California Judge Dismisses Notebook Logic Board Lawsuit Against Apple

[leman]

This judge setting the average at only 18-24 months sure pains the arguments so often spun about the quality of Apple workmanship and the long life of Apple Macs (as part of justifying the Apple premium).

He certainly does no such thing. The judge simply says that a 18 month is not an unacceptable lifespan for a laptop. If he were to say anything else, this would automatically set the precedent of increasing the USA-wide warranty for at least 24 month. Which would be a reasonable thing to do, in accordance with the rest of the civilised world I mean, even swiss now have a 24 month warranty.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

In no way did the Judge determine that the average life span of a computer is 18-24 months. Instead he is laying down a minimum life span that one could be expecting.

And in so doing was able to let a massive corporation off the hook from doing anything while that corporation's customers just had to swallow the personal loss. I appreciate that we want to spin anything as favorable to Apple as possible but when it's Apple the corporation vs. Apple consumers, the latter could just as easily be any one of us in another circumstance. When it's OUR own pain are we going to be just as quick to favor the corporation at OUR own expense?

Personally, when my prior Apple laptop exhibited the problem, I initially thought it was just an unfortunate issue for me. I also assumed that the wonderful Apple might do something (favorable) about it even though the timing was a bit beyond warranty. THEN I learned that it wasn't a unique problem but what appeared to be a manufacturing defect affecting lots of people with the same laptop. Now it wasn't just an isolated mistake but something the manufacturer got wrong. I was even more confident that Apple might do something about it but they did the same thing they did here- ignore the problem. And it's fans did the same thing that is showing up here: "my <Apple product> is fine so there should be no issue for anyone else either" or otherwise marginalize away someone else's problem.

Good for you if you have not had such an issue. And good for Apple that the products they've sold to you have worked well. When they sell you one that seems like a lemon, hopefully you'll feel exactly the same. Personally, I don't agree with the judge that 18-24 months is an average or "reasonable minimum" for laptops that cost as much as Apple charges. I think Apple should have accepted the defect with these (which doesn't affect me by the way) and done something to make it right for these customers (which again could just have easily been you or me had we chosen to purchase an Apple laptop from this same batch).

 

[69Mustang]

Agreed. Their whole system is designed to sell you Apple Care. I think the 90 days of phone support is stingy too. Still, even with the $349 warranty, they lose money when they have to give you a free rMBP.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, until the last sentence. Apple doesn't lose money on Apple Care. Extended warranties, like all types of insurance, are darn near pure profit. Companies that offer them are betting that more of those warranties will lapse before use than get used. They are almost always right.

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

Admittedly the 1 year warranties are a bit scummy. If Apple product quality is supposed to be the best why aren't Macs coming with 3 year warranties like high end products from other companies do.

The law lets them get away with 1 year.

 

[neuropsychguy]

Admittedly the 1 year warranties are a bit scummy. If Apple product quality is supposed to be the best why aren't Macs coming with 3 year warranties like high end products from other companies do.

High end cars (to use the overused car comparison/analogy) don't typically come with longer warranties than lower end automakers. Ferrari comes with a 3 year warranty (although there are 12 year ones available now for purchase), Bentleys come with a 3 year (but unlimited miles) warranty (not sure who would want to put that many miles on a Bentley), Hondas are 3 years/36000 miles, etc.

On the other hand, Hyundais and Kias have longer warranties (good cars now but longer warranties were warranted as build quality was catching up with other manufacturers).

http://blog.truecar.com/2012/06/05/top-manufacturer-warranties-on-new-cars/

A longer warranty does not mean higher quality or even greater manufacturer confidence that quality is high.

 

[Traverse]

I agree with you wholeheartedly, until the last sentence. Apple doesn't lose money on Apple Care. Extended warranties, like all types of insurance, are darn near pure profit. Companies that offer them are betting that more of those warranties will lapse before use than get used. They are almost always right.

I meant in the situations in which they have issue new computer systems to users.

 

[xbjllb]

Explains why Apple holds on to so much cash

Lawyer fees.

