M2 Refirb vs. Minecraft (why AppleCare might be worthwhile)

[roadkill401]

I bought my 15" MBA off the Apple refurbished site so it had been fully checked over by Apple before getting shipped to me. Came with a great battery with only 11 recharge cycles so that was great. it worked great for 2 weeks doing Logic Pro music. but I decided to run a game on it as Apple Silicon is such a wonderful procssor and should be great for gaming according to the advertisements from Apple. Not that Minecraft is an AAA game. but clearly it was far more than this M2 could handle. The MBA lasted about 20 seconds before the screen glitched and the unit rebooted in Panic. glitched 3-4 more times then wouldn't work.

Repair Estimate​

SOFTWARE REVIVE/RESTORE,RETAIL
Item Number: SF542LL/A Price$ 0.00

Logic Board, M2, 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 16 GB, 1 TB
Item Number: 661-34310 Price$ 633.09

HARDWARE REPAIR-LEVEL 1
Item Number: S1490LL/A Price$ 129.00

Touch ID Board, Midnight
Item Number: 661-34701 Price$ 93.62

Total Price:$ 855.71

To say the MBA lasted just over two weeks before it met its match with an old game that pushed the graphics just past the limit of what it could handle. I am lucky that it happened within the first month so that Apple will still honour the warranty and give me the option of getting AppleCare+. There are two lines of thought that I can have with this. its either that Apple didn't do a very good job of doing any soft of testing the MBA they were setting refurbished so its literally if it turns on its good. or Apple products are paper thin in regards to functionality and break by looking at them wrong or in my case running some software that Apple doesn't sell on the App Store so it broke. I guess the $300 for AppleCare+ is far cheaper than $855 to get it fixed the next time I try and run some actual software on it. And I guess if you have the care package you'd be less likely to worry if this program is just too much for AppleSilicon to handle.

 

[Howard2k]

Sometimes things break. That's why Apple offers AppleCare so you can extend the warranty.

I don't think Minecraft is breaking Macs en masse after 20 seconds. That's just silly.

 

[JPack]

At the end of the day, a refurb is a refurb. Some people have romantic ideas about Apple refurbs being better than new or some other silly notion. But the reality is, refurbs can have salvaged parts and components that could be new or previously waterlogged and cleaned up.

 

[1BadManVan]

Just a defective board, these can run minecraft no issue normally. Try it again once its back. Ive run minecraft on mine and runs fantastic. Hell my kids still run minecraft on their older ipad air 3's.

 

[cjsuk]

At the end of the day, a refurb is a refurb. Some people have romantic ideas about Apple refurbs being better than new or some other silly notion. But the reality is, refurbs can have salvaged parts and components that could be new or previously waterlogged and cleaned up.

New machines do this sometimes.

A new HP desktop nearly burned our office down in 2005 after the power supply exploded on first power up and set fire to the carpet.

 

[roadkill401]

I am not on the misconception that just because its an apple that its some miracle machine. The statistical side would say the chances of getting a dud new computer should be much higher than getting a dud refurbished as supposedly the refurbished has been tested against defective parts where the new likely was not.

that is not to say that things could work when tested but still just as easily break a some point shortly after. I look at this as much as a comment about who you really don’t know and perhaps the apple care option is of value. Especially when I run the numbers against the quote for something going wrong. The new computers are so intergrated that any one item out of sorts and there is a $900 bill to get fixed. It’s not like they can swap out a $40 part anymore.