That’s strange, because the official internal guidance in the Genius Bar was to replace the cable. It was a big deal to us because the next iterations had the same cable but was millimetres longer, but the sku was different, so we were not allowed to use the new cables on the 16/17 MBPs.
Sounds like you'd be a great witness
cable stress
engineers should have caught that one in engineering phase
They should have, but in simulated testing it may not have show up as a problem as its not every MacBook that displays the symptoms.
Perhaps you would like to detail how you test for problem that takes three years to show up !
There are machines that simulate real world tasks like pressing buttons, opening and closing lids etc ... 1000's of times.
But
Lets assume for a second that Apple did testing on MacBooks that simulate the opening and closing of a MacBook lets say 20,000 times (Appx opening and closing 10 times per day over 6 years).
Lets just say all units passed the stress tests.
Lets assume that they have the documentation to prove it.
Lets just say that the backlight issue has only started affecting a small percentage of users after 3 years.
The question I have, is how long can a company be held responsible for an roll-of-the-dice issue that did
not affect test machines ?
The Judge appears to be taking the side of the plaintiff based on deleted forum comments.
I'm not taking sides on this as Apple has had numerous issues in the past from the Powerbook Hinges "Exploding" ... original MacBook's keyboard yellowing and Cracking, the butterfly issues among other problems.
But it'll be an interesting case as the plaintiff will need to prove that Apple
knowingly sent out this model with the likelihood it
would fail eventually.
I'd take a stab that the outcome will be that Apple will replace this cable or complete display on all affected MacBooks free for the next 3-4 years.