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Fixing the Dreaded iBook Backlight?
Aliencow inquires: "I've recently bought an iBook, and it started having the very common backlight problem. Basically, there are two types of things that can cause the problem: either the screen hinges pinching the cables, which is pretty easy to fix if you're not scared of opening things up; or it could be the logic board, which is what happened in my case. I've heard of someone being able to fix it by doing a bypass operation on the board, soldering a wire before the break and soldering it directly on the backlight connector. Aside from that, however I haven't been able to find much about how to fix that particular problem. Have any of you iBook-owning Slashdot readers had to repair your iBook like this? Any hints? If my repair is successful I'll surely snap a bunch of pictures and make a website, as this is a problem that affects a lot of iBook owners."
I have a dual usb iBook and have a problem with the backlight on the LCD going dim. According to apple, this is a common problem that comes with the age of the screen. I suppose thats an answer, but its a sucky one when the iBook just went out of warranty.
Which backlight problem are you talking about?
Man I was about to tell you, but then you threatened snap a bunch of pictures and make a website out of it.
If it's this common a problem, Apple should recall them.
Danger replaced my HipTop (AKA T-Mobile Sidekick) without me even contacting them, when a very large production run was found to have a defective hinge that may (or may not) damage the wires going to the display.
This must have cost them a fortune, but is good business and impressed me enough to recommend the product highly.
On the other hand, my Vaio F-series has the oh-so-common won't-charge-the-perfectly-good-battery problem and Sony wants to charge me something like $400 to flash the BIOS to fix it (they refuse to post the fix for download)... not to mention I'd be without the unit for a month since it has to be shipped to their repair center, etc.
I won't buy another Sony after this (there's much more to it than that, including a brand new $250 battery that took over a year and a half to get, etc.).
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Call Apple to get it fixed.
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I had that problem 6 months after I bought my ibook. Closing the lid halfway would make the backlight go off for no apparent reason. At first I thought it was the suspend mode kicking in, but since the little blinking light didn't come on and it started to happen when I barely touched the screen it had to be the backlight. Good thing it was still under warranty. On a side note: I had a problem with one the rubber feet a few months back. It kept falling out so I decided to go buy a new set at the local Apple Store. I was rather surprised to here the clerk tell me that they didn't sell those anymore. If I wanted to have the rubber thingies (or just one) replaced, I'd have to send it back to an Apple Service Center to have it replaced. In the end I decided that a big blob of glue would solve it a bit faster.
That sucks pretty badly. I had a bad fan, and then the oh so common the logic board (As seen on blackcider), and then I had the logic board problem. Even though I was thoroughly disgusted with Apple for selling me such a worthless piece of garbage that it never worked for 3 weeks straight, I must say that every time I used the warranty, it came back within two days. As in I ship it Monday, it's with apple Tuesday, and it's back Wednesday. That kind of service is incredible seeing as how they must be swamped with repairs given the record of known issues. That iBook is gone, I had it for six months (The end of the warranty) and dropped it off on eBay (It was working at the time of sale) for a Dell which hasn't had an issue to date.
Thats all I have been hearing for years. Now that Apple is becoming more "cool" and mainstream though, all I hear about anymore are the problems. Have things changed, or were the apple zealots just fooling us?
I've owned three Apple laptops-- A powerbook 140, an Powerbook 1400, and an iBook 500. They've all had problems with the backlight or scan lines turning on or off. It's probably not specific to Apple, though.
I bought a bunch of Apple hardware when 10.1 was released and it seemed to be pretty good quality. I am still using it all regularly. BUT I have noticed a general trend with their new products; quality control seems to be slipping. My new iPod has crash the system several times, and my girlfriend's iMac seems to be cheaper than previous models. This all might not be true for everyone but it is something that I noticed with the products around me.
Yarr
It isn't hard to see that Apple's policy of denying widespread iBook failures is going to bring about blowback. Can it really be worth the bad publicity, loss of customer loyalty and damage to the iBook brand? Does modern corporate experience teach that acknowledging product flaws is always a last resort, is Apple management just in denial, or what?
