They’ve also quoted me more than a whole new pair to repair some AirPods Pro that I accidentally washed in the laundry. They didn’t tell me that was the case when I was on the phone with them.
Apple uses a lot of customer hostile behaviors nowadays. Recently:
* I canceled the Apple TV+ year trial that came with my iPhone. While, I believe, they require other apps to allow access until the trial ends, they ended my access immediately.
* Apple Music pulls up a slow interstitial almost every time I open it up to try to get me to pay. I have like 4 albums on my phone I listen to, it’s incredibly annoying how they’ve broken the music app to upsell their services.
I’m trying to get rid of most of my Apple devices in favor of anything else at this point.
I just swapped from Android to an iPhone for privacy concerns. The other side of the fence is pretty user hostile as well. Google makes you disable a lot of functionality on the phone if you try to get out of their invasive tracking. And they are constantly nuking apps that I use like Google Play Music and Google Inbox.
Maybe check out PinePhone if you're interested in hacking something together!
>I just swapped from Android to an iPhone for privacy concerns.
Understandable, if Apple's claim on Privacy is to be trusted, then it does seem to be a better alternative to android when it comes to privacy; But for a power user android ecosystem offers more without rooting, is not dependent upon 'trust on a company alone' and there's no separate power-user level ecosystem for iOS without jailbreaking.
e.g.
• AOSP, so there's LineageOS as aftermarket alternative, /e/ with e foundation phone or Fairphone, dozens of other alternatives.
• Firewall VPN for android are more refined e.g. Netguard (open-source) even allows selective blocking of connections per address/ per app; this is the closest thing to Little Snitch on macOS.
• Tasker allows automation to such an extent that, several things which required writing apps can now be performed by creating tasks. Tasker is Siri shortcuts on steroids without Siri.
You can deactivate pretty much all the Google apps you're not using. I use VLC, Firefox and K-9 Mail instead of the default Google apps and have been doing it for ages. Pretty much doesn't break anything, other than some banking apps that immediately assume you must have Gmail installed, so they direct you to that instead of your default email client. That's not a big deal, you can just open your email client by hand. A small price to pay for giving less space to Google on your phone.
But you can't disable play store and framework(s) without losing a ton of integrated facilities. Probably also why the integrate most ad and tracking stuff in there.
> But you can't disable play store and framework(s) without losing a ton of integrated facilities.
But can’t those basically be considered part of the operating system at this point? I can’t disable Apple frameworks on my iPhone either. Mind, iOS of course does less user tracking.
> But can’t those basically be considered part of the operating system at this point?
That's exactly why I switched because the idea that I can't disable Play Services is bonkers. It does look like MicroG (open-source replacement) is maturing a lot recently though!
> I can’t disable Apple frameworks on my iPhone either. Mind, iOS of course does less user tracking.
Apple makes their money up front by me purchasing the device. That's why they're expensive. They are a hardware company.
Whenever you use an iOS feature for the first time, you are prompted with a privacy policy statement that is presented in both a summary and a long form to be read before you click agree. And they have an icon that they show you whenever data will leave your device.
With them being the forward about it, I trust it way more.
If you don't believe me, go and read this[0] privacy policy on (arguably) the creepiest feature that Apple provides you (Siri).
Some quotes from it:
> Siri Data is associated with a random, device generated identifier. This random identifier is not linked to your Apple ID, email address, or other data Apple may have from your use of other Apple services.
> Siri Data and your requests are not used to build a marketing profile, and are never sold to anyone.
That immediately hits me differently from Google's policy (I read it a long while ago now), and it makes me view Apple with enough of a positive light to make the ecosystem jump.
> Apple makes their money up front by me purchasing the device. That's why they're expensive.
Apple also charges 30% of much of your software and content purchases, and the hardest isn't particularly expensive relative to similar competitor hardware.
You could try out LineageOSformicroG.
(Basically LineageOS + microG + signature spoofing patch)
It's not 100% of the user experience, but most things work well enough that it's worth it imo. (Running this daily on my OnePlus 3 since last year or so)
Thank you for sharing. This is awesome! It looks like they replace Google Play Services with MicroG and so this is (fairly truly) a full de-Google'd phone. I might try to flash this on my old phone sometime soon. :)
How is anything Android Google free? Is Android its own separate entity not under the Google/Alphabet lineage? This has kept me from seriously considering Android as something I could ever use.
I guess I'm asking what part of Android is not Google? I get trying to detach apps like GMail, Maps, PlayStore, etc. But if Google created Android, why is it assumed to be okay of doing Googly things?
the concern is not code written by google, but code that depends on googles infrastructure, requires a google account, phones home, gives google control over my phone, is not released under a FOSS license (so i can't change it), anything that violates the users privacy...
so what /e/ is doing is essentially an audit of android, and an attempt to remove everything that is of concern.
it's a major project, and it's not complete. work in progress.
This and disabling google apps. Surprisingly not much of a difference in functionality, my data usage is low, downloaded local maps on OSM. Motorola something
So if you use their cloud services, both Apple and Google have access to your photos, but Apple has access to all of your whatsapp and signal conversations, while Google does not (if you decide to password protect your backups).
And you have to use iCloud if you want to keep your 3rd party chat history safe, unless you jailbreak to extract it from the file system.
iMessage is of course purposefully flawed to allow for MITM.
Yeah, death of Google Play Music will be remembered, and mentioned in the same saga as Google Reader's demise.
I would love to know how many subscribers of Google Music have they lost during this transition to YouTube music. Not that I think Google actually cares, and seeing how big companies BS themselves from inside, they probably sooth themselves with "it is temporary", "we will catch up on features", "they will come back".
Everyone who paid for Google music for moved over to YouTube music. I don't think they've lost much yet. I hate the YouTube music app but the music and playlists are still there.
Right now my android phone is GrapheneOS with no Google Play Services/Apps. I download everything via F-Droid. However like you said, there is a lot of functionality disabled.
I have a Pinephone and hope that sooner then later that I can use it full time.
I used Play Music and Inbox as well, and also just switched (3-ish months ago?) to an iPhone.
The YouTube Music app is not that bad, but definitely missing a feature or three that I used a lot on Play. It also seems to need to be manually started every time my phone connects to Bluetooth whereas Play would start automatically if it was the last thing that was playing on that BT connection.
Youtube music's biggest drawback is being required to subscribe to listen with the screen off. I was willing to change interfaces since I thought google play music was reasonable. Then my free trial ended.
I use Spotify for 95% of my listening. Their ability to sync songs that aren't on Spotify though is pretty bad, and that's why I used Play Music. There are just some albums/bands that I want to listen to that aren't easily available without having the raw MP3 somewhere.
Wow, I had no idea about the interstitial. I happily pay for Apple Music for the convenience / never-sync factor (and, if I'm honest, to make it easier for my wife to manage music on HER devices without having to hook them up to the server and download from our library), but that's a choice I made. If they're being obnoxious with an ad for people who just want to use the music app on their phone normally, that's really disappointing.
I'm using Music app without Apple Music subscription. They are not obnoxious, I think that's an overstatement. Yes, they remind about Apple Music, but that's quite a rare event.
Agree, about 7 years ago I spilt liquid on my MacBook Pro. They let me off the repair costs (significant, new motherboard etc..), just said be a bit more careful. Have recounted this story many times since, sad to hear things may have changed.
I've still encountered cases like that recently — I'm not sure the situation is any worse now (at least with support incidents). It's all just anecdotal.
I think to be fair it probably depends on which country you're in. In the UK I've found their support to be downright poor, even when compared to other device manufacturers, but I'm told in the US they're better.
All those free repair and decent Apple experience are all from US. Worldwide Apple Services tends to be crap.
I even heard in some part of the world Apple started to paid commission to Apple Retail Staff for products sales. ( They used to pride themselves the lack of conflict of interest and to provide the best services possible )
I had a similar anecdotal story just a couple of months ago. I've spilled a few drops of juice on my 16" MBP keyboard, which was enough for three keys to become sticky. They've replaced the keyboard and whole top case chassis for free without any comment and I got my laptop back in three days.
