board was faulty and known by Apple, but computer was out of warranty. Apple fixed it. No problem at all.
Anyway, they have, in the past, been pretty generous, to a level that even I thought was excessive, however, no complaints.
As someone has said, the flat rate program is pretty good. The price is reasonable and Apple is pretty insane about getting the computer back to new. When that one MacBook failed, they sent it in for repair for free AND gave us a new keyboard and top panel, so the baby looked like new.
Typing this on a 6 year old MacBook Pro...looks like new.
I also have this laptop. When it failed after 3 years and was out of warranty, I took it to my Apple Store and asked for Apple's flat rate repair program. For only $299 Apple will replace anything in the laptop that is not working to spec. They replaced the entire screen, the video board, the mother board, the expansion card cage, and even the RAM memory. It is an amazing deal that made my MacBook Pro 17" 2011 essentially brand new. You get a new 90 day warranty. My MacBook has been working fantastically since then.
I recommend Apple's flat rate repair program. It is an absolute bargain.
I've used it also on my MacBook Pro 17" 2008. And it too has been going on strongly since.
This is actually really awesome to learn and I'm going to bookmark this post so I remember it.
That pretty much right there seals the deal that my next computer will be a Mac when my current Wintel finally bites the dust, since I was already on the fence.
Leave the platform if you’re that upset. Why would you not? I won’t ever buy Firestone tires again because of something that happened over thirty years ago. You could give me a set of Firestone tires and I would hand them back to you.
Do the right thing and buy a Dell with Windows 8.1. Bid Apple farewell.
Not the original poster but...
I am an Apple investor and a long time Apple owner and I have this problem as well. The unit is still usable but going downhill (graphics hickups). I have bought three macbook pro's in a row and this one ($2300) will probably be my last. I can take a $800 dell breaking after three years but not a $2300 Apple. First of all, the Dell would actually be fixable for a lot less, second Apple has never made a 'proper' replacement board. The replacement boards all have the problem of the original.
So my replacement will probably be a Dell unit, with either Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 with a third party GUI fix. A shame. Apple is still a stock buy due to the iPhone and IOS but quite disappointed by the OSX hardware now.
So my replacement will probably be a Dell unit, with either Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 with a third party GUI fix. A shame. Apple is still a stock buy due to the iPhone and IOS but quite disappointed by the OSX hardware now.
Maybe a shame for you. Nobody else cares. Tired of listening to the bitching.
Also reviews and the support boards are anecdotal info. Sure it shows folks are having AN issue but in no way confirm what the issue is.
So I have to side with the Judge that this suit wasn't properly formed
Maybe a shame for you. Nobody else cares. Tired of listening to the bitching.
Well Ikrupp, I've bought an MacBookPro 15" SSD etc. for roughly 4,000 US$ here in Asia and worked with it for 1 1/2 years when the screen started to get crazy. Went to the supplier but got the feedback: Sorry out of warranty and we know about the problem from many other people. You state "bitching". I'm not bitching on Apple at all but being told to throw out 4,000 bucks through the window really pissed me off.
I'm not the only one who experienced this problem there are about 25,000++ people out there. Personally I'd expect that a company like Apple should do something about this but as we all know now this didn't happen yet. No offer on a free replacement etc. I've exchanged my MBP with a Vaio 13 Pro, costs for the new one was exactly the price of a mainboard MBP replacement. I won't buy any Apple products anymore. Because I'm really pissed off.
Hmm.. I have mixed feelings about this one. Being an owner bit me on this one, I even emailed Steve Jobs telling him that sometimes even Apple Engineers can be wrong. His quick response was "Sometimes they can be right."
Sorry Steve. (Though I adore the yacht. REALLY adore it.)
Blame NVIDIA I say!
Where were you when I was crying to Apple. I can say Apple has changed everything for me, and I am both humbled and in adoration of said company. Mibad.