Happened to mine a couple of months ago. No warning, just got the lines across the screen and then nothing.
Because I purchased it from the Apple online store they told me EU law meant that were still liable for any hardware failures (up to six years). I wasn't going to argue. New £450 motherboard fitted in a couple of hours (on a Sunday) at Cambridge Apple store. It cost me nothing.
Other issues aside, I don't know if that's fair. If Apple takes the position that the warranty is expired so the owner is SOL, there's not much one can do "man to man." A machine that costs as much as a MacBook Pro that is promoted as a high-quality alternative to unreliable dreck should be expected to live longer than 3 years. If it doesn't, and Apple refuses to do anything about it, what can an individual do? Joining with others to negotiate from a position of "strength in numbers" is a reasonable response.
True, but Apple service is often not a "reasonable party." A few years ago Apple's service policy resulted in my having to pull a Mac Pro from service and haul it in to a Genius Bar to "diagnose" an obviously failed optical drive. It was that or ship it to a service center. I complained bitterly to no avail. I insisted that we could perform any necessary diagnostics required to eliminate other causes over the phone, and I could certainly manage the four screws and one ribbon cable involved in replacing it. Nope. Haul it in.
So I did. When they eventually came to the obvious conclusion that the drive had failed, they told me they didn't have one in stock and that I'd either have to leave it with them or haul the machine back into the store AGAIN in seven-to-ten days. Calm, reasoned discussion of alternatives got me nowhere, so I tried yelling. That worked. A week later I received a new drive.
Rational solution finding only works if both parties are willing to play along. Because Apple is a really big company and they have a quality reputation to protect, they have policies that allow them to control the service experience and minimize callbacks. That's usually a good thing, but there will always be some issues that are better resolved in ways the policy wasn't designed to address. If the party on the other side of the counter is the type who won't deviate from the printed playbook, sometimes yelling is the only way to get the attention of someone who will.
Sadly, I think you are right for the majority of cases. I've had very good success appealing to the high road and the higher-ups in companies. If you are polite but firm and escalate up the chain chances are that you'll get more action than taking the word of the front line support people as the last word and then taking it to crowd sourcing. But that's just me and I don't have a 2011 MBP that's ailing. I'll still stick to my guns and say that Apple is not ignoring this issue. If 2011 products are failing in numbers that don't make sense based on the reliability estimates that were established for the product at launch, Apple has to be all over this. They have a reputation and customer commitment to uphold. If they lose that they are in serious trouble.
I completely agree with the assertion that the length of the warranty in no way represents the useful life of the product. Electronic products typically exhibit a bathtub curve failure rate, either failing very early (infant mortality) or very late in their lifecycle unless subjected to some damaging influence like excessive shock or heat. If the 2011 products are deviating from this expected failure profile some sort of corrective action is probably required to p[reserve Apple's position with its customers. Even the government depreciation schedule for IT assets like computers is 5 years, so there is at some level an expectation that the payback or recovery period for these products is at least 5 years. To me this would be a "fair" argument for consumers to use. Of course you'd also have to depreciate the value of the computer over this time frame.
Lastly, it's not always reasonable to assume that the more you pay for a product the longer it should last. In fact it's hard to find any product advertised as lasting longer based on initial selling price. I'd bet there are not a large number of owners of exotic sports cars that are raving about the low maintenance costs and amazing reliability of their expensive cars. As consumers we want and expect high price to equate with high reliability, but unless the manufacturer is backing this with solid guarantees you are probably going to be disappointed.
My MBP 2011 crashed 4 times in six months, all out of warranty. First time I ~$300 for a new motherboard and HD. I didn't think there was anything wrong with the HD, so several days after they sent it off, I asked if they could have the HD sent back. They were able to do it, so that saved all my data.
The second and third times, I swapped out the HD before they sent it off.
The fourth time I told them they had striked out and I didn't want a 2011 repair or replacement.
The Genius said to let him confer with his boss. After about 15 minutes he appeared with a box under his arm. "'Here, he said, this is "yours".
It was a brand new MBP, top of the line, with 1 TB SSD, 16 GB memory, and fastest I7, retina screen. They said they would transfer the data from my old HD to the new one.
