Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Apple Over 2011 MacBook Pro Graphics Issues

[Eriamjh1138@DAN]

So should I be complaining I've never had an issue with my 2011 Early MBP8,2 i7 2GHz with AMD 6490 purchased as a refurb in late 2011 with 3 years of daily use?

Cause I'm not complaining and neither is my wife (same model).

No issues here.

Or is mine not part of this class of MBPs?

 

[Jess13]

"$155+ billion chilling in the bank"

"You have a broken MacBook Pro? LOL, fix it and pay for it yourself!"

Apple is my favorite tech company, I have proudly promoted its products and services for years and years, way before the first iPhone, i.e. before Apple was mainstream cool (but was still the coolest anyway.) I bought the first 17" flat screen iMac in early 2003 (I still have it, see included pic.) I own a 2012 MacBook Pro (typing this on) and an iPhone 5. I also am going to buy iPhone 6 or 6 Plus ASAP. That said, if I had bought an affected MacBook Pro, I would be furious and definitely seeking this Apple-Pays remedy for its own fault.

 

[dysamoria]

If you are capable and your GPU is ok - do it. Uberdoward Channel on YouTube has a good 17 inch video where he shows how he does it with Chrome polish - I use autosol for the first polish then Cape cod cloths for the final polish to make them really shine. Only problem is with Cape cod is they smell after the polishing so you have to give them a good wash with denatured isopropyl after. I use a tiny sliver of Gelid GC Extreme paste on each die and more than one pair of surgical gloves.

It works - my record for the 17 inch is 35c on idle and 37c for the 15 and they all cool down really, really quick compared to Apple's stupid guidelines, particularly for this chassis..

This is insane. Consumers shouldn't have to do things like this. Apple has spent the last decade or two obsessing over exterior appearances and hasn't bothered to engineer the interior better than this. Because? It gets them more sales. Most of us hate Windows so much that we'll stay with Apple's stuff anyway. They have a superior environment and great looking hardware that doesn't creak and squeak (though mine whistles high pitched sounds along with all networking and screen activity)... so most of us put up with it because the time when the equipment DOES work is more pleasant and less annoying.

 

[cscheat]

I guess I got lucky. Mine (17" early MB Pro) hasn't had one issue since day one. <knocks on wood>

me too !

 

[dysamoria]

It is in the nature of every product that it might age. Even incredible technique like macbooks.

If a device, a laptop, a car or even e loaf of bread ages it might show some issues.

if the issues appear during warranty, fine the manufacturer has to repair them, if they appear after the warranty ended, you have to pay for the repair.

Even for stupid americans, who claim millions when the empty a fresh cup of coffee on their leg and wonder that the hot coffee is really hot, have to accept, that ther is no infinite warranty on any product. Go and sue your bakery when your bread is uneatable after 6 month.

Educate yourself on the actual McDonald's case you're sloppily and lazily referencing. No one should get 2nd or 3rd degree burns because their coffee spilled, in a parked car, as a passenger. Because accidents happen, there are these things called safety standards that are put in place to reduce the potential for grievous injury when accidents do inevitably occur. The McDonald's in question was repeatedly warned about the temperature of their coffee far exceeding safety standards and refused to reduce it. But I guess, since you're perfect, you don't need safety standards and you think others should suffer for the absence of a safety standards system you don't personally need.

There was perfectly acceptable justification for suing McDonald's over that.

When manufacturers ignore design flaws and provide very short warranty periods, this is an example of the industry abusing the consumer. Since the consumers in the USA are the opposite of empowered, and they believe the capitalist propaganda of the free market, they get screwed, pay for it, and then continue on as if it was their own fault that a company sold them defective product. The capitalist libertarian wannabe-1-percenters gang up in public forums to mock and insult the few consumers that fight for consumer protection laws.

Or, as in this case, the pissed off consumers are collected together expressing their impotent rage against a company they like, but are angry at for justifiable reasons, emotionally supporting each other in their inability to get satisfaction in an economy built on waste and planned obsolescence worse than any other industry ever.

 

[melendezest]

I'm unhappy to be one of the many effected by this issue

About a year ago, my early 11 MacBook Pro just wouldn't turn on anymore one day. When I plugged it into the MagSafe, its light would just faintly flicker orange. So I brought it to the Apple Store and they said they'd have to replace the logic board for a flat rate of $300. We did it and I got it back about 4 days later. I was happy it worked again, however, they put a big deep scratch in the lid of the laptop, which I hadn't noticed when I first received it, so Apple believed it was my fault. I wish they could at least give me back my $300 I paid for them to fix the laptop and then send it back scratched up.