What if it fails? What would you do with the pics you snapped *hoping* it worked? Would you still make a website so we can all see the mangled iBook? Perhaps you could find some way of turning it into an iBookquarium?
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
I had my ibook die on me a few months ago. It was still under warranty, so I didn't have any trouble getting it fixed. I was very impressed with their service turnaround. It sat at my house boxed up longer than it was gone. It only took 2 days to come back to me. I'm hoping that they would have fixed the problem while it was there so it won't happen again.
On a completely unrelated note, my hard drive is starting to make horrendous click of death noises. Only a month out of warranty, damn. Probably would help if I didn't use it all day long. I love my little machine.
I'm curious as to how common this problem actually is. I've read lots about it recently (mainly on /.) but as of yet have not experienced it on my iBook (1.5 years old now). Am I one of the lucky ones, or is it something more on the order of the vocal minority? If it's the former, this would definitely affect my decision in buying another iBook.
I thought all lcd's have a backlight. If you turn the brightness all the way down to low and shine a flashlight on the screen you can still see what's on the screen. The back light illuminates the screen so you can see what's on it.
The backlight the poster was referring to is the light in the screen that makes you able to see it (and lights up the nifty apple logo).
Hold F1 until the little bar goes all the way down to see what it's like with the backlight off. To turn it back on, hold F2.
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Assuming you are talkin about an iBook: All have backlights. Otherwise the TFT would be pretty dark.
i have an iBook that's having the same problem. Its seems to be a loose connection in the front left (to the left of the track pad); pressing in that region will make the light come back on. I'm about to undertake the same project you are. I'll let you know how it goes.
and I sent it in to be fixed. I dropped it off at the only authorized Apple service center in the area on Wednesday, and got it back Friday afternoon - and yes, they shipped it back to Apple to get it fixed, and yes, they sent me back the same iBook (unless part of their service involves putting all the same dings and chips in a new machine so it looks like the old one). They said it was a problem with the motherboard.
In other words... yeah, the fix is to send it back to Apple to have them take care of it. That's what warranties are all about.
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I've only tried this once, though, so I don't know whether it will work for others...
Oh, and in Apple's quarterly earnings call yesterday, I believe they specifically mentioned setting aside some money to deal with the "white spots" screen problem some new PowerBooks had, and maybe also the iBook video issue. I didn't hear that part of the call myself, though.
thing happen. Out of warranty. Apple tech told me over the phone its $319 flat rate, including shipping. Clearly this must be happening all the time as the tech didn't even ask me to try any troubleshooting steps. Two days later I got it back and they even replaced one of the little rubber feet that had been missing for some time. Then the number 1 key popped off, but thats another story... $319 for a new logic board installed is not bad. Ever try taking an iBook apart? Not for the faint of heart!
What do you mean it doesn't have a backlight? Has it never worked? Do you not use the machine's built-in display, using external VGA or something?
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This goes for any brand of laptop out there, not just Apple.
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Are you thinking of the lit keyboards on the newest PowerBooks? If so, the iBook doesn't have that. The "backlight" in this case refers to the light built into the LCD screen.
I see what is meant by backlight now.
... how about the power button? It glows on my G4 tower, but not on the iBook. That's by design, right?
I thought it referred to a backlite keyboard, or a way to make the plastic that surrounds the screen light up (kinda like those makeup mirrors).
Now
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I thought kinda the same way you did. I didn't think the problem was really widespread. Now it's happening to me, too. My nice iBook wasn't AppleCare'd (College Grad gift, I would have AC'd it myself). I basically have the choice between an expensive repair option or no iBook at all. I'm still trying to decide which is best.
I mean, what assurance do I have that this won't happen again?
I'm all for being reasonable, and I'm not trying to get a class-action lawsuit going, but events like this hurt my trust of the brand. My dad has had a Dell laptop for a year, and it didn't fail. He's snickering at me about it, after all, Apple products are supposed to be superior, right?
