What a "peculiar" behavior on Apple's part. The fact that they base their arguments on a moisture paper which seems to be extremely easy to refute and spend more money on lawyers than they would have needed to actually fix this within an established company program just seems... stupid?
Whomever is in charge seems not to have learned from this as well.
Because having an established company program that fixes these issues is the last thing apple wants, their main goal is to upsell to the newest product when an old one breaks, hence all the fun planned obsolescence stuff. Why else do you think they make all their products notoriously difficult to repair?
Ah, the planned obsolescence argument. It used to be invoked all the time with software (updates are making it slower) but Apple just released software updates to fix GPS on several older iPads.
Maybe, they are focusing on other things like thinness and light weight which results in making gadgets less repairable instead of a big planned conspiracy.
> Maybe, they are focusing on other things like thinness and light weight which results in making gadgets less repairable instead of a big planned conspiracy.
... And suing customers like crazy to support a less repairable product strategy.
Of course I'm sure that's the only reason why they use special proprietary screws that you can't normally find anywhere else (along with the special screwdrivers themselves) because if there's a shortage of anything, it's small screws that can be used in the production of electronics. Let's not pretend that apple is interested in keeping older (and by older I mean not the current newest) machines alive any longer then their decaying, conveniently irreplaceable, battery lasts.
When apple starts making a show of actually putting up not-intentionally-cryptic schematics and supplying the market with the parts necessary to repair their dying machines (batteries would be a good start) I might loosen my tinfoil hat, but you'll have to forgive me for the time being...
I'm pretty sure those are because they dislike it when people who aren't their employees repair them, because they dislike getting blamed when someone else messes up a repair job and blames them for it.
It's the same reason most companies try to prevent third parties from repairing their products. 100% "I don't want to stake my reputation on someone else's repair job".
And yet if they want people who are their employees to repair them, why do third parties like Rossman get any business? Clearly he and people like him are providing some service that apple isn't, that service so far mainly looks like repairing apple products that apple doesn't seem to want to for one reason or another. I like that "I dont want to stake my reputation on someone else's repair job" also comes with "I want my reputation to mean you will possibly just never actually receive a repair job". Also, that reasoning wouldn't explain things like, oh I dont know, Thinkpads? I've never heard complaints and issues with them like i do apple, especially when it comes to the quality of the machine itself, and they are famously modular and repairable.
I didn't say it was a _good_ reason, or that all companies make it hard for people to repair their products.
I'm just saying that if a company _does_ make it hard to repair their products, and you sat in on the meeting where that decision was made, you're going to hear "I'm tired of people trying to repair our products and screwing it up".
I mean, it's no accident they're making every effort to make Mac hardware as unrepairable as possible by third parties. And it's not because they want to repair the things themselves.
In any one specific case, fixing a litigious customer's laptop is definitely cheaper for Apple. But by having a policy of fighting legal claims vigorously regardless of merit, they can make it wildly uneconomic for customers to sue, which decreases the probability of getting sued. I suspect the economics of their behavior work quite well overall.
The economics might suck for Apple but they can easily afford to pay the lawyers. The customer on the other hand probably has a much tougher time missing work for court sessions.
It's supposed to be a scare tactic, like how Walmart always sues people who steal more than $20. The point isn't to make it more worthwhile in the one case, it's to scare off 1000 other people who would otherwise do the same.
It's more like a fraud against consumers than a scare tactic. Walmart is being robbed, trace amounts of moisture doesn't mean Apple is being robbed they've just invented that condition and threshold as an excuse to not service warranties. They have a rich history of requiring legal action before respecting consumers rights, even to fix their own mistakes.
Correct, in any specific case. But Apple's playing a repeated game, and any given customer is playing a one-time game. Apple can reap the deterrence benefit in future cases, but the customer doesn't really get any reputational benefit from playing hardball, and so has to evaluate the wisdom of suing or not suing based on the outcome of just the single case at hand.
Having the howto guide on Reddit definitely makes it more difficult for Apple. Independent service shops, opening the case, taking some pictures and sending it back to the customer for a flat rate would tilt it even farther in the consumer's favor.
Let's suppose that the UK repair operation is manage separately. Let's call that exec Joe. And suppose further that the person in charge measured by metrics like "doesn't spend any more on repairs per sale than the US operation does", implying that spending less is better.
Joe making a rule something like "refuse any warranty repairs if a moisture sensor trips, even if the damage is unrelated" is a pretty easy way to keep repairs down. Some people may sue, sure, but probably not many.
And let's assume further, as is common, that Apple's lawyers are all on staff and under their General Counsel. That means they're a fixed cost, and not directly on the budget of the repair operation. That is not one of the metrics Joe is evaluated by. Maybe they won't need to add any new lawyers to handle the extra load; maybe they will. Further, any relationship between repair rules and legal costs will be hard to spot, given that it's delayed by time and filtered through many people.
So at worst, Joe might down the road have to face some sort of complicated analysis from the head of legal complaining about increased costs. But he can point to repair cost savings, so it'll be difficult to say whether on net he's making or costing Apple money.
I would guess the bigger risk for Joe is not legal expenses but the PR problem from writeups like this or an eventual decline in something like a Net Promoter Score metric as more people feel put off by Apple. Those, however, are also pretty long feedback loops. So Joe gets an immediate reduction in repair costs versus the possibility of a problem a year or three down the road. Many ambitious execs are perfectly fine with that; they're hoping to be in a new position anyway in a couple of years, so it may be the next guy's problem.
And really, Joe may not have a problem at all; as this article makes clear, having to sue the company wasn't enough to keep the guy from buying another Apple laptop. That's not a great incentive for anybody to change behavior.
Tell that to ISPs and, from what I hear, cable companies in the US—I’m sure there are other examples too.
“Customer hostile” seems to be a perfectly “good” way to run a business if you goal is raw profit. Doubly so in the US with essentially non-existent consumer protection law.
In the US, people generally have at most a couple of ISP choices, and the general pattern of duopolies is to offer basically the same thing with minor differentiators (e.g., one will be 10% cheaper and 10% worse). Many airline routes are minimally competitive.
This is not getting better with ecosystem lock-in effects. As TFA mentions, this guy had such a bad experience that he sued Apple, and he still bought another laptop from them. That's because Apple intentionally killed off the companies that built MacOS compatible hardware, and never allowed anybody else to build IOS phones or tablets.
Sure, in a simple textbook supply-and-demand model, but we all know that in the real world that isn't how it works.
Most people have very limited choices, and all those choices engage in essentially the same user-hostile practices anyway. The only “choice” is to leave it altogether, which is visibly happening now there is an alternative to cable TV, but not having an internet connection isn't an option for most people.
Again, it depends on your metric for "good". It's clearly good for Joe, and in the semi-feudal power structure of the modern corporation, that's sufficient.
The number in theory ranges from 100 (everybody would enthusiastically promote to friends) to -100 (the opposite). Some well-liked companies include Apple at 47, Starbucks at 77, and Costco at 79. In contrast, Comcast is -3, Time Warner is -5, United is -8. There are definitely some places loved by customers in the Fortune 500, but as you look down the list it's far from universal.
Comcast's profit was something like $11 billion last year. Are they customer hostile? Notoriously. Do they care? Not really!
Not just a fixed cost for staff lawyers - a fixed low cost.
Routine cases like these will be managed with boilerplate briefs and filings, standard arguments, and form letters.
Claims may be checked very briefly to make sure there's nothing unusual or legally dangerous about them. If there isn't, the process will likely be handled by standard templated paperwork, and might as well be automated.
This is why it's such bullshit to have metrics and incentives "aligned" in an organization. Somebody's boss needs to call bullshit and say, "You gamed this metric in a bad way and harmed the company," but that would be counter to their own incentives, so everybody joins in on the game.
Just to be clear, I was suggesting that the metric was "repair spend / sales volume". Also a bad metric, of course.
But yes, it's perfectly possible that a company would use a bad nominal metric like "repair spend". It need not even be explicit. Typical budgeting processes encourage that sort of thing because it's seen as good to be under budget and bad to be over it.
Everyone should be required to watch Louis Rossmann's videos before buying a MacBook. Apple has probably scammed people out of hundreds of millions of dollars just by using fake excuses like "water damage" to avoid fixing things under warranty.
FWIW, my experience with Dell has been the complete opposite. I complained about a couple issues with an Alienware laptop (processor whine, low battery life) and they had a tech at my house the next day with replacement parts. Probably the best service I've ever gotten on any type of product.
I had awful experiences with Dell in their “Dude you got a...” phase. It pains me that I have to use them at work just because they’re the low cost producer. I assume I’ve lost 2-3x the savings waiting for my laptop to get fixed.
M8 the "dude dell" phase ended back in 2003; there will soon be people working in this industry that were born after it ended. That is a long time ago. Since that time, Dell has been taken private, then public again. That advertising campaign ended years before the powerbook and ibook were discontinued, before the macbook brand was created, and before Apple switched architectures to intel x86 processors.
Had lots of trouble with Dell hardware - but excellent support in most cases.
(I think 25% of our Dell motherboards broke in the spring of 2006 because of a batch of bad capacitors, and I think I heard rumours that more broke after I left that place, but service was always great until recently, and I'm now so far away from hardware I don't know if it is Dells fault or the sysadmins fault in a recent case I think of.)
> I think 25% of our Dell motherboards broke in the spring of 2006 because of a batch of bad capacitors
The capacitor plague. Pretty much everybody in the industry was hit by that to at least some extent:
> "Major vendors of motherboards such as Abit,[9] IBM,[1] Dell,[10] Apple, HP, and Intel[11] were affected by capacitors with faulty electrolytes. In 2005, Dell spent some US$420 million replacing motherboards outright and on the logistics of determining whether a system was in need of replacement.[12][13] Many other equipment manufacturers unknowingly assembled and sold boards with faulty capacitors, and as a result the effect of the capacitor plague could be seen in all kinds of devices worldwide. "
I just don’t like Rossman. I’m sure there are solid technical criticisms that he makes, and I personally agree that Apple is too draconian re: repairability (both in design and policy). However, I absolutely cannot trust someone who has such a financial incentive, or as deep a history of twisting facts to make Apple look bad.
Beyond that, there is something entitled about earning your entire income repairing another company’s devices while also demanding they make proprietary parts and knowledge available to you.
I wish there were a critic of Apple’s repair policies that had less of an agenda than Rossman.
1. In 2016, Rossman claimed that Apple was filing suit against him, and was seeking to shut down his YouTube channel. In actuality, one of his videos had shown a schematic, that Rossman illegally obtained, and Apple requested that the schematic be removed from the video. [0]
2. In 2016, Rossman claimed that Apple had a 4 Gigabyte memory chip buffer on their webcams. He speculates that this is due to a nefarious intent on Apple's part. In actuality, it is a 4 Gigabit (512 MB) chip that acts as a buffer. [1]
3. In 2018, Rossman claimed that Apple had contacted Customs and Border Protection to have his import shipment of Apple batteries seized. He claimed that they were genuine OEM batteries, maybe scavenged from old devices. [2] In actuality, the devices really were counterfeit. Rossman had contracted an OEM manufacturer to build batteries to Apple's original spec, which bore Apple's logo, most likely without Apple's knowledge. [3]
No.1 you essentially admit, and cite, that what he claimed was accurate (that Apple threatened to sue/get his channel shut down) but you feel it was his fault.