Also, they forgot to even plug in the backlit keyboard cable when they repaired it. So I had to take it apart myself and do that with the help of iFixIt.

I just paid $300 for the repair on my 17 (logic board). Interestingly, my iMac had the same issue a year ago; it was $1,000 to repair that (logic board and graphics card). When I got my iMac back they'd installed a 1GHz graphics card, even though mine came with the 2 GHz card.

Apple replaced the wrong card, although they fixed it free of charge a year later (when I noticed it). So you take the bad with the good, I guess?

 

[dysamoria]

Yep, but having 80% too much paste spread all over the pcb and heatsink with a pitted die contact plate to bind to the GPU doesn't help much either. Mine still has its original lead free soldering it just runs a lot cooler pasted and lapped my way.

Patent your heat dissipation technique and then market it using Apple as an example of how NOT to do it. Patents are ****, which is why you could get the patent awarded for simple application of sensible practices... but who knows... you could get that patent bought by someone for insane money.

----------

hmm wonder about my early 2013 retina MBP... The display often won't turn back on after sleeping. But I can tell the machine is active, I can ssh into it, hear noises as I hit buttons and adjust the keyboard backlighting brightness. But I have to power off and power back on to get the display back.

Welcome to power save feature bugs. Frankly, NO computer and OS combo has made flawless power save features or multi-monitor functions. Every computer I've ever used has failed to restore its display at one time or another, sometimes very badly, on a change from sleep to awake, or monitor layout change while booted. My MacBook Pro with 10.9.x recently went to the single display mode after I unplugged the mini display port going to a tv, but it didn't redraw the desktop properly. The desktop area was smaller than the background wallpaper area. I had to reconnect and disconnect several times before it rearranged the main desktop properly. It shouldn't even BE changing the built-in display AT ALL. It's bad software design and a lack of testing to suss out the bugs. The hardware also can be at fault because it has its own programming to do the power features. If the OS and the power save hardware don't like each other....

----------

179 quid on eBay sent to bga-repairs in Hereford has worked for 9 clients of mine my fellow Brit. Bearing in mind Apple charge £410 for one of their depot boards which never last long its a rather good deal, and save your receipt for a possible refund.

And for us people in the USA where everyone expects us to take an ass raping by corporate America and then smile about it?

I have a dead MacBook Pro 3,1 and a still ok MacBook Pro 5,5 that's my last good computer. I am also poor and lack the tools and skills to do this work myself.

I'm glad to hear you contacted Apple on an engineering approach. You tried to get Tim Cook's attention too, I assume?

----------

than you should start a computer company, your engeneering skill should be good enough to be the No one in no time and your computers might work in 20 years.

Yes I know there is some kind of consumer law in 2 o 3 US states, but if you read them they are not worth the paper they are written on. Californias only important topic is, that spare arts have to be availabe for at least 7 years and that the devices have to be repairable for at least 7 years.

That would've helped me. When my 3,1 MacBook Pro died, the guy at the Apple store told me there were no more motherboards for this model (mostly because they don't repair them, they just give you one that hasn't failed yet, but will)

----------

Your whole post says "I watched Fightclub recently".

Doesn't make him wrong.

----------

In 2008 it was nVidia's fault. they paid the bill.

For a limited time they paid for customers to have motherboards replaced... replaced with the same boards with the same defect.

This was not a solution. It was a workaround to stop further litigation by Apple and other laptop makers against nvidia, or consumers against Apple and other laptop makers.

 

[diazj3]

Yet, that's what they did to the 2008 and 2010 models. They set up a repair program to repair those affected models, why couldn't they do that for the 2011 model?

Yea, but a VERY LIMITED program. They still screwed a lot of customers, since they pulled the program in 2012. I purchased my 2008 MBP in 2009, as an Apple refurb, bought applecare, and it failed 3 months after applecare ran out. When I called Apple, they said the repair program had just ended, and there was nothing they or I could do but to buy a net one full price. These repair programs are a joke if your computer doesn't fail when they want it to - even of all 2008 MBPs are doomed due to the GPU defect.

 

[dysamoria]

That's the reason I don't buy expensive Apple stuff, I've had dealings with them over cheaper stuff like iPads, I know what they're like, " Do you have Apple Care".

----------


I repaired non Apple PCs for years, most of the problems I found were software related, a few power supplies, a few Video cards, some sound cards, a few Hdds and the odd monitor.
I built a lot of PCs out of years old components and never had many major problems, back in those days I wouldn't have given Apple machines the time of day.

