They're repairing them now, like I've been saying they would be once the logistics and issues with the parts suppliers on the backend got worked out.
If that was the case they'd never let it go that far. That is a very costly disaster for Apple and the only reason they're dealing with that now is that they've figured out that they'll lose big time in court which will cost even more...
They could go a step further (if they aren't already going to) and refund any money that users paid either to Apple or to a 3rd-party to repair the affected MacBooks.
They are, AppleInsider just forgot to mention that important fact:
Quote:
Additional Information
Apple is contacting customers who paid for a repair either though Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider to arrange reimbursement. If you have not been contacted, but paid for a repair that you think was due to this issue, please contact Apple.
This worldwide Apple program does not extend the standard warranty coverage of the MacBook Pro.
The program covers affected MacBook Pro models until February 27, 2016 or three years from its original date of sale, whichever provides longer coverage for you.
If that was the case they'd never let it go that far. That is a very costly disaster for Apple and the only reason they're dealing with that now is that they've figured out that they'll lose big time in court which will cost even more...
While what you say is a distinct possibility, it's also possible that it took them this long to settle on terms of reimbursement with the supplier of the defective components so that they wouldn't be forced to eat the cost, or it took this long to discover a way to supply parts without the problem re-occuring.
Don't let your emotions for having gone thru this cloud rational discourse. In all likelihood we'll never learn the true reason why this took so long, and whether it was because of the lawsuit, or because of technical complications. Point is, it's now here, they are repairing them, and reimbursing those who had to pay out-of-pocket.
I'm just curious what the fix will look like, are they continuing replacing bad boards with bad boards or have they reworked all of them?
They wouldn't have started this program unless that engineering hurdle was overcome. Remember the button issues with iPhone 4's? They changed the design and it was better with the replaced parts.
So when are they going to go back to leaded solder? How many generations of MacBook have this problem now, total?? Mine was a 3,1. There have been endless models since then with these problems.
It's kind of obvious now that the MacBooks have too many temperature extremes for the unleaded solder. The end result is more waste. Solder can still use lead when the application requires it, and this is clearly a case of requiring it.
Hi there!!
I'm from Apple. And we want to hire you as our engineering lead. We're absolutely clueless idiots about these kinds of things.
While what you say is a distinct possibility, it's also possible that it took them this long to settle on terms of reimbursement with the supplier of the defective components so that they wouldn't be forced to eat the cost, or it took this long to discover a way to supply parts without the problem re-occuring.
It is a known fact that the affected GPUs are not defective. The two most likely causes are:
1) design defect
2) manufacturing problems
In case of 1) Apple will have to pay for it anyway and in case of 2) they'd have to talk to Pegatron/Foxconn or whoever produced the boards but in any the costs are much higher than anything than they'll potentially get reimbursed from any party they could blame for this since this is a PR disaster, it cost loyal customers, there was plenty of superfluous handling (board replacements, part shipments, labor) involved, there're running lawsuits that will require settlement...
There would have been many much better alternatives to handling this even if your speculation above was true. Heck, with those margins on Apple products they could have even made a nice profit out of this situation (the one that people would call a win-win) but they decided to swipe it under the rug.
I'm really curious how they will handle the reimbursements (I guess I will not see anything for expenses, wasted labor, reduced efficiency, gas...) and make sure that my MBP doesn't fail again with the now fourth logic board. Oh and it seems that it did cost a few Apple people their job, too: Shortly after my board failed again which was handled "free of charge" by an Apple rep, the machine of a colleague of mine was also failing and I tried to call and email him up -> number disconnected, email bounced.
I've got a mid-2012 MBPr 15 that isn't exhibiting any of these problems. However, I think I'm going to apply a little preventive grease and get it "fixed" nonetheless. Though, I must say that I'm a bit leery of having the work done in-store.
The 2012 models haven't been suffering from widespread problems so far. They won't do anything to it if it's not broken. The Apple page specifically says not to contact Apple if you aren't experiencing problems. There's someone here with an unexpected reboot issue related to graphics on the 2012 model:
I'm just curious what the fix will look like, are they continuing replacing bad boards with bad boards or have they reworked all of them?
AMD don't make the chips any more so they'll have to do some reworking. I would guess they'll just keep doing what they've been doing so far, which is recycling the existing motherboards except now they won't charge for it and will reimburse past repairs.