No.2 dude messed up. No disagreement there. But you are spinning his confusion into: "due to a nefarious intent on Apple's part." That wasn't the tone of the video at all.
No.3 you say, and cite, that what he claimed was true (that a shipment of Apple compatible batteries he had imported was seized). In the original video he said quite clearly they weren't OEM because Apple no longer supplies these "vintage" batteries to even authorized repair centers. Here's the YT transcript (as is):
> the Apple store and I say I would like to buy this battery can i buy this battery please they say no if I become an Apple authorized service provider and I wish to obtain parts to a machine that has been considered vintage Apple will say no if I talk to somebody in China who says hey these are not those knockoff batteries where we take you know where we just like put apple logos on a bunch of crappy cells and send it to you these are the good batteries these are the batteries that are responsible for us being 4.9 out of five
But you said: "He claimed that they were genuine OEM batteries" the transcript above from the video you linked paints a very different picture.
Your original claim was:
> deep a history of twisting facts to make Apple look bad.
But you haven't made that case here.
Your position on the guy feels a little "cart before the horse." You dislike what the guy believes/stands for/his criticism, and then went out looking for reasons to justify that belief.
Your post essentially implies he's a criminal for using "stolen" schematics to repair customer's own equipment and making compatible batteries (which, I'll fully admit, shouldn't have had the Apple logo on them: not cool).
I don't really know if you read anything that I linked. I think a clear pattern of "twisting facts" emerges when you look at Rossmann's original claims, and then see how those claims are walked back or "clarified" by further statements.
1. Rossmann claims that Apple is suing him, that his entire channel is going to be shut down, and that his business might disappear. Later, Rossmann clarifies that Apple just wanted him to take down, or edit out a single video that showed their IP.
3. Rossman claims that Apple contacted CBP to have his shipment of batteries seized in retaliation for a story he did with the CBC. Rossman states they are "good" batteries, that they could be refurbished or scavenged from old machines. He claims that they are not counterfeit. Later, Rossman admits that they are not refurbished or scavenged, but are newly manufactured, but not authorized by Apple, even though they bear Apple's logo. That is literally a counterfeit.
I'm not trying to cast Rossmann in a bad light, I was asked to provide examples of how Rossmann twists facts to make Apple seem more nefarious than they are. That list is why I take everything Rossmann says with a large grain of salt.
It is not the case that one side is right, and the other is wrong. I am not attempting to make the case that Apple should be uncriticized.
> I don't really know if you read anything that I linked.
I read what you linked. Your links don't support your claims.
> I think a clear pattern of "twisting facts" emerges when you look at Rossmann's original claims, and then see how those claims are walked back or "clarified" by further statements.
You haven't given an example of that. In examples you did give you mischaracterized his original statements several times. You can still watch the original videos as you linked as evidence of that (and or read the transcripts, like the excerpt I provided above).
> 1. Rossmann claims that Apple is suing him, that his entire channel is going to be shut down, and that his business might disappear. Later, Rossmann clarifies that Apple just wanted him to take down, or edit out a single video that showed their IP.
The two aren't mutually exclusive. Apple made a threat (i.e. lawsuit, take-down on his channel) and then "settled" for him just removing certain content they found objectionable.
It is great that Apple's legal threats didn't come to full fruition, but they existed. This just isn't a strong example of what you're claiming, there was nothing mislead about saying an actual legal threat with actual legal consequences was received relating to his work with "right to repair."
> Later, Rossman admits that they are not refurbished or scavenged, but are newly manufactured, but not authorized by Apple, even though they bear Apple's logo.
He said that in the original video about the incident you yourself linked. I provided the transcript above.
Honestly, I just prefer the days when he talked through repairing a computer, and wasn't standing on a soapbox while he did it.
It was really relaxing and interesting to watch, but now that he's complaining about Apple half the time, it's significantly less enjoyable for me to watch.
If Apple provided a superior or even comparable service, Rossman would be out of business tomorrow. No-one wants to seek third party repair, they are driven to it.
> Beyond that, there is something entitled about earning your entire income repairing another company’s devices while also demanding they make proprietary parts and knowledge available to you.
Apple won't let third parties produce Apple compatible parts (or sell parts sold to Apple also to non-Apple repair centers). Even if Apple just got out of the way, and offered no help/supply chain, it would be a stark improvement.
But instead they've been using hardware DRM to effectively make third party repairs impossible. If you replace a part with an identical part, you need Apple's software to authorize the change otherwise it won't boot.
Yep, and I totally agree that such behavior is draconian, and I disagree with Apple's stance. That doesn't change the fact that I also find Rossman entitled.
I don't completely understand why you disklike Rossman. I think he's an archetype for a "tell it like it is" New Yorker (like me). Maybe I have a soft spot for people like him, but they're superior to the more common "asshole NYer" that have now ranged far and wide and who take advantage of people as mercilessly as possible.
Rossman has it right. You're paying thousands of dollars for what amounts to an utter POS laptop. The earlier models were technical marvels and then Apple bean counters took over. But Apple needs to get on the same page with all the professionals who use their products and rely on them to make a living. How could they lose touch so badly?
> I think he's an archetype for a "tell it like it is" New Yorker (like me).
> they're superior to the more common "asshole NYer"
West Coasters don't see the distinction. California culture (and many other cultures, I'm sure) believes that making people feel bad is the ultimate social sin and should be avoided at all costs. In their eyes, "telling it like it is" makes you an asshole.
It baffles me that people pay so much for an apple product but then have to go somewhere to get it serviced. I bought a Dell XPS, my keyboard was having issues, next day someone came out with a new keyboard and installed it for me at my house. Very little downtime.
But as a consumer, chances are that you won't be home when the repair technician arrive, because it happens during work hours and you are at work. It means that going to the Apple store may be the easier option.
Funny how personal anecdotes go. Let me tell you mine with Apple.
A few months ago I spilled about 300ml of water on top of my MacBook Pro. It's one of the newer models with the touchbar and the terrible butterfly keyboard (otherwise it's a fantastic machine though). The spillage happened just as I was about to finish work for the day. There was a lot of water there on top of the keyboard. It took me 5 or 6 large napkins to dry it out, even after having drained it first by leaning it sideways. I closed the laptop, put it on its case and went home for the day.
Next morning I took it off the case at work and switched it on, just to find the display behaving oddly (weird colours and artefacts). After a few minutes, the display froze and I believe the whole computer did too. I force-rebooted it and the same thing happened, only this time a lot quicker. After a third time I decided to keep it shut down and head back home to get my backup computer.
I made an appointment at the Apple store and took it in. I described what happened precisely, didn't leave a single detail out. They took it in, found zero water damage but acknowledged the problems. I was told it could take up to 10 days as I use a US keyboard (this happened in London) and they might not have one in stock.
About 4 days later I got a call to pick it up. They had replaced the logic board and the display and cleaned up the keyboard, all free of charge. I do have Apple Care on it but if I recall correctly this was done under warranty and would have happened regardless.
I had a 2017 mbp, two months in, the left hook thing on the J keycap broke. It still stayed on for the most part so I was fine. The minus key was next, but both hooks broke so it just loosely flapped and fell off if the laptop was tipped. I 2-sided-taped under and it was mushy but worked. About 4 months in, the spacebar started sending double inputs like 10% of the time. I learned to watch out for it.
About a year in left shift literally just stops working over the course of about a half hour. The button under the keycap is apparently just done. I use karabiner to remap (only when karabiner is running) left ctrl to left shift and caps lock to left ctrl (just using capslock as shift is painful). One OS update later I get an error message that the keyboard is unrecognized. When it finishes rebooting the remapping is now permanent for some reason and unalterable (I don't have any reason to want to though because it's the only way I can write capital letters without right shift).
A year and a half in, it's working one night, then the next morning I open it and it's showing rainbowy artifacts everywhere that only appear when the screen is past like a quarter way open.
I finally go to an Apple store, where they take it and basically say "yeah all of that is stuff that happens, we'll check what it is and let you know". I get notified that it will be 700$ to replace the display module which they say is at fault.
I just took it back and paid 50$ for the diagnostics and bought an XPS13. Life is good. My mbp works if attached to an external monitor or projector.
Dell can do the same. Or better. I've had a repair guy show up at my house at 9am on a Sunday morning to take care of a motherboard issue.
I also like Canon Professional Services. Annual fee but free maintenance on up to 10 camera bodies and lenses, 30% discount on any actual repair work, with free shipping both ways, and will begin NBD, _and_ they will overnight you a replacement to use while they repair it).
They go very strictly by the water indicator stickers.
You blatantly admit that you spilled water on your laptop but none of the stickers changed color because that's not where the water landed? Congratulations, you're still in warranty.
One of the stickers got triggered by using the machine in a humid environment and your machine fails for a completely unrelated reason? Too bad, all repair will be refused unless you pay for a new logic board.
Based on the terms of their warranty, your experience is an exception. Even after paying $299 for AppleCare+, you should've had to pay an additional $299 for the repair. Anyone who bases a purchase decision on this type of anecdote is just asking to get screwed.
On the other hand, the service I mentioned from Dell is part of their standard warranty, included with every new (and refurbished) computer.
My personal experience also contradicts this. Not only have I repaired the butterfly keyboard at least once on each of the new macs (every new spec bump so far) that had the new keyboards, but they almost always replace the logic board or even battery for free.
Maybe it's because I live in Silicon Valley, but my repair experience with Apple has been quite different. I took my six year old laptop in for a recall on the video card, which required a logic board replacement. They did that at no charge. In the process, they broke the power unit, so they replaced that and my six year old battery, both at no charge. They also replaced the top case at no charge while doing the second repair because they said they damaged it during repair. I never even saw the damage or had to complain.
It took three weeks, but in the end I basically had a new laptop, except the screen.
To be fair, it is a bit tougher when Macs are so expensive. When my PC breaks, I have 4 other options I can count off the top of my head. When my Mac breaks, I only can afford to have one spare, and even that is more of a matter of lucky circumstance.
I think this is one of the benefits of being a programmer. Our tools and materials can be easily stored in an online-accessible way, such that a git clone can recreate your entire environment and all the code you were working on. I don't know if any non-programmers who primarily rely on their laptops do (or can do) the same, much less people who work with music or videos or photos, who often have (hundreds of) gigabytes they need to work on with no real version control, and require much more effort and financial investment to be able to backup, duplicate and restore.
Yeah, it's interesting how, when your job is making things, you manage to make things to make making other things easier, so your ability improves exponentially.
Musicians make music, so they have to rely on other people making tools for them, whereas toolmakers can just make better tools for themselves.
That is, if you can avoid reinventing the wheel, which we aren't great at.
Serious question: Have the XPS QC issues been addressed?
This isn't any kind of attack on them, it's just that when I was searching for a laptop they seemed to be having some issues and even the warranty replacements had issues. Which really sucks because the XPS lineup do look enticing for me.
I talk to a lot of small business people and a question I usually ask when they bring up the subject of new laptops and such is "how long can you be without your laptop if if breaks?"
Usually the answer is that they can't be without it at all.
So I never recommend Apple laptops for business owners unless they have a spare... a spare "anything" will possibly suffice especially if everything they do is online.