 

[Traverse]

This is understandable, but it is always possible that you will be unlucky. Computers are objects of every day use, can fail anytime and should be treated as such. If you cannot cope with losing a $1799 computer prematurely, then you should not get that computer in the first place. The higher price is not a guarantee of a longer longevity.

It is not a guarantee, but it is an reasonable expectation that can affect brand image. My $600 HP laptop is 8 years old and still runs (albeit not greatly). Where as my almost 3 year old $1799 MacBook Pro failed twice to the point where it wouldn't even boot.

 

[scyon]

If you want a Macbook that you know will last you three years buy AppleCare. Support costs money. Hardware techs cost money. Parts cost money. You're going to pay for it somehow, some way. This way you get OS and (Apple) application support along with an extended warranty. It's a stupid good deal for consumers.

I would prefer that Apple bundle that into the cost of their products because this is almost always a no brainer, but then people would complain even louder about a so called Apple-tax. When in fact Apple is giving people an option to pay for service that is really freaking handy, especially for folks that don't fix computers for a living.

----------

... Where as my almost 3 year old $1799 MacBook Pro failed twice to the point where it wouldn't even boot.

I feel for you, that really hurts. On the other hand, why were you comfortable buying a nearly $2000 (with tax) laptop with only a 1 year warranty? We kind of expect everything Apple makes to shoot out rainbows and lighting regardless of the circumstances, but that amount of money is something that I wouldn't personally throw down without something on paper saying I'm getting 3 years minimum.

 

[eroslws]

If you want a Macbook that you know will last you three years buy AppleCare. Support costs money. Hardware techs cost money. Parts cost money. You're going to pay for it somehow, some way. This way you get OS and (Apple) application support along with an extended warranty. It's a stupid good deal for consumers.

I would prefer that Apple bundle that into the cost of their products because this is almost always a no brainer, but then people would complain even louder about a so called Apple-tax. When in fact Apple is giving people an option to pay for service that is really freaking handy, especially for folks that don't fix computers for a living.

They do in Europe, in fact, up to FIVE years in some countries. Apple's a corporation, I don't see why anyone thinks they'll act any different in a pro-corporation marketplace like the US.

 

[Traverse]

I feel for you, that really hurts. On the other hand, why were you comfortable buying a nearly $2000 (with tax) laptop with only a 1 year warranty? We kind of expect everything Apple makes to shoot out rainbows and lighting regardless of the circumstances, but that amount of money is something that I wouldn't personally throw down without something on paper saying I'm getting 3 years minimum.

I had purchased the overpriced AppleCare so I had three years of support. My machine broke down a month prior to it's expiration.

I am realistic that products can have issues, but I did not decide to buy my first Mac on a whim. I did months of research into their products, their durability, and services. Apple has had a checkered past with dGPUs in notebooks, but so many users and professional reviews raved about home. I knew people that had been using Mac's for 7 or 8 years. So I decided to take that plunge. I had expected to keep it for about 5 years.

You're right, the one year warranty is stingy, but my research led me to believe that Apple's durability was among the top in the industry and having been burned my a Dell and an HP in the past I decided to give them a shot.

Side note: one HP was bad, but we have a 13 year old HP desktop tower that still works. It's so slow and freezing that it made me want to beat it with a hammer at times, but it did work and I did use it when my MacBook Pro was in it's first repair (which broke again in 2 weeks).

 

[AlecZ]

There should be a lawsuit about iMacs, not MacBooks. Our family used to buy iMacs, and they're the biggest PoS computers I've ever seen. By far worse than even HP. Failures left and right. Apple makes them less and less serviceable every generation. They were easy to fix in '05, difficult in '06, very very difficult in '07, and nearly impossible in '13. We're the target users for iMacs, but they suck so bad that we've moved to using old Mac Pros or using MacBooks as desktops. Yes, MacBooks aren't serviceable, but Apple apparently cares about them more because they never break. We've had 7 iMacs; the longest living one lasted 6 years, and the rest lasted less than 3.

