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So my new MacBook Pro is broken after just 2 days..

MacBookPro13"

MacBookPro13"

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 25, 2011
589
0
Ireland
I ordered my MacBook Pro 13" from the online store on Tuesday the 1st of February and was delivered on Monday the 7th of February, to my home address in Kerry. (was due for delivery on the previous Friday)

Unboxed and booted up as soon as it was delivered and everything was great. Took it on the train up to Cork with me, using it on-board and still working very well, no problems whatsoever. Got to my apartment in Cork and was using it that night. On one application I was using, the MPB froze and I needed to power off and on again, but it was fine after that. When I was finished for the night I shut it down and went to bed.

On Tuesday it worked fine all day, watched a movie and did some web browsing. Imported pictures from my digital camera and installed a game.
That evening an error randonly came up in several different languages with the english one saying something along the lines of;

"You need to restart your computer. To restart, hold down the power button and when it is shut down, press the power button again."

I did this & the machine booted up without any problems, until one hour later when the message came up again and I powered off and on again and it was fine yet again. Later that night the same thing happened but this time when I tried to reboot, there was a series of beeps and a black screen, it wouldn't boot. I kept trying and sometimes it would boot and get to the desktop before the message coming up again and other times it would just be the series of beeps. Either way, it wasn't working. Tried it again this morning and the problems continued.

What I did on the between getting the laptop & the time it broke down;

Ran & installed Software Updates

Installed app's such as; Skype, VLC, Adium, Messenger for Mac, TweetDeck, Twitter, Steam, Football Manager 2011, Office for Mac 2011, Chrome, Firefox, uTorrent.

Connected to the internet with an ethernet cable & also with USB Broadband Dongle.

Connected and transferred files from my external hard drive.

Connected and transferred files from my digital camera.

Powered it off twice when the computer had frozen.




I rang Apple Support this morning and we tried various methods of booting including;

Holding down cmd, alt, r & p

Holding down cmd, alt, r & b

Holding down c with install DVD in the Superdrive


None of the above worked. He then said that as it was a very new computer that they will send me out a brand new machine and they will collect the old one.

That is fine, but I want to know the following;


What did/may have caused this to happen?

What would happen if this had occurred a few weeks later than yesterday, would I still get a free replacement?

Do Apple need to collect the laptop from me before they will deliver the new one? (They said they are collecting within 48 hours & I will not be at my home address until Friday)

Have you ever experienced this?

Should Apple compensate me in any way for the inconvenience of this? (I am in college now for the week with no PC & I have projects to do etc.)

If the same happens with the new one, would they provide yet another new one?



What are your opinions on this situation?

Thanks guys!

AC
 
MacBookPro13";11880705 said:
uTorrent.
Click to expand...

Apple doesn't like pirates.
But on a serious note, they don't usually replace the macbooks before trying to fix it first, but maybe yours had a big problem that's why the said they would replace it imediately. They won't compensate you for the time you lost. If it happens again, they will sure fix it for free or maybe replace it again.
 
Thats sad news to hear your having problems - i've got my 13" and fingers crossed i dont come across any issues like you...

let them do what they need to do, as for your LOST time - im pretty sure 99% of lic agreements out that state that they will not compensate etc for lost time etc...

only time i know you can even ask about it and stand a chance is if its all been registered down a business channel...

i used to work for o2 and we got it all the time on pay & go - i've lost business cos my phone isnt working etc...our response was simple - this is not registered as a business handset or sim card.

if it was then they would do something about it...i assume apple would be the same...
 
orfeas0 said:
Apple doesn't like pirates.
But on a serious note, they don't usually replace the macbooks before trying to fix it first, but maybe yours had a big problem that's why the said they would replace it imediately. They won't compensate you for the time you lost. If it happens again, they will sure fix it for free or maybe replace it again.
Click to expand...

uTorrent was for downloading a club & competitions logo pack for the above, Football Manager 2011.

Well it would appear that the problem is pretty big as the technical support needed to consult his senior and when he got back to me he said it would need to be replaced.
 