I only tend to buy Dell business laptops: great build quality and a 3-year next business day onsite warranty are worth every penny imo: Not as flashy and fancy as the XPS stuff but they have/had quality issues (as the commenter below mentioned).
I have a old dell vostro from their business line, it is now maybe 6-7 years old. I dropped it many times, use it in a garage and don't care about it. It still works well. Therefore, I agree that the dell business line is really great.
Also, I could not imagine our business having spare computers.We have 600 employees maybe now, and we need more and more computers as more users need to perform work on a computer these days.
You only need a fractional reserve of spare computers, not one for each computer in use; it's as if you had a few more employees who don't actually use their computers
How many of your about 600 PCs die every year? The spares you need are much less than that number, as you can buy (or recover from repair hell) new computers over the course of a few days to recover your reserves.
If you buy a new laptop every 2 to 3 years for work, you can simply switch back to the previous one if needed. Assuming you are not reselling it.
I tend to upgrade every five years: my current laptop (MacBook Pro) is from 2016 and I see no reason to upgrade anytime soon. My 2011 laptop (MacBook Air) is still running fine. I could even work on it still, but it would not be a pleasant experience.
That may be the reason. I live in the Netherlands and I have had consistent terrible experience with Apple store repair service.
> It took three weeks, but in the end I basically had a new laptop, except the screen.
For professional use, that is just unacceptable. If you rely on your computer for income, you can't wait that long.
That is the reason why any Apple product will never be 'pro'. Regardless of how nice the hardware is, if it breaks I need a repair or replacement device immediately. IFAIK Apple does not offer such service (unless you have >50 devices).
Other brands (HP, Dell, Lenovo) offer on-site same day repair service. They send someone to your location and if they can't fix it on site, they'll give you a replacement/loaner. For me, that service is well worth the cost. If only Apple would offer that.
Asked them to replace the battery on my MBP (out of warranty), got it back with non-functioning USB ports. Had to return it 3 times, every time I got it back I tested the USB ports inside the store only to demonstrate that the problem still wasn't fixed. Eventually they even tried to convince me that this was a software bug.
After 6 weeks without working USB ports I got really angry and they finally agreed to replace the broken motherboard. When I got it back my laptop worked but it had a different keyboard installed (Dutch, instead of US intl). I complained about that and they told me that I was lying (even though a had the purchase receipt with the US keyboard option).
After that I gave up and bought a Lenovo, haven't looked back since.
The service in Amsterdam may be better, but traveling to the city center of Amsterdam twice just to get my laptop repaired is not acceptable.
> For professional use, that is just unacceptable. If you rely on your computer for income, you can't wait that long.
This may be an unpopular opinion, and I don't mean to sound dismissive or suggest that waiting 3 weeks is normal, but I do think it is incredibly unprofessional to rely on a single device like that for work. If it's truly an indispensable part of your job, you should have a backup--that goes for anything, not just computers. It could be a 10-year-old hand-me-down or a cheapo Chromebook, but you should have a backup plan.
> Other brands (HP, Dell, Lenovo) offer on-site same day repair service. They send someone to your location and if they can't fix it on site, they'll give you a replacement/loaner. For me, that service is well worth the cost. If only Apple would offer that.
When I was first getting started as a programmer, I made most of my income by doing tech support, rather than actual programming. A large percentage of the cases were people hiring me to deal with the likes of HP, Dell, and Lenovo because their "on-site same day repair services" were absolute garbage about 50% of the time. You could get a laptop with a DoA hard drive, but they'd refuse to replace it unless it failed their specific check, which was always inadequate. It was normal to argue with them for 6+ hours about it. You could put a fresh drive in to demonstrate that the issue was gone, but they'd still refuse to do anything. It wouldn't matter if it BSODed consistently with a fresh installation on their drive but not on the drive I was using for testing, or if the SMART results were the worst I'd ever seen--no test fail, no replacement.
> IFAIK Apple does not offer such service (unless you have >50 devices).
It varies widely depending on location. If you go to a large, busy Apple store, they tend to have a lot more parts on-hand; it doesn't need to be in Silicon Valley as long as it's big. If they need to order parts, they'll give you the option to hold onto your device until the parts arrive. I've gotten apologies when a repair took longer than 24 hours. I tend to prefer the Microsoft store method, though: when I've had issues with Surface-series devices, they've never attempted to repair it there; they just hand me a new one. It's hard to beat that. (I guess Apple's approach is better if you need to recover your data, but I never save anything valuable on a single device.)
But if you're a professional and depend on one being available at all times, it's part of the cost of doing business.
What if your machine was not faulty and repairable, but stolen, broken because you've dropped it, etc? There would be no warranty/repair at play there, and no replacement unit.
So, a professional should always account for a backup machine as a, well, backup as part of the cost of doing business.
If they can't afford a second machine, they can ask themselves if they can afford weeks without a machine and customers waiting for work to be completed, more...
I think the point you're missing is that it needn't be a requirement of doing business, unless you insist on using Apple products. And, even if I have a full closet of old computers (I do) that doesn't mean I find it enjoyable to switch back to old hardware for a week or more, when the alternative is somebody coming to me within a day to fix it on site. If I enjoyed using that old hardware, I probably wouldn't have the new hardware would I? Surely any typical Apple user prefers using their brand new $2000 computer over their old computer that would struggle to get a tenth of that on ebay.
>I think the point you're missing is that it needn't be a requirement of doing business, unless you insist on using Apple products.
I don't think I'm missing any point.
Comparably spec'ed laptops from PC vendors are of similar price. And even a desktop tower-style PC soon goes to more than $2K with good enough components (if you're a video or audio pro, for example -- a sysadmin could get away with a $300 PC barely able to run SSH). At best you save the Apple premium (let's say 20%), but there's still a cost for a second unit, and you should consider it part of the cost of doing business.
>And, even if I have a full closet of old computers (I do) that doesn't mean I find it enjoyable to switch back to old hardware for a week or more, when the alternative is somebody coming to me within a day to fix it on site
Who said anything about "old hardware"? Your backup should just as well be a twin machine to your main driver, that you buy in pairs as backup.
This all is common (and obvious) practice for businesses -- who buy spare PCs, or lease their equipment and can have new ones on demand. It should also be common practice for an individual developer/designer/pro computer user working in an one-man-shop.
Why should it be a common practice for individual developers when it's completely unnecessary with the right (cheap!) support contract? What you're suggesting seems insane to me, like setting money on fire to stay warm instead of simply buying firewood. Is it about 'flexing on plebs' or something? Eating cake when you're out of bread?
But let's pretend good support contracts don't exist because if it's not Apple it must not be real... If I'm going to pay the full price for duplicate hardware, I may as well wait until the day it breaks then walk into an Apple store and buy whatever they have in stock at the moment. I'll be walking down to the Apple store to get the broken one fixed anyway, won't I? And on the off chance that the computer never breaks I've just saved myself $2k that I can use to buy a bunch of cocaine and throw a party to celebrate reliable consumer hardware. That sounds like a lot more fun than owning twinned computers, no? You're invited.
Just because I can afford to buy a second machine when the first one fails, doesn't mean I should have to do so to compensate for a trillion dollar company's shitty support.
If I lost my laptop, then yes, I would bite the bullet and buy a new one.
If I need some trivial issue to be fixed by replacing part of the panel, I shouldn't have to go buy a new one to use for one week.
More than just students have cash flow issues that block a second purchase. In some cases, the first machine was a stretch.
Has HN forgotten that some folks don't have the resources we do (now).
When I first got in the game, I had only one machine for like three years. I was super happy Dell came onsite to swap the laptop main board (c2001). I couldn't afford a second box and for sure couldn't afford a three week delay.
Apple, with all that cash, should be able to deliver a similar experience.
> but I do think it is incredibly unprofessional to rely on a single device like that for work. If it's truly an indispensable part of your job, you should have a backup.
I have a service contract on my car, if it breaks the dealer will supply me with a loaner while my car is being repaired. I don't want to buy a second car just because my primary car may or may not break.
The same goes for my laptop. I always pay for a service contract so I don't have to buy an extra laptop that I may never need. I don't like over-consuming.
I guess my frustration is that I bought a $3000 'pro' grade laptop, and paid an additional ~$300 for the 'care' package and still got the same service level as their consumer customers get. I would have happily paid even more to get a solid service contract, but Apple just doesn't offer that (at least not in my country).
2. You don't need your car for work; you can take Uber/Lyft or a taxi if need be.
3. If you do need your car for work, you've accepted loss of your car of extended periods of time as a risk and have probably gotten insurance for that. I hope.
4. If you're a big company for which cars are an integral part of your business, you have backups.
I don't take my car to dealers to get it repaired. The ones around here do a terrible job, and when I take it back, it's not unusual for the mechanics to sabotage various components (e.g., deliberately point both headlights as far down as they'll go). I'd rather forego the loaner and take my car to a reputable independent mechanic.
Additionally, the dealers around here usually don't offer a loaner anyway without an extra fee, except under certain circumstances (e.g., the repair takes longer than they expected because they broke my windshield and had to order a replacement--yes, that happened).
Microsoft doesn't attempt to repair their machines because they are glued shut to the extent that they are basically impossible to repair. The fast turnaround is nice when you have a problem covered by warranty but if you have any problem whatsoever out of warranty you have to pay the entire price of a new machine to resolve it.
>If it's truly an indispensable part of your job, you should have a backup--that goes for anything, not just computers. It could be a 10-year-old hand-me-down or a cheapo Chromebook, but you should have a backup plan.
There's a difference between backups and failover.
It's unprofessional to not have backups, yes.
Expecting every working person to own 2 expensive laptops 'just in case' a faulty keyboard design requires 1 week of downtime? Makes no sense.
A cheap Chromebook or 10 year laptop is almost certainly not going to be usable as a replacement so it will have to be a larger investment than that.
As a programmer who works as a contractor, I carry around at least two laptops (one Windows, one macOS) and two phones (one Android, one iPhone). If I'm traveling to an unfamiliar area where I'm not familiar with the theft risks, I swap out the two laptops for an older laptop and a Chromebook, or sometimes just the Chromebook.
I can do everything I need to do from that Chromebook, and I have a very hard time seeing how others couldn't do the same. I can use Chrome Remote Desktop to connect to my desktop or a cloud-based workstation as long as I have an internet connection--and my two phones have two distinct carriers, so that's rarely an issue.
Really down on my luck? I've got a few Raspberry Pis on which I can use vim. They're slow, but they work.
Imagine being a college student who needs their computer for accessing their online courses. It's not like your professor is going to say "Oh it's fine, turn in your stuff late." Nope, you get in trouble...
> That is the reason why any Apple product will never be 'pro'. Regardless of how nice the hardware is, if it breaks I need a repair or replacement device immediately. IFAIK Apple does not offer such service (unless you have >50 devices).
They do offer this in the US. Not sure about globally. Can use it for one device, and they have loaners if a repair will take more than 24h.
With Dell I got the same experience. My power supply stopped working. Next day they came to my office and replaced the power supply and main board as well, just to be in case.
You can be a freelancer and get it too. Let’s check the website! New Dell 3541 is €1183, which includes 3 year next business day warranty. Upgrading to 4 years onsite is €77 extra.
That's way cheaper than it used to be. I wonder if that means their computers are just less likely to fall apart.