It was the best tech support experience I've had in my life.
It's one thing for Apple's product quality (or quality control) to be less now that Steve Jobs is no longer with us. But it's another thing for customer-hostile dark patterns to become Apple's norm. :/ (I was subjected to the worst customer support experience of my life with the #KeyboardGate defect.)
Counter-anecdote: I have spilled liquid on MBPs more recently (latest is 2019 MBP with touch bar) and didn’t need to bring them in for repair as they kept working after having been thoroughly dried.
Seeing reports about old laptops breaking from the same, I suppose the upside is that they are becoming less fragile.
I broke the screen on a new Macbook 2 years ago, days after buying it. It was entirely my own fault so not covered by warrantee. I called Apple support and was told £800. Since I bought it with an Amex card, it was covered on that insurance, so I made an appointment to get it replaced. I went to the Apple store and was given a formal quote of £645 parts + labour. They went off to get the paperwork and were gone for a while. When they got back, they told me that the part wouldn't be available for 3 months (it was a new release) and gave me a new laptop, free of charge, on the spot.
Something similar happened with my two year old, out of warranty iPhone with maxed out storage. It had the original battery swollen. I assumed they would just swap out the battery and charge me, but they said they wanted to send the whole thing in to be inspected, and unfortunately they didn’t have any prior gen phones with that level of storage on hand, so asked if I would mind receiving a current gen replacement.
Vehicle breaks, the part or component that fixes it is unavailable/backordered/allocated for months+.
Manufacturers will offer to buy back the vehicle, at original sale price, rather than force you to wait (and relieving them from having to provide a loaner/rental).
It’s a mass market set of products now, so different problems. Still, they are better than any competitor I’m aware of.
Their staff are more empowered than most companies though. Usually I’m able to get what I want with a minimum of fuss, you just need to go in person and be very calm.
The replacement price issue there is probably both a protection against resellers and an incorporation of an expedite fee.
AirPods are made of three components: left earbud, right earbud, and charging case. More granular repairs are neither offered nor possible due to glues and so forth, though damaged parts can be recycled for scrap. So repairs can only replace those three parts in total, and perform no other purpose. This is still useful if you lose an earbud on the subway, or if your charging case lid snaps off, but it opens the door for an exploit as well.
If you have a set of AirPods and you want to jump the line at Apple to buy another set and sell them to someone else, you can simply 'lose' each piece of your set of AirPods. Once you have a complete set of all three parts, you can assemble a fully standalone AirPods and sell it, using the parts that you got from repair.
To prevent this, repair sets their prices for the individual parts to exceed the final unit price of the whole. This isn't a big deal if you damage one part only
Repair costs probably also include 'expedited priority' versus those purchasing new products for the first time, so if there was a waiting list of 4-6 weeks to buy new AirPods, repair's full replacement price would bypass that list and get you your replacements immediately.
They still should have told you on the phone that the repair cost exceeds the repurchase cost and offered to discount the price in exchange for whatever the current wait is for folks buying them on the website.
I find it hard to believe that Apple overcharges all of its customers, just to combat the minority of scammers. Just seems so unbalanced...
Also, aren't waiting lists usually due to manufacturing latency? Not arbitrary delays that can be bypassed via purchasing repairs? Moreover, no one can assemble a Macbook/iPad/iPhone by ordering replacement parts. Your example only holds good for Airpods.
No such option exists for the Apple News+ interstitial.
It's obvious that there is a bug in the code, I get the interstitial at random times, not only when I open the app. Wifi drops and then comes back? Interstitial right on top of whatever I was reading...
PS, am I the only person that puts a "cancel free trial for XYZ" in my calendar the minute I sign up for anything?
am I the only person that puts a "cancel free trial for XYZ" in my calendar the minute I sign up for anything?
So much so, I have an "Add expiration reminder" iOS shortcut. Pretty sure I downloaded it from the Shortcuts gallery or something, it doesn't look like something I'd write.
Had the same thing happen with my wife’s Apple Music 3 month trial.
She accepted the trial, then went into settings to cancel the subscription so she wouldn’t be automatically charged at the end of 3 months.
With no warning, the subscription was then completely cancelled with no ability to use the rest of the trial. (Unlike some other Apple trials.) When asking Apple Support about this, they referenced an obscure sentence in their terms and conditions. They could do nothing to re-offer the trial to my wife. So consumer hostile.
The iPhone 4 was also one of their best selling models of all time (iPhone 6 I think exceeded it).
Geoffrey Moore’s “Inside the Tornado” makes an argument that companies deliberately need to become less customer focused when they’re in hyper growth mainstream adoption.
> companies deliberately need to become less customer focused when they’re in hyper growth mainstream adoption
But, Amazon doesn't seem to have done that. Someone even claimed Amazon sells customer service, they still seem to do so but at the expense of their employees.
Apples demolition of their entire universe of music products is unbelievably frustrating.
I know iTunes never got a great rep but it worked, and iTunes Match was fantastic. Now however they still charge for it, except its totally broken unless you instead pay for Apple Music (9.99/mo instead of 24.99/year).
Annoyed but there really isn’t much alternative on that front.
Apple's pivot into services has just been the worst. They've been getting gradually stingier for years—to the point of it affecting product quality—but it's only recently they've started to add some scummy behaviour and dark patterns, and I can't see it getting any better.
I was anoyed by Apple Music ads as well. To a point where I really started to hate them for that. I do not want a monthly subscription for a streaming service, I do prefer to buy what I want and thats it. After half a year of tapping "No thanks" it suddenly stopped. I am guessing they actually know that some of their customers hate the idea of music subscription. I havent seena Apple Music pop up since many moons.
Hm, trial period (3 months) is longer than non-trial payment cycle (1 month) for Apple Music, and in my experience, you can still use it after cancellation, until the trial period expires.
They completely destroyed the music app. And they prevent third-party apps from having the same APIs as their music app! I used to use Cesium but Apple even managed to break that app.
The first year is $0 when you buy a new iPhone, so pro-rating wouldn't make a difference.
I often sign up for trials and immediately cancel (so I don't forget about them). That way it requires a positive action on my part to keep the subscription. That doesn't work if your access ends as soon as you cancel.
You shouldn't have to though. Apple Music can potentially be offered once, or advertised in the App Store/iTunes Store, but not in the default, local music player app.
It’s simply targeted advertising. People are more likely to consider your ad if it’s related to what they are doing. In this case, it’s a music streaming service ad when you are going to play music. The ad wouldn’t be as effective if it was in the iTunes/App Store.
>Apple uses a lot of customer hostile behaviors nowadays
Nowadays? Apple has been doing anti-consumer behavior for multiple decades. I remember only allowing purchased itunes music being exported in their specific format.
You'd have to burn them to a CD and rip it back to a useable format.
This isn't new, any educated consumer is well aware of how Apple plays.
Maybe you're thinking of the DRM'd files that couldn't be played back by other players, and even iTunes on other computers without your iTunes store account. In that case indeed burning a CD and ripping it would be one solution. They stopped selling DRM'd files completely by 2009, though.
The DRM was not a whim by Apple, it was demanded by the labels, though. At the time that was the only way they'd even permit an online music store. I don't think there were alternatives that weren't just as locked down, unless you're talking about sailing the high seas.
This is exactly it. Songs were 99¢ with DRM. In 2009, Apple managed to convince enough labels to sell DRM-free copies, but at $1.29. You could, at the time, “upgrade” your DRM copy to be DRM-free for 30¢ a song.
About 4-5 years ago, my MacBook Pro's trackpad would randomly stop working and I would have to restart my laptop a few times to get it working again. Sometimes it would work for a few hours, sometimes a few minutes. I also dual-booted Linux at the time and the funny thing is the trackpad never had an issue under Linux. After quite a bit of researching, it led me to believe that the ribbon cable connecting the trackpad to the motherboard was faulty due to macOS never trying to reconnect to the trackpad if it loses a connection for even just a moment.
I brought it to the Apple store and explained that I had tried everything possible to resolve the issue without opening up the laptop myself, such as resetting NVRAM, completely reinstalling macOS completely, etc. I explained that I think that the ribbon cable is simply faulty and that it probably just needed a replacement. The Genius said that they're going to bring it in the back to do every single one of the things I mentioned that I already did.
