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Apple Begins Fixing MacBook Pro Issues
Hack Jandy writes "For those of you who bought one of the first generation Macbook Pros, a new replacement may be in your future. Flickering LCDs, overheating and intermittent WiFi connections are all common place for many of these first generation machines, but apparently Apple is fixing the problem. The article claims 'According to Apple, it has begun replacing the mainboard inside its MacBook Pros with a new revision. It calls the updated product "revision D," which is identifiable by product serial number.' If you have a reservation at an Apple Store, they may even replace your MBP with a new one."
Why do people even buy first generation products anymore? Why not just wait until the 2nd or 3rd generation when these problems are weeded out? This is commonplace among products nowadays (Apple not excluded)...
Hopefully this means that we'll get some sweet, sweet refurbished lovin from the Apple Store. I can't imagine that Apple will simply scrap the defective machines - or am I just not imagining hard enough?
Actually, most companies wouldn't have released a product with such obvious bugs in the FIRST place.
It's not like Apple was re-inventing the wheel. It's an Intel-based notebook. They've been around a while.
You're right. If the battery on your Dell laptop dies on the 366th day after you bought it, Dell's standard response is to just flip ya the bird and walk away... Cudos to Apple for rectifying their mistakes.. I sure as hell know which company my $2500 is going to next time around...
Not every company will (without hesitation) own up to its mistakes and be generous enough to offer repairs. Even good products can have problems early on. I have owned many laptops over the years and have found IBM Thinkpads and Apple iBooks/Powerbooks to be some of the best. I currently own a G4 iBook as well as an older Wallstreet Powerbook 233 MHz G3 (great for running Darwin). These only problems I have had with either machine have been the CD tray failing to eject once on the iBook (I am running Debian PPC Sarge) and a dead PRAM battery in the old Powerbook (to be expected due to its age). Both of these computers are running 24/7 except when I put the iBook to sleep to keep the disk parked when I transport it each day. Some of my other laptops I own, like my Dell Latitude and Armada have suffered from hinge problems, display problems, etc. I have taken apart the Latitude so many times to repair it that the screws are loose. I plan to buy a Macbook in the near future if I don't see any Intel-based iBooks soon. Even though iBooks require significant disassembly to replace things such as the HDD or logic board, I haven't had to do this. And if I ever do, it will be fun. I think we can expect the next generation of Macbooks to be very reliable. Even this generation should be suitable with the logic board revision applied.
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I take it when you talk about repairs you're ignoring the software component of things. That was what undermined the company in the 1996-1999 timeframe. I doubt you'd try to seriously argue that OS8 and OS9 were quality products.
I hear what you're saying about the iPod, but I think I didn't state my point exactly the way I wanted to. Apple has problems once people catch up with it technically. In the late 90s this led to what I would characterize as "quality" issues with the software. Similarly, plenty of competitors are coming along with cheaper versions of the iPod that are basically the exact same thing. As that occurs, I predict Apple will implode. You could be right, but since it's a prediction neither of us really knows.
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I had to part with my 15 inch titanium powerbook Sunday and they said it would take two weeks to get it back. It's a really slick process when you have something wrong with your machine. I called support and said um.... ya it doesn't turn on and he said you live close to an apple store would you like to drop it off for them to diagnose it. So I said sure and he set me up a "Genius Bar" appointment while I was on the phone. I showed up and they called my name ran a bunch of diagnostics and said yep... it's broke. So I cried a little bit until he pried it out of my hands.
But I didn't let that stop my Mac fever, oh no! I have been wanting a Mac Mini for awhile and now had a perfect reason/excuse! So I bought the Core Duo and headed home to set it up and continue feeding my addiction.
It's really funny, I used to make fun of Mac users because it was so cult like, but then OS X came out and all the suck went away and I got drawn towards the light. I guess long story short, you can put me on the list of people that wouldn't want to be without mine for an extended period. All my windows boxes are gone, it's just my PB and my linux firewall/fileserver/proxy/dev/dhcp/ntp/Myth Tv/asterisk server. And I guess the new family member my Mac Mini.
I'd probably flip ya the bird if your battery died too. Not so much if it was your hard drive, or mobo or something... But a battery really isn't expected to last much longer than a year in my experience.
So you're saying it's impossible I was one of those 100? I actually just checked it and found that the battery is clearly marked as a "Lithium Ion". So obviously mine didn't get recalled.
No. All of them got recalled. But whoever you bought it from obviously didn't return it.
I'm going to post pix of it online to prove it to you. Course, you'll then just say that I lit it on fire with a lighter just now. So really I can't win. Tell me if you want the pix and I'll post them.
No, if you have a LiIon 5300 that really caught on fire, you'd be the first truth in a decade-old myth, where no known adverse events involving battery fire were known to have ever happened in consumer hands, as you can see from the links I posted. I and many others would no doubt be interested in seeing them.
How about some real criticisms, like abandoning a whole set of customers who bought PPC-based machines right before the changeover. Jerks.
How would you have suggested the transition be made?
