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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."
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
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.
Assuming you are talkin about an iBook: All have backlights. Otherwise the TFT would be pretty dark.
If it's under warrantee, quit bitching and get it fixed. If it's not, you should've bought AppleCare. Learn how to fix it yourself, like this guy, or buy a new LCD. They aren't that hard to install, believe me.
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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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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!
Yes, it is a just a bunch of whiney people that purchased a product from a highend vendor that doesn't work.
What are they going to do when the warranty runs out? Screen and logic board problems appear to be an ongoing thing with newer apple notebooks. Just sending it in and getting a temp fix doesn't help when it breaks again, out of warranty, because the root cause of the problem hasen't been fixed.
This goes for any brand of laptop out there, not just Apple.
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What are they going to do when the warranty runs out?
Do what I do. Ask nicely if they'll fix it anyway. In every case Apple has said yes, and a few times has specifically said "if it's been less than one year since your last repair, we're authorized to do it." On the other hand, when my Sony died, no luck. When my Dell died, no luck. When my Compaq died... well, honestly, I was so happy about that thing dying that I didn't ask.
Gateway might be different... like Apple, they actually have a place you can go to ask nicely. Interaction in person is much more powerful than interaction over the phone.
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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.
I do agree that it's not a bad idea to get it for laptops, but you do need to do it before your 1 year is up.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
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.
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'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 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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So, you got suckered by somebody's marketing scheme, and you think they should then pay up?
Seems like some people posting here have had some really good experiences getting their iBooks fixed. Some other people have had bad experiences. Apple being a "premium" brand has nothing to do with it.
I have had good experiences, both first- and second-hand, with Apple hardware. Therefore, they will be my next vendor of choice. You are free to make a different decision. What exactly do you want? Steve to fly to your house and personally repair your $1200 laptop? Come on.
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Just to clarify for the unknowing... this is a problem with the iBook G3 and not the iBook G4.
I think it's fairly widespread, as Apple's CFO mentioned the unusually high number of warranty expenses for Powerbooks (due to initial white spots problem with the 15" AlBooks, now completely resolved according to them) and iBooks (not further specified) as the reason that their margins were lower than expected during the previous fiscal quarter.
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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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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'll replace the sob every 11 mos. if I have to."
My question is, is it really worth it? Personally, if had to go through the hassel of replacing one of my computers every 11 months I would forsake whatever company I bought it from forever. Right now I'm using one of the cheapest laptops that I could find 4 years ago, and it is still chugging along fine. The only problem I have ever had with this sucker was having some keys on the keyboard stop responding. The problem was fixed in a week under warranty. Seriously, I would look into a different brand.
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