Apple Launches Repair Program For Longstanding 2011 MacBook Pro GPU Problems

AmiMoJo writes: Apple has just launched a MacBook Pro Repair Extension Program for Video Issues to provide out-of-warranty repairs for MacBook Pros and Retina MacBook Pros sold between February of 2011 and December of 2013. Symptoms of affected computers include "distorted or scrambled video on the computer screen," "no video on the computer screen (or external display) even though the computer is on," and unexpected restarts. Some users have been complaining about 2011 MacBook Pro GPU issues since shortly after the systems launched. Those complaints continued for well over three years—outside of the warranty window even if you bought AppleCare, at least if you bought the systems at launch—and were more recently the cause of a class-action lawsuit.

Comments

heh heh

[drinkypoo]

Those complaints continued for well over three yearsâ"outside of the warranty window even if you bought AppleCare,

That's like Sears. Bought a window AC from them, failed inside the 1 year warranty. They drug the replacement process out for so long that the warranty expired, then they tried to claim that since it was now out of warranty, they had deleted all information on the claim and they wouldn't cover it. Took many hours on the phone to even get the unit replaced with an inferior model, spent says in over-100 temps with no AC as a result. Now I sincerely hope Sears goes out of business. Petty? Too bad.

If you make your warranty claim before the period expires, though, they don't have a legal leg to stand on.

This is not Apple's first epic hardware failure. The one by which I've been personally bitten is the B&W G3 data corruption bug. Rev.1 used a CMD IDE controller which sucked, and which Apple implemented very poorly. Works okay in the Ultrasparc 5, causes data corruption with most UDMA devices in the B&W G3 mac. Apple's solution was either spend more money on FWB toolkit (a third party utility) or spend more money on a PCI IDE card, which due to the apple tax was $100 back when exactly the same card with a different rom was sold for the PC for $20. No logic board replacements. When they folded the old TechInfo Library (TIL) into the modern Knowledge Base (KB) they got both older and newer articles than the one in which they described this problem, because Apple would like you to forget both that they make crap and that they will leave you twisting in the wind even when they know it was their fault and their products are not suitable for their described purpose.

Apple is different from other OEMs only in that it is sleazier.

Re:heh heh

[drinkypoo]

You're delusional if you think other OEMs are not as sleazy...

Apple is sleazier because they delete important documents that you need from their library if they make them look bad. If you go to Microsoft's site you can find them self-reporting on flaws in products as old as DOS 5.0. They kept the pages up for the use of their customers, who want to be able to figure out if a problem is their fault or the vendor's fault, even well after the software was obsolete. Apple just wants to hide their flaws, and who cares if you have problems? Buy some new hardware, peon.

Now granted, there are other companies just as sleazy as Apple out there. But frankly, the only one which is as popular is Sony.