Every time something like this happens, it hurts Apple's image, regardless of our status as a "vocal minority" or not.
Considering I know 5 people with iBooks and of them all, only the oldest (original offering, actually) iBook ran for more than 1.5 years, that's pretty bad. Mine was the most recent to go.
What are we supposed to do? Be happy about it? Defer our G5 purchases to get another iBook so that we have a laptop that shouldn't be experiencing such an obviously bad defect in the first place?
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I tried to repair it, but the only thing that fixed it permanently was forcing the control signal of the backlight (a PCM signal) to maximum by soldering a pullup resistor at a strategic point in the lid. I deliberately leave it as vague as this: you really should know what you're doing when you try this, and you should be able to fill in the details yourself. Google is your friend.
Have any of you iBook-owning Slashdot readers had to repair your iBook like this? Any hints? If my repair is successful I'll surely snap a bunch of pictures and make a website, as this is a problem that affects a lot of iBook owners."
Some repairs are documented online, but more are always welcome.
Disassembling an iBook is hard; reassembling it is even harder. Unless you really, really, REALLY know what you're doing, you're shouldn't try this. Even professional repairmen consider it a difficult machine to work on.
If you still want to do it, the procedure is roughly: remove bottom case, bottom shield, top case, top shield to expose the motherboard. Illustrations can be found online, but be prepared for surprises, in particular lots of sticky tape and screws at weird places. Most importantly: carefully document the origin of every screw you remove. I find it helpful to keep the screws from different disassembly steps separate, so that a sanity check can be done for each step of reassembly.
The video chip is located on the bottom side of the motherboard, under the harddisk, but again, resoldering a loose chip requires professional equipment. The wire loom to the display starts roughly under the 's' key, and goes through the left side of the hinge.
Sorry, but I am not going to trust their unwritten 'promise' to fix it. If they were really the 'highend' 'customer focused' company they claim to be the would extend the warranty on the replaced parts by 12 months. After all the sell a permium product so they should back it up.
Apple's SEC filings indicate that they sell about 250,000 ibooks a quarter. The dual-usb model came out very nearly three years ago. So even if every one of those 1800 signatures is accurate and unique, that puts the incidence rate at around one in two thousand units.
That doesn't exactly sound like lawsuit time to me.
You seem to be saying that these people have paid a lot of money for their systems, so they deserve extra-good support? The ibook is among the least expensive laptops one can get, and the bottom end of apple's product line.
Now, I'm not saying that that means apple is excused from offering support; I wouldn't've thought of the two issues as being related at all. But if you feel they are, keep in mind that the ibook is not a "premium" or "highend" product in the senses which I think you mean.
My iBook has the same problem. I got it for a Christmas / birthday present in 2002 and the backlight started dying in December 2003. I bought AppleCare from the website on Dec. 13 but they wouldn't accept it as apparently my iBook was purchased on Dec. 11 and was therefore 2 days out of warranty. Even though it wasn't registered until Dec. 25 they wouldn't make any exceptions.
My specific problem is when I open up the screen and turned the iBook on the backlight would flicker and I'd have to put a little pressure on the back of the screen to push it forwards a little bit for it to work. I had to hold it like that for a while and then it usually took 10 minutes or so until I found a position where it would stay on. Oddly enough though, after it's been on for a while I can move the screen any way that I want and it'll stay on.
So my solution was to set it up as a music server, connect it up to some good speakers, leave it open on my desk and buy a PowerBook. I'm a little pissed, but on the bright side I guess I now have a 12" PowerBook and a sweet little web based interface to iTunes that I wrote last week. On the downside my employer hasn't paid me for 6+ weeks so perhaps the PowerBook wasn't the best idea.
I have a dual usb that is almost two years old (few months) and out of warranty I had a problem with the backlight going out. It was caused by the hinge crimping the cable. I took the entire assembly apart, rewired the cable with a new splice and did a better job insulating and moving the cable so it wouldn't happen again. Took me a good 4 hours of work...but saved me a ton of dough.