I come back 4 hours later to pickup my laptop and they tell me that the issue is the motherboard and that replacing said board would cost $800. I asked how they determined it was the motherboard and not simply a faulty ribbon cable to the trackpad, but they wouldn't answer the question directly. After requesting their superior and restating my question a few more times, they told me that they don't have access to replacement ribbon cables and that my only option was a motherboard replacement, which itself would take about a week because they needed to order the board. That was enough for me to take my laptop and leave, even though they still didn't answer the actual question of how they determined what the actual issue was or even confirm my hunch that the issue was with the ribbon cable.
I bought a $5 replacement cable from Amazon, took about 10 minutes to swap it out using an iFixIt tutorial, and I'm still using that laptop as my main machine years later. In other words, they spent 4 hours to quote me an $800 fix that would take about a week to be done for something that was actually only a $5 fix that would take no more than 30 minutes. I've been hesitating to buy a new laptop for years because of that experience as well as the downhill quality of MacBooks as of late, such as the keyboard (although fixed now), touch bar, initial Catalina bugginess, etc.
> I explained that I think that the ribbon cable is simply faulty and that it probably just needed a replacement. The Genius said that they're going to bring it in the back to do every single one of the things I mentioned that I already did.
People who are technical like you, or myself, and attempt to fix things, and often know more than techs, it's frustrating.
But consider how many people come in that don't do those things, or don't do them but said they did, etc.
Honestly, often times when a coworker of mine is checking an issue I'm having, the issue is a minor one that I somehow missed.
Yup, that was a common issue. This is exactly what happen to a friend of mine. Tried to sell him a new motherboard, he decided to just buy a ribbon cable and replace it himself.
Another friend had his motherboard replaced because he had the common issue with the old keyboard where keys would randomly stop working. Of course it didn't fix it, only wasted a month of his time. Luckily his was still covered under warranty and they managed to get it right and replace the keyboard the second time around.
He also has a video where the apple store person didn't plug the battery cable all the way in after looking at it and just blamed it on the machine being broken.
I had almost the same thing happen. Turned on my Mac Mini one day and it just could not see the SSD. Not even in Recovery mode. Took it in and the “Genius” tested it and said that the drive wasn’t working. They offered to replace my 1TB SSD for some large amount of money. I asked if they would sell me a replacement cable so I could see if it was the drive or the cable. Nope. Had to get it third-party, which cost next to nothing. And of course the only reason these cables fail is because they’re wafer thin and designed for laptops. When’s the last time you heard of a full-size hard drive cable failing? Never. If Apple would release a “real” desktop computer that was toaster sized instead of mini, this wouldn’t be an issue.
Recently my iPhone XR stopped working after only a few months of usage. I thought it shouldn't be much of a problem since the device still had warranty. But I was very wrong... dealing with Apple Support (Germany) was one of the most frustrating customer support experiences I've ever had.
My local Apple Store sent the phone to the repair facility 3 times but it always came back with the comment "Couldn't replicate issue" although the issue was clearly documented and reproducible by me and the Apple support staff.
After a lot of phone calls, email back and forth, the manager of my local Apple Store said there's nothing they can do about it, the only option that I have left is to trade-in the defective device to get a gift card and then use it to buy a new iPhone 11. Since I need a iPhone for my job (software-testing), that's what I did. I was tired to fight for my right to get a replacement device or a repair.
It's completely ridiculous. Apple's "warranty" is basically useless. But somehow they can get away with it.
FYI, in Germany you can retroactively undo your purchase if you have:
1. Given them sufficient time to honor the warranty
2. Informed them about it in writing
3. Have a significant issue
So you can just undo your purchase and get a full refund. And then, if you want to give them a 2nd try, you could use that money to purchase a new identical phone.
Did you try going via your consumer rights instead of their warranty?
Completely anecdotal I know, but I had a Apple Pencil fail on me outside of warranty. On the phone they refused to fix or replace it. Once I mentioned my consumer rights (which cover 6 years in Ireland https://www.apple.com/ie/legal/statutory-warranty/ - I'm sure it's similar in Germany) they put me through to a separate phone line and sent me out a new pencil.
In Germany, it's 2 years of statutory warranty (Gewährleistung), but there's a shift in the burden of proof (Beweislastumkehr) after 6 months, so if the retailer insists, it's up to you to prove that a defect was actually present when you bought the item.
We talk a lot about the throwaway society and about planned obsolence, but six years of statutory warranty could actually change something.
Most of the UK also has similar statutory protections (6 years in England and Wales; 5 in Scotland), but after six months you have to prove the defect was present at the time of purchase too...
I wonder if you can dispute the initial payment with your bank or file a case in small claims court. This should be a straightforward case given that they sold you a defective product with a problem that both you and the support staff reproduced and documented and are not willing to honor the warranty.
My experience is completely different. I had an iPad Pro with 'ghost touch' problems, a bit difficult to replicate because sometimes it wouldn't show any issue for hours, and sometimes it would have the issue constantly. It was outside the standard warranty but inside the 2 year warranty you get by EU law.
I phoned AppleCare, they made me jump to all the standard hoops (factory reset, etc) to ensure it's not a software issue. Problem persisted so they scheduled a pick-up. Next day, UPS picked up the iPad, it arrived at the service center the day after and the status went to diagnosed and replacement shipped within the hour. Had the replacement iPad in my hands the next day.
That's really weird. I'm based in the UK and on two occasions I've had an iPad replaced outside of warranty for free and without a fight; both times they said it was because it issue was covered under EU law. I've also had an iPhone replaced within warranty with no trouble.
All three times they've just confirmed the issue in store, entered the device into their system, then gone into the back to get a replacement device.
Purely anecdotal I know, but it's odd how much it seems to differ from country to country.
I saw a video by Louis Rossman the other day that's relevant to this. He owns an independent repair shop that repairs Apple products, and he said that Apple has basically won the fight by locking down their supply chain.
Independent repair stores now cannot get Apple parts anywhere, so your only repair option in many cases is to take the thing to Apple and pay the predictably just-below-used price to get it repaired.
Yeah I believe the strategy is to make consumers think they should "just buy a new one".
Apple is also putting up a very poor "training" program (Independent Repair Program) so that it looks like they're entertaining "right to repair" while they ensure the program is not adequate enough for people taking the course to handle even the most basic repairs.
Apple also locks it all up in tight NDAs so that they can't discuss this publicly.
Point well taken, but that doesn't seem to be Apple's MO.
Most of my apple devices have lived far past their life. Now maybe in 10 years I look back to this time and say that is no longer true, but I have multiple 10 year + old pieces of apple hardware that still function remarkably well.
Apple started to crack down on this by burning an ID in each part with a security chip that will brick the laptop if it detects a part changed and only apple can reset it so it works again.
No, they are generally not. It's just that there's so much unethical _shit_ to keep track of, that you have no chance to even know half of it.
And even if you do, what can you do about it? Switch to another company? [1]
The amount of effort that I need spend just to fight only _some_ of the unethical behavior in my area of expertise is already high.
Just imagine the issues in other fields which I don't know about.
I just don't think people are that upset about this. I think there are other things that they are more upset about that happen far more often.
We constantly get anecdotes on here like this post, Yet everyone I know who has a mac never has any of these troubles, or if they do apple takes relative care of them. My mom's macbook still kicks after 10 years. The only issue which I saw a friend have was the keyboard debacle. Other than that, I never hear of these situations.
I'm currently having to go through a home insurance claim for a similar reason. I stupidly took one of the keys off and bent a bit of plastic getting it back on. The damaged part of the key is on the keycap itself, rather than the mechanism underneath. Silly mistake but I imagine not super uncommon.
Took it to an Apple store and was quoted £700 to fix it which is equivalent to almost half the cost of the laptop. For a single key. Absolute insanity.
Damn, what a rip-off. Why not stop giving them your money and stop buying any more of their products and services? Hit them where it hurts, their sales and bottom line.