We still don't (and likely won't ever) know how many people were affected by the problems. It could be anywhere from 100 to 3 million.
This shouldn't be as much of a recurring problem going forward because they have pushed dedicated GPUs to higher and higher price points. I'm sure that when Skylake arrives later this year it should have roughly the same performance as an NVidia 850M and can displace every dGPU in the laptop line and all but the top two 27" iMac models.
They wouldn't have started this program unless that engineering hurdle was overcome. Remember the button issues with iPhone 4's? They changed the design and it was better with the replaced parts.
I'm very sure that they're not going to redesign the old logic boards to address this problem. There're exactly two ways to address this particular problem:
1) replace the boards as they did before and hope for the best
2) rework all boards before replacing them
My hopes are on 2), my money would be on 1); only difference to before is that they're not charging customers ridiculous prices for the swap.
Money, and Marketing. It's Money, because the longer they wait, the more replacements they sell, and the less likely customers are to bother getting them repaired. It's Marketing, because the longer the wait, the less relevant a story it is. At this point nobody really cares whether Apple's 2011 machines were reliable or not. This all played out as expected. If the issue didn't affect the most expensive component (logic board replacement) most expensive portables (17" MB P), the program would have come earlier. Judging by the thousands of posts on Apple's Support Forums, It's not like Apple Engineering has suddenly realized there was a problem last week. It's Money, and it's PR.
AMD don't make the chips any more so they'll have to do some reworking. I would guess they'll just keep doing what they've been doing so far, which is recycling the existing motherboards except now they won't charge for it and will reimburse past repairs.
The smart thing would be to have some balling machines at the depots where they do the refurbishments, unsolder all GPUs, re-ball and reflow. With the right equipment that would only take minutes per board and be very effective.
So when are they going to go back to leaded solder? How many generations of MacBook have this problem now, total?? Mine was a 3,1. There have been endless models since then with these problems.
It's kind of obvious now that the MacBooks have too many temperature extremes for the unleaded solder. The end result is more waste. Solder can still use lead when the application requires it, and this is clearly a case of requiring it.
High-powered GPUs really need ample cooling, which pretty hard to achieve in the confines of an ultrathin laptop. Further, macbooks are known for being quite conservative with fan speeds presumably to minimize noise. Maybe something like smcFanControl would help improve reliability.
Since heat is the worst enemy of electronics aside from water, low-voltage CPUs and integrated graphics are the way to go if you want maximum reliability in a laptop.
I guess I was very lucky Apple agreed to replace my MacBook Pro 15-inch, mid 2010 i7's mother board due to its NVIDIA GeForce GT 330 failure. The sooner Apple take GPU development in house the better.
Apple are hopefully extracting the financial guts of NVIDEA and repaying all those who had to pay for repairs.
Quite a bit of discussion about lead solder. Was there proof that lead-free solder was the root cause of these failures? I thought it had to do with something about the GPU overheating or something similar.
So do you still have a Mac or any other Apple products? If so, why?
iPhone: 6+ was 1st iPhone that is useful as a phone. It's the best mobile platform out there. I don't carry it in my back pocket.
Mac mini server 2012: bought this just before apple screwed up the design (it was the replacement for the dead MBP). My job requires that I use a Mac to develop software.
Why would you continue to do business with the company if you feel that way? I really don’t understand you people sometimes. Do you like being Apple’s victim?
Huh? Feel what way?
That I bought a lemon from a company I trust, and they profoundly let me down?
That I feel they owe "something" for the nine visits to their "geniuses" (I use the term loosely here) over the course of three years that mostly resulted in finger pointing on their part at, me, the customer?
("You'll need to reinstall the OS". "We're willing to replace the motherboard a second time, but for $350 instead of free because the computer is out of warranty, and you didn't buy AppleCare")
Not to mention three years of really poor productivity due to crashes, hangs, power offs, etc.
I've owned enough Apple products to realize that this poor quality user experience was atypical for a Mac Book Pro costing $2600.
My naivety was in assuming they would own up and do something about it.
Granted, this was during the 10.7/10.8 crappy OS quality period when they stopped doing real quality control on their software releases and just pushed out something shiny to placate the shareholders and tech media (observation: the MacOS was a lot better when you had to pay for it)
The problems were less evident on 10.6.