...

that is called a kernel panic, I would personally have tried reinstalling the OS and if it continued then probobly bad hardware
 
newdeal said:
that is called a kernel panic, I would personally have tried reinstalling the OS and if it continued then probobly bad hardware
Click to expand...

i don't understand... I read many threads in here about kernel panics, and checked wikipedia to see what that is. It seems it's like the windows Blue Screen Of Death, but for unix.
People have been flaming windows for being a ****** OS crashing all the time, but I haven't had a BSOD in like 7 years of windows usage, while macs seem to have them pretty often. kinda off-topic but it raises questions...
 
Personally a Kernal fault after 2 days, would more than likely point to iffy hardware, and you arne't going to want a new customer to go thru the process of reinstallation, to possibly not fix it.

Apple made the right call here.

As for kernal panics happening all the time..i'd say if you see more than 1 in 9 months there might be an issue. I've got a mac mini that is left on for months at a time (it's longest recorded uptime is 9months), it is yet to kernal panic.
 
orfeas0 said:
i don't understand... I read many threads in here about kernel panics, and checked wikipedia to see what that is. It seems it's like the windows Blue Screen Of Death, but for unix.
People have been flaming windows for being a ****** OS crashing all the time, but I haven't had a BSOD in like 7 years of windows usage, while macs seem to have them pretty often. kinda off-topic but it raises questions...
Click to expand...

"Pretty often"? I have 6 macs running in my home and haven't had a kernel panic on one in probably 5 years (rough guess). You never hear about the awesome running machines, you only hear about the badly running ones. Reoccurring kernel panics usually point to a hardware issue and have nothing to do with the OS. So even then, your argument falls flat on its face. Good troll though.

2010 Mac Pro
2010 Mac Mini
2006 MBP
200? Powermac G5
2001? Powermac G4
2003? Powerbook G4

Last batch of kernel panics I had was when that Powerbook G4 I mentioned had a failing optical drive. Once that got repaired it didn't kernel panic again.

Ohh and guess what, my machines stay on 100% of the time and they are USED heavily. Lots of rendering, lots of transcoding, etc.
 
orfeas0 said:
i don't understand... I read many threads in here about kernel panics, and checked wikipedia to see what that is. It seems it's like the windows Blue Screen Of Death, but for unix.
People have been flaming windows for being a ****** OS crashing all the time, but I haven't had a BSOD in like 7 years of windows usage, while macs seem to have them pretty often. kinda off-topic but it raises questions...
Click to expand...

No, Macs don't have kernel panics often. Macs with broken hardware do. And people with broken hardware and kernel panics will often post here. And then they get told "check your hardware", and that fixes it.
 
orfeas0 said:
i don't understand... I read many threads in here about kernel panics, and checked wikipedia to see what that is. It seems it's like the windows Blue Screen Of Death, but for unix.
People have been flaming windows for being a ****** OS crashing all the time, but I haven't had a BSOD in like 7 years of windows usage, while macs seem to have them pretty often. kinda off-topic but it raises questions...
Click to expand...

Do more research on a Kernal Panic. It is similar to the windows blue screen of death but not nearly as severe.
 
gnasher729 said:
No, Macs don't have kernel panics often. Macs with broken hardware do. And people with broken hardware and kernel panics will often post here. And then they get told "check your hardware", and that fixes it.
Click to expand...

How could my hardware be broken after just 2 days?
 
MacBookPro13";11881247 said:
How could my hardware be broken after just 2 days?
Click to expand...

Hardware is not flawless. Inside the factory something could have gone wrong. With what minimal QC Apple seems to do these days, it is no surprise that some machines will be DOA. They even have a DOA policy which should give you some hint as to whether or not hardware could potentially fail before it gets to you or the day it gets to you. It happens, it's technology ... electronic ... etc.

Just let them fix or replace it and be done with it. If you think this doesn't happen on Dells, HPs, Toshibas or even an IBM then you're wrong.
 
gonnabuyamacbsh said:
What!?!?

I love torrents. I wanted to buy my first mac soon :(
Click to expand...

Yeah..go buy a sense of irony first...he was joking.

