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I have never had a problem with any piece of Apple hardware that they have not covered, you say that you baby the thing but really, none of us know how you truly treat the machine. I mean I could be wrong you might truly baby the thing but I kinda side with Apple when it comes to not wanting to replace the plastics. If you think Dell will solve all your problems go for it but you will have to deal with the biggest problem of all, Windows Vista.

Im really sick of these threads, if you dont like your Mac or you think Apple is screwing you I really could care less and the only reason that Im posting this now is to make that clear. You want to go gripe about how bad Apple is go to dellrumors.com.

As I stated above, there are plenty of people who have no problems. If you are one of those people it is good for you.

For those of us who have not had any problems we should not assume every one else has done something to deserve the problems they are experiencing. There is some cathartic benefit in posting problems and knowing you are not alone in having a less than acceptable experience. Understanding and acknowledgment of the limitations of modern manufacturing is the appropriate response, not negative comments based on assumptions not based on fact.

Give the OP a break. It is punishment enough to even consider working exclusively in Windows. :D

Cheers,
 
panzer06, thank you, you seem to understand where I'm coming from. :) I can't speak for all Apple owners as a whole; just my own personal experience, that I'm frustrated, and I feel that Apple simply doesn't care about me or my future business.
 
Dybbuk,

I read your experience and it is an unfortunate one. I am really sorry to hear that this happened to you, but at the same time I have to tell you that your story sounds somewhat suspect. Please don't be quick to get offended.

The reason I say your story sounds a little suspect is because I work in IT at a fairly large media company that deploys 95% Mac computers of various models. Among those Macs there are about 40 MacBooks distributed company-wide. The problems you have had with cracking wrist rests and foundation cracking is virtually non-existent @ my company and we've purchased and deployed MacBooks from their introduction. Let me add that we have our share of irresponsible MacBook abusers and I have yet to see any of the symptoms you described. There is one particular user who sits his MacBook in such a precarious position on his desk and drops it OFTEN. I put "often" in caps because the dude is plain annoying. Now his desk is about 4 foot high and he sits on a high stool. His MacBook casing (palm rests and bottom and everything) are totally in tact with no cracks! There are scratches, but no cracks whatsoever.

I do believe your story, but I must also conclude that something else must be going on that you're not aware of... perhaps the temperature of the environment where the computer resides? Or maybe you've got some mischievous kids who like to tinker with your MacBook when you're not looking?? I dunno. But in either case, what you've described is not the norm at my job. Don't know what to tell you, but I'm sorry to hear of your woes.

Take heart in that most people don't have the issues you've had so maybe your next MacBook or MacBook Pro will be a better experience. Don't give up just yet.
 
RRRize, there will not be another Mac in my future at this rate. I deserve much better service for the premium that I paid.

I am happy for you that you do not have these issues at your company; however, these issues are .

I work in a room that's usually at about 17 degrees celsius, and my macbook stays under 60 degrees celsius at the core always. There is no stress put on the machine other than my dainty little fingers and wrists.

Don't be so quick to judge simply because you haven't experienced any issues yourself, thanks. :)
 
Dybbuk,
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hirline cracks in the MacBook casing is likely due to some kind of stress imposed on the machine

This is simply not true in every case. There have been many documented cases where just opening and closing the magnetic lid resulted in hairline cracks. Removing the covers determined the plastic on those units was too thin in the areas affected. In other cases just using the palm rest was enough to cause minute stress fractures. This is not user abuse but manufacturing materials defects that are all too common. It is not limited to Apple. Poor QC is rampant and consumers tolerate it so long as a small enough subset of purchasers is affected.

I don't want anyone to give up on Macs but sometimes the negative QC experience makes the user forget all the other great reasons they bought the product in the first place.

BTW, saying "that sounds ~ suspect" and "don't ~ get offended" in the same sentence is very funny. Average person will be upset before they even get to "don't" :)

Cheers,
 
Geez, that's tough luck! I've not had any problems with my Macbook since I purchased it over 1 year ago. I'm not rough with my stuff but I don't exactly baby it. In fact, I often let my 8 year old and 9 year old use my Macbook to play on Webkins and the plastic is absolutely fine.

I had a Dell in the past and I had to send it in to get the keyboard mouse button replaced. I got it back within 2 days. I was quite impressed with their customer service.

Too bad your Mac experience wasn't as good as the majority of ours has been.

Good Luck!!

Cheers.
 
