PB 15" 1.5Ghz Logic Board and Ambient Light Sensor failure ?

Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
Please tell me this is just a bad dream ...



http://www.spymac.com/forums/showthr...threadid=78063



Yesterday 06:12 PM | REPORT



Powerbook 15'' 1.5Ghz notice. READ!



DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT buy the 1.5ghz 15.2'' Powerbook. I bought one and the Ambient Light Sensor broke the day I got it, then today the Logic Board went bad. I called Apple (Applecare number) and they said they were getting tons of calls with Logic Board and Ambient Light Senor complaints. I plan on going to my local Apple Tech thursday (Only day I can get off) to have my Powerbook returned to Apple, and have my credit card refunded. In a month or two I will purchase a new Powerbook, assuming they have solved the Logic Board and Ambient Light Sensor problem.



For those of you who do not believe me just call Apple and ask to talk to the Powerbook Product Specialists on the help line. I got it all from them.

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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 26
    messiahtoshmessiahtosh Posts: 1,754member
    Not another quality control issue! This would be heartbreaking, I just spent so much cash on my PowerBook.
  • Reply 2 of 26
    wrong robotwrong robot Posts: 3,907member
    Has anyone noticed that in the past year apple has had more and more quality control issues with various products? particularly the notebooks?



    logic boards failing on iBooks

    cracks in the iBook cases

    loose hinges on the powerbooks and iBooks

    White spots on the 15" alu displays

    peeling keys on the iBooks and titaniums

    Squished track pad Buttons on the titanium

    Easily breakable power supply input



    all these in significant numbers.
  • Reply 3 of 26
    bnoyhtuawbbnoyhtuawb Posts: 456member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Messiahtosh

    Not another quality control issue! This would be heartbreaking, I just spent so much cash on my PowerBook.



    So far we have one single source with nothing more than rumor status. Escept for the post cited here, there are no other source as of now. All just speculation so far, no hard facts.



    Funnily enough people are more than willing to bealive any old shite as long as it's negative!
  • Reply 4 of 26
    trumptmantrumptman Posts: 16,464member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Wrong Robot

    Has anyone noticed that in the past year apple has had more and more quality control issues with various products? particularly the notebooks?



    logic boards failing on iBooks

    cracks in the iBook cases

    loose hinges on the powerbooks and iBooks

    White spots on the 15" alu displays

    peeling keys on the iBooks and titaniums

    Squished track pad Buttons on the titanium

    Easily breakable power supply input



    all these in significant numbers.




    It's called charging a premium price, keeping a near 30% margin and then sending all the machines to be built by the same people Dell Compaq and others use in Taiwan.



    You use the same people, you get the same result. People don't seem to mind when it is a $500 POS. But obviously everybody minds when it is a Mac and an expensive one at that.



    Nick
  • Reply 5 of 26
    wrong robotwrong robot Posts: 3,907member
    Well, apple has always had a very good record with stellar product builds. (with some exceptions) That was one of the ways they justified their 'premium price' So that's why stuff like this stands out more, if it keeps up, and en masse it could hurt apple, if not monetarily, it'd hurt their reputation of having solid long lasting products.
  • Reply 6 of 26
    messiahtoshmessiahtosh Posts: 1,754member
    I guess I'll find out this week if mine has any problems.
  • Reply 7 of 26
    locopanolocopano Posts: 38member
    Hey i have ordered a 17" PB 1.5GHZ BTO w/5400rpm & 128MB VRAM. I was wondering if you have heard of any problems with the new 17" models?



    Also do you think that because i'm getting built to order that they might put it through another quality inspection before they ship? Anyone have any experience?



    Thanks.



    Also anyone with a 17" 1.33 or 1GHZ can you let me know if your DVI port had screws mising on the side? or is that neccisary? I mean either side of the port there are two screw holes and i noticed that they were missing on my PB, and the PB's in the apple store. Can anyone let me know what the deal is. Maybe send a photo of what yours looks like close up.



    Thanks Again
  • Reply 8 of 26
    wrong robotwrong robot Posts: 3,907member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by locopano

    Hey i have ordered a 17" PB 1.5GHZ BTO w/5400rpm & 128MB VRAM. I was wondering if you have heard of any problems with the new 17" models?



    Also do you think that because i'm getting built to order that they might put it through another quality inspection before they ship? Anyone have any experience?




    I got my alu15" (1.25ghz) in the middle of the "white spots" ordeal, I committed to get it when I did partly because I got a BTO(no superdrive) When it arrived *all* the notorious problems(latch, keys peeling, white spots, flimsy..etc) weren't there, my powerbook was, and still is in perfect condition(except for a few scratches)



    So, I'd say that the BTO model probably gets at least a little more attention than a standard model, but probably not much more.
  • Reply 9 of 26
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    I buy apple products primarily for the quality. I have noticed this quality slowly vanishing. There are design defects in Apple's products, I hate to say it, but there are.