I have a 2012 Dell Inspiron sitting next to me as a server. It was a pretty good machine, though never my daily driver. Main complaint is that replacing anything (in my case the hard drive) requires removing everything out of the plastic shell, there is no drive bay door like on my similar vintage HP.
Meanwhile the next year's group got about 10 Dell inspiron laptops of the new 2013ish redesign, and I've never seen a lower quality laptop. Each and every one needed to be completely replaced at least once. Screws were just falling out of the case because the build quality was so bad.
For reference, the warranty on these laptops was so good (at about a 200-300 dollar price tag) that the Dell representatives told us the day before it expired we should throw our computers down a flight of stairs to get new ones
I’m not familiar with Inspiron devices. I am however surprised that you could get such a level of warranty for those. I thought they were the cheaper ones. I haven’t had to use my Latitude’s warranty yet just like I never had to use my ThinkPad’s warranty throughout its 8 year life, so that should definitely help reduce warranty costs.
As a 'pro' I have a backup iMac, backup MacBook Air, and backup MacBook Pro. I couldn't imagine working without this kind of safety net, regardless of the brand of equipment I'm using.
In order to support such a high level of service, one would basically need their own IT support shop, ready to (in one day?) re-image a hard drive, swap out laptops (and have spare supply), deliver them in that time, etc.
The typical cost for this to corporations (maintaining their own service desks or going via contractors dedicated to their company) is extremely high. Are you saying that HP and Dell offer this level of support to individual consumers through vendors for a nominal fee? $300 wouldn't even cover a keyboard replacement in terms of the hourly rate, so I'm not sure how you could expect to have that level of service by paying for Apple Care. A full replacement laptop would likely cost LESS than subscribing to that level of service, but might be an opportunity for a third party company if there's enough volume in it I suppose.
> Are you saying that HP and Dell offer this level of support to individual consumers through vendors for a nominal fee?
I can answer this for Dell (Alienware).
Yes. At a price comparable to Apple Care (Around $300 at the time, it was 5 years ago). This was for my Alienware device. The power supply died because I was dumb and had plugged the computer directly into the wall, and there was a power surge. Replacement wasn't literally the next day as I'd called in the evening after the cutoff time. But still, it was one day after that. When I got home, it was fixed. No fuss, no muss. Online support had me go through a few things before they'd send out a repair guy, but it wasn't anything unreasonable. It was the only time I needed a repair.
The price I paid covered 3 years of that level of service, the same as Apple Care.
Edit: Because I saw you ask in other locations: this was just me personally buying through Dell's website.
By making computers more reliable, a company like Dell could dramatically reduce the amount of computers that require on-site servicing in the first place. For instance, what percentage of Dell XPS's have their keyboards fail within a year? What percentage of MBPs do?
Right now a base warranty for an XPS includes on site repair during business hours after a remote diagnosis for one year. Getting three years of that is $160. One year of the more advanced "ProSupport" is $50 more than the base price, and three years of that is $280 more. The non-linearity between those two figures is perhaps indicative of the failure rates Dell is expecting.
I couldn't say if Dell is losing their ass with these service contracts or not, but from what I've seen it works pretty well for the consumers.
Edit: And beyond baseline reliability, the particular design of a computer can determine whether a particular failure is cheap or expensive to fix. If the Foo widget requires replacing the Bar board, that's going to be a more expensive design to fix than a computer in which the Foo widget and the Bar board aren't soldered together. This matter crops up in things like "flexgate" for Apple, where faulty cables necessitate replacing the entire screen. What could have been a very cheap repair suddenly becomes a very expensive repair. I can't claim to be familiar with the insides of a modern XPS, but I wager they tend to be cheaper to repair than modern MBPs.
I used the next day onside service for my Lenovo X1 Yoga 3rd gen. My laptop broke, I called the next day someone came to my house and replaced the motherboard. Was super easy and convenient.
I looked up my purchase, $2639 for the laptop, $311.75 for 5 years of next day onsite repair service and $169.25 for 5 years of accidental damage protection.
Their repair is through IBM. I'm not sure at what point I was talking to Lenovo employees and when I was talking to IBM.
Previous to converting to Lenovo I had two Macbooks. The first Intel white Macbook lasted about a year and a half before dying. I didn't have apple care but when I replaced that with a Macbook Pro I got apple care. That laptop was repaired 8 times, the 9th time it needed to be repaired Apple told me it would cost $800 to replace the motherboard because I had upgraded the hard drive.
Needless to say I swore off Apple's crappy HW and purchased my first Lenovo. That x230 never needed any service. My current X1 only broke because I plugged in a 10 year old $15 off brand external cdrom that fried and pumped 12v from the power adapter into the USB port.
Clear from the anecdotes and downvotes I was totally wrong about this and Apple’s way behind for consumers. Something to be said for available parts and easily repairable machines for sure.
Three weeks ago my Macbook Pro's keyboard (with the butterfly design) became completely unusable after 6 months of being mostly unusable.
Not only did the authorized service provider (Apple doesn't have its own presence where I live) take more than a week to get it replaced, they refused to do it under warranty because there were some scratch marks on the side of the laptop.
They told me to contact Apple Support if I wanted to dispute that.
After spending 6 days haggling with Apple Support and being bounced from agent to agent, I was finally told that they cannot replace under the existing Apple Care warranty because of the scratches on the side.
I then asked them to give me, in writing, a note explaining that they were denying me service under warranty for the keyboard issue.
That seems to have done the trick.
Two days later she called back and said they re-reviewed my case and were going to fix it under warranty.
I spent almost 2 weeks without the laptop while fighting with Apple over a pre-existing design flaw in a laptop that had extended Apple Care.
Not sure if where you were serviced, but Apple Store Amsterdam is terrible. It has devolved to another Leidseplein tourist trap: if you don't plan to spend money, you're wasting their time. For any serious issues, I take the bus to Apple Store Haarlem, which I've found to have friendlier service.
As someone who worked in a computer store... I got really tired of hearing people come in demanding service because "they need their computer to make money."
If you can't live without your computer, you should have a backup waiting and ready to go in case your primary fails. If you're going to lose $500/day from not doing your work, doesn't it make sense to spend $500-1000 on a backup system?
I had some lady tell me she was losing $3000/day and needed her computer fixed urgently. Her work didn't involve any intense computational work, so I pointed her to a $500 machine that would do the same work. She got so offended that she could have saved $8500 by having a backup machine, but she opted to go without her computer instead for 3 days. I put her right at the back of the queue like everybody else.
That is nice. I live in India and we don't even have an Apple Store. One of their Reseller replaced pretty much everything with my 2nd Gen Macbook (Apple care expired) because the keyboard had the "quality issue".
Just FWIW re: 3 week repair. 3 weeks sounds rough to me.
I once had a screen issue, I took the laptop in and they replaced the screen with no questions asked and at no charge. However it took a week and I couldn’t go a week without my computer.
The Apple store rep pointed me at their return policy on laptops, specifically no questions asked 30-day returns, and told me that while he couldn’t rent me a computer that I could buy a backup and get 100% refund if I brought it back in 30 days.
So that’s what I did: “purchased” an alternate with a credit card, used it for 8 days, brought it back when my laptop was fixed, and they refunded the charge. I was never out any money.
Psychologically, I’d like it better if they offered that more readily and with a lower deposit to put down - so I’m not trying to argue that this policy is just great and has no issues.
But, if you ever find yourself in that situation and can’t go without a computer, maybe that option will help you get by.
I had a similar experience, except it was Portland OR - came in because a key was stuck, the tech said he saw some smudging on my screen and asked if they should just go ahead and replace that too since it's covered - the "bill" which was all free to me was something like $800. Turned around in a day.
I wonder if these out of country operations are being denied the cash required to the repairs or if they just have problems getting parts so they end up being much more stingy about replacement?
I live in the UK and 10 years ago would have had similar experiences to this, but in the last few years my experience has been much closer to that of the author on Reddit. Our Apple Stores generally have long wait times and do as much as they can to get out of repairs, all the while being incredibly patronising and unsympathetic to personal or business concerns. It's overall pretty terrible service – I've seen far better from Dell.
I live in the middle of nowhere South Carolina, and have had only fantastic experiences with our local Apple stores. It sounds like maybe they have a consistency problem across stores?
>I took my six year old laptop in for a recall on the video card, which required a logic board replacement. They did that at no charge
Well sure, it was a recall.
>In the process, they broke the power unit, so they replaced that and my six year old battery, both at no charge. They also replaced the top case at no charge while doing the second repair because they said they damaged it during repair.
>It took three weeks...
So... they busted up your machine while performing the repair, extending the time to 3 WEEKS. not sure how this is an endorsement of Apple's repair services.
I guess it's just a gamble. I took mine in to an Apple Store in Newcastle UK with a minor problem - the case was creaking when pressed down. The staff were super friendly, they examined the laptop and decided the the entire bottom case and the battery has to be replaced - under warranty. I had to wait 3 days for the new case to arrive, brought my laptop in, it was ready the next day. Absolutely no issues and miles and miles above any service I have ever experienced from other brands.
> Maybe it's because I live in Silicon Valley, but my repair experience with Apple has been quite different.
This is absolutely the case. I've been in Apple services both in US and in many other countries in Europe and Eastern Europe. The farther from US, the worse.
>I took my six year old laptop in for a recall on the video card, which required a logic board replacement. They did that at no charge.
They replaced your defective design motherboard(whether it was Nvidia GPU or C9560) with ... another defective design motherboard, plus some shoe rubber to prop badly soldered parts(dead serious, Apple refurb outfit glues rubber to bga chips in order to wedge them against outer case because its easier/faster/cheaper than replacing bad solder).
>in the end I basically had a new laptop
build using same factory defective parts, with life expectancy of at most couple years IF they actually replaced GPU with new one, there were plenty cases of Apple refurb motherboard dying almost instantly leading even Apple technicians to suspect foul play http://advancedreworks.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-2692.ht...
Apple are just vile. Is there a dimension in which they are not just an utterly vile company? This is apple innovation all over. The fraudulent pretence of quality and honesty wrapped in shiny.
But at least they're not selling their surveillance data about you you never willingly agreed to provide like google do, right? They're storing it and keeping it and can sell it as soon as it suits them, but they're not right now as far as we know. So we're paying them not to be the product just like we pay them for quality hardware and good service. The fact we're paying them for it doesn't count for much. iPod customers found out how paying apple not to be the product works when sync deleted their collection. No not me, not you, but people we know who aren't stupid had it happen, you remember, loads of people found out they were product like that. Just buy everything from apple, then when it doesn't work, pay more, and more and more because user friendly and "microsoft are actually worse" and google as though that would be a defence if it were true and maybe it is. ugh.
oh i'm sorry. Apple are lovely. Everything they do is for the best in this best of all possible worlds. Any concerns you have about apple you should address immediately. Best!
edit: lying to avoid obligations then pointing lawyers at a much higher expense than just meeting their obligation is exactly in character for apple in my opinion. You may disagree if you like.
This is just an emotional speculation with no substance. Apple is the best there is at the moment, incomparable to G or MS (which explains the success).
"They're storing it and keeping it and can sell it as soon as it suits them" - mr Nostradamus, thank you for your version of Les Propheties, your rant makes no damn sense.