My mom's 2011 iMac's hard drive failed twice within less than a year then began to slowly fail after the second in-warranty replacement... Now that it's out of warranty, it's ridiculously slow and keeps corrupting the OS on it. I've reinstalled it like 3 times. It would be an easy fix if I could open the stupid thing and put a new hard drive in. But it's not like the hard drive itself could be the problem. Not even a Seagate is this unreliable, and it has WD anyway. Something else is causing it. To make it worse, someone installed Mavericks on it, so that just about tripled the lag time to open anything. My brother and I are so sick of dealing with this crappy computer that he might give her his MacPro1,1 or our Hackintosh Dell to use.

 

[baryon]

Regardless, if a computer comes with a ridiculous 1 year warranty, that means the manufacturer does not trust that the computer will likely still function after one year. Otherwise surely they would try to gain your trust by guaranteeing (in many languages, the word "warranty" is the same as "to guarantee") its useful life with a warranty...

Add to that the fact that most modern electronic devices have almost no moving parts, and that they require no maintenance and that other than dropping them or submerging them in water (which have telltale signs), there is nothing a user can do to cause the machine to fail, so almost all faults are the manufacturer's fault and are a matter of bad luck to the user.

Add to that that anything you buy today will come with at the very minimum 2, but more commonly 3 years of warranty, be it a hairdryer, a memory card, a cheap mouse, a hard drive, a car (though most cars come with at least 3-4 years of warranty, with companies like Kia offering 7 years), or any computer not made by Apple (even cheap, unbranded ones).

If Apple makes a computer that is supposed to have a useful life of 3 years (that better be the case given the price and the upgrade cycle), then they should reflect that intention with a guarantee.

You can't spend money based on the HOPE that you will be lucky and that your machine will probably continue to work after 1 year.

There's no other good or service that I can think of that doesn't guarantee some sort of reasonable useful life for the thing you're paying money for.

A warranty means: You don't just buy a product and hope for the best, but rather you have a company's promise and guarantee that the product will have a useful life of a number of years. This means that manufacturers cannot just clunk together a machine from cheap parts that fail within a year, since a user cannot know how long the machine will last at the time of purchase. You can check if it works when you buy it, but you can't check if it will still work in 2 or 3 years because you don't have a time machine. But when the time comes, if you're out of warranty, it's too late to regret the purchase. That's why a warranty is important. 1 year is useless for a product that NO ONE intends to replace on a yearly basis.

 

[eroslws]

Add to that that anything you buy today will come with at the very minimum 2, but more commonly 3 years of warranty, be it a hairdryer, a memory card, a cheap mouse, a hard drive, a car (though most cars come with at least 3-4 years of warranty, with companies like Kia offering 7 years), or any computer not made by Apple (even cheap, unbranded ones).

I like your car example because it makes the most sense to people who can't seem to wrap their heads around the right to proper product. Competitive car warranties are 7 year/100,000 miles on the most expensive parts of the car (engine+transmission). It makes sense. In general, if you drive a car and the engine craps out at less than 100,000 miles, it's a lemon and everyone knows this. Most people drive their car 15,000 miles a year, give or take, and that's your 7 year warranty. By that point, some people want a new car and others will keep it until it dies or needs repair.

There's just no way to justify the short expected life of consumer electronics. The only reason people aren't turned off by Apple's 1 year warranty is because everyone else does it.

 

[melendezest]

Regardless, if a computer comes with a ridiculous 1 year warranty, that means the manufacturer does not trust that the computer will likely still function after one year. Otherwise surely they would try to gain your trust by guaranteeing (in many languages, the word "warranty" is the same as "to guarantee") its useful life with a warranty...

Add to that the fact that most modern electronic devices have almost no moving parts, and that they require no maintenance and that other than dropping them or submerging them in water (which have telltale signs), there is nothing a user can do to cause the machine to fail, so almost all faults are the manufacturer's fault and are a matter of bad luck to the user.

Add to that that anything you buy today will come with at the very minimum 2, but more commonly 3 years of warranty, be it a hairdryer, a memory card, a cheap mouse, a hard drive, a car (though most cars come with at least 3-4 years of warranty, with companies like Kia offering 7 years), or any computer not made by Apple (even cheap, unbranded ones).

If Apple makes a computer that is supposed to have a useful life of 3 years (that better be the case given the price and the upgrade cycle), then they should reflect that intention with a guarantee.

