Because a Car which costs over $15,000 Is the Same as a $1,500-$3,000 or so laptop.
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It isn't that widespread... A few thousand threads here isn't "widespread"
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My MBP Keyboard Experience - $513 repair
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Quick search of Mac related forums may prove different. After all the 2011 Radeon dGPU failures were never an issue according to Apple, until Apple knew it would definitively loose in a court of law. 2016/2017 keyboards are clearly compromised by Apple's lack of due diligence.
Thinking different is simply insulting peoples intelligence, there has been more posts since 2016 regarding MBP keyboard failure than since 2006 to 2016. Have doubts? Simple search will reveal. I expect more of Apple, so should others not excuse poor design and or quality control...🙄
Q-6
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I'd be curious to know which year Apple laptop has had the most problems. I have had several iterations of Mac laptops over the last decade. None really stand out as having as many problems as the current crop. As a matter of fact, none of my laptops have ever had problems that were directly related to Apple's design or quality. I had a hard drive fail in one, and replaced a battery in another. Thats it in the last 10 years.
You guys are taking the car analogy way too seriously. He was referring to customer service. Could have been widgets. Customer service is an important part of any purchase, car computer, or otherwise. I had the transmission fail on a two year old car with 72,000 miles. The warranty was 70,000 miles. They wanted to charge me $5,000 for a new tranny. Called customer service, and had a new tranny installed at no cost to me. That is a great example of how you keep customers loyal.
Apple picking up the cost of a $500 keyword to provide good customer service and keep customers is not really going to take too big a chunk out of their billions. Not to mention $500 for a keyboard seems like gouging to me.
As the differences between Quality Apple laptops and Quality Windows laptops slowly blur the lines, and competition increases, it would probably be a good idea to try and keep your customers happy.
I remember being in an Apple store when they used to flash a light in the plug of your phone if you had a problem. Sometimes they would refuse to replace or service the phone. I heard more than one person being accused of getting the phone wet and were denied service. Their proof came in the form of some sales clerk looking in the charging slot with a flashlight and making an assumption. Watched it happen more than once.
I understand repairing one phone for free is not a big deal, but if they offer it to thousands of customers it could get expensive. Moral of the story is to improve quality control and build a better product from the get go. Don't cut corners. Good way to lose customers.
You guys are taking the car analogy way too seriously. He was referring to customer service. Could have been widgets. Customer service is an important part of any purchase, car computer, or otherwise. I had the transmission fail on a two year old car with 72,000 miles. The warranty was 70,000 miles. They wanted to charge me $5,000 for a new tranny. Called customer service, and had a new tranny installed at no cost to me. That is a great example of how you keep customers loyal.
Apple picking up the cost of a $500 keyword to provide good customer service and keep customers is not really going to take too big a chunk out of their billions. Not to mention $500 for a keyboard seems like gouging to me.
As the differences between Quality Apple laptops and Quality Windows laptops slowly blur the lines, and competition increases, it would probably be a good idea to try and keep your customers happy.
I remember being in an Apple store when they used to flash a light in the plug of your phone if you had a problem. Sometimes they would refuse to replace or service the phone. I heard more than one person being accused of getting the phone wet and were denied service. Their proof came in the form of some sales clerk looking in the charging slot with a flashlight and making an assumption. Watched it happen more than once.
I understand repairing one phone for free is not a big deal, but if they offer it to thousands of customers it could get expensive. Moral of the story is to improve quality control and build a better product from the get go. Don't cut corners. Good way to lose customers.
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It is widespread. If you know Apple store techs they will tell you it is widespread. Anecdotally, I know several people who have experienced this issue, and I don't even know that many people with 16/17 MBPs. Admittedly it seems to be less of a problem with the 2017s.
We could go even further back with the Titanium PBG4 that had problems with the paint bubbling off and the cracks that developed in the middle of the SuperDrive slot.
As you say, there are plenty of options for mistakes made by Apple and every other manufacturer.
That's a nice summary above
One really crucial thing to consider when comparing issues is: repairability
Nothing about this current keyboard situation would be anywhere near as bad as it is if they hadn't designed themselves into a corner of having to replace the entire top half of the computer for a single key switch issue.
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How do you know the volume of those issues vs current keyboard problems?
Or what data are you using to make that assertion?
