Lawyers Researching Possible Class Action Lawsuit Over 2011 MacBook Pro Graphics Issues

[namethisfile]

I have the 2010 too, it KPs weekly. Nothing I can do about other than sell to a craigslist buyer.

you're far more pragmatic than i am. i am going to keep this mid-2010 macbook pro for ever. not b/c i like to but have to. can't really explain it.

PS--how much do you think you will list your MBP for?

 

[Hastings101]

Apple's laptops run too hot in my opinion, especially if someone's brave enough to run Windows under Boot Camp where I was easily getting 70C temperatures just web browsing on my 2010 MBP. I wonder if removing discrete graphics has helped in regards to that.

 

[69Mustang]

Why not? Hey you know what, in the state of California they legally have to be able to repair or replace any electronics for 7 years. So lets do that. Lets give everyone a 7 year full warranty including damage on all Apple products. But how dare Apple raise the price to cover it. Not one penny. They have billions in the bank they can afford it.

And even better. If you have any issue at all, no matter how minor you get an instant swap to a new retail boxed whatever. Oh that model is no longer sold, great you get an upgrade

Charlie, bud, take it down a notch. Did a cat pee in your Cheerios? I can agree with you on avoiding a rush to judgement, but you're yelling like Apple is your bullied little sister.

I think even you can agree this doesn't seem to be a one off event. People are rightfully PO'd that their kit is faulty and they have a reasonable expectation of product life beyond 2 years without having to resort to applecare.

 

[PocketSand11]

Didn't they have that yellow gate issue with their screens too?

You mean yellowing of the screen? I haven't heard of that. The problem I'm describing was where the GPU slowly failed. First, rare graphics glitches. Then more. Then total GPU crashes when doing lots of graphics processing. Running the fans extra fast prevented that for a while… but then, eventually, it would crash instantly at bootup without the fans running 100% and would still crash after that sometimes. The iMac's screen itself was fine, which was painful because I had to sell my GPU-dead '06 24" iMac instead of using it as a nice monitor.

So I've got a big cheese grater instead of an iMac now. I can replace/upgrade my screen, CPU, or GPU whenever I want.

 

[Tubamajuba]

So you KNOW that the issue is widespread, exactly what the issue is, when Apple knew how bad and what the issue is etc.

You must since you say this has legs.

I'll start by responding to another one of your posts:

Over and over. Enough to notice that in many cases an easy 80-90% of the posts are just folks ranting about how crappy Apple is. Or 'victims' ranting about the issue and how they won't bother taking it to Apple cause it won't be fixed, even if they are under warranty. How they never buy Apple Care cause it's a rip off and then this kind of thing always happens. Cause their tin foil hats tell them that Apple does this on purpose to make more money off of them. But they still buy Apple stuff.

And it doesn't change that in the end we don't have actual facts to say what or how big the issue is. Anymore than any other time.

I'm right there with you on the way people tend to handle these issues. Every time Apple does anything that someone doesn't like or something happens to an Apple product that could happen to a product from any other manufacturer, people get irrationally emotional. It annoys me too. But with each passing day and every new report of a failed GPU, it gets harder to brush this issue off. This doesn't change my opinion of Apple as a company that makes exceptional products, but they should really consider getting ahead of this issue while they can.

 

[Traverse]

Charlie, bud, take it down a notch. Did a cat pee in your Cheerios? I can agree with you on avoiding a rush to judgement, but you're yelling like Apple is your bullied little sister.

I think even you can agree this doesn't seem to be a one off event. People are rightfully PO'd that their kit is faulty and they have a reasonable expectation of product life beyond 2 years without having to resort to applecare.

Haha XD I haven't heard that one before.

Joking aside, very well said. I am not rushing to judge Apple, but I think it's clear that there is a problem. When I put in over $2100 into my old MacBook Pro I expected it to last more than three years.

 

[PocketSand11]

Apple's laptops run too hot in my opinion, especially if someone's brave enough to run Windows under Boot Camp where I was easily getting 70C temperatures just web browsing on my 2010 MBP. I wonder if removing discrete graphics has helped in regards to that.

The dedicated GPU, when it's running, seems to be the offender. From what I've seen, the 15" rMBP runs hot, and the 13" rMBP runs cool.