PowerPC Macs aren't any more obsolete than any other Mac is or ever has been. Support is eventually dropped for all older hardware in the current OS (for example, for PowerPC G3-based systems). Apple usually supports older hardware for an average of 6.5 years in the current OS, and there is no reason to believe that level of support will change, regardless of the processor contained in the hardware that supplants it.
Further, Mac OS X currently has an approximately two year lifecycle. Apple has announced that Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" will ship at the end of 2006 or early 2007 (thus, Macworld Expo San Francisco 2007 in January seems a likely target). Apple has also specifically stated that Leopard will support PowerPC. Therefore, just from the official information we know today, it can be inferred that Apple will support PowerPC hardware with the current OS until at least 2009. Also, Apple has provided security updates for the version of Mac OS X immediately previous to the current release since Mac OS X 10.0. Therefore, we can further infer that security updates will be available for Mac OS X running on PowerPC until at least 2011. However, it is likely that PowerPC support will continue beyond this, given Apple's history of legacy hardware support in its operating systems. The official statement from Apple is that PowerPC support will continue for "a long time".
Other vendors, such as Microsoft, will continue producing software natively for both platforms as well. For example, on January 10, 2006, Microsoft formally committed to continuting to produce Microsoft Office for Mac OS X on Intel and PowerPC platforms for a minimum of five years.
Clearly, you're not using Dell.
Tell that to the folks who, if they turned around 5 days after the intel announcement, tried to resell their brand new PPC macs on ebay, would have lost over 50% of their money.
So their machines suddenly became useless? Ingenious!
You Mac fiends are such stupid goons. Your justifications are wonderful but just don't hold water.
Except that they do. I just explained to you specifically why PowerPC Macs will still be fine in an enterprise/institutional/professional environment, exactly as they were before the Intel transition, for years to come.
Your response? "Stupid goons."
Please explain how a PowerPC-based Mac is any less useful, or how it will be less useful for a traditional 3-4 year replacement lifecycle because of the Intel transition.
How should they have done it? Announced it a long period in advance to allow people to make buy decisions with complete information. Don't just sideswipe people. That's exactly what they did with the 680x0->PPC switch. They did the same thing with the iPod Mini->iPod Nano changeover too. A lot of pissed off customers there.
LOL! Yeah, that would just help sales famously (especially among emotional, irrational types who think that ebay is the measure of the usefulness of a product they just bought)! Remind yourself to never run a business.
And before you go on some tangent about how "the products still work and they support them," a product is worth exactly as much as people will pay for it on a widely distributed site like ebay.
Um, wha?
The product is worth how much use you get out of it, not how much someone will pay for it on *ebay*. Jesus, please tell me you're not serious. Ebay is the LAST test of the usefulness of a product you just purchased.
When my product loses 50% of its value when it should have only lost 20%, that pisses me off, and I think they should pay me for the loss of value.
Well, first, it didn't "lose 50%", especially considering people were still buying, e.g., PowerBook G4s as long as they were available, and are still buying Power Mac G5s and Xserve G5s in the pipeline right now.
Second, why does a person have to sell it right away (other than the fact that they might be a moron)? Now I know your first post was a troll, because you're doing it again. Nothing dropped "50%" when it was only "20%" days prior. And it will still have the EXACT SAME USEFULNESS for its lifetime. Might it be worth slightly less at the END of its usage lifetime? Sure. But not considerably. A 4 year old laptop or desktop is worth a lot less than 50% of its original value, so your numbers are suspect to begin with.
Sadly, my experience with my iMac G5 monitor has not been so great. If it's in use for more than an hour or two (actually, anytime after startup - 8 or so hours of being on, but usually within an hour or two), a green line appears going down the screen. I explained this to their phone support. They said take it into the Apple Store. I did. Of course, the "Mac Idiot" couldn't see the problem, because it USUALLY ONLY SHOW UP AFTER THE COMPUTER HAS BEEN IN USE FOR A WHILE. The asshole "genius" said he couldn't do anything, and I had to take my 'puter home. I'll be back in next weekend with pics of the error, and if he knows what's good for him and his children and his children's children, he'll send it in for repair.
fuck you.
"No, it was a myth of epic proportions that never affected any shipped consumer units for which Apple suffered on its portable line for years afterward. "
Uh-huh. And the first generation of Playstations didn't have heating problems despite claims to the contrary. Sony said so.
I'm not particularly criticizing Apple here, but I'm not going to dismiss a problem as a "myth" because a corporation says it's a myth. Other companies have done the same thing, denying actual problems with their products. And simply dismissing this as myth yourself shows you're more on Apple's side than their customers. If that weren't true you'd want to see the proof rather than proclaim that's a myth because you can't possibly know that.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
Obviously you didn't get a degree in economics. Just because something maintains its exact same usefulness doesn't mean that its value doesn't decline. Try telling the guy with the horse-and-buggy in 1910 how he's gonna get another 20 years out of that investment. Or my friend who was conned into buying 3 brand new Apple III computers by a salesman just before the Mac came out. Value is understood in relation to the marketplace, not the "usefulness" of the product.
So all you care about is the value of the product in the marketplace, not its usefulness to you, including its relative usefulness to newer products?