Yeah, the palmrests cracking is an annoying 'feature' of the macbooks (at least the 1st-year ones). Mine is from Nov06 and has cracked about a year ago. It was repaired under warranty. Now it's 2 years old and has developed a fresh crack on the same spot. Although out of warranty, apparently Apple will still repair it due to it being a design flaw (so says my local dealer).

Unfortunately they have also told me, that it will crack again after some time. They claim Apple now uses a different plastic for new macbooks, but not for replacement covers. That may be false information, though.

I also have very slight cracks on the display bezel right at the edge of the 'distance holder bars'. I don't know yet whether I can get that repaired free of cost, also...
 
Take heart in that most people don't have the issues you've had so maybe your next MacBook or MacBook Pro will be a better experience. Don't give up just yet.

Being a disappointed Mac convert, I can sympathize with the original poster.

I am always amazed when people complain about throwing money at their Macs people here suggest to get another Mac and they will have a better experience. Next comes the personal attacks and ways to diminish the credibility of the poster and personally blaming the person for mistreating their computer.

I would NEVER go back to a restaurant that I got food poisoning from, why would I spend more money for a new Mac?

Obviously, the guy has had many headaches with his computer. He deserves a replacement or permanent solution to his problems. It's not like he spent $500 for a crappy laptop.

The thing that Apple does not understand is that when a person is happy with their MAC, they will get an iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, iMac, Apple whatever. They will happily spend thousands of dollars for a good product year after year after year. So why jeopardize that profitable long term relationship for less than $1000?

But then again, corporations are so shortsighted and focused on next quarter's profit that they miss the boat completely. That might be a reason why we are in the financial mess right now.

But then again, I might be completely wrong and probably there will be 10 posters discrediting my message.
 
Being a disappointed Mac convert, I can sympathize with the original poster.

I am always amazed when people complain about throwing money at their Macs people here suggest to get another Mac and they will have a better experience. Next comes the personal attacks and ways to diminish the credibility of the poster and personally blaming the person for mistreating their computer.

I would NEVER go back to a restaurant that I got food poisoning from, why would I spend more money for a new Mac?

Obviously, the guy has had many headaches with his computer. He deserves a replacement or permanent solution to his problems. It's not like he spent $500 for a crappy laptop.

The thing that Apple does not understand is that when a person is happy with their MAC, they will get an iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, iMac, Apple whatever. They will happily spend thousands of dollars for a good product year after year after year. So why jeopardize that profitable long term relationship for less than $1000?

But then again, corporations are so shortsighted and focused on next quarter's profit that they miss the boat completely. That might be a reason why we are in the financial mess right now.

But then again, I might be completely wrong and probably there will be 10 posters discrediting my message.

I agree and if Apple is doing this on a large scale they will pay a price later on. I haven't had a bad experience with Apple yet.
 
About the only thing the OP can do is to be persistent with Apple, document everything, and ensure the service log is notated with each call. While your problem is rare in the larger sense, it is by no means unheard of, and has been documented here a number of times. It is in no way however representative of the overall quality or experience of the vast and overwhelming majority of Macs and their users.

I agree that receiving the expected level of care from Apple can sometimes be a crap shoot, and the only solution there (assuming you have no other convenient Store to visit and attempt a correction there) is to continue, on a regular basis, to escalate. Sooner or later they will deal with it completely, hopefully sooner.

As to the responses you've gotten here. Remember, please, that this is a public forum. You can't dictate who or how people respond to you, and none of the counters to your comments were particularly dismissive, although musings as to the veracity of your care really weren't necessary.

Calling other people idiots, telling them to not post, and general argumentativeness will not aid your cause, nor will it make others willing to assist you in finding a solution, if in fact that's what you came here for, as I note there was no question in your original post. It was, in the vernacular, a rant, and as such, open to whatever commentary anyone decided to throw back.

Everyone here would rather you be successful and happy with your Mac, believe me. :D
 
the cracking palm rest is a pretty well documented problem. I would see if you can talk to some higher ups at apple; get a new macbook sell it and wait for the new ones if you still want to use a mac. Aluminum + intel chipset will protect you from alot of problems the plague the current lines. When you spend your money you need just do more research and wait it out so you don't get burned. The macbooks had tons of problems at launch. Call customer relations and bitch them out; Also see if lemon laws apply.
 
the cracking palm rest is a pretty well documented problem. I would see if you can talk to some higher ups at apple; get a new macbook sell it and wait for the new ones if you still want to use a mac. Aluminum + intel chipset will protect you from alot of problems the plague the current lines. When you spend your money you need just do more research and wait it out so you don't get burned. The macbooks had tons of problems at launch. Call customer relations and bitch them out; Also see if lemon laws apply.