The problem with the iBook hinge is bad engineering, not low cost. Doing it properly would not cost any more, in fact it would probably cost less because the wires wouldn't need to be crushed into such a weird assembly. Have you noticed how swish and stylish the hinge looks though? That's the problem, they have sacrificed function for form. I wrote up my hinge problem and solution to it (i.e. full disassembly, remaking of the cable and reassembly) on my blog here. I haven't had a problem with the video connector but I did notice in passing just how darn fragile it is - the slightest movement of the connector (at the screen end anyway) caused bad scanlines, weird colours, or complete blanking. I figured that was another fault just waiting to happen, but so far just left well enough alone. Apple should sort these issues out before they start to damage their reputation - they are stupid, easily avoided issues that would cost nothing to get right. They need an engineer there who understands reliability issues (hint: it's always the connectors, and always where there is mechanical movement. They should spend a little time building some rally cars, they'll soon learn this!)
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I have an iBook G4 12" which I bought in October, got the 29th, dropped the 30th, and took me until the 32 to make it boot again. However, I have no more problems and it's been rather resiliant, going back to Ireland with me, getting treated not too particularly well, tho not being blatantly abused either, and then back to America. where I've turned it off once since the 30 of December.
I have not noticed any backlighting problems, or in fact, any problems at all.
I'm on my second iBook since my switch from windows, and while I love them, I'm also on my *fourth* logic board.
Generally the backlight issue is solved by repairing the connector between the screen and the board -- a lot of times, the opening and closing of the lid kind of makes the wires bend back and forth, if you're unlucky, and like a piece of plastic they can snap or grow weak. Pulling it apart yourself is ... difficult. I've done it a few times, and I don't recommend it. You can probably find the actual apple repair manuals on some sites (*cough*) if you want to do that yourself.
However:
I'd say a higher percentage of the time *any* problem you have on an iBook, particularly the recent ones, is due to logic board failure. The problem is that *everything* is on the logic board, and if one thing goes wrong (IE, the modem shorts out, or a chip on one side of the board gets too hot, etc) the whole thing can have a cascade failure. I've had discussions about this with trained apple repair men, and they've all hated the iBooks because of this issue (which, incidentally, is shared by the Powerbook 12", but those machines fail at a lower rate due to higher quality parts).
So despite whatever you end up doing to fix your machine, you may still need to replace the logic board anyways. If you replace the connector between screen and board and your backlight doesn't come back on, I'd recommend you looking into the logic board replacement, as having one thing go bad on it can lead your machine down a dark path.
- Cloud
My fiance just had me look at her laptop for this today. After a fruitless (half-harted) google search I decided to put it off until later tonight.... until I decide to read /. and here it is. Does anyone have the link to the by-pass cable arrangement mention by the OP?
My girlfriend's iBook has (clamshell, graphite) just devloped backlight problems. When you switch it on the back light fires up but as soon as the OS starts loading it cuts out. I believe it's also when the PMU kicks in, but whether it's the PMU (resetting the PMU hasn't cured it), tube or driver bord. Anyone have ant insight into this problem?
My iBook is currently at Apple's repair center. But my story starts much earlier. I ordered my dual-USB iBook 500 the day after Steve announced them, in March of 2001. It took until early-June to receive it. I didn't want to finance the cost of AppleCare, so I figured I would buy it later. In October, I joined the ranks of the dot-com unemployed, effectively destroying my plans to order AppleCare that month. I wasn't particularly worried, though, as I had experienced no problems.