I've built PCs for a large part of my 38 year lifespan and I'm sick of it. The last PC I paid actual money to construct was built from highly rated parts, all listed as compatible with each other (unless you count the RAM, since the memory on Asus' "certified compatible" list didn't exist on the market and they wouldn't have maxed the board's capacity even if they were available). I replaced the Asus motherboard twice, finding out that this highly rated board (Asus Striker Extreme) was by then well known to be garbage. Apparently I didn't listen to the right voodoo geeks when I researched my parts before buying. Then I went through three or four Evga motherboards till they got me one that wasn't defective or WARPED! (yes, they sent me a board so warped on one corner that I felt like they were playing a practical joke on me). This was to replace a brand new one that was dead fresh from the box. Then there was the cap that popped off my BFG nvidia GPU card when bumped during one of five system rebuilds, which needed to be replaced with a refurb board that looks worse than the brand new one I originally bought, because they don't re-attach surface mount parts for repair service. Then there's all the variously suspiciously incompatible components and all the other voodoo.

Screw that. I want to buy a single product, warranted by one damned company, for a decent amount of time. I also want it to not sound like an air conditioner or fish tank pump, not take up an entire corner of my studio, and not have fans that rattle, hum, and vibrate a few years after first use. Building computers is for people that do it as a career, not for people that want to be productive.

 

[John.B]

If this pans out like most class action lawsuits, the lawyers will be able to buy new Malibu estates while the actual plaintiffs will get something on the order of a $25 coupon toward a future Macbook purchase.

 

[MacMulti]

Glad to see some hopes for macbook owners here. Lenovo owners including myself have to sit duck staring at dead thinkpad T61 series with nvidia graphic card flaw in manufacturing, rendering it coma and unbootable, now using as paper weight.

In 2008 it was nVidia's fault. they paid the bill.

Now and forever, I'm totally shunning away from nvidia. F! it.

 

[dysamoria]

If this pans out like most class action lawsuits, the lawyers will be able to buy new Malibu estates while the actual plaintiffs will get something on the order of a $25 coupon toward a future Macbook purchase.

That's because law in the USA is a business, nothing more. If there wasn't money in these suits, no law office would take them. There is no justice, merely winners and losers. The lawyers win no matter the end result of the lawsuit, and they set the ridiculously high fees that makes access to help from the law industry almost impossible for average people. Only businesses, groups (and very patient, well spoken average people who have time and mental/emotional stamina to do all their own law work) have access to "justice". Most companies settle out of court to avoid being found in the wrong, when they see they're going to lose, so the court process itself is a total waste of people resources and time anyway.

Edit: criminal law is another matter entirely. Not as corrupt, but also not justice.

 

[Lancer]

Well In New Zealand we have the "Consumer Guarantees Act" which means we have certain rights years after the warranty runs out. Things like "Fit for purpose" "Reasonable expectation of life", etc etc etc.

We are not reliant on lawyers making money.

Same sort of thing here in Australia... but I still got Apple Care for my iMac.

 

[duffman9000]

If you are capable and your GPU is ok - do it. Uberdoward Channel on YouTube has a good 17 inch video where he shows how he does it with Chrome polish - I use autosol for the first polish then Cape cod cloths for the final polish to make them really shine. Only problem is with Cape cod is they smell after the polishing so you have to give them a good wash with denatured isopropyl after. I use a tiny sliver of Gelid GC Extreme paste on each die and more than one pair of surgical gloves.

It works - my record for the 17 inch is 35c on idle and 37c for the 15 and they all cool down really, really quick compared to Apple's stupid guidelines, particularly for this chassis..

I've been meaning to clean up my GPU for a long time. I need to open my MBP to install a new Bluetooth card to enable continuity anyway.

 

[Lancer]

I've been meaning to clean up my GPU for a long time. I need to open my MBP to install a new Bluetooth card to enable continuity anyway.

How much do they cost for the 2011 MBP?

 

[RockSpider]

I've built PCs for a large part of my 38 year lifespan and I'm sick of it. The last PC I paid actual money to construct was built from highly rated parts, all listed as compatible with each other (unless you count the RAM, since the memory on Asus' "certified compatible" list didn't exist on the market and they wouldn't have maxed the board's capacity even if they were available). I replaced the Asus motherboard twice, finding out that this highly rated board (Asus Striker Extreme) was by then well known to be garbage. Apparently I didn't listen to the right voodoo geeks when I researched my parts before buying. Then I went through three or four Evga motherboards till they got me one that wasn't defective or WARPED! (yes, they sent me a board so warped on one corner that I felt like they were playing a practical joke on me). This was to replace a brand new one that was dead fresh from the box. Then there was the cap that popped off my BFG nvidia GPU card when bumped during one of five system rebuilds, which needed to be replaced with a refurb board that looks worse than the brand new one I originally bought, because they don't re-attach surface mount parts for repair service. Then there's all the variously suspiciously incompatible components and all the other voodoo.