You are naive if you think the new ones won't have problems also. People think aluminum is some type of saving grace. It isn't. The intel chip they have in them hasn't been a problem anyways.
 
This is sad story and I hope something works out. I am new to Mac and I got the Apple Care because Mac's are man made and you will get one that has problems. If I paid 600.00 or less I wouldn't get a protection plan because I don't think it's worth it, but over $1300.00 I am getting something to protect my investment. That's just me. I even got a warranty for my HDTV and my truck, and for me it's a piece of mind. After spending that much money, a few extra $100.00's isn't that much. If you think spending that much money and you will never have a problem isn't good thinking. As I said before it's man made and man isn't perfect and never will be.
A company can make thousands of a great product, but sadly it will make a few "bad apples" (no pun intended).
 
RRRize, there will not be another Mac in my future at this rate. I deserve much better service for the premium that I paid.

I am happy for you that you do not have these issues at your company; however, these issues are .

I work in a room that's usually at about 17 degrees celsius, and my macbook stays under 60 degrees celsius at the core always. There is no stress put on the machine other than my dainty little fingers and wrists.

Don't be so quick to judge simply because you haven't experienced any issues yourself, thanks. :)


Again, I didn't mean to offend you in any way. I just happen to work with these machines daily and have not seen the issues you're talking about. You mentioned in your OP that it was a wide spread issue, so I would have imagined I would have seen the issue in the 3 years I've been working with them to this point if it were wide spread and a potential recall-like situation.

That being said, as I said in my last post to you, I do believe you as I don;t see any reason why you'd come on here just for the sake of belly-aching about a lie. I think your situation is very unfortunate. I was not in ANY way judging you. being a techie-geek, when someone puts up a post like yours, it is a reflex reaction for me to start looking for REASONS why the problem is occuring. All I can do is go into my own database of experience and deduce against that. That's why I came up with the possible room temperature, stress and kid conclusions. You say those are not possible so I go into conclude mode again... maybe the plastics used in the lot of MacBooks that yours came from was defective/not mixed correctly or to spec. Either way, SOMETHING went awry SOMEWHERE. The conclusion and suggestion I had in my last post to you and this post too is, DON'T LOSE HEART. I totally appreciate your plight, but it is about certain you just got a lemon - and as is the case with most lemons, you don't tend to get them twice. If you loved OS X but hated the machine that it was running on, give Apple another chance and get another Mac. If you prefer Windows XP or Vista, then go for the Dell. Dells are pretty good machines too. My company has a contract with them. We worked it so that they sell us machines with our company-designed build of XP (because Vista sux). Finally, let me tell you, if you go the Dell route, brace yourself for worse customer service than Apple's!! We have PLATINUM service with Dell and it is pure and utter rubbish - nothing but bad things to say about Dell's customer service. But on the flip side of that, the machines very rarely fail so we rarely have to deal with them for replacement parts.

That said, I wish you the best in whatever you do!:)
 
I'm sorry to hear this had to happen to you. I understand why you would want to switch and how madding it is to loose a ton of productivity time. The hd issue would be that manufacture but the case is totally apple. Out of all the bs extended warrenties out their apple care is the only one I buy. I but it every time.

I hope your computer situation is fixed some how. Just remember apple uses all of the same parts as any other dell or hp. It's apples os and ease of use(such as the easy to use iPod enterface) that gives apple it's name.
 
^ Good for you ...?

I was wondering how long it would take for the apologists to come out of the woodwork and tell me how great their Mac has been to them!

Well, that's great for you, but it doesn't really help me, now does it?


I'm just saying that you're not going to find a perfect product 100% of the time no matter who manufactures it. There's always going to be some that continuously have problems. At least Apple has been kind enough to replace the parts on your computer free of charge. I paid for an extended warranty on my Alienware, and I still had to argue with them on the phone for about 4 hours to get them to replace the motherboard free of charge, not to mention the laptop was still within the 1 year warranty period.

Besides, do you buy a computer to just put it on a desk and stare at it, or do you buy it to actually do something. Other than the hdd failure, it sounds like all of your other problems are cosmetic, and don't affect the performance of your computer. The one problem that you described that would affect the performance I'm guessing they fixed for free since you didn't complain about having to pay for it.