The new computer starts up in 9 seconds.
The only problem is they didn't transfer the Windows partition, so I lost that.
Apple are deleting every post I make on the support forum, informing people that there is a petition on change.org. I have got a screengrab of my last post which was deleted 30 seconds after posting which I can share if people want. It just shows how desperate apple are to keep people in the dark about a solution to this ridiculous problem. All they are doing is pushing their otherwise loyal customers away. This is the first and now last apple product I will buy.
A high-end macbook pro is dead by design: it cannot properly dissipate its heat, so components are bound to die early, and because everything is soldered onto the logic board, a prohibitely expensive logic board swap, which is not economically feasible. So, these machines are dead by the time applecare expires...
Sadly, I think you are right for the majority of cases. I've had very good success appealing to the high road and the higher-ups in companies. If you are polite but firm and escalate up the chain chances are that you'll get more action than taking the word of the front line support people as the last word and then taking it to crowd sourcing.
Escalating upward is completely academical with Apple. I am currently battling an Apple Authorised Reseller who offered to replace the logic board in my MacBook Pro for EU700. The replacement didn't even last 1.5 years, and I suspect the logic board got a reflow instead of a replacement. Apple Benelux does not even answer my letters, and the one and only contact I have with Apple Europe refuses to address my complaints, and insists I send a letter to Apple Benelux, instead. So far for escalating upward. There is a Apple Authorised Reseller who better start digging trenches right now...
A high-end macbook pro is dead by design: it cannot properly dissipate its heat, so components are bound to die early
The Macbook Pro can dissipate heat just fine now. It can cool down from burning hot to cool to touch within seconds of the heavy processing finishing. The Iris Pro model will make up the bulk of sales now and they'll be fine.
I have got a screengrab of my last post which was deleted 30 seconds after posting which I can share if people want. This is the first and now last apple product I will buy.
If you actually had it, you’d post it. Thanks for the FUD in your first (and only) post.
Apple are deleting every post I make on the support forum, informing people that there is a petition on change.org. I have got a screengrab of my last post which was deleted 30 seconds after posting which I can share if people want. It just shows how desperate apple are to keep people in the dark about a solution to this ridiculous problem. All they are doing is pushing their otherwise loyal customers away. This is the first and now last apple product I will buy.
Are you sure the posts are deleted for some other reason? Been awhile since I read the rules over there - but could be you simply violated some established guideline/policy relating to cross linking or "promoting" another website. Might be no need for the tin foil hat on this one.
forgive me for forgetting theres no trust on the internet. Here is the screen grab from last night.http://[IMG]http://i61.tinypic.com/9pmc0o.jpg[/IMG] if you find it on the forum let me know, but i cant see it anywhere and it was the third one that was deleted. I'm not sure of the rules either in fairness but i have seen other people linking to outside sources, like this thread for example. If you still dont believe me, try posting about the change.org petition yourself and see if that gets deleted too, I have a feeling it will.
Are you sure the posts are deleted for some other reason? Been awhile since I read the rules over there - but could be you simply violated some established guideline/policy relating to cross linking or "promoting" another website. Might be no need for the tin foil hat on this one.
His hypothesis can be tested. We simply go over and input the details into their forum search that he says are the reasons it's being deleted...
Based on the available data I'd say the change.org link was probably the reason, especially after 30 seconds which was more likely an automated filter.
and now my account has been disabled [IMG]http://i60.tinypic.com/op4pza.jpg[/IMG] perhaps i have broken their rules but i think its going a bit far now. I don't want to bash apple, i still think osx is and always will be far superior to windows, but I cant help but feel like they dont care about their customers at all and cant or wont take any criticism whether its true or not. I'm not being unreasonable am i? there are so many people having this problem with their early 2011 macbook pro 15" models it defies logic that they can be considered to be taking this seriously. sorry for ranting, im just quite annoyed about the whole thing.
The Macbook Pro can dissipate heat just fine now. It can cool down from burning hot to cool to touch within seconds of the heavy processing finishing. The Iris Pro model will make up the bulk of sales now and they'll be fine.