My point is we put and awful lot of trust in Apple and they are almost always unworthy of it as soon as you scratch the surface. Like right here in this article. Right now surveillance tech is something that some are worried about. Maybe not you but it's a current concern repeated around here. Right now some think Apple are ok because you pay them so you're not the product. That's repeated here on HN often. I disagree with that. Because Apple have shown, in my opinion, that they are as vile as they can be to customers to enhance their profit. You don't have to agree. Perhaps neither of us are subject to a reality distortion field either.
Re water damage: Louis Rossmann had a video up where he was repairing someone Mac. He was looking through his microscope while narrating, showing us what he sees. Said something like, "Oh, there is it. No water? Riiiight... People lie. People lie all the time. If Mother Theresa could get away with lying, she would."
Right before Sprint bought Nextel, dooming both companies, I worked in what they called a “repair store”, taking apart phones and replacing bits and pieces (rubber keypads, boards, displays, most of the gadget)
We saw this all the time: my phone never got wet. Crack it open with the ol’ spudger, find a blue-green mess.
Had one lady bring hers in smelly like pee: her cat.
Had another pull it out of her cleavage: full of salty crystals and moisture.
I never went off that stupid paper, since the moisture of the PacNW air during rainy season is enough to set them off.
But yeah people treat their expensive, sensitive gadgets like shit
The last time I was in an Apple store I was in Seattle getting a MBA battery replaced. The Apple employee told me there were indications of water exposure but no apparent board damage, so the humid Seattle air was probably to blame. Thankfully for me, they didn't refuse to replace the battery because of this.
But that experience leads me to believe those water indicators are considerably more sensitive than the electronics themselves. If I had gone in there complaining about some weird issue instead of simply wanting a new battery, would the lack of apparent corrosion on the board still lead that Apple employee to conclude that the board wasn't water damaged?
Yes, 10 years ago Apple was undergoing massive growth and establishing itself as a premium consumer brand where customer service was a differentiator.
Their revenue is levelling off now as the markets they're in mature and they need to continue profit growth. They do this by raising prices (see the iPhone 6,7,8,X dance) and reduce their costs to expand their margin. Lowering repair costs is now a key part of their strategy in a way that it wasn't 10 years ago.
Not only that but iPhones are generally more durable now than when they first launched in 2007 allowing Apple to justify their need to raise prices.
A more durable phone reduces the incentive to upgrade to a newer device every 18-24 months like was the case with iPhones from 10 years ago — like the iPhone 3GS — it offered a compelling reason to upgrade because it was released with much faster hardware specs than the iPhone 3G before it.
The pace of hardware improvements: 2G -> 3G -> 4G cellular speeds; camera pixel count increases; faster processors etc, has reduced considerably.
I found that the screen in the newer 2018 ipad pros get scratched easily compared to ipad 3. Haven't dropped the ipad pros yet, not sure whether the screen will survive, but have dropped the ipad 3 multiple times and the screen was much durable.
10 years ago, an 'Apple Genius' was a relatively skilled role, and was permitted decision making discretion.
In 2011 Apple Store employees went on a strike, and due to the skilled labor nature of the role, Apple was not able to quickly hire replacements. Apple had to cede to some labor demands.
Ever since 2011, Apple has been putting a TON of energy into removing the skill from the Genius position.
1- Removal of troubleshooting from the role. Almost ALL genius work is now following a flow chart on the iPad, without involvement of the brain. People that have been hired in the past few years have no understanding of what is going on beyond the iPad workflow.
2- Removal of discretion from the role. A genius's ability to help you is now based on advocacy. Meaning, if they feel sympathy for you, all they can do is ask their manager to make an exception.
3- reducing the scope of the role. Stores have been reconfigured in a way that makes figuring out whats going on more difficult, and reduces the ability to find a workspace or access tools.
4- probably incidental but the scope of repairs possible has decreased, too. When your choice is to replace the screen, top half, or bottom half of the laptop there isn't much to think about aside from where the screws are.
> Ever since 2011, Apple has been putting a TON of energy into removing the skill from the Genius position.
I'm not sure exactly what you're saying. Is your point that Apple's response to organized labor was to try to make sure that those employees are easily replaceable in the future? That sounds tremendously counterproductive. Though perhaps it's the exact sort of shortsightedness we should expect from large corporations today.
Yes. Apple, like any major US corporation, is in a fundamentally adversarial position vs their employees. The corporation seeks maximum profit at the expense of the worker and the workers seek a decent living. However, the need to extract wealth from the worker to further enrich the richest is of a greater need to a corporation than the wellbeing of the workers.
Thanks for sharing this information. This is pretty much consistent with my experience from visiting Apple Stores for repairing my MBP.
I'm especially enraged by 2: You visit the store with a broken machine costing upwards 3K (including the Apple Care plan) and you have to put up a little play to make yourself likeable to the genius. This is not serious customer service. I expect my case to be examined seriously, without prejudice and without me having to outguess how Apple works to get the service I've already paid for.
I'm also curious on whether Apple encourages geniuses to be unfriendly via incentives/counter-incentives. E.g. would the genius get a sale bonus if they get me to buy a new computer/tablet/phone after our consultation? Would a genius be penalized if they approve more free repairs than what some sort of AI algorithm predicted?
PS. If you have a source to cite (so I can share it elsewhere), that would be most welcome.
In my opinion the main takeaway here is that in both cases the OP was able to win their case thanks to the diagnostic of a third party repair shop - precisely the kind of business that Apple is trying to kill with its unrepairable products
Apple pulled the liquid damage bullshit on my ipod. The device wasn't worth much so I declined and got a el-cheapo sansa. Apple is also trying to shut down independent repair, so in the future, there might not be a third-party repair shop who can expose Apple's lies..
This is very different to my experience. Around 10 years ago the battery on my Macbook Pro began to expand and come apart. There had been a replacement programme but it had expired about a year previously. I took it to the Apple Store (Oxford St I think) where an employee took a new battery out of its box, gave it to me and sent me on my way. I guess everything having to go away for repair now means there's less opportunity for store employees to do the right thing nowadays.
Apple stinks inside and out. I'm dazzled to learn this is their practice towards consumers who contribute to their large profits. As I have dumped Rotten Apple long time ago, these stories reassure me all along that there is no need to go back :D
Just a counter-anecdote, but I've only had good experiences.
Just yesterday I picked up my out-of-warranty MacBook Pro whose battery was starting to show problems after 3 years... turns out it was originally a faulty battery and they replaced it for free -- the whole top case including the keyboard.
Last year my out-of-warranty iPhone had battery swelling so it was unsafe to swap the battery, so for the $29 price of a battery replacement they gave me a brand-new iPhone.
Fraying cable on earphones? Replaced them for free as well a couple of years ago. Lost the rubber buds at another point? I stopped in, they just gave me an extra pair no charge.
Maybe being in NYC has something to do with it? But service at the Apple store has been so far above and beyond any other company I've ever dealt with, it's been a no-brainer to pay the "premium Apple tax" in the long run for me.
I wonder how much discretion managers in stores/countries have to be generous or stingy, though, or if they explicitly have different internal policies around these things.
> There's no need for LIQUID CONTACT, or WATER DAMAGE
> to trigger the 'sensor' but just humidity, caused
> for example, by taking the laptop from a well-heated
> room outside, in the winter.
This is backwards. Water condenses on cold objects in hot humid rooms. In Winter the condensation would happen when you take the laptop inside, not outside.
Yet another reason I don't plan to buy any Apple computers ever again, especially laptops. They used to have fantastic service. If the logic board was faulty under warranty they would honor that. This humidity sensor seems to be there specifically for Apple to pretend like there's water damage when there isn't so they don't have to fix their shit hardware. And not honoring their replacement claim and misdiagnosing the problems are likely intentional too. The hardware is garbage and the support is abysmal. I don't care how great osx is, it's not that great considering the above facts. I would expect similar treatment and winning small claims cases in the US is much harder. Then you have to actually collect the money yourself. And we have no consumer protection laws. Fuck Apple. If this is the kind of company they run, a fashion company that makes shitty consumer electronics, I have no interest in wasting thousands on their garbage.
Good on him for taking the time and energy to get through it. Apple is still waging a war on its own customers.
They wouldn't replace a faulty magsafe charger that suddenly died and that was still under warranty. The "genius" (that term is so ridiculous) at the store claimed that accessories were not covered, which is very very wrong under European laws.
He then left me waiting and went asking his manager. This took a good 20 minutes and when he came back, the employee was adamant that the only way out of this was to pay 100€ for a new charger. I had to pull law excerpts, raised the tone of the conversation and started making a fuss.
Then the mood magically changed when the other customers started noticing the argument and I left with a brand new charger.
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[ 36.3 ms ] story [ 4515 ms ] threadWhomever is in charge seems not to have learned from this as well.
Maybe, they are focusing on other things like thinness and light weight which results in making gadgets less repairable instead of a big planned conspiracy.
... And suing customers like crazy to support a less repairable product strategy.
When apple starts making a show of actually putting up not-intentionally-cryptic schematics and supplying the market with the parts necessary to repair their dying machines (batteries would be a good start) I might loosen my tinfoil hat, but you'll have to forgive me for the time being...
It's the same reason most companies try to prevent third parties from repairing their products. 100% "I don't want to stake my reputation on someone else's repair job".
I'm just saying that if a company _does_ make it hard to repair their products, and you sat in on the meeting where that decision was made, you're going to hear "I'm tired of people trying to repair our products and screwing it up".
MBP with water damage to the battery charging circuitry. Battery is fine. Laptop is fine on AC power.
Let's see how much it'll cost... maybe $300ish? Labor, parts?
Nope. "That will be $899. Maybe we should talk about getting you into a new MBP instead?"
Let's suppose that the UK repair operation is manage separately. Let's call that exec Joe. And suppose further that the person in charge measured by metrics like "doesn't spend any more on repairs per sale than the US operation does", implying that spending less is better.
Joe making a rule something like "refuse any warranty repairs if a moisture sensor trips, even if the damage is unrelated" is a pretty easy way to keep repairs down. Some people may sue, sure, but probably not many.
And let's assume further, as is common, that Apple's lawyers are all on staff and under their General Counsel. That means they're a fixed cost, and not directly on the budget of the repair operation. That is not one of the metrics Joe is evaluated by. Maybe they won't need to add any new lawyers to handle the extra load; maybe they will. Further, any relationship between repair rules and legal costs will be hard to spot, given that it's delayed by time and filtered through many people.
So at worst, Joe might down the road have to face some sort of complicated analysis from the head of legal complaining about increased costs. But he can point to repair cost savings, so it'll be difficult to say whether on net he's making or costing Apple money.
I would guess the bigger risk for Joe is not legal expenses but the PR problem from writeups like this or an eventual decline in something like a Net Promoter Score metric as more people feel put off by Apple. Those, however, are also pretty long feedback loops. So Joe gets an immediate reduction in repair costs versus the possibility of a problem a year or three down the road. Many ambitious execs are perfectly fine with that; they're hoping to be in a new position anyway in a couple of years, so it may be the next guy's problem.
And really, Joe may not have a problem at all; as this article makes clear, having to sue the company wasn't enough to keep the guy from buying another Apple laptop. That's not a great incentive for anybody to change behavior.
“Customer hostile” seems to be a perfectly “good” way to run a business if you goal is raw profit. Doubly so in the US with essentially non-existent consumer protection law.