Fast forward to late April of 2002. I'm living at home, in my parents' basement piggybacking off their T1 (no shit), paying down debt via a combination of frugal rent-free living, unemployment checks and the odd freelance gig thrown my way. I'd sold my Win(D'OH!)s machine awhile back. I started getting mild electrical shocks from the metal rings around the footpads on the iBook, and the screen was flickering like mad and wouldn't go to full brightness. I needed to wrap things up on a freelance gig, so I called Apple, still well in warranty and got them to send me a box. It gets to be June 1st or so and I send it in. They repair it and I have it back in-hand less than 48 hours later, functioning perfectly. Life is good...up to a point. A choad at the Apple Store in the Mall of America tells me that I have 30 days in which to make a warranty claim if the repairs go bad.
~45 days after the repair, I'm out of my main warranty by a long shot, and I think I'm out of the repair service warranty. Problems begin to recur. Basically, I think I'm fucked, so I kinda decide to put off repairs until I absolutely have to. I'm back at work full-time and kicking ass on my bills, so I should be able to cover it. Well, about 120 days after the repair work was done, I'm in the Apple Store, looking at the toys, and I overhear mention that service work has a 90-day coverage. When I talk to the clerk about it, he tells me it's always been 90 days, and that he's sorry the other guy was wrong, but that there's nothing he or I can do about it.
So I stewed for awhile. Fast forward to 12/30/2003. In a fit of boredom at work, I drop an email to sjobs@apple.com, explaining the above...not asking for anything. I just want him to be aware of the communications disconnect in the store and expressed disappointment in the quality of the product.
I come home on 1/5/2004 and there's a message on my answering machine from someone at Apple that wants to discuss the email I sent to Steve. I think "practical joke" and then realize that I didn't tell anyone about the email. The guy and I finally make contact with each other last Thursday. He wants to hear the story, so I go into detail about it, again, and we talk for a bit. Then he says, "Well, we want to make this right. We'll cover it outside of warranty this one time. And you'll still get the 90 days of coverage on the repair work."
My jaw literally dropped. He hooked me up with the tech group, filed a repair ticket for me, and had a box sent Airborne Express overnight to me. I talked to the tech, and he told me that the work order ticket basically covered anything wrong with the laptop, including cosmetic damage. I nearly shit. So we went over the problems, and that was that.
I shipped the iBook out this Tuesday morning (1/13/2004). I spoke with the people at Apple today and they informed me that they had replaced the entire upper shell (cosmetic damage), several parts of the power subassembly, the little rubber footpads (god, how that warms my heart), and went down a laundry list of other items. They said it might get back onto a truck tonight to come home.
This isn't the first time that Apple has come through for me, I'm sure it won't be the last, but they've cemented me as a Customer For Life.
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If you bought it that recently, the one-year warranty should still be in effect.
Take it to an Apple Store, or fedex it to Apple (after calling 'em up for an RMA), and wait a week.
I did that when mine went out not 3 months in. Haven't had any problems since.
My Dual USB 700 14" laptop is 1.5 years old. No LCD problems at all. I used it several hours a day every day. The hard drive started acting up (after warranty expiration) so I swapped it out for a 60 gig. You can't expect a hard drive to last very long these days anyway. Now that Quantum is gone, hard drives don't last very long.
In fact, after 15 years and 6 Macs, the only real Apple hardware failure I've seen was when the sound went out on my old 7100. I don't know, but the lightening strike may have been more at fault than Apple on that one.
Do yourself a favor and send it back to Apple. The iBooks are pretty well sealed until you pop it open, then it becomes a mess of different size screws and rf shielding.
About two months ago, my girlfriend's iBook was having problems. Unfortunately it was way out of waranty, and we had bought it second hand (at a very reasonable price). The hard drive was making clicking noise of death. So I thought, no big deal, I'll just swap it out.
So I talked with the people at the Genius Bar at the local Apple store (great folk by the way), and verified that it was just a standard ide laptop hard drive. They said it was, but advised against me doing it myself. I thought, yeah, whatever. less than 48 hours later I found myself wishing I had taken their advice, but I get ahead of myself.
Anyways, I decided to do a dry run on my 15 inch powerbook, just to see if there would be any surprises. It was easy enough to get to the drive. Satisfied, I decided to go ahead with her iBook.