Screw that. I want to buy a single product, warranted by one damned company, for a decent amount of time. I also want it to not sound like an air conditioner or fish tank pump, not take up an entire corner of my studio, and not have fans that rattle, hum, and vibrate a few years after first use. Building computers is for people that do it as a career, not for people that want to be productive.

I did it as a career for a while, not that lucrative I might ad,made more money doing it as a hobby. I stopped building around 10 years ago, not enough money in it anymore, I just build the occasional one for myself now. My brother went into the laptop side of it, and he's doing very well, but it was just too finicky for me.
You must have bought some real bad parts, I never had that trouble.

 

[Medic311]

Instead of putting lead back into our products, we should be focussing on finding a replacement for leaded solder that does work well in the situations that leaded solder works well in.

Unfortunate for us, the most toxic materials are actually the best for their applications hence why they we're chosen in the first place prior to an understanding if their toxicity snd the health effects.

Example - asbestos floor tiles and shingles were virtually indestructible. An asbestos shingles roof or siding has a life expectancy quadruple of even the best asphalt shingles and vinyl siding today. Same with floor tiles - asbestos floor tiles installed in the 40's are still in existence in many older buildings. Unless there was repeated moisture exposure underneath and flooding the tiles stay put forever. The tiles themselves never crack, and never warp.

Lead is added to many materials to improve various properties and there really isn't anything comparable without making sacrifices

 

[Jessica Lares]

I'm probably out of luck. My Intel graphics 13" MBP has the same issues though.

 

[duffman9000]

How much do they cost for the 2011 MBP?

I know I over paid a little : $35 plus tax. I chose a local guy.

 

[Aloft085]

Screw that. I want to buy a single product, warranted by one damned company, for a decent amount of time. I also want it to not sound like an air conditioner or fish tank pump, not take up an entire corner of my studio, and not have fans that rattle, hum, and vibrate a few years after first use. Building computers is for people that do it as a career, not for people that want to be productive.

Well, to each their own. Personally, I don't think I'll ever go back to buying a factory-built desktop. Not unless Apple starts providing significantly better value for the money at the high-end, which I find unlikely. My custom-built PC has far better performance for the price than anything that I can order from a manufacturer, and all Windows PC manufacturers have crap customer service anyway. They also tend to use really low-grade parts. For example, my previous PC came with a power supply specifically labelled "For Pentium IV processors only"... yeah. Needless to say, I wasn't running a Pentium IV. Every other part in the thing was a no-name brand as well.

I guess if you were not concerned about GPU's, then I could see your argument for going with a manufacturer. GPU's are the great difficulty. You need specific motherboards to SLI/Crossfire, a powerful and reliable power supply for high-end or multiple cards, and of course you need a decent GPU brand. It's far easier to just build your computer from scratch with upgradability in mind, than to try to upgrade an OEM PC full of sub-par hardware.

----------

That's because law in the USA is a business, nothing more. If there wasn't money in these suits, no law office would take them. There is no justice, merely winners and losers. The lawyers win no matter the end result of the lawsuit, and they set the ridiculously high fees that makes access to help from the law industry almost impossible for average people. Only businesses, groups (and very patient, well spoken average people who have time and mental/emotional stamina to do all their own law work) have access to "justice". Most companies settle out of court to avoid being found in the wrong, when they see they're going to lose, so the court process itself is a total waste of people resources and time anyway.

Edit: criminal law is another matter entirely. Not as corrupt, but also not justice.

Yep. I'm no bleeding-heart, but our justice system definitely needs reform. Off topic though, I guess.

 

[kavlo26]

Hope something good comes out of the lawsuit

My 2011 MBP died last month with the same graphics card failure. I had just reached the end of my Applecare and was quoted a $600 logic board replacement with no guarantee on how long that board would last. It was extremely frustrating walking out of the apple store knowing I paid well into $2k for a laptop that would last only 3 years. My white Macbook from 2008 is still going strong! I ended up buying a new MBP because I needed a daily driver. But I hope I can get the old one fixed. Come on Apple, step it up a notch. You've made so much money already by not offering a base 32gb iPhone 6 and indirectly forcing people to buy the 64gb. Fix the 2011 MBP!

 

[Gav Mack]

Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Apple Over 2011 MacBook Pro Graphics Issues

I was quoted £510 at an Apple Store just this very morning, Yosemite upgrade didn't agree with my late 2011 MBP 17, gutted to say the least!

