New MacBook Pro Speakers Are Most Affordable to Repair Since 2015

[MacRumors]

For the first time in nearly a decade, Apple is able to repair individual MacBook Pro speakers without replacing other components too.

In a memo shared with Apple Stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers this week, Apple said it is offering speakers as standalone repair parts for the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with the M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max chips. This is the first time Apple has made individual MacBook Pro speaker parts available since 2015.

For all MacBook Pro models released between 2016 and 2023, Apple replaces the entire "top case" with the battery and other components for speaker repairs. This results in out-of-warranty speaker repairs costing hundreds of dollars more than they should, so standalone speaker parts will make these repairs far more affordable.

Even better, the speaker parts will not be limited to technicians at the Genius Bar and Apple Authorized Service Providers. Apple has already shared speaker repair manuals for the new MacBook Pro models on its website, so it should make the standalone speaker parts available to order through its self-service repair store soon.

The repair procedure is fairly complex, involving the use of Kevlar thread, speaker installation caps, and a single-use battery cover, so the average customer will likely want to rely on an experienced technician to ensure it is done correctly. Fortunately, those who opt to go down that route should pay far less than they would have before.

Update: According to a reliable source, Apple is now giving technicians access to individual speaker parts for ALL 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with Apple silicon, going back to models with M1 Pro and M1 Max chips. It remains to be seen if those parts for older models will be added to the self-service repair store too.

Article Link: New MacBook Pro Speakers Are Most Affordable to Repair Since 2015

 

[0134168]

Im gonna repair mines, tough they are fine. Will be the first time in years I can repair anything on my Macbook Pro.

 

[Baseiseough]

Can't wait to order 11 of them and build a Dolby atmos setup in my living room !

 

[ghostface147]

Damn, I replaced my own speaker on my 2020 MacBook Pro on my own without replacing the top case. Easy.

 

[russell_314]

I’m not sure why this is a thing. How often do people blow out speakers on a laptop? I rarely turn my Air over 50% volume and its speakers are weak compared to the Pro.

 

[Joe Rossignol]

Update: According to a reliable source, Apple is giving technicians access to individual speaker parts for ALL 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with Apple silicon, going back to models with M1 Pro and M1 Max chips. It remains to be seen if those parts for older models will be added to the self-service repair store too.

 

[Yimbaz]

Wow. I had no idea this was a limitation in prior models. It seems like every few weeks I find out some new way the 2016 models were absolute trash.

 

[mihirdelirious]

So it was a matter of policy rather than technical limitation. The speakers on my 14 inch 2021 MBP were blown twice. Fortunately, I had AppleCare and didn't have to worry about the cost of the entire bottom case at the time. The question though is... Will Apple do the right thing and reimburse the customers who paid exorbitant amounts to get their replaced ?

Update: According to a reliable source, Apple is giving technicians access to individual speaker parts for ALL 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with Apple silicon, going back to models with M1 Pro and M1 Max chips. It remains to be seen if those parts for older models will be added to the self-service repair store too.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Wow. I had no idea this was a limitation in prior models. It seems like every few weeks I find out some new way the 2016 models were absolute trash.

The 2016 models are not trash except for the butterfly keyboards, which Apple routinely replaced. My 2016 MBP ultimately RAMmed-out due to the 16 GB maximum available at the time, so I bought an M2 MBP with maximum M2 RAM. But the 2016 MBP still drives any single app fine and still gets used every day, just no longer aggressively multitasking.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

So it was a matter of policy rather than technical limitation. The speakers on my 14 inch 2021 MBP were blown twice. Fortunately, I had AppleCare and didn't have to worry about the cost of the entire bottom case at the time. The question though is... Will Apple do the right thing and reimburse the customers who paid exorbitant amounts to get their replaced ?

Why should Apple replace parts free out of warranty for those who did not buy AppleCare? Especially speakers, which most likely fail due to a few users' abusive overly-high volume out of tiny speakers.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

The 2016 models are not trash except for the butterfly keyboards, which Apple routinely replaced. My 2016 MBP ultimately RAMmed-out due to the 16 GB maximum available at the time, so I bought an M2 MBP with maximum M2 RAM. But the 2016 MBP still drives any single app fine and still gets used every day, just not multitasking.

My 2016 had to be replaced three times for the keyboard, once for a dead Webcam and almost every replacement unit I got had a slightly crooked lid for some reason.
I know some people had machines that work perfectly fine, but to this day the worst Apple product I’ve ever owned.
Not to mention the awful touch bar, it was OK at first, but by 2020 it barely worked and constantly crashed.
It has been said the 2016 MacBook Pros were a big reason Apple finally pulled the trigger on changing to their own in-house processors, which explains a lot because the computer was unreliable in so many ways.

