I'm not sure to be honest. I was not aware of that as an option when I bought my previous Dell XPS around 5 years ago. Maybe things have improved now though.
Yes, the higher support levels have international options, although the details depend on where you are. (although afaik the apple-like case of "bring to service partner, have them handle it" is covered very widely, but .e.g you won't get on-site support everywhere. But well, with Apple you can't even get that in your home area, so yeah...)
If you pay enough (I only checked commercial ProSupport Plus[2]) you get service and support anywhere where Dell is selling that product [1], as long as you travel less than 6 Months.
Yes. I have had next-day on-site support for Thinkpads in Europa, South Africa and the US. For devices not necessarily purchased in that country. The only question I got was with a German Thinkpad in the US when the power brick failed: "Do you want the replacement with the European plug or the US plug?". Everything else was fixed promptly without any questions or issues with warranty status. And no Thinkpads don't fail that often, I just have used them for more than 20 years.
Looks like they use their Mac a lot judging by all the projects they're working on.
I have a strategy that is common to all hackers / nerds / technophiles and that is: having multiple devices for different things.
It's common to see in hacker circles: This laptop is for gaming. This other laptop is for freelancing & business. My other laptop is for toying / tinkering etc
You can extend that list to probably 10 devices if you're serious enough about compartmenting your digital life. I have long since used a single device for everything that I work on.
* Surface Go Tablet used for reading around the house, light travel, etc.
* Personal Dell laptop used for longer travel
* Old desktop converted to a server for running services I always need up.
* A rpi 3b used for running services I want to physically separate from the internet accessible main server.
I've considered repurposing some old hardware I have laying around into a htpc type thing for gaming/emulation on my TV, but that's on hold right now due to GPU pricing.
So I'm not far off 7. Other tech-heavy users may have seperate devices for their spouse/kids, or dedicated devices for specific OSes (my main workstation is a dual boot, my laptop is linux only and the tablet is windows only). So I can see a path to 10 for others.
Similar here- work provides MB Pro and Dell Laptop and workstation and iPhone/iPad. Personal iPhone/iPad Pro, self built gaming PC, Linux Xeon lab server, a couple Pis, M1 and Intel Mac Minis, random assortment of laptop/iMacs/iPads/self built PCs for other family member use.
I don't want to yuck anyone's yum but the thought of maintaining, keeping charged, finding room for and managing data on so many computers sounds like a nightmare to me.
1 closet server desktop (also old, but runs terraria servers just fine)
On my desk, I use 2 HDMI switches and a USB 3.0 switch to use the same peripherals and monitors for both my work laptop and gaming desktop. At the end of the day, I just hit the buttons on the switches to toggle to my desktop.
I have a USB-C dock that the work laptop plugs into. If i ever want to do work for my side project, I can unplug my work-provided laptop and plug in my personal laptop, and have the same setup as before -- just with a different machine.
Even just keeping software updates, backups, and your personal data up to date on both a laptop and a desktop can be frustrating. Two Macs could be doable because of the level of syncing that iCloud provides, but I'd probably still need Screen Sharing every once in a while!
I've used a single MacBook Pro for all my work for the last 10 or so years with no problems. I highly doubt this is the reason. Plus, if you have 3 devices and extend their lifetime by 3x, it's the same as having 1 device which gets replaced more often ;)
Yes. My laptop is where I do all my work. Since I work remote a lot, I try to stick to as few devices as possible. Having a MacBook where I can also run Windows and Linux as VMs when I need to, has been a huge benefit.
Yeah, you described my computing approach. Including a couple tiny PCs like Raspberry Pi, etc. there are currently 12 computers in the room I'm sitting in (only 3 are powered on), and this is just my "office" -- not the "computer museum" I have in another room which probably has 30+ computers of varying sorts. Each has a different purpose, different OS, different architecture, made in a different decade, etc. :)
> I have a strategy [...]: having multiple devices for different things.
> I have long since used a single device [...]
I'm not sure which you're suggesting then?
I understand the desire to compartmentalise... I just think real life's too blurry, and then it gets annoying at the edges - oh I had this problem on my other one, how did I solve it again? etc.
I definitely agree with this strategy, but try to limit it to mainly 2 primary systems, and maybe a couple older repurposed systems. Basically I have one for my professional life, one for my personal life, and an old laptop dedicated as a tv streamer.
But I don't travel much, and if I did I would probably only have one primary system.
That's my take, although I don't own $1000 worth of computers all added together.
I'm always surprised when people use laptops for professional work as I've always had great honkin' company-supplied desktop machines. Generally, if something breaks (which is super rare) the main cost is the time to rebuild an environment.
Do you... regularly carry around like six laptops, then? Even carrying two sounds like a hassle, my husband had to do that for a while due to a single stupid time clock app installed on a corporate laptop that was too locked down to get the rest of his work done on.
I use multiple devices, mostly desktops with varying specs. They run off the same Ubuntu master image, primarily use network storage, and are managed with Landscape for updates and so forth. Now there are times when I will need to use my GPU workstation, and others times where an old C2Q would suffice for web browsing. In general though, I can sit down on any machine and start working right away in a consistent enviroment.
Those machines are getting old, and I've been considering upgrading my server and using a VDI solution instead. Or maybe it's time to switch to a more mobile option...
Interesting. I've owned macbooks since 2010 non stop and each one has last 4-5yrs, upgraded only because I wanted something faster (ending in M1 which is incredibly solid).
You may be triggering some hardware failure vector given the frequent pressurization/depressurization associated with travel (particularly if you don't check in the laptop?).
I've never quite seen a repair history like this! Does your MacBook get crushed inside of bag/backpack often? Subject to unusually high temperatures, cold, or sunlight? Any weird power issues at your home? Very curious :D
Thule's Gauntlet cases are great but in your case, maybe a Pelican laptop box could work too.
Haha, nope. It's perfectly fine and undamaged. I work remote a lot, coffee shops, cafes, coworking spaces, airplanes. So it moves a lot. No unusually high temperatures.
I always use a soft case when I put it in my backpack for extra protection. Heat might be an issue though, especially if the laptop is hot and goes into my backpack directly.
Maybe I should consider a Pelican case now that my APP has expired... and maybe install some fans as well...
> especially if the laptop is hot and goes into my backpack directly.
I'd found MANY times that simply closing one of the more recent MacBooks (2019?) would not actually put it to sleep. I would close it, put it in my bag, then... hours later, find it was overly hot, still running, perhaps with 10% battery left. 2008 MB, 2012 MBP, 2015 MBP - never ever had this problem. I'm sure I overheated my 2019 MBP far more often than it was designed for.
Back in the day, when I was working at a PC repair shop, you'd see every kind of laptop come in. People would bring in Mac laptops, and then just open the lid up on the service desk and it would wake up immediately like it was still running! After all my experience with Windows PCs, I would be shocked that people would just shut the lid and put them away.