I'd like to hear if anybody on this topic has experienced the issue described in the article. Also describe what symptoms their computers are having.
I happen to have a 2011 15'' Mac Book Pro purchased in June of that year and in the last 3 months while watching YouTube Videos the computer will completely freeze, drop internet connection (either through WiFi or connected to ethernet) and not let you close any programs. I'm now concerned.
I'd like to hear if anybody on this topic has experienced the issue described in the article. Also describe what symptoms their computers are having.
I happen to have a 2011 15'' Mac Book Pro purchased in June of that year and in the last 3 months while watching YouTube Videos the computer will completely freeze, drop internet connection (either through WiFi or connected to ethernet) and not let you close any programs. I'm now concerned.
So, how come it becomes burning hot?
What happens if the heavy processing continues?
It's hot to touch but well within acceptable operating temperatures. Like a kettle boils water and gets hot but it's not defective.
The newer Macbook Pro will maintain the components within acceptable temperatures under heavy load. They stay under about 80 degrees celsius. Maximum acceptable temperatures are up around 95 or something like that. The AMD GPUs used to get very hot and they'd stay hot:
The Iris Pro model MBP doesn't have a dedicated GPU and while it will also get up to ~80 degrees, it won't fail the way the AMD models did. There's always a chance that 2012/2013/2014 NVidia ones could fail but they don't stay hot and temperatures under heavy load are only slightly above the Iris Pro ones.
A high-end macbook pro is dead by design: it cannot properly dissipate its heat, so components are bound to die early, and because everything is soldered onto the logic board, a prohibitely expensive logic board swap, which is not economically feasible. So, these machines are dead by the time applecare expires...
The issue most people including me are having, is that the dedicated graphics chip, in my case radeon 6750m is getting too hot and the solder that joins it to the motherboard deforms, even cracks and causes errors or crashes. Mostly involving graphical errors visible on the screen accompanied by beeping untill you force it to shut down by holding the power button. The problem happens only a few times at first but progressively gets worse until its crashing daily or not working at all. The only solution so far is reballing the graphics chip, preferably a new one, which is quite expensive. I have also had a few slowdown incidents recently that may be similar to yours (syvjeff) so im not sure if its related as mine has only done it a few times. apparantly the thermal paste is applied in a bad way on these models as well and changing that can slow the process but not solve it. I would consider a replacement unless you want to join the rest of us in paying apple to replace faulty logic boards with a different faulty logic board.
Comments
Happened to mine a couple of months ago. No warning, just got the lines across the screen and then nothing.
Because I purchased it from the Apple online store they told me EU law meant that were still liable for any hardware failures (up to six years). I wasn't going to argue. New £450 motherboard fitted in a couple of hours (on a Sunday) at Cambridge Apple store. It cost me nothing.
Other issues aside, I don't know if that's fair. If Apple takes the position that the warranty is expired so the owner is SOL, there's not much one can do "man to man." A machine that costs as much as a MacBook Pro that is promoted as a high-quality alternative to unreliable dreck should be expected to live longer than 3 years. If it doesn't, and Apple refuses to do anything about it, what can an individual do? Joining with others to negotiate from a position of "strength in numbers" is a reasonable response.
True, but Apple service is often not a "reasonable party." A few years ago Apple's service policy resulted in my having to pull a Mac Pro from service and haul it in to a Genius Bar to "diagnose" an obviously failed optical drive. It was that or ship it to a service center. I complained bitterly to no avail. I insisted that we could perform any necessary diagnostics required to eliminate other causes over the phone, and I could certainly manage the four screws and one ribbon cable involved in replacing it. Nope. Haul it in.
So I did. When they eventually came to the obvious conclusion that the drive had failed, they told me they didn't have one in stock and that I'd either have to leave it with them or haul the machine back into the store AGAIN in seven-to-ten days. Calm, reasoned discussion of alternatives got me nowhere, so I tried yelling. That worked. A week later I received a new drive.
Rational solution finding only works if both parties are willing to play along. Because Apple is a really big company and they have a quality reputation to protect, they have policies that allow them to control the service experience and minimize callbacks. That's usually a good thing, but there will always be some issues that are better resolved in ways the policy wasn't designed to address. If the party on the other side of the counter is the type who won't deviate from the printed playbook, sometimes yelling is the only way to get the attention of someone who will.