Outrageous considering the quality and the length of life expected of that replacement depot board. Another 100 over the norm. For anyone, especially with a board failing for the first time seek out a lead reballer please.

----------

Patent your heat dissipation technique and then market it using Apple as an example of how NOT to do it. Patents are ****, which is why you could get the patent awarded for simple application of sensible practices... but who knows... you could get that patent bought by someone for insane money.

----------



Welcome to power save feature bugs. Frankly, NO computer and OS combo has made flawless power save features or multi-monitor functions. Every computer I've ever used has failed to restore its display at one time or another, sometimes very badly, on a change from sleep to awake, or monitor layout change while booted. My MacBook Pro with 10.9.x recently went to the single display mode after I unplugged the mini display port going to a tv, but it didn't redraw the desktop properly. The desktop area was smaller than the background wallpaper area. I had to reconnect and disconnect several times before it rearranged the main desktop properly. It shouldn't even BE changing the built-in display AT ALL. It's bad software design and a lack of testing to suss out the bugs. The hardware also can be at fault because it has its own programming to do the power features. If the OS and the power save hardware don't like each other....

----------



And for us people in the USA where everyone expects us to take an ass raping by corporate America and then smile about it?

I have a dead MacBook Pro 3,1 and a still ok MacBook Pro 5,5 that's my last good computer. I am also poor and lack the tools and skills to do this work myself.

I'm glad to hear you contacted Apple on an engineering approach. You tried to get Tim Cook's attention too, I assume?

----------



That would've helped me. When my 3,1 MacBook Pro died, the guy at the Apple store told me there were no more motherboards for this model (mostly because they don't repair them, they just give you one that hasn't failed yet, but will)

----------



Doesn't make him wrong.

----------



For a limited time they paid for customers to have motherboards replaced... replaced with the same boards with the same defect.

This was not a solution. It was a workaround to stop further litigation by Apple and other laptop makers against nvidia, or consumers against Apple and other laptop makers.

Patents you can't get using common sense and thinking things through to find obvious solutions. I have been repasting the unibodies since my 2009 15 could cook an egg on the left speaker. Yes there were two/three emails to Tim, one to Jony, feedback requests and a joke of a merry go round from corporate relations with a lovely Apple rep powerless to actually help. I heard from contacts in AASP's that there was a spike in failures in July 2013.

I never wanted this lawsuit and still don't - the repair options are too much of a mess but what I did ask for was for only all the heatsink plates re profiled far less and better paste and 3 pages of the technicians guide edited, in other words the engineering guidelines amended. It could apply not only to the 2011 15/17 but 13 inch with a single die plate too and also but pretty much every classic unibody from 2008 till today cooling tens of millions of them better. I wanted them to save millions and the users too but got absolutely nowhere. Then there's hundreds of posts I've made on the huge 2011 AMD thread on the Apple site over the past year too it feels like I've cared about these users who haven't paid me for my services far more than Apple have for making some die plates shiny for a few bucks each and changing the way they paste. I even offered to demonstrate for free with a selection of 2011's at Apple UK HQ that they could test afterwards for thermal performance. Seemingly their engineers are overruled by their lawyers as they surely must know, but then again they seem incompetent at pasting dies on CPU and GPU through their whole range even today, lacking the micron precision they have everywhere else.

Now they haven't listened and this lawsuit is out it leaves a bad taste in the mouth, feels like a bit of a reap what you sow Apple and that doesn't make me happy one bit. That would have been if they'd simply done something about the guidelines instead of nothing!

 

[AlecZ]

"You have a broken MacBook Pro? LOL, fix it and pay for it yourself!"

Apple is my favorite tech company, I have proudly promoted its products and services for years and years, way before the first iPhone, i.e. before Apple was mainstream cool (but was still the coolest anyway.) I bought the first 17" flat screen iMac in early 2003 (I still have it, see included pic.) I own a 2012 MacBook Pro (typing this on) and an iPhone 5. I also am going to buy iPhone 6 or 6 Plus ASAP. That said, if I had bought an affected MacBook Pro, I would be furious and definitely seeking this Apple-Pays remedy for its own fault.

That's a great picture. My brother is a Mac collector, so I will definitely show it to him.

 

[The Mercurian]

So I have one of these and it works fine and is still in warranty into 2015.

I was planning to sell it for a faster one - what should I do with it now with this in the works (bearing in mind I am in Europe)

 

[AlecZ]

Even if its the 2012 rMBP, I will be happy. But really, this is what I want, too. My 2011 is dying as I type this

Meh, my dad's 2012 rMBP has crashed twice while I was using it. The screen freezes. It's a rare occurrence, but it's disheartening.