You can't spend money based on the HOPE that you will be lucky and that your machine will probably continue to work after 1 year.

There's no other good or service that I can think of that doesn't guarantee some sort of reasonable useful life for the thing you're paying money for.

A warranty means: You don't just buy a product and hope for the best, but rather you have a company's promise and guarantee that the product will have a useful life of a number of years. This means that manufacturers cannot just clunk together a machine from cheap parts that fail within a year, since a user cannot know how long the machine will last at the time of purchase. You can check if it works when you buy it, but you can't check if it will still work in 2 or 3 years because you don't have a time machine. But when the time comes, if you're out of warranty, it's too late to regret the purchase. That's why a warranty is important. 1 year is useless for a product that NO ONE intends to replace on a yearly basis.

This +1000

The myth that Apple computers have a better build quality and that the price is justified is just that, a myth. Perhaps 5-6 years ago that was true. No longer. Now they lure you in with anecdotal experience, a sexy shell, and (admittedly) remarkable features only to have a beautiful but disposable paperweight a year or two in.

I feel that 3 years should be the minimum warranty and then Applecare should extend it to 5. Some countries got it right and forced the company to stand behind their product. Unfortunately, in the "litigious" US this is a pipe dream and will never happen, as evidenced by the judge's ruling.

So the "Apple tax is" now purely for the luxury and bragging rights of owning an expensive product. Nothing more. Apple has officially become the ecstasy of the industry. It feels awesome at first, but before you know it, you're dead.

 

[leman]

It is not a guarantee, but it is an reasonable expectation that can affect brand image. My $600 HP laptop is 8 years old and still runs (albeit not greatly). Where as my almost 3 year old $1799 MacBook Pro failed twice to the point where it wouldn't even boot.

Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. I can find you dozens of people with exactly the opposite experience. We have a bunch of a decade-old Macs in the basement, most of them in working condition. I still don't see how this should show that Mac is a superior (or inferior) brand.

 

[melendezest]

High end cars (to use the overused car comparison/analogy) don't typically come with longer warranties than lower end automakers. Ferrari comes with a 3 year warranty (although there are 12 year ones available now for purchase), Bentleys come with a 3 year (but unlimited miles) warranty (not sure who would want to put that many miles on a Bentley), Hondas are 3 years/36000 miles, etc.

On the other hand, Hyundais and Kias have longer warranties (good cars now but longer warranties were warranted as build quality was catching up with other manufacturers).

http://blog.truecar.com/2012/06/05/top-manufacturer-warranties-on-new-cars/

A longer warranty does not mean higher quality or even greater manufacturer confidence that quality is high.

Yes it does. That is exactly what it means.

A longer warranty effectively means the company putting their money where their mouth is. Anecdotal experience here doesn't matter when purchasing upfront (who has time to wait three years to see if they were right?). A warranty like that is meant to establish customer confidence in a product.

A company like Honda can get away with their relatively low warranty because their products have consistently built a reputation of durability, so Honda probably doesn't want to spend the money on the offshoots that don't live up to the rep. But Apple cannot say the same.

The more time goes on, the more unreliable Apple products have become (in my personal experience), to the point where my investment is no longer sound. My PowerMac G4 lasted 7 years before I sold it. I replaced it with an iMac G4 that is still kicking in my father in law's office. I replaced it with 27inch iMacs on a yearly basis, and each had issues. I would have them repaired, and after the new came out l'd sell it.

Same thing with my portables: I sold a 1Ghz PowerBook 17 after 5 years, replacing it with a 13, 15, and 2 17's in the same cycle as before, for the same reason. The early 2011 17 I'm typing this on has had 3 repairs: bad antenna, messed up screen, and (out of warranty) logic board replacement due to graphics card failure.

There is no way I'm that unlucky.

This is why I seek out older Macs; I wait and see if the reliability is there and I purchase, kind of like waiting for later point-releases before you update your system.

Maybe I should move to Europe...

 

[Traverse]

Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. I can find you dozens of people with exactly the opposite experience. We have a bunch of a decade-old Macs in the basement, most of them in working condition. I still don't see how this should show that Mac is a superior (or inferior) brand.