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[Allen_Wentz]

My 2016 had to be replaced three times for the keyboard, once for a dead Webcam and almost every replacement unit I got had a slightly crooked lid for some reason.
I know some people had machines that work perfectly fine, but to this day the worst Apple product I’ve ever owned.
Not to mention the awful touch bar, it was OK at first, but by 2020 it barely worked and constantly crashed.
It has been said the 2016 MacBook Pros were a big reason Apple finally pulled the trigger on changing to their own in-house processors, which explains a lot because the computer was unreliable in so many ways.

Former Intel Engineer Claims Buggy Skylake Chips Hastened Apple's Switch to Custom Silicon

At this week's WWDC, Apple confirmed its plan to switch from Intel to custom processors for its Macs over a two-year transition period. Apple...

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Sounds like you got a lemon; bummer. And it also sounds like the person doing your repairs may have been sloppy. Except for the keyboard replacements my 2016 MBP [2.9 GHz i7] traveled 365 days/year and still works flawlessly except that apps/OS RAM demands are now too much for the 16 GB RAM.

Edit: P.S. I am one of the few that actually liked the touch bar. ;~)

 

[surfzen21]

I’m not sure why this is a thing. How often do people blow out speakers on a laptop? I rarely turn my Air over 50% volume and its speakers are weak compared to the Pro.

My 2010 MBP blew out a speaker sometime in 2015. I dont remember ever maxing out the volume since I didnt use it for listening to music. Just medium volume for youtube stuff.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

I will repair mine even though they work and I will enjoy it!

 

[russell_314]

My 2010 MBP blew out a speaker sometime in 2015. I dont remember ever maxing out the volume since I didnt use it for listening to music. Just medium volume for youtube stuff.

That’s crazy a speaker blew after five years of normal use! I wonder if it was defective in some way

 

[groove-agent]

I've never had to repair a speaker after 20 years of owning MBPs.

 

[ChrisA]

I’m not sure why this is a thing. How often do people blow out speakers on a laptop? I rarely turn my Air over 50% volume and its speakers are weak compared to the Pro.

I could say the same about my Toyota Prius. Why does Toyota sell left-side front body panels? I mean really? How many times do I need to replace it? I probably never will.

Repair parts are for the one-in-a-thousand-case accident. But if you sell ten million cars or computers, then you have to expect about 10,000 one-in-a-thousand accidents.

 

[Stella_Fudge]

The 2016 models are not trash except for the butterfly keyboards, which Apple routinely replaced. My 2016 MBP ultimately RAMmed-out due to the 16 GB maximum available at the time, so I bought an M2 MBP with maximum M2 RAM. But the 2016 MBP still drives any single app fine and still gets used every day, just no longer aggressively multitasking.

As far as reliability goes, the 2016 and 2017 pros specifically have been some of the most unreliable machines Apple has put out pretty much since the 2011 model pros/imac/that one mini with the nonstop AMD HD6xxx GPU issues. They were basically a walking hardware liability back in the day, and they still are as of right now, on top of them becoming fairly end of life at this point since Monterey is being sunset before end of this year and Ventura being sunset next autumn.

2016/2017 was plagued with so many repair issues and needed so many different repair programs, to the point where there were even 4 concurrent quality repair programs running at the same time for some models, such as:

• 13 inch 2016 display flex issue (only covered 13 inch 2016 model and only for certain backlight issues up to 5yrs from purchase date, which was extended from 4yrs. The display flex fault also affected all the 15 inch 2016 and all the 2017 model pros and also had more symptoms beyond just backlight but Apple never bother to acknowledge it or do anything about it, and the people that were covered by this program got another 2016/2017 display which means it's just gonna fail again since there were no changes made to the part)
• butterfly keyboard, which is a repeat failure problem that Apple no longer covers and it's just doomed to fail again since the 2016 part just gets replaced with the 2017 part which fails just as much. only covered you up to 4 years from purchase
• 13 inch 2016 non-touchbar battery swelling program, covered only up to 5 years from purchase
• 2016/2017 Pros with battery failure that causes them to not charge past 1% (added prevention fix in BigSur but this was a thing for some time)
• SSD failures due to faulty firmware on 2017 13 inch non-touchbar for 128/256gb models. Covered ssd swap up to 3 years

