Macbook Pros engineered to fail

[vishkap]

I have been waiting 2 weeks now for a new logic board for my macbook. This class action suit is a demonstration of how Apple engineers redundancy and failure into their products.

Watch out if you plan to buy a new laptop. At the Apple store i was told 3-5 out a hundred laptops fail this way; with 500 Euro replacement cost if out of warrantee.*

http://www.patentlyapple.com/patent...apple-for-defective-macbook-logic-boards.html

 

[wordoflife]

I know people who have Macs that are over 7-8 years old and they use them every day.

They're not engineered or designed to fail.

 

[Queen6]

Equally i have a MBP from early 2008 with over 30K hours uptime, all manufactures have a failure rate and it`s obviously not in their best interests for this figure to be more than a couple percent. Then again some systems fail prematurely, however there are a lot of variables and each case should be looked at in isolation.

Apple may not be perfect all the same, I cant find anything better that runs OS X. without a great deal of "jiggery-pokery"

 

[mon.semblable]

I'm using my five years old MacBook Pro daily for architectural design (ArchiCAD 16, AutoCAD 2013 and Adobe Suite CS6)- it's still working perfectly!
I recently upgraded to an SSD and Mountain Lion and it's been working even faster ever since.
Sorry to hear you had bad luck with Apple computers, faulty products happen to every company.

 

[John Adams]

At the Apple store i was told 3-5 out a hundred laptops fail this way;

At the Apple Store, I was told a lot of things that were pure bullish*t. At the Apple store, I've gone for help with minor issues and was given completely wrong solutions.

There are a lot of idiots at the Apple Stores.

 

[erratikmind]

Sorry to read about your issue. Everything has a failure rate. To expect otherwise, you will continually be disappointed.

 

[gngan]

I have been waiting 2 weeks now for a new logic board for my macbook. This class action suit is a demonstration of how Apple engineers redundancy and failure into their products.

Watch out if you plan to buy a new laptop. At the Apple store i was told 3-5 out a hundred laptops fail this way; with 500 Euro replacement cost if out of warrantee.*

http://www.patentlyapple.com/patent...apple-for-defective-macbook-logic-boards.html

Thank you for your information but it's pretty normal for any computer to fail. I've seen friends with 7+ years MacBook and all my previous notebooks (Sony) lasted me 2 years before dying. Why don't you find out fact about this too?

 

[old-wiz]

What "class action suit"? Every computer built has a potential for logic board failure. Unless you want to pay enormous amounts for redundant hardware, failures are a fact of life. The goal of the consumer computer makers is to have a low failure rate, not to have a zero failure rate.

In order to file a class action suit, you would need a lot of people to get together and you would need to prove that there's something that Apple ignored in the design. This would be extremely expensive to do and there is no guarantee a lawsuit would be successful.

Your statement "Apple engineers redundancy and failure" is confusing. Redundancy would imply that Apple puts two circuits into the board and sets it up so that if one of the circuits fails the other one takes over. This would reduce failure, not increase it. Designing failure into a computer would be wasteful - companies do not design things to fail.

 

[JesusChrist]

I have been waiting 2 weeks now for a new logic board for my macbook. This class action suit is a demonstration of how Apple engineers redundancy and failure into their products.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

 

[Mrbobb]

U got bad luck, don't blame the world.


I read the complaint and I must say the ambulance-chaser got no case. They put the obligatory "negligence" in there but they give no details. Did they say high-failure rate? No. Did they say power trace to USB ports thinner than required to drive devices? No. All I read is, "it' broken and we're not happy!" Wah-wah-wah.

 

[ayeying]

Mine works. My old MBP works. My friend's MBP works.

Plus, limiting the amount of USB isn't a cause for a flaw within the logic board. It's not like they had 10 USB ports before then suddenly limited to 2...

Anyways, at the Apple Store, they get A LOT of machines coming in every day. 3-5 is very minor when you look at the bigger picture. Plus, those could have other issues that caused a logic board to fail.

 

[Braniff747SP]

I have a PowerBook from 1999ish that still works just fine. I also have a MacBook from 2008 which was used daily (and quite heavily) until a couple of months ago. My iBook from 2002 which was used until 2008 also works just fine. And you can add to that list some other Apple devices.

Somehow, I don't think they are engineered to fail...

 

[T5BRICK]

You have no idea what you're talking about.

What he's saying doesn't make any sense. If you engineer redundancy, that's a good thing. If you engineer failure, that's a bad thing. If you engineer redundant failures, well, good thing Apple doesn't build airplanes.

Anyway, I've got a mid 2009 MBP that works PERFECT. My family has a 2006 MB that still runs fine after it has been dropped 3 or 4 times(the case is in pretty bad shape). My old 2007 MBP still works, as far as I know, even though it was one of the models affected by the NVIDIA GT8600m problem.

 

[CASLondon]

Logic board failures are tragic. I had a G5 iMac that had one blew up, luckily it was still under warranty and, as I had the magic of Google, I learned that there was a known issue with faulty capacitors (a new vendor using pirated formula for the liquid and getting it wrong) meaning a 30 cent part gone bad meant replacing a 900 dollar logic board. Apple recognized the issue and extended the warranty.

Its considered a wise policy to invest in Applecare for laptops, as given the miniaturisation and tolerances, they will have slightly higher failure rates. I suggest all laptop buyers get it.

 

[leman]

I have been waiting 2 weeks now for a new logic board for my macbook. This class action suit is a demonstration of how Apple engineers redundancy and failure into their products.