We all knew that you'd never just suspend or sleep a PC laptop and put it in your bag. It would always wake up, or not go completely to sleep, and you'd end up with a toasted laptop.
Meanwhile, every single Mac brought in had no trouble sleeping. They never overheated in a bag. The Mac owners never powered them off, always just shut the lid and put them in the bag. I'd never seen one overheat in a bag. Tons of Macs would come across the service desk, and never one overheated. Nobody ever shut them down to transport them either. They would reliably suspend / sleep every time you shut the lid.
Lately though, and I don't even work in a repair shop, I see Macs overheating in in other people's bags. I hear the fans soaring on them constantly. Mine doesn't suspend / resume properly either. They really aren't built as well as they used to be, IMO. I don't trust it to just sleep properly when I shut the lid, so it always gets powered off before it gets put away in a bag.
I think one thing I did sometimes would precede the 'no sleep Mac' thing. I'd have an external monitor connected, then disconnect it. Looking back, I did notice that often disconnecting a monitor would mean... it might take 20+ seconds for the OS to be 'normal' again. If I waited for a minute after removing a monitor, the sleep would seem to work. Disconnecting at office and putting in the bag... it never really went back to 'one screen' mode, and I presume continued to think an external monitor was connected.
I can't say that's behind all the events, but thinking back on it more, I know that was a repeating scenario.
I have had this issue on my previous 2015 MBP, and haven't had it on the 2018 device I now use, for what it's worth. The 2015 would also wake up from sleep (presumably for updates?) while in my laptop bag, so I resorted to doing a full shut down at the end of a work day.
Do you use one of those apps that keeps your screen open? Caffeine.app and the like? Some of those used to be notorious for keeping the laptop awake when the lid was closed.
If you do move it around a lot it could be repeated flex stress? You would not even see it unless you got the thing under microscope. Even then it may be fine but one small part in the middle of board may cause other issues that cascade?
Airplanes man… my 15” MBP 2015 would always make this case cracking sound when the plane reached a specific altitude. It had some battery swell, not noticeable.
I own an XPS and had in-home service. I called dell and we agreed my keyboard needs to be replaced. A few days later a guy shows up at my door and replaces the keyboard. I never had to go anywhere. Obviously, the mileage might vary if you travel outside of the us.
But......again....that many repairs are downright scary.
There is also one anecdotal fact I want to add about apple. I have been told that apple is so amazing because they build hardware/software. I was tired of samsung bloat and only 2 years of OS updates. So, I switched.......I am having many weird bugs with the apple watch not syncing properly. Safari freezing on some sites, and some of these issues are quite widespread.
I just hate people who drink the koolaid, there is a similar problem when it comes to seeking opinion about cars. Some people just become part of the cult and will go above and beyond to justify buying a certain product.
I miss the old days of online nerds before "marketing" teams realized they can really advertise through social media and now you can't even tell what is real.
A few days?! Is this not a major problem for you? The author is right - a great thing about Apple is I can pop into a store in many cities around the world and just get things sorted. In some random
city in another country with a conference the next day? No problem.
No, I can just use an external keyboard. The service was normally the next day but they didn't have a keyboard for my machine available, so it needed to be shipped. No problem for me.
I had a US keyboard fixed in London same day (3 hours), no charge. I didn't even have AppleCare. I was a bit surprised, although... London ... big international city - having US keyboards probably isn't out of the realm of possibility. This was... 2009(?) - things may have changed a bit over the years, but that was one of those things that stuck with me.
Dell, as well as the other OEMs, do offer better warranty SLAs for replacement hardware. I've had techs show up with replacement hardware within 18 hours of contacting support.
I had to wait for parts as well. For example, Taiwan and Japan didn't have a Swedish top-case so they had to order one. It took about a week. But I could keep the laptop while they were waiting for the part to arrive. Once it arrived I went back and they fixed it within 24 hours.
I had Apple replace the battery in my Macbook about 6 months ago and it took two days. There was a minimum 24 hour time frame for them to just diagnose that in fact, they needed to replace the battery.
I went to an Apple authorised service centre in India to repair an iPad screen that was not broken but was not displaying properly. I was told that Apple in India doesn't repair iPad at all. If it is under warranty, they just replace it. Otherwise you are out of luck as no replacement parts are available! Obviously, I wasn't impressed at all.
On the other hand, Intel once replaced a CPU for me (out of warranty) for free (they shipped it from Singapore to India). It was an old CPU (5+ years) and I never thought they would respond to my complain about it.
When one of my Western Digital HDD conked out under warranty, Western Digital asked me if I wanted the replacement drive shipped from the US (as I had purchased it there, and they had a newer model which they offered) or from India (where I was at that time, and had the same model in stock).
I think Apple are coasting on the brand perception that they built from back in the day. 10 years ago, Apple was genuinely ahead of competition in terms of reliability but today other software and hardware manufacturers have caught up or surpassed them.
At this point, the OS is the only thing I'm really hooked on.
And ElementaryOS has been coming along fairly well, so I'm hopeful than in ~5 years they'll have something I can fully switch over to for my work computer. Right now, I just use it for my gaming/media pc.
Not just surpassed them, but when you compare Apples to apples, their professional hardware today is utter dogshit.
The most glaring example I can think of is that the Mac Pro isn't built seemingly for anyone. For $6000 you can build a VFX workstation with an overpriced(!) top-of-the-line threadripper and RTX 3090 and 1TB Samsung SSD which performs more than 4 times faster than their $13,000 highest-end CPU configuration. So what has ended up happening? A lot of studios are simply buying high-end PC prebuilts or the studios are building their own systems now for desktop-side compute.
For that price you get 256 GB and some AMD $150 equivalent graphics card, which is worse than what you'd get off some random laptop today.
Even studios have budgets. I don't care about spending $6-15k for business hardware per inventory unit, plus you're not purchasing it frequently or in mass orders.
The problem I and a lot of other firms have is the value you're getting for it. It's utter garbage, and has been all over the press for years now, so it's not exactly news.
When big studios and little firms alike are complaining and asking, "Who exactly is this for?" It's clear they don't care about mass professional market consumption. And I'm talking about businesses that are going to spend over $6000 per desktop-compute unit.
The organizations that I have seen are the only relevant customers are the ones who have deep Apple-centric workflows, and they're not buying a lot of the hardware. They might have under 10 units in the office at most.
If the prices were more inline with what the rest of the hardware market looked like, I'd provide Mac Pros to each staff member because it would be a no-brainer.
For our business, there isn't a difference in between $6 or $15k, but most businesses aren't spending more than $15k per desktop-side compute station even when we max out specs from our partner suppliers, because for that type of budget you can work with very large amounts of data that hit RAM limits on workstation motherboards, versus just large amounts of RAM on consumer motherboards.