 

[apolloa]

i did that already. i don't want to pay $310 to have the LB replaced since Apple has already stated that it's "Latent Manufacturing Defect," which usually means it's not what it says it is. but, Apple is just using it to cover something. know what i'm saying?

again, can't afford LB replacement. and i don't think i will even do a LB replacement, even if i could afford it. it's an old laptop.

I am going to guess your in America? Latent Manufacturing Defect to me reads as a fault that was present since point of sale. But you would have to argue that I guess with Apple?
And I agree if you have to pay for a repair it may not be worth it.

You mean yellowing of the screen? I haven't heard of that. The problem I'm describing was where the GPU slowly failed. First, rare graphics glitches. Then more. Then total GPU crashes when doing lots of graphics processing. Running the fans extra fast prevented that for a while… but then, eventually, it would crash instantly at bootup without the fans running 100% and would still crash after that sometimes. The iMac's screen itself was fine, which was painful because I had to sell my GPU-dead '06 24" iMac instead of using it as a nice monitor.

So I've got a big cheese grater instead of an iMac now. I can replace/upgrade my screen, CPU, or GPU whenever I want.

Yeah that's it, I remember reading about it a lot, yellowing screens. I didn't know the GPU's failed in them as well. Perhaps Apple should not have made the new iMacs so thin, kept them the same thickness which was hardly that bad, and use that to help with the thermal cooling?

 

[Tech198]

When Lawyers are involved with something a company can't even figure out (eg Apple), you know its not going to end well..

I mean Apple's is the company here, not the lawyers..

It should be pretty easy to put 2 and 2 together..

I would have also put money on the display too... as a possible cause..

Or a faulty batch of AMD chips (second)

The fact "Some users are experiencing after a logic board replacement" tells you a bit too..

I would actually want to be sure, before going in the deep end.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Why not? Hey you know what, in the state of California they legally have to be able to repair or replace any electronics for 7 years. So lets do that. Lets give everyone a 7 year full warranty including damage on all Apple products. But how dare Apple raise the price to cover it. Not one penny. They have billions in the bank they can afford it.

And even better. If you have any issue at all, no matter how minor you get an instant swap to a new retail boxed whatever. Oh that model is no longer sold, great you get an upgrade

When the tech at the Apple store basically says, "I know what's wrong with your laptop but I have to run these tests anyway because it's store policy" that makes me think the problem is fairly common.

If it's a manufacturing defect and/or inherent design flaw causing a showing stopping issue (which this GPU failure is) then the manufacturer (in this case Apple) should be responsible for servicing the device (or replacing it if it's not serviceable) for free regardless of the device's warranty status. It should be like a factory recall on cars. If it was defective when it left the factory then it should be on the manufacturer to make it right.

 

[cocky jeremy]

If people would purchase Applecare like a smart person would do, I'd bet 90% of these would have been covered when they noticed an issue. Just sayin.

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Why not? Hey you know what, in the state of California they legally have to be able to repair or replace any electronics for 7 years. So lets do that. Lets give everyone a 7 year full warranty including damage on all Apple products. But how dare Apple raise the price to cover it. Not one penny. They have billions in the bank they can afford it.

And even better. If you have any issue at all, no matter how minor you get an instant swap to a new retail boxed whatever. Oh that model is no longer sold, great you get an upgrade

Well, hell, maybe Apple should just cover everything.. for free. Your 1990 Mac got dropped and shattered? Screw it, you get a 2014 for free. They're rich, why not, right?!

 

[FuNGi]

If people would purchase Applecare like a smart person would do, I'd bet 90% of these would have been covered when they noticed an issue. Just sayin.

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Well I certainly don't think we should be obligated to buy 3-year insurance to guard against manufacturing defects. I am simply comfortable in hoping the NVIDIA 750's are more solidly constructed. I've got one in a rMBP and iMac now with no Applecare. Am I not smart because I refuse to spends hundreds more to guard against unknown risks?

 

[tsmercer]

I had one of the 2006 20" iMacs that went bad. There was a 200 page forum discussing the issue for that one. When mine went bad I called Apple to see if they had a program for that model and they said they had never heard of the problem. I referred them to discussions.apple and the 200 page forum with 50,000 views and they locked the forum the same day. There was a class action suit in preliminaries on that one too, but it eventually failed. It was a pretty crappy situation.

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

If people would purchase Applecare like a smart person would do, I'd bet 90% of these would have been covered when they noticed an issue. Just sayin.

AppleCare does not solve the underlying technical problem.