Now, if I would have just googled for instructions on how to dismantle an iBook, I would have discovered the magnitude of my mistake. iBooks are laid out very different from powerbooks. In fact, in the iBooks, the hard drive is pretty much the last thing you get to.
Now, your problem isn't the hard drive, it's the backlight. that's much easier to get to, in much the same way a hand grenade is much easier than a nuke. However, if it's still an option, just ship it in.
Take it or leave it. You might be more inclined in the ways of hardware than I am. However, if you decide to go forward and do it yourself, get yourself an empty egg carton, or something similar. Label the holes, and keep track of which screws went where, because you're going to have a lot of them.
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About 6 months ago my dual usb was one week out of warranty when screen backlight refused to work beyond about 30 degrees open.
Searched around on google and found it to be a relatively common problem. Took it into an Apple Store and got if fixed within 3 days.
I questioned the 'genius' about what I found to be a common problem and was told that they had not see such an issue before.
I was a little surprised but I guess they wouldn't say if it was common. Was a little bummed that it occurred just one week out of the warranty but I got it fixed quickly and moved on without much hassle (except for the small matter of the service cost)
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Hrmm. Not really that offtopic. The topic was backlight on iBook computers. Someone said their iBook has no backlight, or that it isn't on and has never worked. It seems a pretty valid and on-topic question to me.
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... sorry, can't find a story link right now but one report I read on Apple's financial conference call mentioned the drop in profit margins over the last quarter was due to higher than expected warranty service expenses. Hmmm...
I dropped mine off to a local apple service. They sent it to apple and it came back, but took a bit over a week :( :)
They replaced the logicboard, which would have cost hundreds, but since I had warranty I ended up paying only bus fare to the apple service
I got my nice new Ibook G4 12" in October, right after they came out. Everything was great, for a couple of weeks, then it started getting funky. Anytime i would wake the computer, it would make this weird static sound at full volume and then slowly dissolve into silence. Then the week after that, on top of static noise, the speakers started to feedback with the built in microphone. This was not very pleasent. So i took it to the apple store and the girl checked it out. She came back 5 minutes later with a brand new ibook and a firewire cable. She transfered all my files to the new iBook and i was out of there in 20 minutes, new ibook in hand. The best part is that my warranty now ends a year from when i got the new Ibook! It was so painless and quick and i didn't need to call customer support based in India.
Anyone else have that weird sound issue?
Yep.
Disclaimer - I've got 4 Macs. Cube. iMac. PowerMac, and an iBook. Technically 5 if you count the eMac I bought and support for my Dad.
I'm on my second iBook.
I don't yet have Apple Care on it since it was a Christmas present, and I've still got what's left of the year warranty before I need to shell out for it, but I will definitely be getting Apple Care.
I've got Apple Care on every single Apple product I own where it's offered (sans iSight & Airport).
For commodity PeeCees, extended warranties aren't worth it.
For Apple products, they are.
Now, I'm on my 2nd iBook, where the backlight died on my first iBook within the week.
Trip to the Apple Store (and having to deal with the genius bar - which I can't stand). New iBook.
If it dies again, warranty replacement.
If it dies again after that, warranty replacement.
I'll replace the sob every 11 mos. if I have to.
Fixing these problems one's self is not going to provide Apple with enough feedback to change their design processes, but the manager at the Apple Store told me it costs Apple some $250 to do an open-box exchange in loss time, shipping, in addition to the loss revenue and expense it would cost to refurbish the machine being exchanged.