One really crucial thing to consider when comparing issues is: repairability
Nothing about this current keyboard situation would be anywhere near as bad as it is if they hadn't designed themselves into a corner of having to replace the entire top half of the computer for a single key switch issue.
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How do you know the volume of those issues vs current keyboard problems?
Or what data are you using to make that assertion?
Please. People are complaining about this exact defect left and right. We buy Apple computers (at a premium price) because they're supposed to be well built. Keyboards that go south JUST out of the warranty period and cost FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS to replace -- that's bad design and bad quality control.
in a time when retail electronics has attained extreme reliability we have apple care.
Premium priced junk hardware & than selling Apple Care seems to feed the Apple Inc mid life crisis.
You know Apple is 40+ years old
You omitted talking about the first part of his quote re: Apple store employees.
I also have personal experience talking to a few and the keyboard problems are real, and definitely larger than ever in the past.
We can argue about the degrees of it, but it is a real problem of some kind and degree.
"Keyboard reliability issues" isn't a data point you want any upward change in...
That combined with the extreme cost and difficulty of doing any keyboard repairs is what makes this a really big problem, especially as the machines age.
I won't own a Lenovo Thinkpad (or any model) after the Superfish debacle. Nothing like pre-installed spyware on your brand new PC.
As far as bad MacBook Pro experiences go, my second gen 15" MBP (2006 maybe) with a Radeon X1600 had serious graphical problems due to overheating, which eventually fried the GPU. After four visits to the Apple Store (AppleCare really paid off), they finally got it straightened out with a new logic board.
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Heck Apple have more or less confirmed there is some sort of issue themselves in a not-so-direct manner:
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT205662
The truly inexcusable part is that they are charging for the topcase replacements out of warranty - one thing if they make a mistake and agree to put it right, but charging your customers for what is clearly a design mea-culpa leaves a bit of a bad taste.
Q-6
Same sort of support thing happened to me with my very first laptop ever, an Inspiron 8000. Display had a manufacturing defect from the start. Dell took great care of that issue. Overnight shipping, and fast turnaround ... was picked up Friday afternoon by DHL, and I had it back, with a new display, on Monday. Then, sometime during the next year (got the 3yr warranty on it,) they moved from NA-based support for that line of product, to overseas-based (XPS support was still in NA at the time.) Then, the HDD died. Was a nightmare trying to get that addressed. Finally gave up after three days of going in circles, and dealing with supposed techs that felt it necessary to ‘splain rundementary knowledge of how PCs work to me, like I was born in the 1930’s and had been frozen for the last 70 years. Bought a new drive off Newegg, replaced the bad one with it, and then sold the laptop and transferred the remainder of the Dell warranty to the new owner. That was the last system I ever bought from Dell.
Paid $2k for it new, with the 3yr warranty, and sold it for $1600 after a year and a half, so didn’t lose too much.
Anyway, I haven’t bought a Dell since. Not because of the HW issues, but because of the quality of support I was getting. I have an expectation that “some” failures will happen with HW, regardless of the OEM, but I also have an expectation that those same OEMs should stand behind their products, and support their customers appropriately if/when the time comes.
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Wow...that's just...colossally stupid. No wait, a phrase just popped into my head. What is it...ah, yes. "Planned obsolescence." It's a smart business move, until people catch on to it.
I see two sides to this argument. Firstly the buyer should have purchased the extended warranty otherwise they're gambling that they'll be on the hook for repairs once the warranty expires.
On the other side of the coin, this keyboard problem is likely a design flaw which if taken to court via a class action lawsuit, Apple could be on the hook for keyboard repairs in or out of warranty.
On the other side of the coin, this keyboard problem is likely a design flaw which if taken to court via a class action lawsuit, Apple could be on the hook for keyboard repairs in or out of warranty.
I guess I don't understand how you're going from your personal repair experience to making the assertion that "by volume the GPU issues are more widespread then the current keyboard issues".
By volume I suppose you mean just what you saw at your shop?
(one data point - valuable - but just one point still)
It seems hard to go from that to speaking so confidently about how widespread this new issue would is, beyond just speculation.
Really only Apple can know how truly widespread this keyboard situation is across the install base.
It must have been something of note though, as they did install the 2016 shim fix into the 2017 models it sounds like.
Perhaps at your shop you'll just need more time to have these keyboard repairs stand out as much as GPU ones, as those were far in the past now and all likely examples have come to the surface whereas we are just getting going on the keyboard issues.
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