In the US, people generally have at most a couple of ISP choices, and the general pattern of duopolies is to offer basically the same thing with minor differentiators (e.g., one will be 10% cheaper and 10% worse). Many airline routes are minimally competitive.
This is not getting better with ecosystem lock-in effects. As TFA mentions, this guy had such a bad experience that he sued Apple, and he still bought another laptop from them. That's because Apple intentionally killed off the companies that built MacOS compatible hardware, and never allowed anybody else to build IOS phones or tablets.
Most people have very limited choices, and all those choices engage in essentially the same user-hostile practices anyway. The only “choice” is to leave it altogether, which is visibly happening now there is an alternative to cable TV, but not having an internet connection isn't an option for most people.
It's also often a profitable way to run a company. Take a look at the Net Promoter Score for the Fortune 500: https://customer.guru/net-promoter-score/fortune-500
The number in theory ranges from 100 (everybody would enthusiastically promote to friends) to -100 (the opposite). Some well-liked companies include Apple at 47, Starbucks at 77, and Costco at 79. In contrast, Comcast is -3, Time Warner is -5, United is -8. There are definitely some places loved by customers in the Fortune 500, but as you look down the list it's far from universal.
Comcast's profit was something like $11 billion last year. Are they customer hostile? Notoriously. Do they care? Not really!
Routine cases like these will be managed with boilerplate briefs and filings, standard arguments, and form letters.
Claims may be checked very briefly to make sure there's nothing unusual or legally dangerous about them. If there isn't, the process will likely be handled by standard templated paperwork, and might as well be automated.
Nominal numbers = bad KPI
Ratios = good KPI
"Repair spend / (lost) court filings" is a way better ratio than plain "Repair spend".
But yes, it's perfectly possible that a company would use a bad nominal metric like "repair spend". It need not even be explicit. Typical budgeting processes encourage that sort of thing because it's seen as good to be under budget and bad to be over it.
Not when even the CEO lists repairs as one of bigger growth concern https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmd9a5/tim-cook-to-invest...
For example, a computer Apple said had "been in a bathtub" when it was really just a manufacturing defect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2r-g8EaTfY
FWIW, my experience with Dell has been the complete opposite. I complained about a couple issues with an Alienware laptop (processor whine, low battery life) and they had a tech at my house the next day with replacement parts. Probably the best service I've ever gotten on any type of product.
This goes to show how long consumers hold grudges when brands let them down. And those consumers eventually Jin corporate purchasing departments.
Had lots of trouble with Dell hardware - but excellent support in most cases.
(I think 25% of our Dell motherboards broke in the spring of 2006 because of a batch of bad capacitors, and I think I heard rumours that more broke after I left that place, but service was always great until recently, and I'm now so far away from hardware I don't know if it is Dells fault or the sysadmins fault in a recent case I think of.)
The capacitor plague. Pretty much everybody in the industry was hit by that to at least some extent:
> "Major vendors of motherboards such as Abit,[9] IBM,[1] Dell,[10] Apple, HP, and Intel[11] were affected by capacitors with faulty electrolytes. In 2005, Dell spent some US$420 million replacing motherboards outright and on the logistics of determining whether a system was in need of replacement.[12][13] Many other equipment manufacturers unknowingly assembled and sold boards with faulty capacitors, and as a result the effect of the capacitor plague could be seen in all kinds of devices worldwide. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague#Prevalence
Beyond that, there is something entitled about earning your entire income repairing another company’s devices while also demanding they make proprietary parts and knowledge available to you.
I wish there were a critic of Apple’s repair policies that had less of an agenda than Rossman.
Can you provide examples?
2. In 2016, Rossman claimed that Apple had a 4 Gigabyte memory chip buffer on their webcams. He speculates that this is due to a nefarious intent on Apple's part. In actuality, it is a 4 Gigabit (512 MB) chip that acts as a buffer. [1]
3. In 2018, Rossman claimed that Apple had contacted Customs and Border Protection to have his import shipment of Apple batteries seized. He claimed that they were genuine OEM batteries, maybe scavenged from old devices. [2] In actuality, the devices really were counterfeit. Rossman had contracted an OEM manufacturer to build batteries to Apple's original spec, which bore Apple's logo, most likely without Apple's knowledge. [3]
[0] - https://www.gamerevolution.com/features/12677-free-speech-un...
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw3-j_RaX74
[2] - https://youtu.be/AVL65qwBGnw
[3] - https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/9pow06/louis_rossman...
No.2 dude messed up. No disagreement there. But you are spinning his confusion into: "due to a nefarious intent on Apple's part." That wasn't the tone of the video at all.
No.3 you say, and cite, that what he claimed was true (that a shipment of Apple compatible batteries he had imported was seized). In the original video he said quite clearly they weren't OEM because Apple no longer supplies these "vintage" batteries to even authorized repair centers. Here's the YT transcript (as is):
> the Apple store and I say I would like to buy this battery can i buy this battery please they say no if I become an Apple authorized service provider and I wish to obtain parts to a machine that has been considered vintage Apple will say no if I talk to somebody in China who says hey these are not those knockoff batteries where we take you know where we just like put apple logos on a bunch of crappy cells and send it to you these are the good batteries these are the batteries that are responsible for us being 4.9 out of five
But you said: "He claimed that they were genuine OEM batteries" the transcript above from the video you linked paints a very different picture.
Your original claim was:
> deep a history of twisting facts to make Apple look bad.
But you haven't made that case here.
Your position on the guy feels a little "cart before the horse." You dislike what the guy believes/stands for/his criticism, and then went out looking for reasons to justify that belief.
Your post essentially implies he's a criminal for using "stolen" schematics to repair customer's own equipment and making compatible batteries (which, I'll fully admit, shouldn't have had the Apple logo on them: not cool).
Sounds a lot like Terry Gilliam's Brazil.
1. Rossmann claims that Apple is suing him, that his entire channel is going to be shut down, and that his business might disappear. Later, Rossmann clarifies that Apple just wanted him to take down, or edit out a single video that showed their IP.
3. Rossman claims that Apple contacted CBP to have his shipment of batteries seized in retaliation for a story he did with the CBC. Rossman states they are "good" batteries, that they could be refurbished or scavenged from old machines. He claims that they are not counterfeit. Later, Rossman admits that they are not refurbished or scavenged, but are newly manufactured, but not authorized by Apple, even though they bear Apple's logo. That is literally a counterfeit.
I'm not trying to cast Rossmann in a bad light, I was asked to provide examples of how Rossmann twists facts to make Apple seem more nefarious than they are. That list is why I take everything Rossmann says with a large grain of salt.
It is not the case that one side is right, and the other is wrong. I am not attempting to make the case that Apple should be uncriticized.
I read what you linked. Your links don't support your claims.
> I think a clear pattern of "twisting facts" emerges when you look at Rossmann's original claims, and then see how those claims are walked back or "clarified" by further statements.
You haven't given an example of that. In examples you did give you mischaracterized his original statements several times. You can still watch the original videos as you linked as evidence of that (and or read the transcripts, like the excerpt I provided above).
> 1. Rossmann claims that Apple is suing him, that his entire channel is going to be shut down, and that his business might disappear. Later, Rossmann clarifies that Apple just wanted him to take down, or edit out a single video that showed their IP.
The two aren't mutually exclusive. Apple made a threat (i.e. lawsuit, take-down on his channel) and then "settled" for him just removing certain content they found objectionable.
It is great that Apple's legal threats didn't come to full fruition, but they existed. This just isn't a strong example of what you're claiming, there was nothing mislead about saying an actual legal threat with actual legal consequences was received relating to his work with "right to repair."
> Later, Rossman admits that they are not refurbished or scavenged, but are newly manufactured, but not authorized by Apple, even though they bear Apple's logo.
He said that in the original video about the incident you yourself linked. I provided the transcript above.
It was really relaxing and interesting to watch, but now that he's complaining about Apple half the time, it's significantly less enjoyable for me to watch.
Apple won't let third parties produce Apple compatible parts (or sell parts sold to Apple also to non-Apple repair centers). Even if Apple just got out of the way, and offered no help/supply chain, it would be a stark improvement.
But instead they've been using hardware DRM to effectively make third party repairs impossible. If you replace a part with an identical part, you need Apple's software to authorize the change otherwise it won't boot.
https://www.macrumors.com/2019/04/30/apple-right-to-repair-c...
Rossman has it right. You're paying thousands of dollars for what amounts to an utter POS laptop. The earlier models were technical marvels and then Apple bean counters took over. But Apple needs to get on the same page with all the professionals who use their products and rely on them to make a living. How could they lose touch so badly?
> they're superior to the more common "asshole NYer"
West Coasters don't see the distinction. California culture (and many other cultures, I'm sure) believes that making people feel bad is the ultimate social sin and should be avoided at all costs. In their eyes, "telling it like it is" makes you an asshole.
But as a consumer, chances are that you won't be home when the repair technician arrive, because it happens during work hours and you are at work. It means that going to the Apple store may be the easier option.
A few months ago I spilled about 300ml of water on top of my MacBook Pro. It's one of the newer models with the touchbar and the terrible butterfly keyboard (otherwise it's a fantastic machine though). The spillage happened just as I was about to finish work for the day. There was a lot of water there on top of the keyboard. It took me 5 or 6 large napkins to dry it out, even after having drained it first by leaning it sideways. I closed the laptop, put it on its case and went home for the day.
Next morning I took it off the case at work and switched it on, just to find the display behaving oddly (weird colours and artefacts). After a few minutes, the display froze and I believe the whole computer did too. I force-rebooted it and the same thing happened, only this time a lot quicker. After a third time I decided to keep it shut down and head back home to get my backup computer.
I made an appointment at the Apple store and took it in. I described what happened precisely, didn't leave a single detail out. They took it in, found zero water damage but acknowledged the problems. I was told it could take up to 10 days as I use a US keyboard (this happened in London) and they might not have one in stock.
About 4 days later I got a call to pick it up. They had replaced the logic board and the display and cleaned up the keyboard, all free of charge. I do have Apple Care on it but if I recall correctly this was done under warranty and would have happened regardless.
About a year in left shift literally just stops working over the course of about a half hour. The button under the keycap is apparently just done. I use karabiner to remap (only when karabiner is running) left ctrl to left shift and caps lock to left ctrl (just using capslock as shift is painful). One OS update later I get an error message that the keyboard is unrecognized. When it finishes rebooting the remapping is now permanent for some reason and unalterable (I don't have any reason to want to though because it's the only way I can write capital letters without right shift).
A year and a half in, it's working one night, then the next morning I open it and it's showing rainbowy artifacts everywhere that only appear when the screen is past like a quarter way open.
I finally go to an Apple store, where they take it and basically say "yeah all of that is stuff that happens, we'll check what it is and let you know". I get notified that it will be 700$ to replace the display module which they say is at fault.
I just took it back and paid 50$ for the diagnostics and bought an XPS13. Life is good. My mbp works if attached to an external monitor or projector.
I also like Canon Professional Services. Annual fee but free maintenance on up to 10 camera bodies and lenses, 30% discount on any actual repair work, with free shipping both ways, and will begin NBD, _and_ they will overnight you a replacement to use while they repair it).
You blatantly admit that you spilled water on your laptop but none of the stickers changed color because that's not where the water landed? Congratulations, you're still in warranty.
One of the stickers got triggered by using the machine in a humid environment and your machine fails for a completely unrelated reason? Too bad, all repair will be refused unless you pay for a new logic board.