Apple's software quality has absolutely tanked over the past 4 years or so. I've gone from 100% Apple devices (starting with a G3 in 1997) to zero as of about 2019 as I got sick of dealing with all the bugs.
My company has thousands of Macbooks. I've never heard of anything remotely similar.
My current laptop is a 2016 model. No repairs needed, ever. Only now the battery is complaining. Not even the butterfly keyboard gave me any issues. It's likely the only repair it will ever need is the battery. Or maybe not even that, it's overdue for a replacement due to age. But works just fine.
I also have a 2015 model. Also fine. Dropped it in concrete. A small dent. Totally fine.
Unless quality has significantly degraded, this sounds like a bad unit/batch.
Well FWIW, I have a Retina MBP that's close to ten years old. It's been on 24 hours a day, almost everyday since the day I bought it. It's travelled with me to different countries, endured extreme humidity in some areas of the world, and is still running reasonably well today. I've had a lot of computers over the past few decades and it's IMO the best computer I've owned. I skipped out a few generations of MBP's because I didn't feel the need to upgrade.
A few years ago, I bought an XPS because I wanted a PC and it was underwhelming considering I treated it with a lot of extra care. I experienced various bugs running simple games. The fans would go into overdrive despite keeping the drivers up-to-date, raising the laptop to give good airflow, and no graphic intensive program running.
Ultimately, I think it's a bit of a luck of the draw. I don't doubt there are people who have horrible experiences with any brand.
I know, which is why I felt compelled to comment. Most business class dell machines and XPS can be purchased with next day in-home service. This beats going to a apple store for me.
Like I said in the post, Dell refused to offer any sort of service while I wasn't in the country I had purchased my laptop. I don't know if that's changed, but that was a complete deal breaker for me back then.
I thought it was funny that being unable to replace Dell battery while traveling in Japan is seen worse than having crashing and overheating macbook for 2.5 months + all the other problems.
Honestly the swollen battery made me fear for my life any time I used it. On planes it would swell so much (even when turned off) that the keyboard almost popped out.
I mean any manufacturer will have some unlucky streaks. i've had a few macbooks and all of them are going strong still. some are 15 years old. slower than they were but hopefully they last a while longer.
> I miss the old days of online nerds before "marketing" teams realized they can really advertise through social media and now you can't even tell what is real.
Yeah, true. When I was new to HN, I had a minor altercation with some mod here because I posted a reply to a particular comment that the poster seemed to be doing paid marketing / shilling for Apple. My comment was deleted and I was reminded that as per HN community rules, I cannot accuse anyone of such things. Annoyed, I replied to the mod that it seemed obvious that the post was paid social media marketing. Someone (I don't remember if it was the mod or another fellow member of HN) pointed out that if the same logic was applied to my critical and negative posts about Apple, someone could make an argument that too was paid social media marketing by Apple's competitors. I was honestly stumped for a moment because negative campaigns are a fact too (e.g. politicians do a lot of negative campaigning through social media; the Chinese are aggressively known to do such kind of negative campaigning by posting negative reviews of their competitors product on Amazon).
That said, it does happen on HN too. It would be unreasonable to expect otherwise - the kind of high net worth / IT influential crowd that comes to HN is the very market that Apple (and others) target.
I have a 2018 Macbook Pro that had 1" of the touchbar stop working. I was quoted 1500 to replace it(did not have apple care as the 4 previous macbook pros never needed it) So I instead bought a new macbook pro and gave this one to my son. 6 months later the touchbar magically fixed itself... I really really really hate the touchbar.
Same, with roughly the same ridiculous quote. 2019 MBP touchbar died just a week out of warranty. Had it have completely died I would have been happier than the persistent flickering it now does. In spite of thousands of such reported problems, my understanding is that Apple refuses to acknowledge it as a defect.
My macbook from 2011 had recently a fan replaced, it cost me £10 on ebay. My ASUS and Dell (each for ~£350) from 2009 are still running, have only upgraded RAM and SSD. It's your fault for buying new Macbooks.
I'm back to my 2012 now. After the battery was on its last legs I upgraded last year to a 2020 air, figuring 8 years was a pretty good run. The air bricked itself just out of warrenty, and I'm back to the 2012 with a fresh battery (since you could still replace it yourself on these macs). Its honestly just as performant as that 2020 air since I gave it an SSD and 16gb RAM a few years ago. Not sure why I even upgraded, I'm planning on just shelling out for the repair bill then giving the 2020 laptop to my parents who are on 2006 era hand me downs still.
Jesus, that sounds terrible! I feel lucky my own MBP 2015 has fared without much problems although I did drop it once it which caused the bottom cover's screws pop out one by one in half a year. Bottom cover replacement + replacing a swollen battery (which naturally requires replacing the keyboard) have been the only repairs I've had to do. And charger. I feel the charger wires could be a lot sturdier.
But I hope I'll get at least 5 years more out of it. Although buying a new cool M2 MBP sounds tempting I feel for me there is no particular reason to do so. If I can run an editor, Chrome, some Docker containers and the laptop works well, I feel work-wise I'm pretty much set.
Certainly the OS updates will stop at some point which conveniently will then phase out my MBP. Oh well.
The 2015 MacBook Pro was an absolute tank for me. I recently replaced it with an M1 Air, which so far has been incredible. Dare I say the best laptop I have ever used. The keyboard is great, even better than the 2015 pro and Touch ID is great to have as well.
I think Apple has learned some lessons, they fixed the keyboards, they added a physical Touch ID button, and it seems like the divisive Touch Bar is probably going to fade away, or at least be optional.
I think OSX could use an update that focuses on power users and the finder, but other than that I am pretty happy with the current state of the Mac.
Agreed - I've used virtually all the variants starting back with Powerbooks. I think the 2015 MBP Retina was the most durable, reliable machine I've personally used.
My only complaint is non-upgradable RAM - if it had upgradable RAM, I'd keep using mine well into the future.
Damn, and I thought I've had to take my 13" 2016 Pro in for a lot of repairs. There's a design flaw that makes it chew through batteries every 8-16 months and I just had to have a week-long involuntary vacation while they shipped it off to a repair center in another case, where the entire top half of the case got replaced for the third time.
This is the most expensive Mac I've owned in like 18y of using the things, even before I count the fact that only one of those battery replacements happened before the extended warranty ran out, and estimate the cost of several unplanned vacations.
My next machine will probably be a 2022 Air; I had a succession of Intel Airs that gave me very little trouble before this battery-devouring Pro. I'm hoping their solidity has survived the transition to Apple silicon.
I think its absurd that apple stopped doing a lot of repairs in store, but still doesn't offer you a loaner computer imaged from yours. Clearly, people are using these computers for work.