I love how you turn around and talk about how if Apple preannounced the changeover it would hurt the company. Well, so what? So, they chose to hurt their customers instead. Good work. You sound just like Gil Amelio when I heard him talk at the Apple annual meeting around 1996. I mean, you literally have him almost word-for-word here. That was exactly his reasoning on several decisions that crushed the company. "What matters is keeping customers in the dark long enough for us to ship the product." That really worked out well.
Except that is PRECISELY what Apple has been doing since Jobs returned in 1997. In Amelio's days, we'd get briefed on products for months before their introductions. We actually got roadmaps we could plan with. When Jobs came back, all that stopped. That's bad from our perspective, because if Apple wants to play in the enterprise space like it's been claiming it wants to, it needs to balance its need for product secrecy in the consumer sector with enterprise IT's need for roadmap and planning information.
But its product secrecy has made it *wildly successful* as a consumer company. It keeps competitors in the dark, business intelligence to a minimum, and yields millions of dollars in free advertising and magazine covers at every product introduction that it wouldn't otherwise get. It's been so incredibly and ridiculously successful with this secrecy strategy that it refuses to change even as its institutional customers press it to release routine planning information.
Would we liked to have heard about the Intel transition before it happened? Sure. But as a planner, I can't think of one actual strategic decision that would have changed for us. At all.
These are all reasons I think Apple will wilt again over the next 3-5 years. Time will tell.
Except for the fact that the reasons you gave are actually widely recognized to be some of the central reasons for its continued business success.
And, you are a fanboy. No question about it.
You are a troll. No question about it.
And I keep feeding you by continually responding. Congratulations. You win.
Apple consistently ranks at or near the top for laptop quality, according to Consumer Reports.
Any little problem with their laptops is magnified because 1) Apple gets an inordinate amount of press, both good and bad 2) iBooks and Powerbooks outsell pretty much any other model of notebook out there.
It's true that Apple has a small percentage of the overall market, but they're pretty much as big as Dell or Gateway. I think they were 3rd last I checked. And they have fewer models than the other guys, so they sell more of the few models they do have.
Dell has like, fifty different laptops. If there's a problem with the Dell Latitude 43094.23B, you don't really hear much about it because it's only one of their many models. Apple only has one 15" MacBookPro. Thus the small problems are magnified.
Also remember that Apple uses the same manufacturers as the other guys. ASUS, Quanta, etc. I think a lot of people don't realize that. What, you think ASUS does a crappy job on their Mac contract but a vastly better job for Dell or Sony or whoever else they build for? That just doesn't make any sense.
I've used a variety of laptops over the years from Dell, Compaq, IBM and ASUS and they've all had little quirks at least as annoying as the ones that that the MacBook Pros apparently have.
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Having said that, I don't think Apple can slide much more into glitchy than they already are before it starts to hurt them. Microsoft, which has always been glitchy AND badly designed, may eventually get over the glitchy part, and people may get tired of overpaying for buggy products.
I'd place better odds on OS/2 coming back from the dead over MS getting over "the glitchy part" before Apple does.
I had the exact same issue. I bought AppleCare at the time of purchase, then I had a HD problem in the first year of ownership. Apple took THREE WEEKS to replace the HD, delaying work for a few days because they wanted to charge me $700 to replace what they called a "destroyed" Ethernet jack. (That's right -- they wanted to blame an Ethernet jack for a busted hard drive.) The jack worked fine then and it works fine now in daily usage.
I've been at the local (Pittsburgh/Shadyside) Apple store watching as the "geniuses" shamelessly sell AppleCare to people who believe that it will cover their problems. Dell's "CompleteCare" by contrast costs less than AppleCare and covers accidental damage, whereas Apple just throws a latte in your face when you are even potentially in the wrong.
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I did just that after my nightmarish experience with Apple's customer service. I got a phone call questioning my whole story, then another phone call months later asking if I had bought AppleCare. (I did buy AppleCare at the time of purchase; the saleswoman seemed relieved that I had. Fat lot of good it did me.)
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They should probably keep it in their repair shop for a while and witness for themselves. My iMac G5 had a problem where it would cut off (power) after being on for an hour or so. The "genius" (what a bad name for low-level tech support. I cringe anytime I have to say it) kept it in the store for a while so he could witness it happen. When he did notice it turned itself off he sent it off to get a new power supply and motherboard. That seemed to fix the issue. Maybe you could reccommend something like that? Sometimes you have to lead the horse to water....
:)
Hope you can get it fixed.
I use to work at Staples and have witness first hand what happens when someone tries to return/repair a laptop with a cracked screen. It doesn't happen. To be honest, the best way to get a screen repaired is through Insurance. For instance, some times home owners insurance or renters insurance will cover accidental damage to appliances (such as laptops) - they're MUCH cheaper than an actual "Extended Warranty" through the likes of Apple/Staples/etc. and cover much more. Another way is to check with your credit card company. Some cards will actually cover purchases and will repair anything purchased with the card.
Finally, you can purchase warranties specifically for "Accidental Damage". But, the prices are so high. However, if your kids or your drunken roommates are prone to dropping things, it may be worth it...