Black line on built-in display...

[therealseebs]

2016 rMBP 15". Was fine previously. Ran on external monitor for a while. Opened it to look at a thing... There's a black line about 2/3 down the display. Not affected by resolution, not affected by GPU. Doesn't show up on external monitor, obviously.

My guess is that a cable going to the display is loose, but it turns out they switched to special 5-pointed star bits to make it hard to look at things, and I have misplaced my Fancy Weird Screwdriver Bit Set, so I can't check to see whether it's trivial.

Sooooo. I get to back up the drive, then take it to an apple place where they may or may not be able to repair it within a week, and if they have to do anything they may well swap the logic board, which indirectly results in loss of all data, because the data is soldered on.

A+ customer experience, here.

 

[Ataricade]

you will be ok

 

[RoskO]

Sounds like bad cable/screen but who knows, maybe you'll get lucky and SMC reset or something similar would work.

I wouldn't open it up though, I think it requires pentalobe screws..and if they know you tried, you might be hosed altogether. Just get them to swap it out.

 

[therealseebs]

you will be ok

Very helpful of you to point this out, I guess?

 

[Wackery]

Very helpful of you to point this out, I guess?

Tim Cook's 'pro' tip: "you can avoid this problem, by buying 2!"

 

[therealseebs]

Sounds like bad cable/screen but who knows, maybe you'll get lucky and SMC reset or something similar would work.

I wouldn't open it up though, I think it requires pentalobe screws..and if they know you tried, you might be hosed altogether. Just get them to swap it out.

It's a BTO machine. If they don't happen to have a spare display on hand, they can't just give me a different machine.

Because, with the parts soldered on, even Apple can't just have a bunch of logic boards. They have to have logic boards for every combination of CPU, memory, and SSD.

Which strikes me as a sort of fundamental and severe flaw. Even the repair techs can't swap out a defective part anymore.

 

[yillbs]

It's a BTO machine. If they don't happen to have a spare display on hand, they can't just give me a different machine.

Because, with the parts soldered on, even Apple can't just have a bunch of logic boards. They have to have logic boards for every combination of CPU, memory, and SSD.

Which strikes me as a sort of fundamental and severe flaw. Even the repair techs can't swap out a defective part anymore.

Your wrong, it's not a flaw. Apple takes a week to replace the boards they don't care if we have to wait, it's no sweat off their back. Why would it be, we're purchased thousands and thousands of dollars worth of hardware, what's another week to us.

 

[therealseebs]

Your wrong, it's not a flaw. Apple takes a week to replace the boards they don't care if we have to wait, it's no sweat off their back. Why would it be, we're purchased thousands and thousands of dollars worth of hardware, what's another week to us.

Well, I'd argue that it's a flaw in that, if they can't get me a working machine very quickly, I'm probably going to go with the simpler solution of returning it. I haven't really got a plan for what to do instead, but this machine has pretty much disappointed me on every level. Unfortunately, so far as I can tell, even if I can find a 2015 with a discrete GPU, it's apparently unstable and may fail badly, and apparently you can't just upgrade the SSD in those because even though they're standard form factor, they're a special proprietary interface that's not standard, so there's no way to get comparable performance from after-market. Wheeeeeeeeee.

... Of course, then I'm out $hundreds in USB-C cables and widgets, but I guess they'll probably be useful eventually someday.

 

[therealseebs]

Long story short, after thinking about the repair process and all that, I realized that I just plain don't like this machine enough to spend $3,500 on a computer, plus $350 on a support deal, plus tax, for the dubious privilege of having a machine every part of which disappoints me.

I haven't figured out what to get instead, but I am pretty sure that $4k will get me something I'd like.

 

[DeltaMac]

Rather than "thinking about the repair process and all that..."

You have free support calls - What did AppleCare tell you when you called them?
If they said something like: "We can repair that, just by removing the bottom cover and reseating the cable", or maybe: "We can't fix that, you have to ship it off to the repair depot. It will be back in 3 to 5 days, tops. We'll send you a box so you can ship it out yourself."
Or: "sounds like a display failure. We have the part here, takes 30 minutes and you are out the door" (OK, maybe I'm dreaming)
Or - some other, hopefully helpful ideas that you can realistically decide on,
Or - continue with your desire to return. Apple will accept it back, for sure.

I do get your frustration, but if you back up your data before the repair begins, you can't lose your data. You would be backing that up, anyway...

 

[therealseebs]

Oh, I have a backup. But I live far from Apple stores, so I either do repair-by-mail, or repair-by-driving-two-hours, twice. And either way I'm out the computer for a while.

And then I look at PCs, and for a bit over $2k, I can get a machine with 32GB of faster DDR4 memory, upgradeable to 64, PCIe slot for an SSD and 2.5" drive bay, anti-glare display... Basically, I can get a machine a lot closer to what I actually wanted, hardware-wise. Downside? A lot of apps I want aren't available for Linux, and I hate Windows. But for a nearly $2k lower price and much better hardware?

Apple got the sale initially just because they hadn't updated in a year and a half and I was way overdue for a machine, but the machine was just plain too disappointing.