Just complaining about it doesn't get you very far as long as you still keep shoving money in their pocket.
These days there are plenty of quality alternatives that are not Apple and lowering their sales should send a clear message to their board.
It will send a message but I'm not sure it's clear at all.
I always see the suggestion to vote with your wallet but how does it even work with a product with usable lifecycle of 5 or even 10 years? By the end of 2025 Apple will see a sales slowdown over the past few years. At that point I'm not sure it's even possible to pinpoint specific reasons, like "customer couldn't replace keycap on a 2017 model computer" which may or may not have been solved for years already.
If you have complaints and you want them to be fixed, tell them (https://www.apple.com/feedback/), unless you've given up completely on the company and won't ever return to it. Simply voting with your wallet is the equivalent of ghosting in commerce.
They do already see their sales figures. They also know what their own repair policies/budgets are. I absolutely believe that they're looking at what effect changes on repair policies have on repeat sales.
It is unfortunate that you are getting downvoted for stating the absolute most sane option. Apple isn't doing anything illegal here, so consumers aren't going to see a change in their behavior. Unless they opt out of Apple's offerings completely.
Another option of course is to change what's legal. Society could legally force Apple to allow and cooperate with real independent repair shops. It seems quite clear this would be a more efficient and fair system.
But yes we can also strive towards both goals simultaneously. I personally will never spend any money on Apple's products. I've inherited a few of them, but I keep myself as loosely tied to the ecosystem as possible.
Some years ago I had the tech at the Apple store replace a single damaged key on my laptop for me completely free, he had a drawer full of keycaps, it took him five minutes, he was just like, no problem, bye.
Other people in this thread are saying they have done DIY single key replacements... but maybe it was on models that weren't the butterfly keyboard?
Do I understand right that the "butterfly keyboard" is actually no longer used in the new 2020 models, it was abandoned by Apple? [1] It does seem to have been a mistake all around.
Not sure about the latest version of the butterfly keyboard, but the that’s not true of the 2017 version. I just had two keys replaced, individually. I have a loose key as a souvenir.
The costs are wrong. I had my 2017 MacBook's pro keyboard fixed this week (for free). They can't replace the keyboard alone, so they had to replace the whole bottom case, so fixing the keyboard I also got a new trackpad and a new battery.
The Apple repair confirmation email has two items listed, £290.83 for the case, £69 for repairs. It's £0.00 to pay because it's covered by Apple.
>parts + labor costs £700 for a keyboard. I bet the part costs £70.
Lol, why? I have expensive keyboards and they are nowhere near that much for a single key. Is there any other keyboard on the planet that has such expensive keys (except maybe that one with OLEDs on every key)?
What are they sprinkling these things with to make people parrot such tripe?
They are riveted to the aluminium top case, that also contains the trackpad and a battery glued in on top of it. So... you're forced to buy all that for a keyboard - a part that is likely to fail in the lifespan of the machine.
That's sort of what I was hoping for in this case. In the past, I've brought my laptop in, and per their discretion they've either honored a repair program or just made a quick fix.
>Took it to an Apple store and was quoted £700 to fix it which is equivalent to almost half the cost of the laptop. For a single key. Absolute insanity.
I've had this happen to me, although I argued (successfully) that the keyboard was defective and I was trying to repair a stuck key (this was the previous butterfly mechanism) and they did a replacement under AppleCare.
The tech even told me that replacing keycaps on the butterfly keyboards is extremely challenging, and even they break the keys sometimes.
If homeowners insurance in the UK is anything like it is in the US, I'd advise you to cancel the claim and pay for it yourself out of pocket. In the US, if you ever make a homeowners insurance claim, you basically get blacklisted from getting a new policy from any provider anywhere in the country on any home you own for some unknown number of years.
I can't wrap my head around Apple customers, most of the people I know that use mainly Apple products had a surprisingly amount of major issues with them but continued to buy Apple stuff only, it's like an addiction.. For example screen stopped working in a 3-year MacBook so what did the guy do? Bought new one because fixing was too expensive. Another one had a problem with the keyboard in MacBook which is one of the most important things in a laptop, his solution - do not part with a can of compressed air and wait to buy new one. Next example - brand new iPhone was randomly loosing WiFi connection so the guy sent it for a repair and had to wait 2 months (note that this was in eastern Europe but anyway) to get it back.
I could go on and on with such examples and I can't believe that people pay so much money and don't see a problem here. I never had any major problems with any devices I use and they all cost several times less than Apple equivalent.
FWIW, I have owned _a lot_ of Apple products over the past decade. They have been almost universally reliable and overall pretty great to use. I _did_ have to send my 2018 MacBook Pro in for the dreaded & common keyboard repair. We also have a 2014 MacBook Pro that recently has had its battery inflate, but that was after years of service.
The keyboard thing was a real (and sucky) problem that Apple should not have let go on as long as they did. But the very small number of problems I've had through the years of using Macs, iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, AirPods, iPods, etc. gives me an overall good impression of their products.
I personally buy their products because they are absurdly reliable.
I have 4 year old iphone 7 that works perfectly for 4 years.
Ipad mini 4 - 5 years of lots of use every day. Works perfectly, battery still lasts like 6+ hours. Sometimes I wish it broke so I have an excuse to buy a new one.
iPad mini 1 - 8 years, my mom uses it for videos, facetime, reading. Still works fine.
Airpods are great.
Macbook pro 2017 - 3 years of use, works perfectly. Keyboard had its issues - had replaced it for free this year, wanted to replace a battery - they found some kind of defect there and replaced for free.
So yeah, I haven's seen anything even close to this kind of reliability and customer support. That is why when time comes I will continue to use Apple.
Before that I was a long time Android and Windows laptop user.
The problem is that everything is just awful. Pick your poison.
Apple is the most expensive but also the least... bad.
Android is fine I guess. I still prefer iPhones. They have a much nicer app experience. Android feels subpar and inconsistent.
Windows... is just awful. I deal with Windows every day on machines much faster than my macbook and it’s just slow. Opening Explorer randomly slow. Settings that are randomly forgotten. Sound and network settings spread out over 5 config screens. One laggy app can easily make the whole system feel unresponsive. Oh, and “this file cannot be opened because it is in use by another program”. Thanks. What program? I dunno.
It’s not an excuse and I’m not saying windows can work for you, but there are quite a few horrible ways to configure windows and corporate IT has figured all of them out. The state of windows in most enterprise deployments is disgusting to me.
Huge progress has been made on consolidating settings in the last couple years, unfortunately that means everyone is unhappy right now because old settings are constantly being moved to more consistent locations but you still need to know both the old and new ways.
I could offer some insights: I had my MBP's 2018 batteries recently swollen. Cost of repair is absurd ($800). I was using it as a desktop machine and I decided that was a bad idea. So I moved to Linux. Now I'm shopping for a new laptop (not for any work intensive tasks but just a portable thing) and Apple still has the best devices in the market despite all the problems I had.
This was also my first problem with Apple after 6 years of using different products. So I can tag it to bad luck. If I was having these problems with every device, I'd definitely move to something else.
And at least in Germany, Berlin is full of these fixer shops that'll do a great job fixing your Mac. Usually in the neighborhoods with large arabic minorities.
For many people, the hardware is simply a container for the software. If you prefer Apple's operating system, then there's unfortunately little choice, except perhaps Hackintosh.
The answer to "why do people spend so much on Apple hardware?" used to be that they would offer fast easy and sometimes free repairs and replacements at their genius bar stores even when the product was out of warranty. I guess those days are over?
Those days aren’t entirely over (my out of warranty iMac is getting great care, my out of warranty iPhone had AppleCare and they waived the screen fee even though it expired a couple months prior - this was in 2019), but they’re at the scale that it is hard to please everybody at a profit and easy to blog about being upset.
It is baffling sometimes, but I think the inclination for people to just replace their device is why it was necessary to post this. If someone isn't rich, they should be getting more longevity out of their products, but it's easy to pressure someone into the replacement with some fuzzy numbers.