 

[littyboy]

you're far more pragmatic than i am. i am going to keep this mid-2010 macbook pro for ever. not b/c i like to but have to. can't really explain it.

PS--how much do you think you will list your MBP for?

Not much. We got screwed since this was the latest gen with the dual core. Once the quad-core came out, sell back price dropped dramatically. I'm guessing I can get 700-800 comfortably?

 

[bcburrows]

I have to say Apple replaced mine for free despite the MBP being out of warranty and applecare. The replacement was done under EU law, so might not be applicable to everyone.

I did say I think this looks like a replacement programme issue, but all they could tell me was that it was something apple may review.

 

[69Mustang]

If people would purchase Applecare like a smart person would do, I'd bet 90% of these would have been covered when they noticed an issue. Just sayin.

Applecare is not the answer. When you drop $1000+ on a computer you have a reasonable expectation the product will not die on you in less than 2 years. Heck, cheap ass $400 HP's are still chugging along running XP. Applecare is a bandage, not a cure for the problem. Even if every customer had Applecare how would that fix the graphics issues?

 

[Larry-K]

All right!

I'm looking forward to that $10 off coupon good towards the purchase of a new MacBook Pro.

And I'm sure the lawyers are shopping for new Bentleys.

 

[tsmercer]

From what I can tell, the only way that the extended service/replacement programs happen is because of the class action suits. I'm not sure that those happen out of kindness of Apple's heart.

 

[odedia]

It was a very rare type of ignoring a wide spread problem and trying to silence it. I am also affected with this problem, even talked to Tim Cook's executive board representative, and yet I was told that a recall was not planned at this time.

I hope Apple gets sued this time. I have a 3000$ machine that can't even be connected to an external display (when it bothers to work)

 

[Mago]

Same here, my gpu failed and my Mbp e2011 15" becomes a brick.
Sent the logic board to repair to China and Macexpert scammed me and steal my board, now I have an empty unibody chasis, no source offers a reasonable logic board or at least one reliable. I hope this class action wake Apple and start soon a replacement program.

 

[odedia]

This is so ridiculous, I pointed to this article on the main discussion on apple forums (525 pages and counting), didn't even link to the post to prevent issues, and they still removed my post.

 

[mtneer]

Because your sales contract is with Apple and not it's suppliers, hence Apple have to fix the issues.

That is a very simplistic way of looking at it. Even in the other cases of systemic failures, saying that a crash victim bought the ticket from the airline and not the manufacturer or component maker - does not insulate a lot of these background figures from getting sued. I am trying to see why Apple is being treated differently.

 

[SatoruGate]

[url=http://cdn.macrumors.com/im/macrumorsthreadlogodarkd.png]Image[/url]

While Apple has assisted some customers with logic board replacements, the issues have been known to reoccur after servicing and some users have been faced with expensive repair bills to address the problem.

Instead of repairing with Apple, would it be better to have some 3rd party store repair it?

I once had an issue with my Late 2011 17" MacBook Pro's graphic card, but Apple service would be very expensive, so I have one of the shops in Akihabara repair the broken graphic chip. The price was way lower than what I would get from Apple Service.

Btw, I downgrade my Last Generation 17" MacBook Pro from Mavericks to Lion and it seems to solve the issue with system crashing.

 

[wizard]

I will happily take part.

My MBP, however faithful and wicked awesome it's been, has had it's card fail already outside of AC (1.5-2 years), costing me a good chunk of change, and lately it's been having the same behaviors as before, a sign that it could be failing again.

I'm pretty disappointed with this issue - I understand all things have a break, but this really does seem to be a failure of design rather than abnormal stress. My previous Mac chugged away for 5 years before having any sort of internal issue, I'd expect a decent 3-4 out of my next.

It certainly is a design issue. The problem is NVidia and AMD compete so aggressively that they don't consider long term relaibility in their designs. This is why we see flip flops every couple of years with these guys having excessive failures in the field.

Apple most likely is trying to stick AMD with the bill, AMD is most likely blaming Apples design. In the end they are probably both right. Apple has attendance to produce mechanical designs that run hot which is almost certainly part of the problem.

The bigger issue becomes this, what is a reasonable expectation for reliability or run time in a MBP? Beyond that what are the real failure rates? Let's face it a few people whining in an on line forum tells us nothing about how many machines actually failed out of the entire production run. Is it less than 1%, 5% or 20% because it does make a difference.