On the other hand, the service I mentioned from Dell is part of their standard warranty, included with every new (and refurbished) computer.
It took three weeks, but in the end I basically had a new laptop, except the screen.
I could find ways to do most things. Nowadays it's a lot easier.
Musicians make music, so they have to rely on other people making tools for them, whereas toolmakers can just make better tools for themselves.
That is, if you can avoid reinventing the wheel, which we aren't great at.
This isn't any kind of attack on them, it's just that when I was searching for a laptop they seemed to be having some issues and even the warranty replacements had issues. Which really sucks because the XPS lineup do look enticing for me.
Usually the answer is that they can't be without it at all.
So I never recommend Apple laptops for business owners unless they have a spare... a spare "anything" will possibly suffice especially if everything they do is online.
I only tend to buy Dell business laptops: great build quality and a 3-year next business day onsite warranty are worth every penny imo: Not as flashy and fancy as the XPS stuff but they have/had quality issues (as the commenter below mentioned).
Not sure if there's a precision model for the xps13.
Also, I could not imagine our business having spare computers.We have 600 employees maybe now, and we need more and more computers as more users need to perform work on a computer these days.
How many of your about 600 PCs die every year? The spares you need are much less than that number, as you can buy (or recover from repair hell) new computers over the course of a few days to recover your reserves.
I tend to upgrade every five years: my current laptop (MacBook Pro) is from 2016 and I see no reason to upgrade anytime soon. My 2011 laptop (MacBook Air) is still running fine. I could even work on it still, but it would not be a pleasant experience.
Apple is not so great in other parts of the world.
That may be the reason. I live in the Netherlands and I have had consistent terrible experience with Apple store repair service.
> It took three weeks, but in the end I basically had a new laptop, except the screen.
For professional use, that is just unacceptable. If you rely on your computer for income, you can't wait that long.
That is the reason why any Apple product will never be 'pro'. Regardless of how nice the hardware is, if it breaks I need a repair or replacement device immediately. IFAIK Apple does not offer such service (unless you have >50 devices).
Other brands (HP, Dell, Lenovo) offer on-site same day repair service. They send someone to your location and if they can't fix it on site, they'll give you a replacement/loaner. For me, that service is well worth the cost. If only Apple would offer that.
Asked them to replace the battery on my MBP (out of warranty), got it back with non-functioning USB ports. Had to return it 3 times, every time I got it back I tested the USB ports inside the store only to demonstrate that the problem still wasn't fixed. Eventually they even tried to convince me that this was a software bug.
After 6 weeks without working USB ports I got really angry and they finally agreed to replace the broken motherboard. When I got it back my laptop worked but it had a different keyboard installed (Dutch, instead of US intl). I complained about that and they told me that I was lying (even though a had the purchase receipt with the US keyboard option).
After that I gave up and bought a Lenovo, haven't looked back since.
The service in Amsterdam may be better, but traveling to the city center of Amsterdam twice just to get my laptop repaired is not acceptable.
Do you mean "immediately"? I'm having trouble understanding that word in this context.
This may be an unpopular opinion, and I don't mean to sound dismissive or suggest that waiting 3 weeks is normal, but I do think it is incredibly unprofessional to rely on a single device like that for work. If it's truly an indispensable part of your job, you should have a backup--that goes for anything, not just computers. It could be a 10-year-old hand-me-down or a cheapo Chromebook, but you should have a backup plan.
> Other brands (HP, Dell, Lenovo) offer on-site same day repair service. They send someone to your location and if they can't fix it on site, they'll give you a replacement/loaner. For me, that service is well worth the cost. If only Apple would offer that.
When I was first getting started as a programmer, I made most of my income by doing tech support, rather than actual programming. A large percentage of the cases were people hiring me to deal with the likes of HP, Dell, and Lenovo because their "on-site same day repair services" were absolute garbage about 50% of the time. You could get a laptop with a DoA hard drive, but they'd refuse to replace it unless it failed their specific check, which was always inadequate. It was normal to argue with them for 6+ hours about it. You could put a fresh drive in to demonstrate that the issue was gone, but they'd still refuse to do anything. It wouldn't matter if it BSODed consistently with a fresh installation on their drive but not on the drive I was using for testing, or if the SMART results were the worst I'd ever seen--no test fail, no replacement.
> IFAIK Apple does not offer such service (unless you have >50 devices).
It varies widely depending on location. If you go to a large, busy Apple store, they tend to have a lot more parts on-hand; it doesn't need to be in Silicon Valley as long as it's big. If they need to order parts, they'll give you the option to hold onto your device until the parts arrive. I've gotten apologies when a repair took longer than 24 hours. I tend to prefer the Microsoft store method, though: when I've had issues with Surface-series devices, they've never attempted to repair it there; they just hand me a new one. It's hard to beat that. (I guess Apple's approach is better if you need to recover your data, but I never save anything valuable on a single device.)
But if you're a professional and depend on one being available at all times, it's part of the cost of doing business.
What if your machine was not faulty and repairable, but stolen, broken because you've dropped it, etc? There would be no warranty/repair at play there, and no replacement unit.
So, a professional should always account for a backup machine as a, well, backup as part of the cost of doing business.
If they can't afford a second machine, they can ask themselves if they can afford weeks without a machine and customers waiting for work to be completed, more...
I think the point you're missing is that it needn't be a requirement of doing business, unless you insist on using Apple products. And, even if I have a full closet of old computers (I do) that doesn't mean I find it enjoyable to switch back to old hardware for a week or more, when the alternative is somebody coming to me within a day to fix it on site. If I enjoyed using that old hardware, I probably wouldn't have the new hardware would I? Surely any typical Apple user prefers using their brand new $2000 computer over their old computer that would struggle to get a tenth of that on ebay.
I don't think I'm missing any point.
Comparably spec'ed laptops from PC vendors are of similar price. And even a desktop tower-style PC soon goes to more than $2K with good enough components (if you're a video or audio pro, for example -- a sysadmin could get away with a $300 PC barely able to run SSH). At best you save the Apple premium (let's say 20%), but there's still a cost for a second unit, and you should consider it part of the cost of doing business.
>And, even if I have a full closet of old computers (I do) that doesn't mean I find it enjoyable to switch back to old hardware for a week or more, when the alternative is somebody coming to me within a day to fix it on site
Who said anything about "old hardware"? Your backup should just as well be a twin machine to your main driver, that you buy in pairs as backup.
This all is common (and obvious) practice for businesses -- who buy spare PCs, or lease their equipment and can have new ones on demand. It should also be common practice for an individual developer/designer/pro computer user working in an one-man-shop.
But let's pretend good support contracts don't exist because if it's not Apple it must not be real... If I'm going to pay the full price for duplicate hardware, I may as well wait until the day it breaks then walk into an Apple store and buy whatever they have in stock at the moment. I'll be walking down to the Apple store to get the broken one fixed anyway, won't I? And on the off chance that the computer never breaks I've just saved myself $2k that I can use to buy a bunch of cocaine and throw a party to celebrate reliable consumer hardware. That sounds like a lot more fun than owning twinned computers, no? You're invited.
If I lost my laptop, then yes, I would bite the bullet and buy a new one.
If I need some trivial issue to be fixed by replacing part of the panel, I shouldn't have to go buy a new one to use for one week.
Has HN forgotten that some folks don't have the resources we do (now).
When I first got in the game, I had only one machine for like three years. I was super happy Dell came onsite to swap the laptop main board (c2001). I couldn't afford a second box and for sure couldn't afford a three week delay.
Apple, with all that cash, should be able to deliver a similar experience.
Not many tasks require high end hardware
I have a service contract on my car, if it breaks the dealer will supply me with a loaner while my car is being repaired. I don't want to buy a second car just because my primary car may or may not break.
The same goes for my laptop. I always pay for a service contract so I don't have to buy an extra laptop that I may never need. I don't like over-consuming.
I guess my frustration is that I bought a $3000 'pro' grade laptop, and paid an additional ~$300 for the 'care' package and still got the same service level as their consumer customers get. I would have happily paid even more to get a solid service contract, but Apple just doesn't offer that (at least not in my country).
1. A backup laptop is cheaper than a backup car.
2. You don't need your car for work; you can take Uber/Lyft or a taxi if need be.
3. If you do need your car for work, you've accepted loss of your car of extended periods of time as a risk and have probably gotten insurance for that. I hope.
4. If you're a big company for which cars are an integral part of your business, you have backups.
I don't take my car to dealers to get it repaired. The ones around here do a terrible job, and when I take it back, it's not unusual for the mechanics to sabotage various components (e.g., deliberately point both headlights as far down as they'll go). I'd rather forego the loaner and take my car to a reputable independent mechanic.
Additionally, the dealers around here usually don't offer a loaner anyway without an extra fee, except under certain circumstances (e.g., the repair takes longer than they expected because they broke my windshield and had to order a replacement--yes, that happened).
There's a difference between backups and failover.
It's unprofessional to not have backups, yes.
Expecting every working person to own 2 expensive laptops 'just in case' a faulty keyboard design requires 1 week of downtime? Makes no sense.
A cheap Chromebook or 10 year laptop is almost certainly not going to be usable as a replacement so it will have to be a larger investment than that.
I can do everything I need to do from that Chromebook, and I have a very hard time seeing how others couldn't do the same. I can use Chrome Remote Desktop to connect to my desktop or a cloud-based workstation as long as I have an internet connection--and my two phones have two distinct carriers, so that's rarely an issue.
Really down on my luck? I've got a few Raspberry Pis on which I can use vim. They're slow, but they work.
They do offer this in the US. Not sure about globally. Can use it for one device, and they have loaners if a repair will take more than 24h.
https://www.apple.com/retail/business/jointventure/terms.htm...
I have a 2012 Dell Inspiron sitting next to me as a server. It was a pretty good machine, though never my daily driver. Main complaint is that replacing anything (in my case the hard drive) requires removing everything out of the plastic shell, there is no drive bay door like on my similar vintage HP.
Meanwhile the next year's group got about 10 Dell inspiron laptops of the new 2013ish redesign, and I've never seen a lower quality laptop. Each and every one needed to be completely replaced at least once. Screws were just falling out of the case because the build quality was so bad.
For reference, the warranty on these laptops was so good (at about a 200-300 dollar price tag) that the Dell representatives told us the day before it expired we should throw our computers down a flight of stairs to get new ones
That is also how they keep repair costs low.
I always think they are better designed than Apple computers and today they even look nice.
The typical cost for this to corporations (maintaining their own service desks or going via contractors dedicated to their company) is extremely high. Are you saying that HP and Dell offer this level of support to individual consumers through vendors for a nominal fee? $300 wouldn't even cover a keyboard replacement in terms of the hourly rate, so I'm not sure how you could expect to have that level of service by paying for Apple Care. A full replacement laptop would likely cost LESS than subscribing to that level of service, but might be an opportunity for a third party company if there's enough volume in it I suppose.
I can answer this for Dell (Alienware).
Yes. At a price comparable to Apple Care (Around $300 at the time, it was 5 years ago). This was for my Alienware device. The power supply died because I was dumb and had plugged the computer directly into the wall, and there was a power surge. Replacement wasn't literally the next day as I'd called in the evening after the cutoff time. But still, it was one day after that. When I got home, it was fixed. No fuss, no muss. Online support had me go through a few things before they'd send out a repair guy, but it wasn't anything unreasonable. It was the only time I needed a repair.