Charging the battery over 80% produces more heat and degradesvits lifetime, did you ran it plugged in all the time? My phones manufacturer stops at 90 but i installed an alarm to pull the plug earlier.
I ran it exactly the same way I ran the several Mac laptops that preceded it: unplugged in cafes, unplugged in parks, and closed while plugged into the external monitor on my desk. It’s rare for it to spend more than a couple days plugged in, even during the pandemic. The exact same usage pattern that produced a slow, multi-year decline in battery capacity in every other machine resulted in the 2016 Pro suddenly starting to shut down completely while it thought 20-60% of the battery capacity remained. SMC/PRAM resets did nothing, “recalibration” did nothing.
2016 Pros eat batteries, and while Apple acknowledged this enough to pay for one battery replacement, they’ve still hit me for an annoyingly large amount of repair cost, plus downtime, plus the annoyance of work lost due to unexpected shutdowns before I say “oh god it’s doing this again” and start getting insanely aggressive about saving.
Sounds like a defective machine. I'm surprised Apple didn't just give them a new one after the 2nd or 3rd repair.
That said, looking at the keyboard condition makes me think it was in some pretty harsh conditions. My 2012 17" keys still look almost new.
I've only had a single experience where I had to repair my Mac in ~8 laptops, which was my Apple M1 aAr that died from plugging in a third party USB-C adapter (multiple reports of this happening).
MacBooks are great machines, but once you need repairs for a fairly new one, you'd better hope you sprung for Apple Care.
I recently had a MacBook that wouldn't start. I'm decent with computer repair and have a modest background in it, but let the safety screws dissuade me from opening it.
I brought it to a repair store where they said it had water damage, which was what I anticipated. I'm guessing they saw that the humidity dots had been triggered, which were probably due to my laptop being in humid conditions at some point beforehand, as I think the water just barely got into a port via condensation from a nearby object.
They called back saying that the water damage repair would come to $850 level, as they observed "significant corrosion" inside the chassis. That's maybe just under a third of what the machine costs retail, but there's not really another option at this point.
Then I got it back, with all of my data in place, which struck me as odd - anything of value is soldered onto the mainboard. If there were "significant corrosion", everything would have been trashed, and the repair probably would have been much more expensive. They definitely weren't going to migrate data from the old mainboard to a new one for free, as that's a whole other racket that's enabled through these monolithically architectured machines.
At the end of the day, I felt kind of ripped off and knew that if something like this were to happen again, I had no other recourse other than to give it a shot on my own. Given how clumsy I tend to be, that'll probably happen sooner rather than later, so I kind of see my machine as a liability at this point.
I think I'm going to give the Framework laptop a shot, though I'll miss MacOS.
PS: Had a really good time repairing a friend's 2012 MBP recently, though. With a replacement SSD, new battery, and another stick of ram, it feels like a capable machine without too much time or money sunk into it.
I just replaced the battery myself in my 2012 macbook pro and I'm so happy with my battery life now, the replacement had a higher capacity than even the OEM (that apple no longer sells). A full charge with a top off during lunch lasts me a full day now. I've never seen this computer run for longer than three and a half hours, now it goes for double that.
2012 MacBook Pro with retina screen here too. I've replaced the battery twice, and I've had 2 SSDs going dead, but other than that it's still going strong. I love the screen, I love the keyboard, I just wish I didn't cheap out on 8MB of RAM when I bought it.
My 2011 was still in service too until a year or so ago, but I lent it to someone and they didn’t notice the battery swelling. It popped the track pad right out and must have damaged something else in the process because even with trackpad and battery replaced (by me with a quick YouTube tutorial, probably the last ever time I’ll ever fix an apple product myself) it still won’t turn on. RIP. You did your time.
I have a gripe with every Macbook Pro I've owned, and I've owned 4 of them over the last 10 years.
They all lag when I type. I hit a key, and it takes a while before it shows up on screen. The effect is at its worst in Safari, but it shows up most everywhere else as well.
Sometimes, I'll type a few letters or even words before they start showing up. Doesn't matter if I wipe the machine and reinstall, and Apple has never been able to resolve it for any of their machines I've owned.
I do type faster than average, but I don't think it is humanly possible to type fast enough to make a proper computer lag. This has never been an issue on any of my concurrently owned Windows/Linux machines. Only on Mac, and on every single Mac.
The only thing that lags from time to time on my M1 is opening a Safari tab. Recently did a clean install to get rid of some 10 year Time Machine backup cruft I accrued and it's gone. I've owned 3 in the past 10 years and none of them lag when pressing a key not even my wife's white MacBook with a HD.
Switch to firefox, there are extensions to put tabs in the background so it feels lightweight whether you have 1 tab or 1001. All of apples reported efficiencies with safari just wash away when you compare it to the performance of firefox with tab suspension and ublock origin considering the modern web.
I just wish there was some interoperability with the tab syncing and password management features in Safari. I know that isn’t on Mozilla, but having to migrate the massive iCloud database of all my passwords and give up tab syncing to my phone makes switching to Firefox a hard sell.
Just put you tabs into bookmark folders for later use. For dev work I understand how one could need a lot of tabs but I just bookmark them into a folder.
The M1 Macs I tried at the store are the first ones where I'm not sure if there is a lag or not. I'm planning on upgrading once the M-series Macs have at least 32gb of ram, so I'll see at that point.
I've noticed this too: at first on my friend's hackintosh, which I just chalked up to a bad kext or something. I was pretty surprised to find that the used MBP I bought also exhibited the behavior. Touch-typing on it feels like I'm fat fingering a Nokia keypad, with how frequently I need to delete and try again.
My CapsLock key (mapped to Esc because I am a Doom Emacs User) gets really slow over days. Like in ~4 seconds to register. A reboot fixed the delay. But it degrades again.
Happened twice. Thankfully, after the last reboot, it seems to be holding.
I map it the same way to caps lock and experience exactly the same you describe. I noticed after the last patch a few weeks ago it went away for now. Been driving me nuts until.
Have you applied the 11.5.2 update? The Caps Lock slowness/beach ball issue seems to be related to the high WindowServer CPU issue and has gone away for me since I applied 11.5.2.
I was running an MBP for work and running Doom Emacs got me the exact same issue, that would spread to everything. Luckily I was up for a new machine before things got to bad and on the new Dell Percision I haven't had any issues (after I installed Ubuntu on it)
For me it's the '0' key on my numpad on an external keyboard. Takes up to 500ms to be scanned. All other keys have input lag, but are scanned instantly.
Keyboard works flawless on Linux. Really weird. Wondering if the '0'key is somehow scanned in software on Mac.
Hmmm.. FWIW, I type at like 130wpm (I have won typing competitions), and have never experienced frequent text-input latency on my Macs (I've used Macs since the mid-80's). Only intermittent due to obvious things like CPU-intensive operations in progress.