So I figure, once Apple loses enough $250 for iBooks being returned, maybe they'll correct the problem.
you know what you are doing. DON'T do modifications you read on a japanese weblog from 2001 - unless you exactly know what they are doing and if it is possible or not. Remember to get the service manual (ibk-usb2.pdf on the web), get the right torx and philipps screwdrivers and take your time. The ibook is a bitch to open, last week I exchanged the harddrive (10Gb -> 60Gb) and it took me over 3 hours. It isn't really complicated mechanically, but you definitely have to take your time. You really need to find out what particular 'backlight'-problem you have got. Use the apple-discussion forms for your research. If it is just a pierced cable I'd take a try and fix it with ordinary laptop-replacement parts (soldering-skills required). If you have indication that some other part is defect, you'd better get an intact part from ebay. I've seen complete screen assemblies sell for 120 euros and cables for much less (complete screen cables for 30e). Let me repeat: if you know what will cure your particular problem, it just boils down to get the parts and be careful with your disassembly.
Just to clarify for the unknowing... this is a problem with the iBook G3 and not the iBook G4.
I successfully replaced the hard drive in my 500 MHz dual USB, using these instructions. The first time I took it apart, it took three hours - two to get the hard drive out, and one to re-assemble it afterwards.
Everything appeared to work at first, except it wouldn't automatically go to sleep when I closed the lid. Took it apart again and reseated the cable from the trackpad (just under the keyboard and memory/AirPort shield), which fixed that.
I've taken it apart once more since then, to fix a bent rail on the CDROM drawer - my son dropped the machine on our carpeted stairs, the drive drawer popped open and got hit/bent so it wouldn't close.
As you can tell, I beat the crap out of laptops. My iBook has been to Apple service under warranty once (infant mortality on the CDROM drive), and has otherwise taken an incredible amount of abuse with only a gradual hard drive failure to show for it. I have a new 800 G4 iBook on order, and I dearly hope it's as tough as my current one.
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I think it's because very early on in my iBook's career I cracked one of the hinges, thus releasing the stress on the cable. Unfortunately, the other died too recently. Now I've gone with a Alumnium PowerBook...I hope I have more luck.
Question for you guys out there, does this problem affect the G4 iBooks? I just picked one up the day before yesterday.
I just took a look at that link. Those are some good instructions. Rock on. :-)
I have to say, even though I ran into problems with the iBook, it was a good learning experience to take apart the iBook and the Powerbook. I came from a PC background since I was 13 (I'm 26 now). I've taken apart a lot of PCs, and now that I can say that I've seen the inside of my Mac I feel like less of a poser (I switched over a year ago).
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My website has a section for replacing backlights that might help http://home.comcast.net/~stonent/screenfix.htm
It's a love thing. Really, I'm serious. It's the hazard of loyalty. That loyalty has been cultivated personality that equates Apple and it's proponents on a human level. Mac users have a hard time seeing Apple as just another callous, bottom-line first organization. It's part of having built an OS from the the user's perspective. The engineering serves the user. The user isn't forced to serve the engineer's laziness. When people get accustomed to having things work well, they take offense. It's unexpected.
It's tough to live to such a standard, and some people take their loyalty, and any betrayal of it a little too far. Some cheated spouses will forgive. Others carry through quite acrimonious divorces. Sorry to say, those hate sites are aggrevied spouses.
That's one group, but there are those others that have never liked Apple or it's products. They just like those people who take an instant, unaccountable, dislike of another individual. Having taken a dislike, they will look for reasons to rationalize it. Using the thinnest of reasons, they will tear down the other's character without even knowing the other person.
The fact that Apple suffers from stupid attacks is testament to it's ability to make people think of it as a friend, a company that is looking out for their best interest. Despite the fact that it's a corporation, people ascribe the company a measure of humanity.
I can't think of another company that engenders such affection. Hate, yes, but the best example of that is M$, and the hate directed at them is, for the most part, a defense of the love of Apple (or Linux).
For the most part, we don't expect corporations to have our best interests at heart. Hell, we don't expect them to have a heart, just a cold avariscious greed to separate us from our earnings. So, when Sony, or another corporation, treats customer's poorly there is little protest.
We've learned to take corporate mistreatment with diffidence. Apple is very rare in this respect. We expect them to treat us well. When they act like any other corporation it's a betrayal of those expectations, and betrayal is one of the most aggrieved emotions.
The potato it is uninformed.