For my current mbp, (the one used in the comparison) I only have it because my late 2013 model was stolen, and needed a new machine quickly. Then I got the 2018 fn key 13" which I was forced to first replace the screen on, then the logic board, then the entire computer under warranty. They gave me the 2019 model as a replacement.
If it only were that simple... I'd gladly abandon Apple ecosystem long time ago.
For a lot of professional people it's mostly a matter of time vs cost. I am a developer, mostly working with ruby & python these days. What my options are? Mac, Windows and Linux.
Let's sum it down:
- Windows. Took them like 20 years to figure out how to make a working Terminal so no, really not a good candidate for people like me. I am glad they are catching up, but who knows when they will get stuck for 20 years on another important piece (not to mention their WSL is a prerequisite for a lot of work, and basically a VM)
- Linux. Good on paper but man, it's such a time sink. Dependency hell: you want to upgrade your httpd so you must upgrade 175+ other packages, one of which will break something. UI: clumsy but works if you have little expectations. Hardware: A mess, sleep never works, gfx performance is silly, at the end of the day mostly closed-source stuff that companies do not care about making it unreliable at best.
- Mac: Expensive? Kinda, yes, but not that much if you compare to similar hardware from other vendors (ie. Dell) assuming you do not compare apples to oranges (same cpu, same general performance, same form factor & quality). Does it break? Yes it does and it sucks. It shouldn't - not for that price, not for environmental reasons since they try to be so "green". Had my issues with Apple hardware more than once, but thank god they were not as serious as this.
Saying that linux is a good replacement for mac is like saying that k8s is good for everyone. Yes, you can deploy your blog on k8s but it will cost you a lot of time & energy. Same with linux - yes, I can work on linux, but its just sooo much faster and cheaper for me to just go and buy another MBP if my current one were to break. Some people (me) still like to play with k8s, others like to dig into linux stuff (not me).
What I am angry about with Apple is how they approach their failures rather than the failures themselves. I can understand mistakes that you cannot do anything about - famous iPhone 4 antena. They made tens of millions of devices that have an issue with antena in some edge conditions, well, shit happens, what can you do - it's not like they are going to replace all of them.
But MBP keyboards? Giving 4 years of free replacements is not the solution, a solution would be to create a replacement keyboard that would not break - and use that each time it gets replaced. Because 4 years old MBP is still a great machine that can do what's it supposed to very well, there is no reason to trash it.
If there were a law to force manufacturers to repair known defects (examples like that keyboard, screen laminate etc) for at least 10+ years, I would be first to vote for it. It's way to common for things to break after a couple years, things that could - and should - work for much more. And this is what I'd expect from companies like Apple, which would justify their green PR and prices bullshit.
On macOS, I can easily upgrade my nginx homebrew package, (same with httpd) each of them have like 2 dependencies and I don't think I ever had a conflict when doing so. Granted, not easy on windows, but see my comment about terminal ;-)
You're happy because you always want to use latest version of software and that's Homebrew works to be intended. Your latest httpd also depends on other packages but not a problem because you upgrade all packages and os.
If you want to use latest packages at all, you can use distro like Arch Linux, Gentoo, or etc.
Normal distros like Ubuntu and RHEL don't upgrade packages because of stability. If you use these distros but need latest software, you can use LinuxBrew (it seems that it's merged to Homebrew) to install latest software, or use Docker.
Anyway it's not pros for Mac but pros for Homebrew and it's also available on Linux. OTOH stable and secure macOS environment with many packages like Ubuntu, RHEL is difficult.
What are you talking about. My wife went through 2 windows laptops, and nothing by misery, until I gave her my 2013 Macbook and installed Windows on it, she's been using it for 5 years now. I ran OVER my 2015 Macbook Pro with a car last year (long story), it's bent and has rainbows on the screen but still works fine. My 5 year old iPad Air 2, which also got ran over with my Macbook, is bent but still runs fine.
I just took my almost three year old iPhone X in for an expanding battery, first real issue I've had with any of my iPhone's since I went snorkling with my iPhone 4. Since I didn't buy the extended warranty, they charged me $89CDN for the repair. Turns out they can't repair the battery, so I got a new iPhone X. Oh, that phone I snorkled with, they COMPED because I'm a good customer.
This price looks incorrect. Tier 4 damage would only be accidental damage that the customer caused. Delamination of the screen doesn't count. Tier 4 would be liquid damage. I think the rep was new to the internal tools that apple provides.
A cracked display in a MBA retina 13in 2019 cost the customer $489.94 total.
Was thinking the same. I pretty much destroyed a MacBook of mine when I was running to catch a train, tripped, and landed squarely on my backpack. I had bent the laptop slightly right in the middle from where I fell on it.
That was a tier 4 repair, which the indie Apple authorized repair shop described to me as the repair category for catastrophic damage and basically just a little less than the full replacement cost.
It was a three month old laptop and so I paid the fee, as it was like $150 less than the original cost of the machine and I would’ve had to buy a new one otherwise anyway.
I was a little beat up from the fall and needed a few stitches in my hand, luckily the ER didn’t also deem that to be a tier 4 repair.
That was my thought too, which I was I asked numerous times for clarification. I've gone through the screen replacement before, and the number wasn't remotely close to $2000, much closer to yours. I usually don't lean towards malice, if there's a better explanation, but he seemed quite aggressive in not answering questions and linking me directly to the product page for a new computer.
Phew! Thank goodness someone finally mentioned this. The next step is to ask to speak to a manager and I bet this conversation would have gone a lot better.
> The numbers Joe suggested in this conversation are either entirely fabricated, or belong to the cost of replacing the entire machine if its experienced catastrophic damage. But, after clarifying numerous times about what the numbers actually represent and comparing to previous repair bills for the same issue, my belief is that the rep used a false and obscured repair order to persuade me to replace my girlfriend's minimally damaged screen with a new computer.
I have misquoted a repair before. Either I clicked the wrong box. Because either I didn't do my do diligence or because I was scatter brained and copied and pasted the wrong number. Regardless this is still a reflection of the way apple trains the agents and QC team not catching this agents mistake.
You might want to call back and mention the delamination repair program. If you're still within the 4 year purchase period it should be fixed for free.
I hope Luke Tully is around and reading these comments, the only contact he has on his site is the twitter and he looks inactive on it.
But his 2015 MBP delamination is covered by an Apple Recall from many years ago! He doesn't have to pay a dime to get that issue fixed.
I first took my 2015 MBP to Apple a few years ago for the delamination problem and was told it was covered under a recall notice, but at the time I didn't have up to 2 weeks of service time to be without my MBP, so I just dealt with it. This Spring I finally called up Apple and told them I wanted to get my delamination issue fixed. The Apple rep was completely lost about the recall I was talking about, but about 15 minutes of looking around he found the recall information. 1 week later I had my MBP back from the service center looking b-e-a-utiful :)
Yep. I haven't updated the site much lately, and quit twitter years ago.
Oddly, in the interaction with customer support I posted, there is one comment missing, and that's where the rep says the laptop is outsode the repair window (4 years).
On my personal machine, I used the repair program multiple times because the screens are just so vulnerable to delamination and damage.
To elaborate, when I experienced the issue on my machine in 2018, I also couldn't let them ship it out for a week. I believe they made a note on my file, which worked out in the end, but no subsequent technicians were able to rely on that note and had to do their own inspection
I just saw this. Even if you are beyond the 4 year purchase window. The repair should only be considered a "display only replacement" I suspect if display somehow got "fried" and failed the repair wouldn't not be a tier 4 repair.
You also have an option of just removing the anti-reflective coating using solvents like 90% ISO or stronger.
I've seen people literally scrub off the coating, but it's not quite at that point yet. Thanks for the suggestion though. I was just expecting to either be told whether or not it's in the repair window, or what the display replacement and battery would cost, if it did become unusable. Oddly, the one comment where the support person confirms that it's not in the window was removed from the transcript.
The title and initial blurb of the article makes it sound like the rep tried to somehow disguise the cost or downplay it.
But if you read the transcript, it's the exact opposite. The rep warned them the repair would cost more than a replacement before he even quoted them a price, and tried multiple times to explain why. He acted completely professionally, and the situation itself is totally unremarkable too.