Did you see it happening on really "simple" applications like Terminal? What's crazy to me is how you saw it happening on a fresh OS install... had you installed any other software? Or any kind of customization to settings, locale, stuff like that? Curious how that could be happening!
Fresh is "fresh but with IntelliJ and a large project open", but without all the background NGINX etc installed.
Once one app starts lagging, they all lag. Terminal, TextEdit, Safari, Notes, IntelliJ, everything.
I'm well north of 130wpm, but I don't think that matters for the issues that my Macs have had to deal with, as I used to be well below 130wpm and still experienced such issues.
Lots of slowly accumulated, deliberate practice here and there over many years. monkeytype.com is probably the best site for typing right now. And I just destroyed so many of bits of anonymity haha.
For me, chatting online for hours on end since ~1997. My impatience to get a message out naturally resulted in typing faster.. I also played piano since childhood which I'm sure helped.
I've got the same issue, I'm a relatively slow typer (90WPM) but every now and then the Mac just becomes so slow and typing everywhere is lagged. It usually happens when I'm working on the frontend of our app which has a javascript 3D engine in it, and the editor is visual studio code, so I was just assuming it was some weird Blink engine problem.
Hmmm.. I run IntellJ IDEA on my 2013 MBP and I don't experience system-wide text-entry latency. Though, to be fair my version of IDEA is pretty old (2016.2)
We have hundreds of engineers at work who all use the same apps on latest MacBook Pros.
There have been zero reports of widespread lagging which clearly indicates that there is some problem with your setup. IntelliJ is the likely candidate especially if you are doing Scala or Kotlin development.
Wow. Full time Mac user with a very, very high typing speed (consistently tested at 90+ WPM), and I have never had a keyboard lag issue with a Mac. Sure, I've had piggy apps -- usually web apps -- create lags, but that's happened on lots of systems, not just Macs.
If my Macs couldn't keep up with my typing, I'd have kicked them to the curb a LONG LONG LONG time ago.
I am quite a bit above 90 wpm. Almost exactly double for sustained (1 min+), and more than that for burst.
My theory is that the Intel macs generate too much heat for the chassis to handle (I'm currently on a 16" 2019), especially when being used by IntelliJ in projects with many files, having additional dev stuff running in the background, and with an external monitor connected.
Additionally, I perceive more lag on the Mac itself than on the external monitor, so I think there is a component that is due to the slow speed of the Macbook Pro display.
Wow, it's pretty interesting that you took the time to challenge the statement without actually verifying that you are correct.
You are, of course, wrong. Cursory googling will show average typing speed to be about half the figure I noted. I've never worked with anyone who typed as quickly as I can, and I've been working quite a while.
But hey, at least you got to drop a dig in about adverbs, so you've got that going for you.
I don't see any adverbs in the post being referred to, making it even more pointless. "Speed" is a noun, not a verb. "Time" is also a noun, so in both cases we're looking at adjectives.
I recommend expanding your web search just a little farther... 90 WPM is not considered "very, very high"!
90 WPM is ok, certainly above average. But please don't take it personally, I was just scrolling through the comments and saw what I thought was a typo, and if not, thought I'd share my perspective. 120WPM can be considered "fast".
If 90 WPM is "very, very fast" then what about those at 120 or 150?
I've noticed the same thing on my 2019 16". In my case, at least, it seems to happen only when the integrated GPU is in use. If I force the discrete GPU to be used, it doesn't happen. I've been able to reproduce this on fresh installs with no third party apps installed or running.
It's incredibly frustrating, and just one more thing to add to the pile of annoyances that I have with Apple products lately.
This exact issue shows up when I type in Terminal, and it makes me annoyed every time.
I used to have this on my work computer, and through some debugging tools that are not available publically or on macOS, I was able to track it down to my shell spawning a git process very frequently; until you mentioned this I suspected that this was the case on my MBP as well.
Could it be that this is just generally true? I don't remember this on my 2014 MBP, just my new 2019 16" MBP. Supposedly the latter is a more powerful machine.
It's gotten so bad that I frequently consider wiping my computer and seeing whether it'll be fixed with a new environment.
I wonder if it could be the hardware acceleration? Hardware acceleration can be weird at times and cause strange behaviors. They are not always consistent across all computers. I couldn't find the information if there is a way to disable the hardware acceleration in Safari.
That’s the most extreme repair run I’ve seen. Like some others have said, there could be something that’s damaging them.
I know exactly what damaged my battery so that now it recommends battery service: Overheating using An external monitor and chrome tabs. The thermal management at higher cpu of this 3 year old MacBook Pro is bad but browsers are needlessly resource intensive.
After about six months of ignoring how hot it was getting the battery notice started. A while later it would shut off at around 40% battery. But I still put off replacing the battery and magically after an OS update it no longer shuts off at 40%, and goes all the way down as it should. I assume the update included some throttling if the battery isn’t providing adequate current.
tldr: My Mac has battery issues and I know the exact cause. There string of defects you’ve had seem statistically unlikely as pure random ones while not impossible. There may be something causing them.
It's absolutely ridiculous that Macs don't come with a 3 year warranty by default.
I've bought maybe a dozen macs in the last 15 years (for myself and the family) and while some have lasted many years without issues, some have died on me on the second or third year.
Because the initial investment is so high you're practically forced to add extra Apple Care to protect it because there's a 20-30% chance you will have problems during those first years.
And don't get me started on design issues and recalls which take years. When my 2011 MBP died because of Radeongate it took Apple 2 years to start a recall and replace the GPU. The honest thing to do would have been to take the machine and offer 60% of its value in credit towards a new Mac. Instead, Apple replaced the GPU on a machine that was already a couple of gens behind and I couldn't sell without practically giving it away because (rightfully) nobody wanted the 15'' 2011 models. That MBP was probably the worst investment of my life.
In the EU, there's a _seller_ obligation for 2 years for items in the same class as laptop to ensure they are free from defects and fit for purpose. It won't help you if _you_ break your laptop, and after 6 months the burden of proof in the event of a dispute switches from the seller to the buyer, but I feel like pretty much all the issues the OP encountered would be covered under this.
A lot of add on warranties don't cover much more than this anyway, which makes them much harder to justify here.
My macbook air died one month out of the yearlong warranty. In their troubleshooting at the apple store they managed to wipe the device and still couldn't breath life into it or figure out what happened. >$400 flat rate repair and they didn't even offer me a loaner in the mean time while the computer was mailed off. I would think apple could compete on customer service with the shade tree mechanic and their loaner car but I guess not.
I had the opposite experience. My macbook air battery was dying, so I paid the $129 to replace it. When I got the computer back, it wouldn't charge. So, they replaced the motherboard. I got it back and it still wouldn't charge - so they handed me a brand-new next-gen macbook air. Inconvenient, sure, but exceeded my expectations. I've found they've been generous with battery replacements.
