MacBook Pro TB - 3 Repairs hell including internal burning finale

[peteyio]

Hey everyone,

Here's a wild story for you....

I purchased a MacBook Pro w/ Touchbar i7/512GB in early January 2017 and was really pleased with the overall purchase and the experience with the MacBook itself.

This all changed in August when the first problem came around.

Fault 1: During the month of August 2017, I started to notice areas of the display were essentially changing colour. When viewing a white page or background, you could noticeably see these dark blue "areas" of the screen developing. For the most part you didn't notice it until you viewed anything in bright colours such as white, light grey and so on. I took the laptop to the Apple Store and they agreed something was clearly wrong, and booked it in for a screen repair. Around 6 days later, I picked up my MacBook and all was well (though the hinge had a minor click to it when opening/closing which wasn't there before).

Fault 2: During October 2017, I woke my MacBook up from sleep only to hear a loud clicking/banging noise coming from the right speaker for around 2-3 seconds. The noise then stopped - so I figured it might have just been a random program trying to play something in the background. When I then went to watch a YouTube video, sound was only coming out of the left speaker - the right speaker had died.

I again took the MacBook to the Apple Store - they agreed it was faulty and booked in a topcase replacement (whole new upper area of the case with keyboard/battery and speakers replaced together). After around 6 days in the store, I picked up the laptop and all was well.

Fault 3: (December 2017) The exact same fault happened again - the right speaker blew at random when waking up. I took the MacBook to the Apple Store again and this time they replaced the top-case and logic board (so I had to start from fresh on macOS). Again, 6 days later I pick it up and all is well.

Fault 4: So this is the big one... Again, I woke up my MacBook from sleep yesterday (Tuesday January 10th) to have a video call on Google Hangouts. About 3 minutes into the call, the right speaker again makes a large banging noise and then immediately dies (volume was set to about 40-50%). Realising what had happened, I still continued with the Hangout call only to then start smelling a very strong burning smell coming from the laptop - it was a the smell of some kind of plastic or other material burning. This smell proceeded to travel across the whole room that I was in, and I had to shut the machine off and walk away.

With colleagues also commenting on the smell coming from my laptop, I ensured the machine was completely shut down and left it alone for a while. I called the Apple Store to say that something is definitely wrong with my laptop and I want to bring it in for someone to take a look as soon as possible.

I bring the laptop into the store about 30 minutes later, and they immediately take it behind the scenes and open the bottom up to see what is going on inside. According to the Apple Genius, the laptop looked "immaculate" inside and they see no evidence of anything damaged/burning. At that point, they agreed that it should either go in for a repair, or I get a full laptop replacement, but they'd need to get "authorisation" for a replacement that would take "up to a week" before then ordering one for me.

I requested they go ahead and run through the process of getting me a replacement sorted as the laptop is clearly not stable. In the meantime though, they offered to give the laptop back to me as "everything looked immaculate and it's working fine" (despite having a blown right speaker) and is "completely safe to use" in their words. With that in mind, I decided to take it back to the office with me (as the smell had completely gone) and started using it again - everything seemed ok.

Literally 5 minutes into use, the left speaker (the one that was still working) all of a sudden made a large clicking noise just like the right one did, and then blew out in exactly the same way. Again, and even more so this time, the really strong burning smell was back and I immediately shut it off. I called the Apple Store again and said I don't want to use it anymore, and they advised me to bring it in - which I did.

I'm now currently waiting for my replacement MacBook which they are ordering through.

I should note that every single time this speaker blow out issue happened, it was never connected to power, I had no accessories connected - nothing - it was just the MacBook on it's own.

To me, this seems like a very poor experience overall - I have many other Apple devices including the iPhone X, iPad Pro, Apple Watch and an iMac and never run into issues. This MacBook however has been an absolute disaster, and it's been in for repair now for almost 4 weeks across the 11 months that I've owned it.

 

[Maxx Power]

Wow, this seems to be a serious issue, whatever it is. I would suspect that somehow, the speakers started receiving direct current, which then overheated the voice coils and that's the smell that you are witnessing. That also explains why there is nothing visible in the Macbook interior, you'd have to take apart the speaker assembly to see the damage to the speaker.

If this is the case, the speakers should not do much more than smell awful (potentially carcinogenic due to plastics) and are non-functional. I don't expect the issue to cascade to the rest of the logic board and the rest of the Macbook.

I am very concerned as to how this could happen. If it is direct current into the speaker voice coils, then something akin to a set of coupling capacitors (which block out DC) or the amplifier chip must have failed. Usually though, that does not happen to properly designed and specified electronics.

All speculations aside, I hope you get a good replacement. This seems like a terrible experience.

On a side note, none of my Macbook Pros were perfect. My 2009 model had the Nvidia-related blinking screen issue that was unpredictable, even after a logic board replacement. It also had a super-weak hinge. My 2011 model had out-of-the-factory key caps that were broken and did not stay on the keyboard, the whole upper-chassis was replaced. My 2013 model had that screen coating issue, which was fixed by replacing the entire screen. This last Macbook also had one fan that was essentially dead after 3 years of use, I replaced that myself. One hypothesis is that these machines are not as reliable as people make them out to be and many issues are under-represented. I once worked with a colleague who had severe screen coating issues that were about 30% missing in the middle of the screen. I asked him if he knew of Apple's program to replace them for free and he answered: "they (the screens) are not supposed to do that ?"