elijahg

GeorgeBMac said:

elijahg said:

GeorgeBMac said:

Shit happens.  Expect it.

#1:   ALWAYS take out AppleCare when you buy a new product

#2:   ALWAYS extend AppleCare when the 2 year period expires

Murphy's law is alive a well.   Don't mess with Murphy's law.

People can bicker all they want over who was at fault.  But, in the end, it still costs them $500.

Well no, why should people pay more to Apple to fix their design flaws? Apple should always repair issues that can be attributable to bad design  - for free - within say 5 years of the product's sale. Bad design resulting in a problem that is widespread, and affects say >0.1% or > 5000 units of that model. 

Of course there are people who claim that they've not dropped their device and the screen just cracked, despite there being a large dent on the corner. That isn't a design flaw and shouldn't be repaired under warranty. However, Apple has a habit of marking down pristine devices as "good" condition, and claiming small marks without enough impact  force to deform the case, are the reason a problem has occurred. If the devices are so fragile that a small knock on the corner causes major issues, that is also poor design. 

I think you made my point:   Shit happens.  Often a "design flaw" is a relative thing:  I have closed my Thinkpad on a hard object any number of times and it suffered no damage.  But, it's built like a tank and feels like it and looks like it.   A MacBook Air is thinner, lighter and more delicate.

Then you get to the user tripping on the power cord, pulling the machine off the table and cracking the screen.  Was that a design flaw because Apple eliminated the mag safe connector or the fault of the clutzy user?    Applecare+ covers either scenario.  Actually, it covers all scenarios (but intentional damage):  wear & tear, design flaws and accidental damage.

I don't consider it paying Apple extra.  I consider it part of the sales price.

A MacBook Air is of course more delicate, but there comes a point when the fragility is a defect. There is no need for it to be so fragile, Apple makes it so because they're obsessed with thinness and thus form over function. It doesn't need to be so thin that a grain of sand cracks the screen. That's bad design.

No matter how much I resent the removal of Magsafe, I wouldn't say it's a design flaw. It could coexist with USB-C, but that's a different matter. Such an issue is obviously under the accidental damage category. Users have a responsibility to look after the device (not getting it wet, not getting it too hot etc) and yoinking it onto the floor isn't taking care of the device.

The machine shouldn't however be damaged by something as insignificant and omnipresent as a few grains of dirt. Users shouldn't have to make sure to wipe the surfaces of the laptop clean each time close it lest they get a scratched or damaged screen, that would be overly burdensome. Not only that, the ultimate cause of the damage is purely down to a whimsical design decision to shave off another 0.Nmm. There is no technical or material advantage to losing that extra space between the display, only a negative trade off between durability and thickness. We're not talking losing millimetres from the overall thickness, because that would turn the argument upside down (i.e. users shouldn't have gravel on their keyboard), but fractions of a millimetre.

Apple has a responsibility to ensure the product is suitably tough for the intended environment. Almost any environment will at some point end up with grit in it, unless you live in a clean room. 

Whether you consider it part of the sales price or not is irrelevant. People shouldn't have to pay extra as an insurance against poor design. And luckily in the UK, we are protected for up to 6 years after the sale from manufacturing defects present at the time of delivery.

lkrupp said:

doggone said:

Often Apple will do the repair for free if you take it to the Apple Store.  I had a situation that my dog bit through the charging cable on an MBP charger.  I went to the store to buy a replacement and was directed to one of the support staff. They gave me a new charger for free even though it was obvious this was not a technical issue.  One of the things I love about Apple.

If the incident rate starts increasing it could be a manufacturing issue and Apple will issue a replacement program.  My only criticism of Apple is that it take some time for them to get to that stage and people end up paying for repairs that later are done for free.

Well, that’s the thing. Honey catches more flies than vinegar. My 2013 iMac 27” 14,2 had the mechanism that holds the head up break. A spring apparently broke. It was years out of warranty and I took it my local Apple Store for repair. After politely asking if there was warranty program for the problem I was quoted a price of $175.00 for the repair. I did not fly into a rage, I did not stomp my feet and demand a supervisor, I did not make a scene and threaten to leave Apple, I did not insist the problem was a design or manufacturing flaw. Two days later I got the call that my iMac was ready for pickup. There was NO charge for the repair. I don’t why but I suspect it was simple customer appreciation. 

I have read posts where the customer claimed Apple hung up on them. I was in customer service for Ma Bell early in my 20’s and the ONLY time we were allowed to hang up on a customer was abusive or profane language. As long as the customer remained rational and polite we were not allowed to hang up on them for any reason. We had to keep trying to satisfy them. 

Nothing to do with "simple customer appreciation" whatsoever, it was covered under one of Apple's secret repair programs, because it was a design flaw. There are two plastic washers holding the spring in place, and eventually the plastic breaks due to the pressure. My iMac had exactly the same, the Apple authorised repair centre refused to fix it until I spoke to Apple, who told them to fix it because even the repair centre had no idea the program existed. There is only one reason they should keep such programs secret, and that's because they are hoping it's not widespread enough that people connect the dots and instead buy a new machine.

People break the rules sometimes, maybe that has happened with Apple customers, or maybe the customers were rude. Literally no way to verify either way, so attacking either for lying or hanging up is unreasonable. 

ArchStanton said:

Fyi, Apple Watches burn your skin, iMacs are crooked by fraction of a mm that hurts one's neck, people killed! from airtags, etc etc etc etc 

There is a cottage industry of free money grabbers and media attention creeps that make every product mysteriously break, crack, blow up or try to harm you. What these slimes have done is make most people believe very one of these stories you hear are just grifters look for the aforementioned. You see that with stories like this and dimwits like a previous poster claiming he wonders how many iPhones did this too!
Just fools and grifters harming consumers from getting recompense when an actual, and rare, problem arises.  

There are plenty of spurious lawsuits that is for certain, but there are also people like you who claim no problem is ever Apple's fault. It's usually somewhere in the middle.

Depending on the tolerance between the case and display, something as insignificant as a grain of sand could cause a contact point crack. Apple has gradually reduced the tolerances over the years; the old stamped aluminium Macbooks/Powerbooks had fairly big buffers (~2mm) at the screen corners to help protect against this. The unibody Macs reduced this significantly to around 0.7mm, not sure what it is on the latest ones; but the display glass has become thinner too. I frequently get keyboard marks on the display of my 2015 Macbook, and I nanny it more than I should have to; ensuring there is never pressure on the display. Dust causes scratches on the display so now I regularly clean the display to avoid permanent marks.

Computers are a tool, not a piece of art to only be looked at. The number of issues attributable to Apple's obsession with thin is absurd, but apparently they never learn.

mcdave said:

loopless said:

HPC runs on Intel. Software vendors are slow to move in this field as it isn’t a simple recompile to run on Apple silicon. Apple would need to show a massive performance advantage…

What proportion of Macs are sold into this market?

It used to be surprisingly high. A large proportion of scientific software runs on Macs. That it until Apple essentially abandoned HPC users with the trash can, plus the 7 year gap between Mac Pro updates. Bit like the abandonment of Macs when Apple tried to force FCPX on editors, and then dropped Shake. Apple’s unreliability and penchant for dropping software titles isn’t something businesses can rely on with long term investments in hardware and staff. So they have gone elsewhere. The BBC’s editing was almost all on Macs until the FCP fiasco. Now it’s Avid on PC.