I've found the opposite. Before that computer bricked itself I noticed capacity was fading fast. Apparently apples threshold was if you are under 85% within a year of ownership you have a defective battery, according to the customer service agent I was chatting with. So they had me open up system profiler and we confirmed my battery was well within threshold for replacement, and they set me up with an appointment. I took it to the apple store and told them what the Apple customer service representative told me about the battery being defective. They ended up running a battery test using their internal tooling and surprise surprise, it turned out a different capacity number than system profiler said I had, and it happened to be just above the threshold for replacement. 1 year of use for full time work should not mean losing 15% of your battery capacity, but evidently according to apple this was in spec.
This is why I either buy Applecare or equivalent (depending on product) if it's mission critical, or buy using a card that extends the warranty by at least one year, such as the Chase Sapphire cards.
Charge it to a credit card and then the charge will get reversed when you return the item, and you won't have to worry about it. Just providing a solution here that works easily (not that the problem and solution need to exist).
My experience with Dell laptops seems to match up with your experience on the MBP. If something is going to fail, it will usually fail immediately or last the "lifetime" of the device. Batteries being the main exception as those age out fast ..
I'm actually becoming a fan of factory refurbished for these same reasons. I'd rather have something that's been shaken down, repaired for the problems that appeared, recertified, and shipped back out.
Depends on the manufacturer. I've had good luck with Dell's refurbs and outlet store over the years.
On the other hand I bought a refurb projector from BenQ and it was straight up junk. The focusing mechanism breaks easily. It's quite clear this is a design flaw, I assume a gear that's weak plastic that should be something more durable instead. I've sent it back twice now to have it fixed, paying shipping each time under their terms. The last time I got it back it died with just 15 hours of use. It's clear they knew this thing was a straight up lemon and just used their refurb program to dump the product. It certainly means I'll never touch another BenQ product so long as I live.
The one thing I really miss about my Dell laptop is being able to call support and having them overnight ship replacement parts so the tech can come over to my place the next afternoon and fix it. The next available service appointment for someone at the Apple Store to take a look at my MacBook Pro’s malfunctioning keyboard won’t be until 4:20PM next week.
> Because the initial investment is so high you're practically forced to add extra Apple Care to protect it because there's a 20-30% chance you will have problems during those first years.
Here's the inverse argument: it's absolutely ridiculous I have to pay 20-30% extra for my Macbook even though I don't care about the mandatory 3-year warranty. They should let me opt out for a discount!
Well, they do.
> you're practically forced to add extra Apple Care
Are you really pro-freedom (see argument above), or just anti-Apple?
Or, you know, it's absolutely ridiculous that they sell broken stuff and then want to charge you more for you to receive a working product that you paid for in the first place. Maybe they should try to engineer things so that they don't break within a reasonable time frame under normal wear&tear. Would save money for both themselves and the customer in the end.
> Maybe they should try to engineer things so that they don't break within a reasonable time frame under normal wear&tear. Would save money for both themselves and the customer in the end.
You sound pretty confident, but just think about this: do you really know more about how Apple should be run than all of their executives combined, or is there a false assumption here?
If you make them guarantee it for three years (or perhaps five) you give them a stronger incentive to build it to last, and you can be sure it’s going to last that long. There’s a strong environmental (public good) aspect to this, so no, you should not be able to opt out.
I find it even more ridiculous that big items like fridges, ovens, and washing machines are also often only guaranteed one year. I think a ten year minimum would be reasonable for white goods.
Why stop at 10? Is there some mechanical threshold we can't design around at that point? I'd propose 20 years should be the minimum.. unless you hate the environment.
The irony in these 'demands' is that this would simply serve to further entrench Apple in its market position, since if you legislated for increasing the cost of doing business tenfold like this, you'd shut out any competitor that wasn't flush with the cash to make it happen.
Of course, legislators know this and that's why it won't happen unless it becomes much more economically feasible than it is today.
I don’t think it would increase Apple’s cost of doing business anything like tenfold, partly because my experience is that Apple’s products usually last.
It might increase costs more for cheap and shoddy vendors, which is kind of the point — you want to rule out making cheap crap that breaks as a point of competition — but again I’d be surprised if the increase was anything like as big as that.
I’d much rather save $$$ than to pay everyone else’s repair bills.
That said - its just ridiculous how much Apple charges for individual a-la-carte repairs. Or rather lack thereof - they’d just say replace the entire motherboard or display.
I'm not anti Apple at all. I'm using an iMac right now and I also use an iPad Pro daily.
What I'm saying is, Macs should include 3 years of warranty at current prices. If Macs had the reliability of iPads and iPhones it would make more sense to not get the extended warranty.
it's true, ggp's claim of "20-30% chance you will have problems during those first years." is not based in data. if that was the rate, the cost of the extended warranty (apple care) would be much higher.
>It's absolutely ridiculous that Macs don't come with a 3 year warranty by default.
Government should mandate that, as in does in other countries.
But many american consumers don't believe in government rules about consumer protection, lest some of this "innovation" we've witnessed is discouraged...
OP seem to pay this premium indirectly anyway. So I guess people would pay that premium.
Like they pay premium for mac's anyway. The regulation for warranty just means sellers need to actually provide the quality the brand induces
Thats why apple would eat most or all of the cost without passing it on to consumers or would make more reliable laptops. The laptops are already priced at what the market would bear and apple makes huge profits.
Nah. You're forgetting that that this is Apple. There would be an announcement that for new Macs you will be required to purchase 3 years of AppleCare+ to have the best possible experience. People will bitch for a few months but eventually it'll die down and Apple will get to market the current price as the base price while charing 30% more.
Hard to say. Apple is often able to release new products at insane price points, but to reprice existing products is more dicey, especially when laptops are one of their most expensive products on offer. I think you have something of a point: Apple products are mostly aimed at people with lots of disposable income, but raising the price still reduces the total addressable market size. The only way to know is to run the experiment.
What Apple does is they make a new model or add a big feature to the latest model and drastically increase the price. You can see that with the iPhone X, the iPad Pro, and with the introduction of the retina macbook pro's, or even with the touchbars. Apple knows how to increase prices and keep the vast majority of their customer base.
You're right, but the iPhone X is well below the price point of their Macbook Pros (closer to Macbook Airs though). Their flexibility is reduced the higher the absolute price point goes. At a certain point, people really can't spend that money.
Over here we have a 2 years mandatory warranty, and most if not all of the price difference can be explained by the displayed prices including VAT and dollar -> euro conversion.
Now, it only covers defects, but that’s what most warranties do.
This is done for all items sold to consumers in New Zealand.