Watch out if you plan to buy a new laptop. At the Apple store i was told 3-5 out a hundred laptops fail this way; with 500 Euro replacement cost if out of warrantee.*

http://www.patentlyapple.com/patent...apple-for-defective-macbook-logic-boards.html

Oh, another conspiracy theorist. I will let you on a horrible secret: some computers will fail after a few years - its complicated electronics and not always bug-free. Warranty exists exactly for that reason. Do you really believe that Apple designs their products to fail so that they can repair them free of charge?

The example complains from your lawsuit are a joke. They demonstrate absolutely nothing, aside what I already told you: computers fail. The only 'proof' would be a statistical analysis showing that Apple computers fail more often than other brands - which is known to be false; ever wondered why Apple hold the highest consumer satisfaction ratings of all computer makers on the planet?

P.S. 3-5 of 100 failures after what timeframe? 3 years? 5 years? Ever?

 

[calvol]

I bought a 2010 15" MBP and the logic board failed within one week. Took it back and decided not to get another one after reading of many failures on the boards. Usually when one fails that quickly it points to a design or manufacturing issue, or both. Looks like this class action has some legs to it.

 

[l0gikb0mb]

Still affects the 2012 Pros?

And what about the Macbook Air line? Only the "MacBook" and "Macbook Pro" are listed, so is the Macbook Air redesigned for this issue?

 

[noteple]

I bought a 2010 15" MBP and the logic board failed within one week. Took it back and decided not to get another one after reading of many failures on the boards. Usually when one fails that quickly it points to a design or manufacturing issue, or both. Looks like this class action has some legs to it.

If they only made one, and it failed I would agree with you.

But they make millions and they don't all fail.

Numbers are probably below a percentage.

I say that because when you look at the numbers of Apple MBP's that are scraped its minuscule.

Thread engineered to fail.

 

[dmccloud]

I have been waiting 2 weeks now for a new logic board for my macbook. This class action suit is a demonstration of how Apple engineers redundancy and failure into their products.

Watch out if you plan to buy a new laptop. At the Apple store i was told 3-5 out a hundred laptops fail this way; with 500 Euro replacement cost if out of warrantee.*

http://www.patentlyapple.com/patent...apple-for-defective-macbook-logic-boards.html

Other than the OP being completely misguided, his information (and this class-action suit) are without merit. The majority of Mac users use their devices for 4-5 years, if not longer. The average for non-Apple machines is 2-3 years, sometimes 4. How can you claim Apple "engineers redundancy and failure" into products that are used for longer periods of time than the WinTel machines then compete with?

There is no material evidence of any sort that would warrant a class-action suit here, and the OP is just trying to invent an issue where there is none to be had.

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I bought a 2010 15" MBP and the logic board failed within one week. Took it back and decided not to get another one after reading of many failures on the boards. Usually when one fails that quickly it points to a design or manufacturing issue, or both. Looks like this class action has some legs to it.

Actually, all electronics run a chance of premature/early failure, but that likelihood is actually far less than what boards like this one would appear to indicate. If a class-action suit was filed every single time someone reported a single instance of a specific model of laptop/desktop/tv/etc failing within a week or two, nobody would be making these devices anymore.

 

[T5BRICK]

I have been waiting 2 weeks now for a new logic board for my macbook. This class action suit is a demonstration of how Apple engineers redundancy and failure into their products.

Watch out if you plan to buy a new laptop. At the Apple store i was told 3-5 out a hundred laptops fail this way; with 500 Euro replacement cost if out of warrantee.*

http://www.patentlyapple.com/patent...apple-for-defective-macbook-logic-boards.html

The article was written by someone who doesn't understand how computers work. It claims that the logic board is designed so that parts can't be replaced(this is true, partially) just so Apple can charge more for the replacement when it does fail(I'm pretty sure this isn't true).

The three main reasons everything is built into a single board are this:

1. Space. If everything were on a separate board, the physical size of the connectors would begin to stack up. It doesn't seem like much but the stacked RAM connector(with RAM installed) on cMBPs is about 9mm thick, the RAM chips themselves are probably about 3mm(source). When you solder just the chips onto the logic board, you cut all of that down to the actual height of the RAM memory modules themselves.

2. Speed. If parts are on different boards you have longer trace lengths to deal with and more potential for interference. Data transfer rates would have to be lowered to deal with the longer distances that the electrical signals need to travel.

3. Power. If everything is built into a single board, a lot of functions can be shared. Less power is consumed. Smaller batteries can last longer.

 

[Binomio]

All ICs are bound to fail anytime, but the only problem with Apple is that they integrate the cpu, gpu, io ports into a single ic whereas some other laptop manufactures have the motherboard, cpu, IO ports separated. So when one of these components fail, the whole logic board has to be replaced.

 

[T5BRICK]

All ICs are bound to fail anytime, but the only problem with Apple is that they integrate the cpu, gpu, io ports into a single ic whereas some other laptop manufactures have the motherboard, cpu, IO ports separated. So when one of these components fail, the whole logic board has to be replaced.

But those laptops aren't in the same form factor as most Macs. I was just looking at the Asus Zenbook teardown and yeah, it does have a single removable stick of RAM and the WiFi/Bluetooth card are removable. But the remaining RAM, CPU, GPU and IO ports are built into the motherboard. It's great to have the one upgradeable RAM slot, but if the built in memory has an issue you're still going to have to replace the motherboard.

 

[goMac]

My 2009 has never needed a logic board replacement.

I actually don't recall ever taking it in.

 

[gorskiegangsta]

Some Macrumors posts are engineered to fail

 

[old-wiz]

I looked at the class action lawsuit and the lawyer who filed the suit doesn't know a thing about computers. They seem to think that all computers are modular and must be able to perform some functions when any component fails. The whole lawsuit makes no sense whatsoever. Separating the logic board into other boards would add weight and introduce more possible points of failure in the connectors. And how many desktop computers can function if the motherboard fails? I got a headache reading the lawsuit.