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MacBook Pro Stage Light Fault: Apple's Design Turns $6 Fix Into a $600 Nightmare (9to5mac.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Some MacBook Pro owners have complained of a 'stage light' effect, where they see uneven backlighting at the bottom of the display. For some, the symptom is only the first stage, with the backlight failing altogether. iFixit says that it has identified the cause -- and the way in which Apple changed the design of the Touch Bar generation for the MacBook Pro turns what would otherwise be a $6 fix into a $600 nightmare. The problem, says the company, is caused by Apple using much thinner ribbon cables instead of the thicker wires used in previous generation MacBook Pro models.

4 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Entire display unit by burtosis · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Don't be stupid, they don't just dump circuit boards like that!!! They have valuable metals in them. You burn them in a smoking heap, and when you can get close enough without hacking your lungs up, you recover the valuable bits. Then you dump it somewhere.

  2. Re:Entire display unit by blackest_k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I believe in the quest for a thinner screen they moved the driver board from the screen to the body with some too short cables bridging the gap instead. This can lead to back light failure if you open the screen out too far.
    I like my old macbook pro but I dislike intensely their recent design choices over the last 5 years or so.

    Mag safe a reliable keyboard upgradeable ram ssd / hdd sd card slot all gone and replaced with junk.

    If only you could buy a modern mainboard that would fit in a macbook pro chassis.
    That way keep what is good and upgrade to something more powerful.
         

  3. Re:Entire display unit by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The Quest for Thinner and Lighter, is actually causing a lot of problems in general. Remember the Note 7 catching fire. That is because they made the device too thin, and jammed the battery in too tight that it didn't allow for the battery expansion.

    Being that the displays with the computing force behind it, is thinner, then the plastic bevel covering the glass CRT from my first Computer. We are in general (not just Apple) is sacrificing too many features for thin and light, where most of the devices are already not too heavy or too thick to be practical.

    Me I don't care that I lost my headphone jack on my iPhone, but a lot of people do, and I understand why they do mind. The reason for waterproofing, and giving extra space for the battery and keeping it thin and light, we are at a point where thin and light means feature sacrifice, perhaps we should temporarily step away from that goal.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  4. Re:Entire display unit by jythie · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This.

    I know so many people who use macs for work rather than media consumption, and the have been feeling increasingly abandoned. I would even be happy if they started some kind of official 3rd party system builder program that could still run OSX but had other companies trying to fill the market gaps.