Does it matter if you're being told to fornicate yourself in a professional manner? The tone of the conversation is irrelevant if the matter is ridiculous. And don't try and frame it as though it wasn't. An independent repair shop would be able to replace a screen for far less. That is of course, if the screens were available for purchase freely.
I suppose the tone is open to interpretation, but I didn't try and mischaracterize the interaction. Both of us were incredulous as to the responses we were getting. When asking the same questions in a store, especially before agreeing to anything, I'd expect and have received clear answers or documents that do that.
Likewise, though I didn't mention this in the post, the first few emails Joe sent were not quotes, but payment requests with no further detail as to what was happening. I've gone ahead and updated the post.
In the last +5 years Apple has been very busy securing their monopoly on every bit or screw their machines have.
In certain models you simply cannot plug another ( Apple original ) screen, it will not work. Also many "regular/mundane" chips are not available to anyone but Apple.
Apple not only doesn't support any repair initiative, it actively sabotages anything they see as a threat. Their Authorized Service Provider Program is a complete joke done in a way to keep other people busy but set for failure and to give Apple lawyers some leverage they can work with.
the right to repair movement is fascinating because it has no political alignment (it includes city folk + farmers, for example), has passed legislation in a lot of states, and implicitly comes with a bunch of other digital rights (because repair is power)
it's also easy to understand -- there's no generation gap. Unlike privacy, the harms are immediate and most people have experienced them.
repair.org is IMO doing as much good as EFF / ACLU on a way thinner budget
Unfortunately, going by Louis Rossmann's latest video, the right to repair means nothing if you don't have access to the parts you need to fix Apple products. And of late, Apple have been preventing their suppliers from selling parts to third parties.
The notion of ip is so deeply ingrained in the US, that I doubt you'll see the kind of Chinese bazaar that you really need. The US will only adapt when China gets significantly ahead.
The point is that that's what you had (admittedly on a much smaller scale) in the US, but that it's now disappearing, seemingly in response to the push for Right to Repair. Watch his latest video.
I must say that all the Apple products my wife and I have used so far, have been very reliable. They're expensive but when you consider the quality and durability they usually have better value. But their repair service can be utterly rubbish sometimes. A few years ago my wife spilled some beer on her MacBook Air and the keyboard stopped working. She took it to the Apple Service centre and told her that it was a faulty motherboard. They asked for nearly 60% of the price of the laptop. She then took it to an independent repair shop and they did it for a fraction of the cost.
I've been using MacBooks for 10 years, and while they've recently been less reliable, I have had good experiences for at least 60% of the time. So if you can get them repaired for a reasonable price, and they don't break that often, I still don't see many good alternatives. Especially if you still like the OS
very true. I've used several other brands of laptops, mostly because they're cheaper. None have lasted more than 2 years. I've had Compaq, Fujistsu, HP, Asus and a ThinkPad. Only the ThinkPad still works. I had one of the early Intel Core 2 Duo Macbooks and it lasted 6 years before I sold it. It was still working. My wife's Macbook Air is 6 years old and has only 4 gigs of RAM and it still supports the latest OS and works. Even the battery last 4 to 5 hours easily. I've tried working with Linux on some other laptops but I'd to deal with a lot of support issues. Macs just work. I'm using a 2017 model Macbook Pro with 16 gigs RAM, from work. The keyboard is not the best so they gave me a Magic Keyboard. It's just a stress free computer.
I can feel all of that. I went from a custom gaming PC, which was ok aside from having to re-install windows once every few months, then to a 2009 MBP 13" which lasted 4 years until I sold it for a ridiculous sum, then a late 2013 13" MBP which I used until 2018 until it was stolen. I then went to a 2017 non-touchbar model, which was just... fine, but had the keyboard issue, delamination, and an insanely hard to troubleshoot deep-sleep/wake from sleep issue which led to it being replaced by Apple under warranty (when I finally re-produced the issue 100% of the time) for my current 2019 MBP 13" w/ 16gb of ram.
Other than that, my impression of Thinkpads is that, while they seem a bit clunky for me, they are at least in the top tier of non-MBP laptops. Likewise, my brother just picked up a 2019 XPS 13" which has earned some praise from HN folk and seems to be pretty solid. I'd personally like a gaming rig of some kind, but if I'm realistic, I won't get that much use out of it until the rainy season.
I know what you mean. ThinkPads are definitely chunky and are in the similar price range as Macs. If I didn't have the Macbook pro (16gigs with core -i5) from work, I'd probably buy a Macbook air. I feel that the Air series offer a lot of value for money. I have the touch bar Macbook pro. It's great. I use the touch bar sometimes but all I really want is the finger print sensor. Great feature. I'm wondering if Apple will ever open up the iPad OS a bit and allow terminal access and enable installing compilers and dev environments like the Mac OS. I wouldn't mind switching to an iPad in that case. The ARM Macbooks are going to be just non-touch iPads with MacOS X on them anyway. I don't do a lot of gaming. Mostly play casual games on a Nintendo Switch. So my desktop PC has been barely touched in the last three years.
I'd love to see iPads become more versatile. The iPad Pro seems like a pretty nice device, particularly because of the high refresh rate screen. But it's very heavily consumption and illustration oriented. My iPad 3 has been passable since it was new, with some degradation in performance, but I haven't found a more interesting use for it besides YouTube and Pocket. I imagine that it could be a great device for interactive systems or 3D modelling, but I'd really be trying to justify the purchase at that point. I do also agree that the fingerprint sensor is a nice addition, but along with it they made it almost impossible to recover data in the event of catastrophic failure.
Yeah, absolutely. IOS is very restrictive in terms of what you can achieve on it as a developer or a power user. But it's an amazing device for artists and content creators. Packs enough CPU power for their needs. My wife has been considering buying one for illustrations etc. Now with the new iPad Air supporting Pencil 2, the choices are even more confusing. She is torn between getting the pro or the new Air.
I'm not sure what's newsworthy, here. This is quite typical of any place, that both sells and repairs stuff.
The cost of repair is calculated to be just below, or at, the cost of replacement. It's unusual, but not unheard-of, to have it more than the cost of replacement.
I've encountered this with TVs, phones, VCRs, stereos, non-Apple computers, cars, and I have heard stories of this applying to buildings and homes, as well.
And I find that infuriating, as it leads to waste.
Not sure this is all that typical. While repair costs can get to a fairly large percentage of the purchase price and thus not making sense in some situations, it's not always the case.
I recently repaired a Sony soundbar system for about 30% of the purchase price, so definitely not "at the cost of replacement". Replaced a phone screen for 10% the cost of a new one etc.
Today, I'm returning a leased car. I had a small crack in the front bumper (trailer hitch in a parking lot). It isn't one of the new sensor-packed bumpers; just a vanilla one.
It cost $1,000 to repair, because they replaced the entire front bumper, and the paint cost more than the part.
It also had to be done at the dealer, because of the lease requirements. The body shop down the road would have done it for half that. I have since found out that the dealer sends the car to a body shop anyway, and they probably only charged half, so the dealer pocketed the difference.
I am never leasing a vehicle, ever again. This was my first, and last time.
Which brand did you lease? I've leased Toyota's before and had no such restriction. I could go to any auto body shop they just had to use genuine Toyota parts for the repair. With my last lease I had to have the rear bumper replaced Toyota didn't care where I got it done.
> I have heard stories of this applying to buildings and homes, as well.
I foresee a future Black Mirror episode about Apple Home: $1m for a $250k condo. When the fridge breaks that’s gonna cost you $990k to repair. Might as well just buy a whole new home.
The problem here is that Apple's stuff is so un-repairable that they almost _have_ to fully replace a larger part. With most other electronics there's still a chance (though diminishing) that the part can be repaired. It's almost as if Apple is seeing this as another revenue source.
I agree, but would suggest that it's newsworthy simply by virtue of it not being unusual (as well as the current holes Apple seems to be digging deeper into). Everyone will read the post with a different set of eyes, so there could be any facet that stands out to someone. One of those is that they seem quite happy to do a specific repair as long as it's under warranty, and will replace literally every major component multiple times before replacing the computer. I've also updated the post with a reference to a previous repair bill that was covered under warranty.
