More Apple Macbook pro failures.

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francovendee
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Joined: 5 May 2009, 6:32am

More Apple Macbook pro failures.

Post by francovendee »

I've renamed my wife's Macbook amd call it her Macbook Woe.
Our experience with two of these has been dismal.
The first, bought in 2013 from John Lewis luckily had an extended guarantee of an additional year. Just within that period it developed a fault and we had it repaired FOC.
About a year later the hard drive expired and we managed to change that ourselves.
Some time later another fault, this time if you moved it the system shut down. We took it to an Apple approved repairer but they couldn't be sure if the fix they offered at 450€ would cure it so we didn't bother and treated it like a PC.

In 2017 we bought a new one, again from JL, Less than a year later some of the keys stopped working so back to Apple and it was fixed under guarantee.
In 2018, just before the guarantee ran out the screen stopped working and was fixed FOC.
It has now stopped charging on one of the USB ports, not a problem unless you need to do a back up when the machine needs to be plugged in.
Another trip to the repairers and an estimate of 620€ to make the repair plus 30€ for the estimate!

My wife is the most careful of people and has never damaged or abused either machine.
I compare this to my two purchases in that time, one for £299 (lenovo laptop) and £199 for an Acer Chromebook. Both are running as well as when I first bought them. I'm rather clumsy and have dropped both machines.
I did have to change the charging port on the Cromebook (my fault) which cost me £10 as I could fix it myself.
When it's not broken my wife loves the machine and it's the reason we bought the second machine, reasoning we were just unlucky.

I always thought that Apple made a good product but superb advertising made people pay over the odds. I think I was wrong on the first part. :evil:
Tiberius
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Joined: 31 Dec 2014, 8:45am
Location: North East England

Re: More Apple Macbook pro failures.

Post by Tiberius »

My early 2015 MBP is on it's third screen - 'Staingate' a known issue, all done under warranty.

I noticed last week that it now won't sit flat on a desk, it wobbles slightly on it's feet. Investigation says that this is a known issue with LATE 2015 MBPs and that there is a recall to change swelling batteries - mine isn't covered as mine is an early 2015 MBP. (NOT covered, confirmed by Apple)

Looks like a £200 battery replacement (from Apple) or let the battery continue to swell and set fire to the house.

To add. My MBP is easily the best computer that I've ever owned. The worst ????.....Lenovo..... :shock: :shock: :shock: ....

Mrs T has just bought a new MBA (M1 chip) Now that is really nice, faster than a very fast thing.
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Mick F
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Re: More Apple Macbook pro failures.

Post by Mick F »

Apple iBook was the first computer we owned. 2002 perhaps.
When the HD went wrong and the other stuff too, Mrs Mick F and me bought a MacBookAir each in 2015 ........ and both are doing strong.

No complaints at all.

Bought an iMac in 2008, and recently the power supply went kapput. Now fixed and up and running again.
Mick F. Cornwall
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simonineaston
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Re: More Apple Macbook pro failures.

Post by simonineaston »

I work with schools here in the south-west. We've supplied thousands of laptops (inc MBs), desktops, tablets and servers over the years, and keep records of every single warrenty claim and component failure we've processed. I understand that devices from Apple have been about average in over-all cost, seeming to be slightly more reliable than average but slightly dearer to fix.
My own MBP is a late 2013 model and is in daily use, without issue, although the cable at the MagSafe plug failed not long ago, so I chose to buy a replacement psu.
S
(on the look out for Armageddon, on board a Brompton nano & ever-changing Moultons)
Richard Fairhurst
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Re: More Apple Macbook pro failures.

Post by Richard Fairhurst »

Keyboards in recent Macbooks are a notorious issue – they've finally reverted to a sane design with the latest models, but for a good few years they were very prone to dust/crumbs/etc.
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Psamathe
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Joined: 10 Jan 2014, 8:56pm

Re: More Apple Macbook pro failures.

Post by Psamathe »

Richard Fairhurst wrote: 13 Jun 2021, 11:46am Keyboards in recent Macbooks are a notorious issue – they've finally reverted to a sane design with the latest models, but for a good few years they were very prone to dust/crumbs/etc.
I find the bad keyboards are not only unreliable but horrible to use. I have one of those laptops and whilst I have no experience on "unreliable" it may be because I find it so horrible to use I tend to use an external bluetooth keyboard when home so the built-in keyboard gets very little use.

I believe the bad ones went through several designs so supposedly the later versions were better than the earlier versions (but just repeating what others have said as my experience is just the one laptop.

Ian
toontra
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Location: London

Re: More Apple Macbook pro failures.

Post by toontra »

Just had my mid-2012 Macbook Pro (the last one you could actually get inside of and do stuff - bought and kept for that precise reason) fail.

Diagnosing the problem was difficult. Took the SSD out and tested in another machine - fried. So I thought that was the problem. Installed a cloned backup - machine still wouldn't boot :?

Turns out the data cable (from SSD to motherboard) had shorted out and taken the SSD down with it. It's a known problem with the mid-2012 MBP's apparently and a regular fail.

New cable bought off Fleabay for a tenner - back up and running.