    Pismo:

    My Pismo is one killer laptop, but just under a year (by 1 week!) after I got it the sound out port broke on the back. Thank you apple warrantee, but I realized a design flaw. The flap that covers the ports on the back can put pressure on my headphone plug, and the port than supports much of the weight of the laptop. I mad a note of this and bought a special adapter that prevents this from happening. That was 3 years ago and it still works great.



    Beige G3:

    Inside the G4 behind the floppy drive is the main hard drive. All the cables are threaded around and blocks airflow. There is a eddy behind the drive bays that make it difficult to get airflow over the main hard drive. After my second drive crashed, I added a cheap fan to help airflow and the G3 seems to work fine now.



    Dual G5:

    Well, well, well. Needless to say there was that burning-up-hard-drive issue.
  • Reply 10 of 26
    kenaustuskenaustus Posts: 924member
    People easily forget that when they buy a computer they are actually buying a computer and a relationship with the seller. That relationship isn't noticed until a problem develops and that is when you see that you get what you pay for.



    Unfortunately ALL man made products have some percentage of defects - my old stat teacher was very good at explaining that: how many standard deviations do you want to pay for in order to improve quality? After a few you are in the 98-99% range and then each additional production expense just keeps getting closer to 100% - but never reaches it.



    Owning both a Dell desktop (and previous laptops) and (as of yesterday) 2 15" PBs I can tell you that there is one hell of a difference. Engineering is one area, as is the time Apple actually invests in designing their computers. As a user, however, the main difference you will see when you have a problem is the quality of customer support. With Apple you get someone who works for Apple and actually cares about helping you get the problem resolved.



    With Dell you get someone in India who is reading from a script book and has no idea how to solve your problem - except to tell you to do a full reinstall. I made one call to Dell's customer support, spent half an hour trying to get help and hung up without my problem solved. The most frustrating part is that Dell used to have a fantastic customer support before they decided to save money by shipping it to India.



    Now that I've moved the laptop to a PB (15" 667 2 years ago and a new 15" 1.5) I'm ready to replace the old home Dell 450 with the next generation iMac and the office Dell with a PM G5 as soon as VPC is available. At least with Apple you get what you pay for!
  • Reply 11 of 26
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by kenaustus

    Unfortunately ALL man made products have some percentage of defects



    True, but it feels like that percentage is increasing... BIG TIME!. I'm not trying to say Apple is lazy or anything, but they really need to do more detailed/quantity of beta testing. (Apple wanna hire me? ) I can name a bunch of botched updates that left people running to apple stores. (Recent airport updates, 10.3 & firewire 800, the list goes on...)



    I also own a dell laptop, and that is a, well, good-ish machine. Dell Tech support is great IMO. They came out to my house to fix a hardware problem. Kudos Dell. Then again, they have yet to release a graphics card driver to let me play the latest games. ATI passes the torch to manufacturers to build their own drivers. They won't release anything that can install on my laptop.
  • Reply 12 of 26
    alcimedesalcimedes Posts: 5,486member
    i don't think the defect rate is increasing per se, just that it's a lot easier to bitch when something breaks.



    then one person bitches which is read by another person who bitches.



    end up with a bunch of whiney bitches all stroking each other into a "poor me with my expensive laptop" circle jerk, when in reality it's maybe 1% of all laptop purchases.



    to the best of my knowledge, there have been a whopping 2 problems in the last year or so with apple's products. (when i say problems, i mean one that is consistant enough to matter).



    the first was the logic board on the iBooks. there's a long story behind that, but basically that one was impossible to know about until after the machines were all built and shipped.



    the second is the white spots on the powerbooks, which was a real problem (although purely cosmetic), and a stupid one to have at that. that was publicly acknowledged by apple, and fixed accordingly.



    most of the other crap listed here is just that, crap. individual instances of something going wrong, not a design flaw.



    things like paint chipping etc. are cosmetic defects, and really have no bearing on how well the machine functions.
  • Reply 13 of 26
    murbotmurbot Posts: 5,262member
    Yep, definitely easier to bitch now about how "you got screwed". Take this SpyMac posting for example. He has a problem, which will be fixed, but of course he just HAS to run to every friggin' site on the web to try and save us all. No one order a 15" PowerBook because of this? Puh-leeze.
  • Reply 14 of 26
    pacepace Posts: 10member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by locopano

    Hey i have ordered a 17" PB 1.5GHZ BTO w/5400rpm & 128MB VRAM. I was wondering if you have heard of any problems with the new 17" models?





    Mine arrived a few days ago, and I have noticed the trackpad behaving odd. That is, the mouse pointer intermittently jumps around. My hunch is a software rather than hardware problem, but what do I know.



    If that's the only problem I find, I can live with it. However, this is my first Apple so I'm going to be left with a rather bad taste in my mouth if I experience other usability glitches.