Sadly, I think you are right for the majority of cases. I've had very good success appealing to the high road and the higher-ups in companies. If you are polite but firm and escalate up the chain chances are that you'll get more action than taking the word of the front line support people as the last word and then taking it to crowd sourcing. But that's just me and I don't have a 2011 MBP that's ailing. I'll still stick to my guns and say that Apple is not ignoring this issue. If 2011 products are failing in numbers that don't make sense based on the reliability estimates that were established for the product at launch, Apple has to be all over this. They have a reputation and customer commitment to uphold. If they lose that they are in serious trouble.
I completely agree with the assertion that the length of the warranty in no way represents the useful life of the product. Electronic products typically exhibit a bathtub curve failure rate, either failing very early (infant mortality) or very late in their lifecycle unless subjected to some damaging influence like excessive shock or heat. If the 2011 products are deviating from this expected failure profile some sort of corrective action is probably required to p[reserve Apple's position with its customers. Even the government depreciation schedule for IT assets like computers is 5 years, so there is at some level an expectation that the payback or recovery period for these products is at least 5 years. To me this would be a "fair" argument for consumers to use. Of course you'd also have to depreciate the value of the computer over this time frame.
Lastly, it's not always reasonable to assume that the more you pay for a product the longer it should last. In fact it's hard to find any product advertised as lasting longer based on initial selling price. I'd bet there are not a large number of owners of exotic sports cars that are raving about the low maintenance costs and amazing reliability of their expensive cars. As consumers we want and expect high price to equate with high reliability, but unless the manufacturer is backing this with solid guarantees you are probably going to be disappointed.
First time I ~$300 for a new motherboard and HD. I didn't think there was anything wrong with the HD, so several days after they sent it off, I asked if they could have the HD sent back. They were able to do it, so that saved all my data.
The second and third times, I swapped out the HD before they sent it off.
The fourth time I told them they had striked out and I didn't want a 2011 repair or replacement.
The Genius said to let him confer with his boss. After about 15 minutes he appeared with a box under his arm. "'Here, he said, this is "yours".
It was a brand new MBP, top of the line, with 1 TB SSD, 16 GB memory, and fastest I7, retina screen. They said they would transfer the data from my old HD to the new one.
The new computer starts up in 9 seconds.
The only problem is they didn't transfer the Windows partition, so I lost that.
Happy anyway.
Apple are deleting every post I make on the support forum, informing people that there is a petition on change.org. I have got a screengrab of my last post which was deleted 30 seconds after posting which I can share if people want. It just shows how desperate apple are to keep people in the dark about a solution to this ridiculous problem. All they are doing is pushing their otherwise loyal customers away. This is the first and now last apple product I will buy.
Sadly, I think you are right for the majority of cases. I've had very good success appealing to the high road and the higher-ups in companies. If you are polite but firm and escalate up the chain chances are that you'll get more action than taking the word of the front line support people as the last word and then taking it to crowd sourcing.
Escalating upward is completely academical with Apple. I am currently battling an Apple Authorised Reseller who offered to replace the logic board in my MacBook Pro for EU700. The replacement didn't even last 1.5 years, and I suspect the logic board got a reflow instead of a replacement. Apple Benelux does not even answer my letters, and the one and only contact I have with Apple Europe refuses to address my complaints, and insists I send a letter to Apple Benelux, instead. So far for escalating upward. There is a Apple Authorised Reseller who better start digging trenches right now...
This was before the Retina model, which is thinner and cooler. The Retina model even has 2 fans and additional cooling vents.
The Macbook Pro can dissipate heat just fine now. It can cool down from burning hot to cool to touch within seconds of the heavy processing finishing. The Iris Pro model will make up the bulk of sales now and they'll be fine.
If you actually had it, you’d post it. Thanks for the FUD in your first (and only) post.