What? In your original post I thought you trying to make a point that even though one buys a more expensive system they shouldn't have an expectation of longer lifespan. I was trying to refute that idea.

 

[melendezest]

Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. I can find you dozens of people with exactly the opposite experience. We have a bunch of a decade-old Macs in the basement, most of them in working condition. I still don't see how this should show that Mac is a superior (or inferior) brand.

All that says is that they don't build them like they used to. And thanks to this judge, they won't have to.

We're seeing enough anecdotal evidence (through relatively-new social networking outlets) from even diehard Mac users (like I used to be) to support the theory that new Macs won't last 10 years.

 

[tlevier]

I do like AppleCare, don't get me wrong, but I'd like to see Apple set a new standard in this regard. Give a 2 year warranty and have AppleCare extend that to 4.

 

[leman]

What? In your original post I thought you trying to make a point that even though one buys a more expensive system they shouldn't have an expectation of longer lifespan. I was trying to refute that idea.

I did. I am just saying that I don't think you can refute or prove something like this without a large body of empirical data

All that says is that they don't build them like they used to. And thanks to this judge, they won't have to.

We're seeing enough anecdotal evidence (through relatively-new social networking outlets) from even diehard Mac users (like I used to be) to support the theory that new Macs won't last 10 years.

This is an odd think to say. How do you know how many contemporary macs will be still in working condition after 10 years? I don't see any evidence that new Macs are of worthier build quality than older ones (quite in contrary, actually). I have taken enough of them apart to say something like this

P.S. Yes, SSDs will certainly fail after 10 years but is has nothing to do with macs per se.

 

[cjmillsnun]

They do in Europe, in fact, up to FIVE years in some countries. Apple's a corporation, I don't see why anyone thinks they'll act any different in a pro-corporation marketplace like the US.

It's 6 years in the UK.

I hate saying it, but US consumer laws are severely lacking. Many third world countries make corporations treat consumers better.

It is one reason that I will pay the extra and buy my items here in the UK, and not go buy them cheap elsewhere.

I'm paying extra for the peace of mind of being covered by some of the best consumer laws in the world.

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

There should be a lawsuit about iMacs, not MacBooks. Our family used to buy iMacs, and they're the biggest PoS computers I've ever seen. By far worse than even HP. Failures left and right. Apple makes them less and less serviceable every generation. They were easy to fix in '05, difficult in '06, very very difficult in '07, and nearly impossible in '13. We're the target users for iMacs, but they suck so bad that we've moved to using old Mac Pros or using MacBooks as desktops. Yes, MacBooks aren't serviceable, but Apple apparently cares about them more because they never break. We've had 7 iMacs; the longest living one lasted 6 years, and the rest lasted less than 3.

My mom's 2011 iMac's hard drive failed twice within less than a year then began to slowly fail after the second in-warranty replacement... Now that it's out of warranty, it's ridiculously slow and keeps corrupting the OS on it. I've reinstalled it like 3 times. It would be an easy fix if I could open the stupid thing and put a new hard drive in. But it's not like the hard drive itself could be the problem. Not even a Seagate is this unreliable, and it has WD anyway. Something else is causing it. To make it worse, someone installed Mavericks on it, so that just about tripled the lag time to open anything. My brother and I are so sick of dealing with this crappy computer that he might give her his MacPro1,1 or our Hackintosh Dell to use.

Have your ram checked on that iMac.

 

[AlecZ]

Have your ram checked on that iMac.

I ran the Apple Hardware Test in extended testing mode on it, and it found no issues. Would Apple do anything differently if I took it in? We'll probably take it in anyway and see if they can do anything.

 

[cppguy]

Considering the average computer has a life span of 5 years, and the average Mac is nearly double that, the 18 month statement is highly ignorant.

I find it hard to believe that serious professionals are using a computer for 5-10 years. 10 years ago computers were so slow that modern software wouldn't even run on them. Even 3 years ago laptops were hot to the touch, had 2 hours of battery life, and an obnoxiously loud fan. Not to mention the rotating disk, which was easily 20 times slower than today's SSD.