Good point. I always get AppleCare, and, unfortunately, have needed to use it, quite often.
In one case, I had a laptop that developed a few, simultaneous problems. It had the notorious "stickyyyy keyyyyyyboard" issue, as well as a loose Thunderbolt port, and issues with the EFI system.
They basically replaced the entire computer. The only thing that didn't change was the screen.
Since it was under warranty, it didn't cost me a dime, but the report said it was about two grand's worth of repairs.
Had the same issue with delamination and because they admitted to it being their fault, took it to an Apple store just to see what they'll say. They said that it is a known defect but, wait for it, not for my model and so in my case it's my own fault by default. The person literally said yes it's delaminating but it's a different type of delamination. There was another comical scene involving googling by the employee which I will spare. It's not a big deal because I wasn't in my hometown anyway and couldn't leave it for longer than 3 days, but still. That company is simply ridiculous, and I hope I don't have to deal with them too much in my lifetime.
The first time I experienced this, I was travelling through the U.S in 2018, in what seems like a similar event. I almost didn't get them to agree to do it, but it was up to their discretion and they obliged. However, the kicker was that they had to mail it away and it'd be gone for at least a week. I tried numerous Apple stores on our way up through California. Some said they did do MB repairs in store, but their hands were tied, they'd have to mail it away. Insane.
For what is worth, I had an iMac 27" out of warranty and Apple replaced the screen for free.
It had started having an issue (condensation) after 3-4 years of use and apparently the part number was from a run that could display was issue and had free repair even if out of warranty.
The iMac cost like $3500 (corresponding local price), and the repair part was listed as costing $750 but given for free.
Another good experience is when they fixed a MBP (charging adapter) from free in a totally different country than the one purchased. Bought in Europe, fixed in an Apple Store in the US.
That said, the first case is 7 years ago, and the other is 6.
I think that's worth something. That's what I was generally happy with around the same time, and tried to emphasize that in the post. Buying an Apple product generally meant that you didn't need to worry, and hopefully you'd get some help for that investment when something did go wrong. Though I would say that I've never had a completely out-of-warranty major repair done. Ironically, the only out-of-warranty repair I had was when I ripped the SATA cable in my 2009 MBP. They sold me a new one and I was on my way.
I'm sure they will argue that they are protecting consumers by preventing potentially untrustworthy repair shops from buying authentic replacement parts.
This is what an anti-competitive monopoly looks like. You cannot even choose where to get your laptop repaired, so there is no possibility for anyone else to offer, for example, a cheaper price for the labor. And the consumer pays the forcibly higher price. Those shops that attempted to offer cheaper repairs were retaliated against by Apple...
This is not surprising at all, the retina screen is one of the most expensive parts of the laptop.
Lots of household appliances are similar to this too. If you have to repair one of the main parts of a washing machine or a dishwasher a new one will be a cheaper option.
Same for a car, a friend of mine flooded his engine by driving through water that was higher than expected. His insurance company just wrote the car off as it was much more expensive to replace an engine than to get a new car.
Disclaimer: I for a company that does consumer electronics after sales.
> This is not surprising at all, the retina screen is one of the most expensive parts of the laptop.
There is no way it costs them 2K to replace a retina screen in a 2K mac book.
Besides if Apple really wanted to they could create a more efficient and cheaper repair process for heavily damaged units. For example send them all to a central point, strip the working components and create refurbished units from those parts. For things on the outside (cover, plastics, etc.) you can use new ones because those will be scratched etc. And then give the customer the option to buy such a refurbished unit instead of a 2K screen replacement. As a bonus It's also better for the environment.
In terms of car repairs, the quotes that insurance companies obtain are almost always for official stealership repairs or their "trusted" repair centers. A third party mechanic can almost always repair it just as well for much less, but of course you may be out of the warranty if that's important to you.
If you car is already out of warranty though, instead of scrapping it and taking whatever low ball value figure they give and buying another car, it may be cheaper to pay for the repair out of pocket elsewhere.
As a point of order: flooding an engine refers to having so much fuel in the cylinders that it cannot be ignited because there isn't enough air to support combustion.
Filling the cylinders with water results in hydro locking an engine because the liquid cannot be compressed on the compression stroke. This can result in damaging the internal parts of the engine. Bent connecting rods are a common issue.
If you've gotten in deep enough to get water in through the intake manifold, it's quite likely that a great many other things that shouldn't be gotten wet have (wiring, interior, etc.) and it's not just the engine that will need to be replaced.
Does your country have unofficial repairs? I can't imagine destroying a car just because of failed engine. In my country I would spend around $1k to repair engine if it's still possible and around few thousands dollars to buy used engine and replace it. Actually I would repair it myself for a few hundreds of dollars, but if someone does not want to spend time, those are the options.
> I can't imagine destroying a car just because of failed engine
They didn't: they wrote the car off because it was flooded. That can ruin electrical systems, motors, pumps, engines, the body, and everything else the water touches.
In the US, when you contact your insurance company and say "I damaged my car driving it through water" and their appraisers agree, they're going to contact the state DMV and let them know. The DMV will mark your vehicle as flood damaged/impaired/salvaged. It's now worth the cost of scrap until you rebuild it to the satisfaction of your state laws to get a clean title.
How do you figure? The screen costs Apple roughly $200. So they don't have to hire skilled technicians, they replace the whole top of the laptop, so some backlight, cover, wiring, case...still well under $500.
The actual reason is they don't want Macbook components floating around on the grey market, so they make the pricing for significant repairs impossible to justify.
I wonder if the actual mission of their "repair" shops is to boost purchases from pigeons who have self-identified as maybe needing a new one. Repair is not at all in Apple's interest. It's certainly not for customer goodwill.
Usually auto insurance doesn't cover the cost of getting a replacement car. The repair only needs to exceed the current market value of the existing car or if the policy includes gap insurance the higher between the market value and payoff amount of the auto loan.
I've updated the post with a screenshot of a previous in-warranty repair bill that indicates the screen cost around ~$500 CAD. Even the logic board and screen came out to around ~$1100, which is largely the basis for the surprising numbers.
Essentially, this blog post reinforces the findings from the CBC and indicates that little has changed over the past few years regarding Apple's repair practices.
Sadly, this kind of thing with Apple has become the norm. I've experienced similar myself and heard anecdotal similarities from friends and family. My next mobile will likely be a PinePhone, and my next laptop will be from System76. I'd rather roll my own private ecosystem anyway, as I don't do anything in the "cloud". Between teaching my children on the Raspberry Pi and mucking about with this and that, it's far less expensive and more sane to stay out of anyone's ecosystem. I get that for a lot of people, it's all about the apps. I guess I'm one of those odd, rare people who don't use a single app. I just can't be bothered and I see no value in giving up what little privacy I have remaining.
I have a iPhone 5s that I only replaced because of battery issues. It's been sitting in my drawer for a couple of years and thought it would be good to hand off to one of the kids as a mp3 player or something. When Apple was running a deal on battery replacements I sent it in for that. I got a call saying that it has water damage and the main board was inoperable. I could have it repaired for $600 or they could recycle it for me for $25. Sending it back to me was not an option. It took 2 escalations to get someone who could authorize returning it as I was unwilling to pay for either of those options. It's now back in my desk.
Had similar experience with Apple watch. For a broken screen replacement, they quoted more than the cost of a new Apple watch (same model and color). I pointed it out and called it ridiculous. They kept repeating the same bullshit with forwarding me to 3 different teams for 1.5 hours. Finally I got fed up and ended the call.
Thought I'd add here that all the values are in CAD, and that the one comment missing from the official transcript is where the rep states that the computer is out of bounds of the repair program window. It's an odd ommision, but that's how it was downloaded.
There are literally hundreds of repair shops that cropped up the last few years. Problem is you never know if the shop is actually good.
Apple guarantees quality- at an absurd price.
Lesson: treat your expensive electronics well. Or be like my brother with a permanent cracked screen on his iPhone.