10.9 killed it dead. At that point they had to admit a defect.
The whole experience felt like going to radio shack. Contrast this with an iPhone 3GS that also "ran hot", shut down, sucked as a phone (inaudible voice quality, crap battery life) and was also out of warranty without AppleCare.
It was replaced with a new phone for free on the 3rd visit when it was revealed that this unit was part of a defective manufacturing run.
Comments
They're repairing them now, like I've been saying they would be once the logistics and issues with the parts suppliers on the backend got worked out.
If that was the case they'd never let it go that far. That is a very costly disaster for Apple and the only reason they're dealing with that now is that they've figured out that they'll lose big time in court which will cost even more...
They could go a step further (if they aren't already going to) and refund any money that users paid either to Apple or to a 3rd-party to repair the affected MacBooks.
They are, AppleInsider just forgot to mention that important fact:
Quote:
Additional Information
Apple is contacting customers who paid for a repair either though Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider to arrange reimbursement. If you have not been contacted, but paid for a repair that you think was due to this issue, please contact Apple.
This worldwide Apple program does not extend the standard warranty coverage of the MacBook Pro.
The program covers affected MacBook Pro models until February 27, 2016 or three years from its original date of sale, whichever provides longer coverage for you.
I'm just curious what the fix will look like, are they continuing replacing bad boards with bad boards or have they reworked all of them?
Don't let your emotions for having gone thru this cloud rational discourse. In all likelihood we'll never learn the true reason why this took so long, and whether it was because of the lawsuit, or because of technical complications. Point is, it's now here, they are repairing them, and reimbursing those who had to pay out-of-pocket.
…And the church bells rang throughout the land!!
So when are they going to go back to leaded solder? How many generations of MacBook have this problem now, total?? Mine was a 3,1. There have been endless models since then with these problems.
It's kind of obvious now that the MacBooks have too many temperature extremes for the unleaded solder. The end result is more waste. Solder can still use lead when the application requires it, and this is clearly a case of requiring it.
Hi there!!
I'm from Apple. And we want to hire you as our engineering lead. We're absolutely clueless idiots about these kinds of things.
How much would you like us to pay you?
While what you say is a distinct possibility, it's also possible that it took them this long to settle on terms of reimbursement with the supplier of the defective components so that they wouldn't be forced to eat the cost, or it took this long to discover a way to supply parts without the problem re-occuring.
It is a known fact that the affected GPUs are not defective. The two most likely causes are:
1) design defect
2) manufacturing problems
In case of 1) Apple will have to pay for it anyway and in case of 2) they'd have to talk to Pegatron/Foxconn or whoever produced the boards but in any the costs are much higher than anything than they'll potentially get reimbursed from any party they could blame for this since this is a PR disaster, it cost loyal customers, there was plenty of superfluous handling (board replacements, part shipments, labor) involved, there're running lawsuits that will require settlement...
There would have been many much better alternatives to handling this even if your speculation above was true. Heck, with those margins on Apple products they could have even made a nice profit out of this situation (the one that people would call a win-win) but they decided to swipe it under the rug.
I'm really curious how they will handle the reimbursements (I guess I will not see anything for expenses, wasted labor, reduced efficiency, gas...) and make sure that my MBP doesn't fail again with the now fourth logic board. Oh and it seems that it did cost a few Apple people their job, too: Shortly after my board failed again which was handled "free of charge" by an Apple rep, the machine of a colleague of mine was also failing and I tried to call and email him up -> number disconnected, email bounced.
The 2012 models haven't been suffering from widespread problems so far. They won't do anything to it if it's not broken. The Apple page specifically says not to contact Apple if you aren't experiencing problems. There's someone here with an unexpected reboot issue related to graphics on the 2012 model:
[VIDEO]
Apple has a program for that:
http://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT203787
AMD don't make the chips any more so they'll have to do some reworking. I would guess they'll just keep doing what they've been doing so far, which is recycling the existing motherboards except now they won't charge for it and will reimburse past repairs.
We still don't (and likely won't ever) know how many people were affected by the problems. It could be anywhere from 100 to 3 million.
This shouldn't be as much of a recurring problem going forward because they have pushed dedicated GPUs to higher and higher price points. I'm sure that when Skylake arrives later this year it should have roughly the same performance as an NVidia 850M and can displace every dGPU in the laptop line and all but the top two 27" iMac models.