If your experiences with Apple are enough to make you want to go back to a pc, then go for it, but I'm sure sooner or later one of them will break on you too.
 
Besides, do you buy a computer to just put it on a desk and stare at it, or do you buy it to actually do something. Other than the hdd failure, it sounds like all of your other problems are cosmetic, and don't affect the performance of your computer.

You're right, it's totally acceptable for a case to crack in multiple places under gentle use, and Apple has never put any focus on the aesthetic appeal of their products. :rolleyes:

To be completely honest with you, the way the laptop looks is part of the equation for me and many Mac users. So to brush off a cosmetic issue caused by a glaring design flaw as negligible is foolish on your part.
 
You're right, it's totally acceptable for a case to crack in multiple places under gentle use, and Apple has never put any focus on the aesthetic appeal of their products. :rolleyes:

To be completely honest with you, the way the laptop looks is part of the equation for me and many Mac users. So to brush off a cosmetic issue caused by a glaring design flaw as negligible is foolish on your part.

I was upset when I saw the 1/4" crack on my macbook, but it's on the underside of it and it doesn't even really affect it. I was going to go to the Apple store and have it fixed, since I was about a week before my 1 year warranty expired, but I didn't figure it would be worth the hassle for a hairline crack.

And for all of your complaints, Apple has fixed them for free, every time. The only thing that's foolish is you expecting that manufacturers can guarantee a perfect product coming off their line 100% of the time. :rolleyes: That's what warranties are for, and it sounds like you have been able to use yours.
 
I was upset when I saw the 1/4" crack on my macbook, but it's on the underside of it and it doesn't even really affect it. I was going to go to the Apple store and have it fixed, since I was about a week before my 1 year warranty expired, but I didn't figure it would be worth the hassle for a hairline crack.

And for all of your complaints, Apple has fixed them for free, every time. The only thing that's foolish is you expecting that manufacturers can guarantee a perfect product coming off their line 100% of the time. :rolleyes: That's what warranties are for, and it sounds like you have been able to use yours.

I am glad to hear that it is of no concern for you. I was looking forward to switching to a Mac for years and used my high school graduation money to purchase it.

I am not really impressed that Apple has managed to repair a known design flaw for free, only to have it happen again later before my three months extension was up, and then agree to fix it once again. They're doing the bare minimum required of them, which isn't something particularly impressive.
 
I sold my Macbook a few months ago.

I bought a Lenovo Thinkpad X300 running XP on sale for $1500

Could've opted for a Toughbook, but decided against it because of the X300's LED backlighting.

I never looked back.
 
I am glad to hear that it is of no concern for you. I was looking forward to switching to a Mac for years and used my high school graduation money to purchase it.

I am not really impressed that Apple has managed to repair a known design flaw for free, only to have it happen again later before my three months extension was up, and then agree to fix it once again. They're doing the bare minimum required of them, which isn't something particularly impressive.

Like I said, if you don't like it, switch back to a pc. In my personal experience, and in a lot of other people's opinions, Apple's customer service goes above and beyond, and they try to do whatever they can to keep customers happy. You just expect them to hand you a brand new macbook, when yours can be repaired? :rolleyes: I'd like to see you run that idea by any other computer manufacturer and actually get them to give you one.
 
I am glad to hear that it is of no concern for you. I was looking forward to switching to a Mac for years and used my high school graduation money to purchase it.

I am not really impressed that Apple has managed to repair a known design flaw for free, only to have it happen again later before my three months extension was up, and then agree to fix it once again. They're doing the bare minimum required of them, which isn't something particularly impressive.

ok so we know you dont like the plastic (ive always felt plastic was cheap anyway, in all computers). Would u be willing to give the new aluminums a try?

I really dont think its fair that youve based all your opinions of apple one one (outdated) product.
 
ok so we know you dont like the plastic (ive always felt plastic was cheap anyway, in all computers). Would u be willing to give the new aluminums a try?

I really dont think its fair that youve based all your opinions of apple one one (outdated) product.

I like plastic. Just not this cheap, thin, flimsy plastic.

And outdated? It's the case they're using right now and it's only a year old. :\ Are you this deluded?
 
I like plastic. Just not this cheap, thin, flimsy plastic.

And outdated? It's the case they're using right now and it's only a year old. :\ Are you this deluded?

im saying the macbooks are outdated, yes. hence the new design. Hey, maybe there aware of all the cracking and are switching to some sort of hard cold easily manufactured stuff. oh yea, aluminum:p
 
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