    -Pace
  • Reply 15 of 26
    messiahtoshmessiahtosh Posts: 1,754member
    This has been talked about a lot on the MacRumors forums, the tackpad issue that is. Supposedly for some people, the mouse is randomely jumping to the corners of the screen. Who knows...



    Anyway, I don't feel concerned in the least now that I have owned multiple Macs and have never experienced ANY issues other than user error.
  • Reply 16 of 26
    gabidgabid Posts: 477member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by pace

    Mine arrived a few days ago, and I have noticed the trackpad behaving odd. That is, the mouse pointer intermittently jumps around. My hunch is a software rather than hardware problem, but what do I know.



    If that's the only problem I find, I can live with it. However, this is my first Apple so I'm going to be left with a rather bad taste in my mouth if I experience other usability glitches.



    -Pace




    I had, what sounds like this exact problem, happen to me earlier this year on an iBook G4 I bought back in November. In my case it was most definitely a hardware problem that was taken care of without question as soon as I took it into the shop where I bought it. Unfortunately, the problem seems to be appearing anew, though not conistently like it was before (and thus easy to demonstrate).
  • Reply 17 of 26
    pacepace Posts: 10member
    I'm going to revert to 10.3.2 and see if that fixes it. The behavior started immediately after the upgrade which I performed the day the PB arrived.



    -Pace
  • Reply 18 of 26
    locopanolocopano Posts: 38member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by pace

    Mine arrived a few days ago, and I have noticed the trackpad behaving odd. That is, the mouse pointer intermittently jumps around. My hunch is a software rather than hardware problem, but what do I know.



    If that's the only problem I find, I can live with it. However, this is my first Apple so I'm going to be left with a rather bad taste in my mouth if I experience other usability glitches.



    -Pace




    Really???? Thats F#@$ED! I cant stand bad service and the fact that bugs are anticipated makes my blood boil. If its just the OS then thats fine. I doubt they will let me EXCHANGE my BTO PB, so i will have to wait if anything goes wrong. Wait for repairs etc, meanwhile my PB is probably getting scratched etc. ALthough the mouse problem i can live with but shouldnt have to! Hopefullyit can be resolved by attaching a 3rd party mouse which i will be doing reguardless.





    I hope the aussie batch of PB's arent tainted.



    Please let me know what the deal is with the mouse problem when you figure it out.



    Thanks Mate....
  • Reply 19 of 26
    beigeuserbeigeuser Posts: 371member
    I also have a nightmare Apple story.



    Last October I purchased a leftover PowerMac G4 (new, not refurb) from Small Dog. 3 days after I received it, smoke came out of the machine and it shut down. Small Dog stopped answering my e-mail after I told them that it was not DOA. It actually worked for a couple of days before it died. So they decided that it's not their problem. I needed to contact Apple.



    The only problem is that I am stationed overseas at a U.S. Air Force base in Japan. So I started by contacting Apple Japan. They told me that they can't repair my computer under warranty because it is a U.S. model. And to make it worse, it would cost a lot more than a regular repair because they will have to import all the parts from U.S. even though they already have Japan parts which are identical to the U.S. parts. (Something about different part #'s from country to country.)



    As my terrible luck turns out, my father passed away that week. I had to return to the Hawaii to attend my father's funeral and take care of family matters so I carried the PowerMac with me.



    Once I arrived, I took it to the nearby Apple Store. I told them that I am staying only for 3 weeks and it needs to be repaired by then. They said that it will be done in 4 days.



    4 days later, they told me that it will take a couple more days. No problem, I'm here for another 2 weeks.



    2 days later. Still not done.



    On the 9th day, I got my computer back. They replaced the CPU & motherboard. When I got home, I found out that there was no sound. I took it right back.



    Another week later, it came back with yet another motherboard. But the main fan was making some really loud clattering sound and the hard drive was corrupt. I was warned about the hard drive but the fan noise was too loud. So I took it back yet again. They told me that it would take another few days. I reminded them of the day that I was leaving and they said that it will be no problem.



    4 days later. Not done yet. They told me that it will take another week. I reminded them again about the deadline. They said that they will ship it to me (at my cost). I cursed at that genius so loud, the other customers seemed surprised. My computer was fixed that day. I had them thoroughly test out the computer to make sure that there is nothing wrong this time.



    Everything is fine ever since except for the fact that "About this Mac" no longer shows a serial number (Probably because of the motherboard swap).



    I don't know if I'm an isolated case, but Apple service is anything close to what people says it is.
  • Reply 20 of 26
    alcimedesalcimedes Posts: 5,486member
    Quote:

    I don't know if I'm an isolated case, but Apple service is anything close to what people says it is.



    yes, it's isolated. apple was ranked the highest in customer satisfaction and turn around time in Consumer Reports recently. they also had the lowest number of defects out of the box.



    who knew that with HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of people buying their machines, some of their shit wouldn't work!!@!@!@



    why is everyone wetting their pants hoping to be a victim these days?
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