Basically the problems with these machines has gotten so bad to the point where the 2015 model MacBook Pros became so extremely desirable as a suitable replacement, not only because they still had the ports at the time that people wanted to use, but because they had none of the horrendous reliability issues 2016/2017 had, a minimal difference in performance overall with the exception of graphics applications on the 15 inch model specifically though even then the 2015 model was not super far behind, slightly better thermals thanks to the slightly thicker heatsinks, plus the ssd was still fairly easy to upgrade and both generations of these machines only maxed out at 16 gigs anyways so they were closely matched

If yours is still working perfectly fine to this day then great, you definitely need to consider yourself lucky because this was not the experience a lot of other people had with this generation machine. Butterfly keyboard and display are by far some of the most common repairs that we did on these machines back in the day, not counting physical damage or liquid damage

 

[surfzen21]

That’s crazy a speaker blew after five years of normal use! I wonder if it was defective in some way

Who knows 🤷‍♂️

Technically it was the subwoofer. I took off the bottom and saw that half of the speaker was torn which caused the static/rattling sounds. It may have actually happened over time and I didn't realize it until later. The first time I noticed it was when I rebooted and heard the startup sound all crackly.

The volume I normally play stuff at wasn't effected but when I turned up the volume I heard it.

 

[Stella_Fudge]

My 2010 MBP blew out a speaker sometime in 2015. I dont remember ever maxing out the volume since I didnt use it for listening to music. Just medium volume for youtube stuff.

It's not a common occurrence just speaking from anecdotal experience of things that have come onto my bench over the years, but it is something that does happen with age sometimes. The foam bits that holds the actual speaker cone into place and allow it to flex sometimes degrade and basically develop little holes in them and that will produce all sorts of fun little rattling sounds. It used to be a fairly simple cheap repair back in the day since speakers were replaceable, then they started adhering speakers to the top case starting in 2016, which still continues to this day and made dealing with speaker issues horrendously expensive. the top case part itself is about 400 to 550 US if the battery isn't failing and about 250 if it is. Not great for simple speaker issue. those speakers are now a separate part again for all Apple Silicon 14 inch and 16 inch models, though the actual repair process looks a little annoying since it involves basically flossing Kevlar thread between the speaker and the ad adhesive until it cuts through it and comes out. looking in the system real quick, it's in the ballpark of around 50 US part cost for the Left/Right speaker set (before any labor)

 

[neuropsychguy]

The speakers on my 14 inch 2021 MBP were blown twice.

I think you might need to change what you're doing with your laptop. Blowing them out once might be a fluke. Twice is a whole other issue.

 

[mcbumbersnazzle]

Wow. I had no idea this was a limitation in prior models. It seems like every few weeks I find out some new way the 2016 models were absolute trash.

Definitely lmao. Gotta love how when the 2016 was introduced, fanboys dismissed every single criticism of it and calling it the laptop of the future. Almost a decade later into the future people are still calling it garbage

 

[MasterControlProgram]

Now if only Apple could do something about the little holes in the aluminium for the speakers being difficult to clean. I’m quite fastidious about keeping my MacBook clean to maximise resale value when it’s time to upgrade, but getting tiny bits of debris out of the speaker holes is quite difficult to do. Perhaps I should risk blowing out the speakers with some loud bass heavy music to dislodge things? 😉

 

[Stella_Fudge]

Wow. I had no idea this was a limitation in prior models. It seems like every few weeks I find out some new way the 2016 models were absolute trash.

With the introduction of the retina MacBook Pro, Apple basically started integrating more and more parts into the Top Case. By the time we got to the intel 2016-2020 MacBook Pros, the Top Case included:

• Aluminum palm rest
• Keyboard and keyboard backlight
• Touchbar (if applicable)
• Speakers (all 4-port model 13" and 15" 2016-2019 and 16" 2019)
• Battery
• Microphones
• Trackpad (this was retroactively made to be a separate part in 2023. Apple Silicon machine machines had it available as a separate part with the launch of the 14 inch and 16 inch pros)
• Headphone Jack (2016/2017 13"/15" Touchbar models only, made replaceable for 2018+ 13" 4port/15" pros)

The top case for the modern day 14/16 inch MacBook Pro now has the palm rest, keyboard plus keyboard backlight, microphones, battery, speaker. Yes I did say speaker on purpose, because with the release of this updated repair strategy for speaker stuff, if you're replacing something that requires a top case, you can't transfer over the speakers for reasons, so they are just included with the top case anyways. If you have just speaker issues, you don't need to replace the whole top case now, is basically the point of the current fun strategy

 

[TechnoMonk]

Bummer! I thought I could upgrade my M1 Max MBP to M6 or may may be M5. I guess I will upgrade to M4 max for speaker repairability.