Apple are deleting every post I make on the support forum, informing people that there is a petition on change.org. I have got a screengrab of my last post which was deleted 30 seconds after posting which I can share if people want. It just shows how desperate apple are to keep people in the dark about a solution to this ridiculous problem. All they are doing is pushing their otherwise loyal customers away. This is the first and now last apple product I will buy.
Are you sure the posts are deleted for some other reason? Been awhile since I read the rules over there - but could be you simply violated some established guideline/policy relating to cross linking or "promoting" another website. Might be no need for the tin foil hat on this one.
forgive me for forgetting theres no trust on the internet. Here is the screen grab from last night.http://[IMG]http://i61.tinypic.com/9pmc0o.jpg[/IMG] if you find it on the forum let me know, but i cant see it anywhere and it was the third one that was deleted. I'm not sure of the rules either in fairness but i have seen other people linking to outside sources, like this thread for example. If you still dont believe me, try posting about the change.org petition yourself and see if that gets deleted too, I have a feeling it will.
His hypothesis can be tested. We simply go over and input the details into their forum search that he says are the reasons it's being deleted...
Based on the available data I'd say the change.org link was probably the reason, especially after 30 seconds which was more likely an automated filter.
and now my account has been disabled [IMG]http://i60.tinypic.com/op4pza.jpg[/IMG] perhaps i have broken their rules but i think its going a bit far now. I don't want to bash apple, i still think osx is and always will be far superior to windows, but I cant help but feel like they dont care about their customers at all and cant or wont take any criticism whether its true or not. I'm not being unreasonable am i? there are so many people having this problem with their early 2011 macbook pro 15" models it defies logic that they can be considered to be taking this seriously. sorry for ranting, im just quite annoyed about the whole thing.
The Macbook Pro can dissipate heat just fine now. It can cool down from burning hot to cool to touch within seconds of the heavy processing finishing. The Iris Pro model will make up the bulk of sales now and they'll be fine.
So, how come it becomes burning hot?
What happens if the heavy processing continues?
I happen to have a 2011 15'' Mac Book Pro purchased in June of that year and in the last 3 months while watching YouTube Videos the computer will completely freeze, drop internet connection (either through WiFi or connected to ethernet) and not let you close any programs. I'm now concerned.
I happen to have a 2011 15'' Mac Book Pro purchased in June of that year and in the last 3 months while watching YouTube Videos the computer will completely freeze, drop internet connection (either through WiFi or connected to ethernet) and not let you close any programs. I'm now concerned.
It's hot to touch but well within acceptable operating temperatures. Like a kettle boils water and gets hot but it's not defective.
The newer Macbook Pro will maintain the components within acceptable temperatures under heavy load. They stay under about 80 degrees celsius. Maximum acceptable temperatures are up around 95 or something like that. The AMD GPUs used to get very hot and they'd stay hot:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1195185
http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/49876/macbook-pro-gpu-diode-over-100-degrees-celsius-hot
The Iris Pro model MBP doesn't have a dedicated GPU and while it will also get up to ~80 degrees, it won't fail the way the AMD models did. There's always a chance that 2012/2013/2014 NVidia ones could fail but they don't stay hot and temperatures under heavy load are only slightly above the Iris Pro ones.
So it's acceptable to you that a $2000+ computer go bad after 3 years?
Then that's not well designed.
The issue most people including me are having, is that the dedicated graphics chip, in my case radeon 6750m is getting too hot and the solder that joins it to the motherboard deforms, even cracks and causes errors or crashes. Mostly involving graphical errors visible on the screen accompanied by beeping untill you force it to shut down by holding the power button. The problem happens only a few times at first but progressively gets worse until its crashing daily or not working at all. The only solution so far is reballing the graphics chip, preferably a new one, which is quite expensive. I have also had a few slowdown incidents recently that may be similar to yours (syvjeff) so im not sure if its related as mine has only done it a few times. apparantly the thermal paste is applied in a bad way on these models as well and changing that can slow the process but not solve it. I would consider a replacement unless you want to join the rest of us in paying apple to replace faulty logic boards with a different faulty logic board.
for some reason this didnt post earlier [IMG]http://i61.tinypic.com/9pmc0o.jpg[/IMG] i said i would share if anyone asked.