I had the iBook backlight problem also. Since I was a cheapo bastard, and didn't bother to purchase the warranty, I was stuck without a fix. I saw it coming, too, since at first it stopped working only at certain angles, and then would die whenever I moved the display...
So what did I do? I bought some guy's iBook screen cable (after he'd fried the computer by spilling coke on it) for $15 and swapped it out with mine. With shipping, the entire fix cost me $35.
The fix was admittedly time consuming, since it took me all of a month to find and purchase one of these cables from someone. It also took some effort to disassemble the whole computer and swap out the hinge/videocable assembly.
However, I think people overplay the the difficulty of working on the iBooks. It is pretty hard compared to, say, the "el capitan" powermac B&WG3/G4 series. But the operation wasn't any harder than helping my friend swap out the internal hard drive on his dell...
You can probably find broken iBooks everywhere you look, since apparently all of them have dead logic boards. (sigh) We only get press from people who don't get theirs fixed, so statistically, it seems like people have unending problems. But they've fixed everything under warranty for my other laptops--admittedly I've bought extended AppleCare on them after I had the iBook problem, but they fixed stuff promptly (for free) under the standard warranty as well.
hey,
I have the fun job of fixing computers at the local giant american electronics retail store in Canada...
we get lots and lots of laptops of all makes with backlight problems...
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
Daniel
http://people.cinn.ca/daniel/
Given that the G4 iBook is fairly new, if it has these problems they might not have shown up yet for people. Or was there some notice or investigation I missed that showed the G4 iBooks don't have these problems?
Very interested in getting a G4 iBook, but these reports are making me nervous.
Luckily I bought AppleCare on my iBook dual-usb 700 back in summer of 2002 - since then it's been in for logic-board replacement FOUR times!!!!!
kinda sucks but since I haven't had to pay for anything except my time, I'm not yelling too loud.
Amazon has the iBook G4 for only $994 after $100 rebate. I was going to get the larger screen, but this deal was too good:
iBook G4 at Amazon
i just randomly decided to look at /. and hey, there's something about broken iBooks! anyway, i had the display cable problem while my book was under warrantee, apple fixed it, no problem....
then a few months later i began having a serious issue with the screen suddenly messing up and then probably a kernal panic of some sort.... this just happened randomly one day while i was in internet explorer. i rebooted, and it happened again even before the boot was finished. this kept happening. i took the laptop to the apple store, they looked at it, and informed me that it was a problem with the display and would cost me around 250 dollars to get it fixed....
this price being too rich for my tastes, i continued to screw around with the computer. with a boot disk i succesfully got the computer to fully boot, only to give me a "bus error" and crash again. the main thing with apple's diagnosis that bugged me was the fact that the computer would boot into target disk mode perfectly fine, and i could access the disk and everything, and the screen didn't give me any trouble in target disk mode. so i tried formatting the hard drive and i used a norton utilities disk to boot the computer.... again i got the bus error.
i haven't been able to fix the problem yet, and as of now, the laptop has been sitting on a shelf for a couple months. perhaps when i have the money i will send it in for service.... but this problem seems a bit more serious than what i've heard others talk about with their iBooks.
I have had six failures. 2 logicBoard failure, 2 ibook power adpaters, 1 hard drive failure, and 1 screen failures, the most recent failure was on mon. Jan 19 2004. I am getting so P.O.d @ apple . I recently got a call from them and the said that in a month they were going to try to find a replacement for the ibook that I have, possibly a new G4 iBook, (I have a 900MHZ G3 ibook) Maybe, just maybe I won't have problems. I also would like to add that I own over 37 other apples and only the notorious ones have hade the problems
The backlight lights up the screen. TFT does colour, backlight does the brightness.
I believe the iBook they are talking about was the clam shell design not the new one. Or atleast thats what happened to my first clam shell ibook (happened 4 days after I bought it so I got a new one never had any problems after that).
:)
I haven't had any truoble with my G4 iBook ethier