A base MacBook is US $999 in the US and NZ $1749 in New Zealand, which is approximately US $1200. Your maths checks out.
The tiny market, currency fluctuations and long shipping route probably factor in the price too, but our legislation is surely the prime reason for the cost.
I absolutely love the consumer guarantees act we have here, and the protection it gives.
Edit: NZ has 15% sales tax and this is missing from the above equation. It accounts for most the difference.
I think you're forgetting VAT, which in NZ, I think, is 13%. Not sure if there are import tariffs/duties to account for too.
Considering all these other costs, I reckon a 20% markup is great value for a 3-year warranty.
Like others though, I really all Apple products globally should come with a 3-year warranty - you pay over the odds for Apple hardware, and should get high-quality, reliable kit in return.
In New Zealand you are getting a 3 year warranty and getting something guaranteed in return - and the extra price appears minimal once tax differences are included.
Sales tax can vary depending on state (among other things), see for example Oregon where it's 0%, vs Washington, where it's 6.5% (and my jurisdiction adds additional couple percent for a total of ~10%).
That can easily be fixed if they're also kept on a watch by legislators and consumer rights groups for pulling such shit up (as opposed to sucking up the cost)...
In the EU, where a longer guarantee is mandaded, state tax aside, the prices aren't that different. MacBook Air $999 US (849 €) vs 1129 € France. Of that 188 € is the state tax (VAT), which means the price difference as far as Apple pockets is 1129-188 - 849 = $92 or $108 dollars.
So that $999 would be say $1109, a 11% increase, hardly 20-30%.
(And that's not even counting the higher cost of business in Europe aside the VAT, which also factors in that 1129-188 price).
Apple are already making higher margin on M1 Mac than on Intel Mac. Did you notice the higher discount rate running on all M1 product compared to old Intel Mac?
Those extra margin could have been repurposed to Service Revenue, getting Apple Care+ by default. ( May be having one accidental damage instead of two ). Just like how the Mac is putting money into services revenue for MacOS, iCloud, Map and Siris.
The consequence of that is instead of a possible lower cost Mac lineup with M1, you now have the same cost but longer warranty. Apple now also has an incentive to make the Mac last longer to minimise any AppleCare cost they get within three years.
Companies exist to maximize profit. The only thing that matters in pricing is supply, demand, and perhaps goodwill/brand power. Apple's already positioned itself as a luxury brand, so they would have no problem raising prices in the face of a supply shock.
Which is a good reason why everything in US is cheaper. Sure, you get more service and better guarantee is you pay for it, there is no reason to force it.
Note that apparent cost and actual cost are not the same thing.
The purchase price is lower without a warranty, but the actual incurred risk cost is higher.
Absent a warranty, that's not only a risk shift from the manufacturer to the consumer, but a real cost shift, as steps which might increase reliability are not taken and the consequences of those decisions (made by the manufaucturer) accrue to the purchaser.
There is also the incidnece cost and the cost of liquidity or credit required to front a repair bill in the hundreds or thousands of dollars. Given that much of the US cannot meet an unexpected $400 expense in a month, this is a significant consideration. MacBook owners may represent a more affluent portion of the population, but a $10k repair bill over four years remains significant. That's a constant $208/mo reliability tax on that particular unit, for this owner.
Note that in this case, Apple did eat the cost as the repairs were covered under the AppleCare Protection Plan.
Which is probably negates by all the legal and lawsuit costs...
AFAIK It's mostly cheaper due to lower sales tax (aka VAT/GST which is ~10% vs 18-27% in Europe) and no China import duty. Finally being local currency helps somewhat because of currency stability I'd guess.
Is it really? People still buy them in droves. As much as I hate devices I can't fix (and this makes the short warranty times problem even worse), many people don't seem to care.
It took a long time for me to understand all this. I bought my last Mac 3 years ago. I'm still using an iMac which I'm really happy with, but I will most likely not buy another Mac again.
My machine for gaming and other hobbies is an AMD with Windows, and once this iMac dies I will probably switch to Linux for my work machine.
Not quite - I'm from the UK too and I believe we have 6 years to file a claim that shows that the item was defective when we received it, not that it developed a defect.
Before 6 months it is assumed that if a defect develops, it was there when it was delivered.
After 6 months the onus is on the person who brought it to show that the defect was there when it was delivered.
Importantly - there is no expectation in law that the item has to last 6 years.
My significant other owned a 2011 MBP and experienced the same thing... She didn't know about the recall and I didn't get a chance to investigate and find out until after the recall window was closed. I can't really avoid using a Mac for work, but for personal use it has definitely trained me to avoid Apple products when at all possible. She would concur with you that her 2011 MBP was a terrible investment.
come to australia, consumer guarantees give you a 3 year warranty. In fact my MacBook Pro gave up the ghost a few weeks after the 3 years had expired, Apple replaced the bits under warranty.
It's just anecdata, but I've been using Mac laptops since the mid 90s, have never bought AppleCare, and have never regretted that. I've never had an out of warranty repair. On a couple I have replaced the battery myself after several years, at a cost much lower than what AppleCare would have been on that one machine. Yes, it's possible that some day I will end up with a lemon that needs a ton of work. But I think that over 20 years of savings on not buying AppleCare more than covers it (I would have bought a new machine before sinking in anywhere near $10k in repairs).
2012 macbook pro is basically like an e30 series bmw. Completely workable with common tools. I've gone into this computer for repairs or hardware upgrades over the years a dozen times by now and thanks to its repairability and performance with updated components I am still using it today.
Mine is the 2012 model before the retina display. Phillips head screws everywhere instead of the pentalobe. Open the case and you have access to everything. Battery can be replaced in 2 minutes. Hard drive in 1 minute. RAM in 30 seconds. Trackpad another 2 minutes after pulling battery. I even took out my optical drive and installed another hard drive in the bay since its SATAIII on that model. Then they came out with the retina mac and glued and soldered almost all of the above.
It's interesting to compare that machine to today's. 5.6lbs vs today's 16" at 4.3lbs. 2012 is 0.93" thick and today's is 0.64". I suppose, based on this datapoint, we can say there is something like a ~25% mechanical overhead for "repairability" then.
"MacBook Pro 15" Unibody Mid 2012 Repairability Score: 7 out of 10 (10 is easiest to repair)."
> Apple is basically the BMW of computers at this point.
> it's a shame, it would be nice to go back to a point where there was more quality/durability inherent in the product.
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Apple has always had hardware reliability issues.
The unibodies had suicidal GPUs (pretty much every dGPU model between the 2007 and 2013 had a service program at one point or another) as well as battery issues, the retinas had delaminating antiglare coating, the polycarbonate unibody macbooks had cracking issues through the entire case, …
It's possible that the pre-Intel models had less issues (that's when I switched) but I doubt it, I was always told to avoid first gens of new design like the plague (not that taking later revisions was a sure bet, but the first gens have always been full of flaws).