MBP13" It probably shipped that way....anything could be faulty from a bad processor thru to the PCB robots not correctly soldering a transistor to the board.
 
MacBookPro13";11881278 said:
It might not be flawless, but to pack up after just two days is ridiculous.
Click to expand...

It happens, again, this is technology and sometimes technology fails us.

If it makes you feel better, I spent $3k on a MacPro in May 2008. Out of the box it was faulty. Although I was not immediately aware of the fault, it was faulty and eventually replaced in February 2009 (because of my own procrastination). After replacing the fans, the tower, the logic board, the CPUs, the GPU and the power supply, nothing worked. I had a brand new machine basically and it didn't fix the issue. 3 weeks later they offered me a new machine, I had it within a week. It took a month to get things fixed up but in the end I got a new machine. It was frustrating and I had to lug that damn thing to and from the Apple store a few times. However, they made it right eventually.

Ridiculous, perhaps, but it happens.
 
You got a duff one! ***** happens!!!!

I'll agree it's not ideal, but for every 1000 that come out of the factory, 1 might be iffy...it's just unfortunate you got an iffy one! They are replacing it, you can't really ask more for that!
 
If it was faulty from the beginning that would be fine, I just want to be sure that it was nothing that I did, so I can avoid this in round 2.
 
MacBookPro13";11881447 said:
If it was faulty from the beginning that would be fine, I just want to be sure that it was nothing that I did, so I can avoid this in round 2.
Click to expand...
It's hard to say without having performed a thorough hardware test before and after the issue began to occur, but that being said I highly doubt that it's anything that you've done that would have caused the issue.

Apple's quality control is above and beyond other computer manufacturers out there from what I've seen, but that doesn't mean that things like this don't occasionally happen - my guess by the description of the issue is that it could have been a bad disk, bad memory, or a bad logic board.

My recommendation? Let Apple take care of it and don't worry so much - if you have problems with your replacement computer then I'd do a bit of escalating.

Best of luck, and have a great day. :)
 
Kreylonus said:
It's hard to say without having performed a thorough hardware test before and after the issue began to occur, but that being said I highly doubt that it's anything that you've done that would have caused the issue.

Apple's quality control is above and beyond other computer manufacturers out there from what I've seen, but that doesn't mean that things like this don't occasionally happen - my guess by the description of the issue is that it could have been a bad disk, bad memory, or a bad logic board.

My recommendation? Let Apple take care of it and don't worry so much - if you have problems with your replacement computer then I'd do a bit of escalating.

Best of luck, and have a great day. :)
Click to expand...

Thank you :)
 
MacBookPro13";11880705 said:
Should Apple compensate me in any way for the inconvenience of this? (I am in college now for the week with no PC & I have projects to do etc.)
Click to expand...
you must be joking. why should they? if you have projects to do, borrow someone elses computer, or go use a shared one in a computer lab or library.

if you bought a pack of underwear, and later found that the underwear was defective and you couldn't wear it, should the underwear marker "compensate" you, because you had no underwear and therefore couldn't go to class? lol it's the same thing. incidental and consequential damages are your problem. the product vendor is liable only for their product, nothing more.

on that same subject, the product vendor is NOT liable for your data. So lets say you get this new replacement computer, then spend 9 weeks writing a huge term paper- and then the hard drive dies and you lose everything. that is YOUR problem, no one elses. What I'm trying to say, is back up your data regularly! get an external hard drive, preferably firewire, and back up your stuff to it often!!
 
Last edited:
dime21 said:
you must be joking. why should they? if you have projects to do, borrow someone elses computer, or go use a shared one in a computer lab.

if you bought a pack of underwear, and later found that the underwear was defective and you couldn't wear it, should the underwear marker "compensate" you, because you had no underwear and therefore couldn't go to class? lol it's the same thing. incidental and consequential damages are your problem. the product vendor is liable only for their product, nothing more.
Click to expand...

There is a big difference in paying €1,149 for a laptop & paying €2 for a pair of underwear. (of which one would normally have more of anyway)

Anyway, regarding that, my uncle (apple employee) is providing me with €240 worth of software (on top of the €200 employee discount), so it's all good.
 
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