The price I paid covered 3 years of that level of service, the same as Apple Care.
Edit: Because I saw you ask in other locations: this was just me personally buying through Dell's website.
Right now a base warranty for an XPS includes on site repair during business hours after a remote diagnosis for one year. Getting three years of that is $160. One year of the more advanced "ProSupport" is $50 more than the base price, and three years of that is $280 more. The non-linearity between those two figures is perhaps indicative of the failure rates Dell is expecting.
I couldn't say if Dell is losing their ass with these service contracts or not, but from what I've seen it works pretty well for the consumers.
Edit: And beyond baseline reliability, the particular design of a computer can determine whether a particular failure is cheap or expensive to fix. If the Foo widget requires replacing the Bar board, that's going to be a more expensive design to fix than a computer in which the Foo widget and the Bar board aren't soldered together. This matter crops up in things like "flexgate" for Apple, where faulty cables necessitate replacing the entire screen. What could have been a very cheap repair suddenly becomes a very expensive repair. I can't claim to be familiar with the insides of a modern XPS, but I wager they tend to be cheaper to repair than modern MBPs.
I looked up my purchase, $2639 for the laptop, $311.75 for 5 years of next day onsite repair service and $169.25 for 5 years of accidental damage protection.
Previous to converting to Lenovo I had two Macbooks. The first Intel white Macbook lasted about a year and a half before dying. I didn't have apple care but when I replaced that with a Macbook Pro I got apple care. That laptop was repaired 8 times, the 9th time it needed to be repaired Apple told me it would cost $800 to replace the motherboard because I had upgraded the hard drive.
Needless to say I swore off Apple's crappy HW and purchased my first Lenovo. That x230 never needed any service. My current X1 only broke because I plugged in a 10 year old $15 off brand external cdrom that fried and pumped 12v from the power adapter into the USB port.
Three weeks ago my Macbook Pro's keyboard (with the butterfly design) became completely unusable after 6 months of being mostly unusable.
Not only did the authorized service provider (Apple doesn't have its own presence where I live) take more than a week to get it replaced, they refused to do it under warranty because there were some scratch marks on the side of the laptop.
They told me to contact Apple Support if I wanted to dispute that.
After spending 6 days haggling with Apple Support and being bounced from agent to agent, I was finally told that they cannot replace under the existing Apple Care warranty because of the scratches on the side.
I then asked them to give me, in writing, a note explaining that they were denying me service under warranty for the keyboard issue.
That seems to have done the trick. Two days later she called back and said they re-reviewed my case and were going to fix it under warranty.
I spent almost 2 weeks without the laptop while fighting with Apple over a pre-existing design flaw in a laptop that had extended Apple Care.
If you can't live without your computer, you should have a backup waiting and ready to go in case your primary fails. If you're going to lose $500/day from not doing your work, doesn't it make sense to spend $500-1000 on a backup system?
I had some lady tell me she was losing $3000/day and needed her computer fixed urgently. Her work didn't involve any intense computational work, so I pointed her to a $500 machine that would do the same work. She got so offended that she could have saved $8500 by having a backup machine, but she opted to go without her computer instead for 3 days. I put her right at the back of the queue like everybody else.
I once had a screen issue, I took the laptop in and they replaced the screen with no questions asked and at no charge. However it took a week and I couldn’t go a week without my computer.
The Apple store rep pointed me at their return policy on laptops, specifically no questions asked 30-day returns, and told me that while he couldn’t rent me a computer that I could buy a backup and get 100% refund if I brought it back in 30 days.
So that’s what I did: “purchased” an alternate with a credit card, used it for 8 days, brought it back when my laptop was fixed, and they refunded the charge. I was never out any money.
Psychologically, I’d like it better if they offered that more readily and with a lower deposit to put down - so I’m not trying to argue that this policy is just great and has no issues.
But, if you ever find yourself in that situation and can’t go without a computer, maybe that option will help you get by.
I wonder if these out of country operations are being denied the cash required to the repairs or if they just have problems getting parts so they end up being much more stingy about replacement?
Well sure, it was a recall.
>In the process, they broke the power unit, so they replaced that and my six year old battery, both at no charge. They also replaced the top case at no charge while doing the second repair because they said they damaged it during repair.
>It took three weeks...
So... they busted up your machine while performing the repair, extending the time to 3 WEEKS. not sure how this is an endorsement of Apple's repair services.
This is absolutely the case. I've been in Apple services both in US and in many other countries in Europe and Eastern Europe. The farther from US, the worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATxsy9otVzs
They replaced your defective design motherboard(whether it was Nvidia GPU or C9560) with ... another defective design motherboard, plus some shoe rubber to prop badly soldered parts(dead serious, Apple refurb outfit glues rubber to bga chips in order to wedge them against outer case because its easier/faster/cheaper than replacing bad solder).
>in the end I basically had a new laptop
build using same factory defective parts, with life expectancy of at most couple years IF they actually replaced GPU with new one, there were plenty cases of Apple refurb motherboard dying almost instantly leading even Apple technicians to suspect foul play http://advancedreworks.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-2692.ht...
But at least they're not selling their surveillance data about you you never willingly agreed to provide like google do, right? They're storing it and keeping it and can sell it as soon as it suits them, but they're not right now as far as we know. So we're paying them not to be the product just like we pay them for quality hardware and good service. The fact we're paying them for it doesn't count for much. iPod customers found out how paying apple not to be the product works when sync deleted their collection. No not me, not you, but people we know who aren't stupid had it happen, you remember, loads of people found out they were product like that. Just buy everything from apple, then when it doesn't work, pay more, and more and more because user friendly and "microsoft are actually worse" and google as though that would be a defence if it were true and maybe it is. ugh.
edit: lying to avoid obligations then pointing lawyers at a much higher expense than just meeting their obligation is exactly in character for apple in my opinion. You may disagree if you like.
"They're storing it and keeping it and can sell it as soon as it suits them" - mr Nostradamus, thank you for your version of Les Propheties, your rant makes no damn sense.
At what? I've never heard this.
I've thought people are forced to buy Apple products due to proprietary software.
My point is we put and awful lot of trust in Apple and they are almost always unworthy of it as soon as you scratch the surface. Like right here in this article. Right now surveillance tech is something that some are worried about. Maybe not you but it's a current concern repeated around here. Right now some think Apple are ok because you pay them so you're not the product. That's repeated here on HN often. I disagree with that. Because Apple have shown, in my opinion, that they are as vile as they can be to customers to enhance their profit. You don't have to agree. Perhaps neither of us are subject to a reality distortion field either.
We saw this all the time: my phone never got wet. Crack it open with the ol’ spudger, find a blue-green mess.
Had one lady bring hers in smelly like pee: her cat.
Had another pull it out of her cleavage: full of salty crystals and moisture.
I never went off that stupid paper, since the moisture of the PacNW air during rainy season is enough to set them off.
But yeah people treat their expensive, sensitive gadgets like shit
But that experience leads me to believe those water indicators are considerably more sensitive than the electronics themselves. If I had gone in there complaining about some weird issue instead of simply wanting a new battery, would the lack of apparent corrosion on the board still lead that Apple employee to conclude that the board wasn't water damaged?
Their revenue is levelling off now as the markets they're in mature and they need to continue profit growth. They do this by raising prices (see the iPhone 6,7,8,X dance) and reduce their costs to expand their margin. Lowering repair costs is now a key part of their strategy in a way that it wasn't 10 years ago.
A more durable phone reduces the incentive to upgrade to a newer device every 18-24 months like was the case with iPhones from 10 years ago — like the iPhone 3GS — it offered a compelling reason to upgrade because it was released with much faster hardware specs than the iPhone 3G before it.
The pace of hardware improvements: 2G -> 3G -> 4G cellular speeds; camera pixel count increases; faster processors etc, has reduced considerably.
10 years ago, an 'Apple Genius' was a relatively skilled role, and was permitted decision making discretion.
In 2011 Apple Store employees went on a strike, and due to the skilled labor nature of the role, Apple was not able to quickly hire replacements. Apple had to cede to some labor demands.
Ever since 2011, Apple has been putting a TON of energy into removing the skill from the Genius position.
1- Removal of troubleshooting from the role. Almost ALL genius work is now following a flow chart on the iPad, without involvement of the brain. People that have been hired in the past few years have no understanding of what is going on beyond the iPad workflow.
2- Removal of discretion from the role. A genius's ability to help you is now based on advocacy. Meaning, if they feel sympathy for you, all they can do is ask their manager to make an exception.
3- reducing the scope of the role. Stores have been reconfigured in a way that makes figuring out whats going on more difficult, and reduces the ability to find a workspace or access tools.
4- probably incidental but the scope of repairs possible has decreased, too. When your choice is to replace the screen, top half, or bottom half of the laptop there isn't much to think about aside from where the screws are.
I'm not sure exactly what you're saying. Is your point that Apple's response to organized labor was to try to make sure that those employees are easily replaceable in the future? That sounds tremendously counterproductive. Though perhaps it's the exact sort of shortsightedness we should expect from large corporations today.
This is not unique to Apple by any means.
I'm especially enraged by 2: You visit the store with a broken machine costing upwards 3K (including the Apple Care plan) and you have to put up a little play to make yourself likeable to the genius. This is not serious customer service. I expect my case to be examined seriously, without prejudice and without me having to outguess how Apple works to get the service I've already paid for.
I'm also curious on whether Apple encourages geniuses to be unfriendly via incentives/counter-incentives. E.g. would the genius get a sale bonus if they get me to buy a new computer/tablet/phone after our consultation? Would a genius be penalized if they approve more free repairs than what some sort of AI algorithm predicted?
PS. If you have a source to cite (so I can share it elsewhere), that would be most welcome.
Just yesterday I picked up my out-of-warranty MacBook Pro whose battery was starting to show problems after 3 years... turns out it was originally a faulty battery and they replaced it for free -- the whole top case including the keyboard.
Last year my out-of-warranty iPhone had battery swelling so it was unsafe to swap the battery, so for the $29 price of a battery replacement they gave me a brand-new iPhone.
Fraying cable on earphones? Replaced them for free as well a couple of years ago. Lost the rubber buds at another point? I stopped in, they just gave me an extra pair no charge.
Maybe being in NYC has something to do with it? But service at the Apple store has been so far above and beyond any other company I've ever dealt with, it's been a no-brainer to pay the "premium Apple tax" in the long run for me.
I wonder how much discretion managers in stores/countries have to be generous or stingy, though, or if they explicitly have different internal policies around these things.
Maybe the product doesn't break, and you save money, and don't have to deal with Apple.
Or the product breaks, and you get the latest and greatest instead of a year old referbished.
They wouldn't replace a faulty magsafe charger that suddenly died and that was still under warranty. The "genius" (that term is so ridiculous) at the store claimed that accessories were not covered, which is very very wrong under European laws.
He then left me waiting and went asking his manager. This took a good 20 minutes and when he came back, the employee was adamant that the only way out of this was to pay 100€ for a new charger. I had to pull law excerpts, raised the tone of the conversation and started making a fuss.
Then the mood magically changed when the other customers started noticing the argument and I left with a brand new charger.
This was a terrible customer experience.