At this point it’s as if Apple is begging to be regulated. Absolutely disgraceful. To be clear my issue is not with the price of the repair but with the lack of alternatives due to Apple’s replacement part policy. I’m pretty sure if the EU were to regulate them they’d still enforce their customer hostile policies onTo their other markets.
What Apple is doing isn't different from what manufacturers have been doing for centuries. Expensive repairs and parts have always been a way to earn more money at the expense of the consumer. I'm not saying their behavior is acceptable, just that it's very unlikely that laws are a solution to this problem.
I think the issue is that faulty hardware isn’t actually that common. I have more than 20 Apple devices in my family circle without any issue. But if there were to e failure it would going to be costly and strenuous to repair. So I don’t think customer choice will solve this issue. We need lawmakers to protect the few unlucky ones from these customer hostile practices.
A colleague of mine recently got a MacBook Pro, whenever they plug in an external monitor the fans are pretty much fully on when doing not much at all.
They now loathe using it.
These computers are so expensive. They seem to have a ton of issues with ridiculous repair costs.
What's going on? The keyboard issue from before is another example. Clearly they have the profit margin to ensure their products work well.
And not charge unreasonable prices for repair.
Ask your colleague if he is charging the MacBook on the left or right side, it may be the cause of excessive heat and therefore higher temperatures/fan noise.
I had this issue. I found people with the same problem up and down the web, across tons of MacBook models (examples: [1] [2]). Most people blamed it on bad drivers, GPU issues, bad graphics ports, firmware issues, and so on.
What actually did the trick - opening the case up, flushing the dust from both fans using compressed air, and replacing the thermal paste on the CPU & GPU. My MacBook is totally silent now.
I'm sure there is more than one possible root cause, but I feel this solution is not nearly as well known as it should be. Laptops generally run hot, and MacBooks have great fans, but they do trap dust. So there are a ton of people running around with old MacBooks which are being absolutely crippled by throttling. I ran some rough benchmarks and performance has approximately doubled. It's super noticeable.
IMO Apple is incentivised to do a poor job in highlighting this (and say, setting up a service program), because when your laptop starts to feel slow after a few years, people tend to feel like maybe it's time to buy a new laptop...
Something is wrong with your colleague's machine, or something else in his toolchain, because that's not normal.
The keyboard issues were really jarring precisely because Apple had, up to that point, a really great reliability reputation - in my experience, on par with the super-overengineered late-90s ThinkPads (IBM, not Lenovo).
I retired several PowerBooks and MacBooks at 6 or 7 years old that were still physically fine, but no longer appealing to use for Moore's Law reasons.
My wife's using my old 6 year old 13" Pro, and while I now find the keyboard weird, it's utterly capable of anything she needs to do with it -- which is pretty much a regular human duty cycle (ie, she's not running virtual servers on it like I was in its initial life).
We then passed on the small Air she'd been using for like 8 years; it's in daily use at a friend's house now as a spare platform (which turned out to be a big deal, given quarantine). My guess is that Intel Macs are about to hit a gate with the shift to ARM, and you won't be able to get 8 years out of one purchased in 2020, but I could be wrong about that. (I mean, I definitely am if you have relatively simple needs -- even if you get stuck at the last rev of Intel-friendly OS X, there's software for you there that will keep working.)
Actually, loud fans are a regular occurrence when using external displays with current high-end 15" MacBook Pros. It gets hot fast, especially when driving a 4K display and charging at the same time. The 13" MacBook Pro on the other hand is basically silent in most circumstances.
If you have "infinite" prices in your mind (e.g. a Mac is always better than a Dell) a rational Apple is going to soak you for all your are worth and try to get you go into debt too.
There are two completely separate issues here, and they need to be disentangled to have a productive discussion.
First, there is the question of the right-to-repair and to what extent Apple is hostile to the existence of a viable second-party and third-party repair ecosystem, neutral to it, or actively supports it.
Second, there is the question of the relationship between the costs of the product and the costs of the things needed to repair the product, like replacement screens.
The two are not entirely orthogonal, because many strategies for reducing the costs of the product or increasing the utility of a working product have consequences with respect to the costs of components and the ease of third-party repair.
An example discussed on HN many times is the choice between user-removable batteries and building a battery in. When it's built-in, engineers have more options for miniaturization or increasing battery size and product life. The consequence, of course, is that batteries are now expensive to replace, and the batteries themselves are harder to get in a third-party ecosystem because there is little standardization: Every device might have a different battery optimized for that device.
If batteries were standard sizes as they are for many consumer devices with removable batteries, engineers have less flexibility to increase battery life, reduce weight, or reduce device size.
The same reasoning extends to replacing screens and keyboards. Supporting a vibrant and viable third-party ecosystem means making engineering compromises that have a distinct effect on the product's price and competitiveness in a world where every review discusses device weight, size, battery life, &tc.
The very best thing for a third-party repair ecosystem is to have fewer device-specific parts, fewer proprietary connectors, fewer components hard-wired into place, fewer components that change from device version to device version, &c.
The more different parts there are, the more that are introduced for a model or two and then discontinued, the harder it is for the viability of a third-party ecosystem with affordable options.
I feel that there's a deep and challenging tension between repairability and the immediate, out-of-the-box product value. In some industries, consumers value the ability to wrench their own product higher than in others. In bicycles, for example, there is a great deal of conservatism around engineering.
For all the bragging about new technology, the bicycle industry doesn't really advance very quickly. What do we have now, twelve-speed rear clusters? Whereas when I raced in the 80s, there were seven speeds back there. Whup-dee-doo, where are the internal gearboxes? And the other big innovations are disc brakes and electronic shifting? Compared to the advances in telephones, this is nearly nothing. When I had a mechanical seven-speed rear mech, I also had a physical phone hard-wired into my car. That was "mobile communications" back then.
I'm not defending Apple, it's up to everyone to decide for themselves which choices they think Apple should make. But we should accept that any choice for making things repairable has an impact on the out-of-the-box value of the device itself.
And if we want right-to-repair to be a viable and profitable business choice, something has to change about the marketplace itself, namely:
1. Get consumers to repair their devices far more often than they replace them, and;
2. Regulation.
I prefer regulation, personally. Yes, it's the bogeyman of "regulated marketplaces." But it also creates a level playing field, so that repairable devices do not have to suffer product reviews complaining about their price, weight, size, lack of differentiation from other devices sharing common standards, &c.
I wonder if we should be surprised at this. Modern devices (phones and laptops) are designed to be small and cheap to produce in bulk in countries with cheap labour.
Very few people will buy a more expensive, larger device that might be easier to repair or extend in a few years time.
Doing bespoke repairs in high labour cost countries is always expensive. More so when devices are small. It's probably cheaper to get a lower skilled worker to replace the whole board than a higher skilled worker to fix a board involving soldering that could cause further issues. Do we really think that it's going to be cost effective to take apart and fix airpods?
If you want something that is more easily repairable, extendable, and recyclable then a desktop/tower is the answer.
That a repair of a modern device can be expensive is one thing, but here they charged more than the machines worth for the replacement part. That is just silly. The quoted labor costs were 150, which is still a lot but reasonable. But more than a few hundreds for a new screen sounds off.
But laptops are not supposed to be designed for trips to the moon!
It is an extremely reasonable expectation that when a part of a laptop breaks or wears out, in most cases it should be possible to repair just that part. Not that you now have to throw out the whole laptop and buy a new one.
Yes, they are produced by robots at scale. But Apple designs the product. And design for maintainability is a key part of good design.
And they are not asking for what people are willing to pay. A reasonable user would not expect that a top-of-the-line laptop is completely unrepairable. Laptops have never worked like that. As such this would not be factored into the purchase price equation.
Apple uses a lot of customer hostile behaviors nowadays. Recently:
* I canceled the Apple TV+ year trial that came with my iPhone. While, I believe, they require other apps to allow access until the trial ends, they ended my access immediately.
* Apple Music pulls up a slow interstitial almost every time I open it up to try to get me to pay. I have like 4 albums on my phone I listen to, it’s incredibly annoying how they’ve broken the music app to upsell their services.
I’m trying to get rid of most of my Apple devices in favor of anything else at this point.