I'm not buying another Macbook until they put some bloody ports in the thing and a decent amount of disc capacity/RAM (both coming in the next M2 release apparently).
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[XAP]Bob
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Re: More Apple Macbook pro failures.

Post by [XAP]Bob »

Four thunderbolt ports not enough for you?

How do you intend to saturate 160Gig of full duplex connectivity?
A shortcut has to be a challenge, otherwise it would just be the way. No situation is so dire that panic cannot make it worse.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those can extrapolate from incomplete data.
toontra
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Re: More Apple Macbook pro failures.

Post by toontra »

[XAP]Bob wrote: 13 Jun 2021, 8:01pm Four thunderbolt ports not enough for you?

How do you intend to saturate 160Gig of full duplex connectivity?
Capacity isn't the issue. I want HDMI and USB ports, not "thunderbolt". I don't want to be forced into using Apple's proprietary cabling. I assume I'm not alone or they wouldn't be doing this. Magsafe also making a welcome return. They are obviously listening to what their customers want for a change, not what they think they want (and forcing them into buying over-priced accessories).
Psamathe
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Re: More Apple Macbook pro failures.

Post by Psamathe »

toontra wrote: 13 Jun 2021, 8:54pm
[XAP]Bob wrote: 13 Jun 2021, 8:01pm Four thunderbolt ports not enough for you?

How do you intend to saturate 160Gig of full duplex connectivity?
Capacity isn't the issue. I want HDMI and USB ports, not "thunderbolt". I don't want to be forced into using Apple's proprietary cabling. I assume I'm not alone or they wouldn't be doing this. Magsafe also making a welcome return. They are obviously listening to what their customers want for a change, not what they think they want (and forcing them into buying over-priced accessories).
My newer MacBook has 4 USB-C ports (although they are only USB 3.1 'cos it's a couple of years old). I thought USB-C was used by some companies other than Apple? And it has 4 such ports (which is plenty for most people).

I think the 1st limit I will hit on the laptop is the 2TB storage - but there will be a fair amount of video I will be able to offline so I doubt it will be too much of an issue. 16GB RAM seems plenty of video editing, photo editing, etc. and that's normally fairly memory hungry.

Ian
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[XAP]Bob
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Re: More Apple Macbook pro failures.

Post by [XAP]Bob »

toontra wrote: 13 Jun 2021, 8:54pm
[XAP]Bob wrote: 13 Jun 2021, 8:01pm Four thunderbolt ports not enough for you?

How do you intend to saturate 160Gig of full duplex connectivity?
Capacity isn't the issue. I want HDMI and USB ports, not "thunderbolt". I don't want to be forced into using Apple's proprietary cabling. I assume I'm not alone or they wouldn't be doing this. Magsafe also making a welcome return. They are obviously listening to what their customers want for a change, not what they think they want (and forcing them into buying over-priced accessories).
Proprietary?
USB-C/TB3 are anything but.
They are what everything is moving to, no need for any proprietary cables whatsoever.

I do think that dropping MagSafe was a bad idea, but that’s because they served a very specific purpose - there was no reason not to have both MagSafe and power over usbc
A shortcut has to be a challenge, otherwise it would just be the way. No situation is so dire that panic cannot make it worse.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those can extrapolate from incomplete data.
Psamathe
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Re: More Apple Macbook pro failures.

Post by Psamathe »

[XAP]Bob wrote: 13 Jun 2021, 11:02pm ......
I do think that dropping MagSafe was a bad idea, but that’s because they served a very specific purpose - there was no reason not to have both MagSafe and power over usbc
I agree that dropping MagSafe was a bad idea but I have seen you can buy similar adapters that connect into the USB PD - they look a bit like those USB bluetooth/radio adapters mice used to use. Trouble is the ones I've seen are only on Amazon from unheard of Chinese companies so I've not tried any. Not a perfect solution and having MagSafe as well as USB-C PD would be ideal (so you don't need the proprietary MagSafe if all available is a standard USB-C PD supply.

Ian
francovendee
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Joined: 5 May 2009, 6:32am

Re: More Apple Macbook pro failures.

Post by francovendee »

Update on 2017 Macbook.
My wife entered into an on line conversation with Apple about the problem and our displeasure with the cost.
The session lasted more than an hour and she got repeatedly moved on to a more senior adviser.
In summery the final chap said 'So your Mac is broken and you don't want to pay for the repair'?
My wife replied, she was willing to pay something but not 620€.
He's promised she'll get it done FOC. We're going to ring the place doing the work and see if they have been told of this.
I somehow doubt it and we'll be in more conversations with Apple over this.
To be continued...................................
francovendee
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Re: More Apple Macbook pro failures.

Post by francovendee »

The continuing story of the Macbook Pro is hopefully coming to a conclusion.
This morning my wife rang the repair agent expecting to be told they knew nothing about the repair being done FOC so imagine her surprise when they confirmed the work would be 'gratuit'.
Parts on order so we may have a positive result by next week.
Does it change my view of Apple? Only partly I'm afraid, reliability for an expensive laptop seems poor.
When the time comes I'm sure their gesture will keep my wife as a customer and she'll buy another.
Jdsk
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Re: More Apple Macbook pro failures.

Post by Jdsk »

Well done.

Jonathan
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