They wouldn't have started this program unless that engineering hurdle was overcome. Remember the button issues with iPhone 4's? They changed the design and it was better with the replaced parts.
I'm very sure that they're not going to redesign the old logic boards to address this problem. There're exactly two ways to address this particular problem:
1) replace the boards as they did before and hope for the best
2) rework all boards before replacing them
My hopes are on 2), my money would be on 1); only difference to before is that they're not charging customers ridiculous prices for the swap.
Why did they take so long to address this?
Money, and Marketing. It's Money, because the longer they wait, the more replacements they sell, and the less likely customers are to bother getting them repaired. It's Marketing, because the longer the wait, the less relevant a story it is. At this point nobody really cares whether Apple's 2011 machines were reliable or not. This all played out as expected. If the issue didn't affect the most expensive component (logic board replacement) most expensive portables (17" MB P), the program would have come earlier. Judging by the thousands of posts on Apple's Support Forums, It's not like Apple Engineering has suddenly realized there was a problem last week. It's Money, and it's PR.
AMD don't make the chips any more so they'll have to do some reworking. I would guess they'll just keep doing what they've been doing so far, which is recycling the existing motherboards except now they won't charge for it and will reimburse past repairs.
The smart thing would be to have some balling machines at the depots where they do the refurbishments, unsolder all GPUs, re-ball and reflow. With the right equipment that would only take minutes per board and be very effective.
How that's going to take some balls to do...
SMH that it took the threat of a class action lawsuit to make Apple capitulate on fixing such an obvious problem:
So when are they going to go back to leaded solder? How many generations of MacBook have this problem now, total?? Mine was a 3,1. There have been endless models since then with these problems.
It's kind of obvious now that the MacBooks have too many temperature extremes for the unleaded solder. The end result is more waste. Solder can still use lead when the application requires it, and this is clearly a case of requiring it.
High-powered GPUs really need ample cooling, which pretty hard to achieve in the confines of an ultrathin laptop. Further, macbooks are known for being quite conservative with fan speeds presumably to minimize noise. Maybe something like smcFanControl would help improve reliability.
Since heat is the worst enemy of electronics aside from water, low-voltage CPUs and integrated graphics are the way to go if you want maximum reliability in a laptop.
Apple are hopefully extracting the financial guts of NVIDEA and repaying all those who had to pay for repairs.
Quite a bit of discussion about lead solder. Was there proof that lead-free solder was the root cause of these failures? I thought it had to do with something about the GPU overheating or something similar.
Was the problem ever publicly disclosed?
Follow the link to Apple's page - they are contacting people who have already paid for repairs and offering refunds.
iPhone: 6+ was 1st iPhone that is useful as a phone. It's the best mobile platform out there. I don't carry it in my back pocket.
Mac mini server 2012: bought this just before apple screwed up the design (it was the replacement for the dead MBP). My job requires that I use a Mac to develop software.
Also, I don't want a Lenovo.
Huh? Feel what way?
That I bought a lemon from a company I trust, and they profoundly let me down?
That I feel they owe "something" for the nine visits to their "geniuses" (I use the term loosely here) over the course of three years that mostly resulted in finger pointing on their part at, me, the customer?
("You'll need to reinstall the OS". "We're willing to replace the motherboard a second time, but for $350 instead of free because the computer is out of warranty, and you didn't buy AppleCare")
Not to mention three years of really poor productivity due to crashes, hangs, power offs, etc.
I've owned enough Apple products to realize that this poor quality user experience was atypical for a Mac Book Pro costing $2600.
My naivety was in assuming they would own up and do something about it.
Granted, this was during the 10.7/10.8 crappy OS quality period when they stopped doing real quality control on their software releases and just pushed out something shiny to placate the shareholders and tech media (observation: the MacOS was a lot better when you had to pay for it)
The problems were less evident on 10.6.
10.9 killed it dead. At that point they had to admit a defect.
The whole experience felt like going to radio shack. Contrast this with an iPhone 3GS that also "ran hot", shut down, sucked as a phone (inaudible voice quality, crap battery life) and was also out of warranty without AppleCare.
It was replaced with a new phone for free on the 3rd visit when it was revealed that this unit was part of a defective manufacturing run.