I don't know about always. Apple has been around a long time and apparently the MacBook Pro 15" Unibody Mid 2012 was a decent machine for repairability, according to asdff and ifixit anyway.
The older macbooks were definitely pretty good at repairability (though iirc you had to take the G4s apart completely to access anything, but the unibodies had easy access to most things, on the whitebooks I think the battery was even removable and that gave you access to the ram and hdd slots), but I was talking about the reliability (durability) not the repairability.
Yes, I missed the distinction. On the other hand, we're talking about repairing a laptop which is nearly 10 years old and still having it be useful, so there must be some durability there.
> ... though iirc you had to take the G4s apart completely to access anything ...
Powerbook G4s (at least, the titanium one I used for about 10 years) had a keyboard you could lift off to access some of the guts. I found it quite nice.
> After speaking to a friend, they told me I had probably received a “lemon” unit (i.e. faulty from the beginning). To be honest, I’m not quite sure where the term comes from.
The term comes from the automobile industry, where a "lemon" is a new car that has some kind of issue so severe that it cannot be reasonably repaired under warranty and the buyer can try to seek a refund or replacement vehicle.
"worthless thing, disappointment, booby prize," 1909, American English slang; from lemon (n.1), perhaps via a criminal slang sense of "a person who is a loser, a simpleton," perhaps an image of someone a sharper can "suck the juice out of." A pool hall hustle was called a lemon game (1908); while to hand someone a lemon was British slang (1906) for "to pass off a sub-standard article as a good one." Or it simply may be a metaphor for something which leaves a bad taste in one's mouth. Specific sense of "second-hand car in poor condition" is by 1931.
"You won't get a lemon… from Toyota of Orange." :-D
Don't know what they're like these days but my 2011 Lenovo Thinkpad works great! Solid laptop, replaced the keyboard once aside from that still going strong.
Maybe it has something to do with the year 2011. My 2011 Macbook Pro 13" is still alive and kicking. With max 16GB RAM and replacing the spinning rust with an SSD, it's remarkably nimble as well. It's done a lot of travelling, and I've replaced the battery 3 times due to battery life going down too far.
I finally upgraded to an M1 Macbook Air, which is also really nice, but the number of miles on that old axe was impressive. I still have it, and the kids use it for various school things. My only complaint is it is now at EOL for OS updates.
That's great, think my next move will be the M1 MacBook. Perhaps cliché but may be worth trying Linux on there now, elementary OS or something, everyone mostly just use the browser anyway.
Same MacBook, same SSD upgrade. I haven't replaced the battery, I tend to stay near an outlet anyway. Debian and Ubuntu work great on it, so I moved off OSX.
My company provides either MacBook or Lenovo (I have a t480s and just received a t14s). I have yet to hear someone having an issue with their Lenovo (most run Fedora). Not sure about MacBooks reliability. The weak point of Lenovo seem to be the thunderbolt docking stations. Mine worked perfectly on the t480s but is unreliable with the t14s and IT support told me they are overwhelmed with docking station issues.
This is why I've always been so reluctant to drop big money on a Macbook. I feel like I'm chained to that AppleCare, whereas on a PC I can probably try to service it myself
After AppleCare expires Apple caps the user cost of hardware repairs per visit to some number they look up in a per-model table that presumably varies over time.
It appears the author doesn’t know this as they seem quite nervous about losing coverage.
In my case I got a keyboard / top cover, logic board, and battery all replaced for $400 and change, on a 6.5 year old machine well out of AppleCare. They only do this while the model is not considered obsolete, and they have more discretion to do things in your favor if your initial purchase was made directly through Apple, and if you previously had AppleCare on the device, even if it is expired.
In the US, after five years they declare your device obsolete. Or after seven years in some states in the US (edit: in cases where it is required to be that long by state law). Then after that, your only repair options are DIY or third party.
Also if there is a repair done by Apple at any time, in or out of AppleCare, that repair itself is warrantied for 90 days. And if an issue was put on the record in Apple’s support system for your device before AppleCare expired, it can still be covered even if it is brought in for repair after AppleCare expired.
Interesting. Indeed, I wasn't aware of that. But I wonder if the capped repair cost is only available in the US, or if it's a global thing. There seem to be some differences between US and ex-US when it comes to Apple support.
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[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 305 ms ] thread1: https://www.dell.com/support/contents/en-us/article/contact-...
2: https://i.dell.com/sites/csdocuments/Legal_Docs/en/us/dell-p...
Looks like they use their Mac a lot judging by all the projects they're working on.
I have a strategy that is common to all hackers / nerds / technophiles and that is: having multiple devices for different things.
It's common to see in hacker circles: This laptop is for gaming. This other laptop is for freelancing & business. My other laptop is for toying / tinkering etc
You can extend that list to probably 10 devices if you're serious enough about compartmenting your digital life. I have long since used a single device for everything that I work on.
Do you have a machine for SQL? Machine for mobile? Machine for web?
* Personal workstation/gaming machine
* Employer provided work laptop (MBP)
* Surface Go Tablet used for reading around the house, light travel, etc.
* Personal Dell laptop used for longer travel
* Old desktop converted to a server for running services I always need up.
* A rpi 3b used for running services I want to physically separate from the internet accessible main server.
I've considered repurposing some old hardware I have laying around into a htpc type thing for gaming/emulation on my TV, but that's on hold right now due to GPU pricing.
So I'm not far off 7. Other tech-heavy users may have seperate devices for their spouse/kids, or dedicated devices for specific OSes (my main workstation is a dual boot, my laptop is linux only and the tablet is windows only). So I can see a path to 10 for others.
1 work-provided laptop
1 personal laptop
1 gaming desktop
1 backup laptop (old, like 10 years old)
1 closet server desktop (also old, but runs terraria servers just fine)
On my desk, I use 2 HDMI switches and a USB 3.0 switch to use the same peripherals and monitors for both my work laptop and gaming desktop. At the end of the day, I just hit the buttons on the switches to toggle to my desktop.
I have a USB-C dock that the work laptop plugs into. If i ever want to do work for my side project, I can unplug my work-provided laptop and plug in my personal laptop, and have the same setup as before -- just with a different machine.
Were you using an Apple adapter when this happened?
If you're actually serious about it, consider Qubes OS [0]. This should be much more secure and convenient than handling ten devices.
[0] https://qubes-os.org
But that starts breaking down when working on mobile or hardware projects.
> I have long since used a single device [...]
I'm not sure which you're suggesting then?
I understand the desire to compartmentalise... I just think real life's too blurry, and then it gets annoying at the edges - oh I had this problem on my other one, how did I solve it again? etc.
But I don't travel much, and if I did I would probably only have one primary system.
That's my take, although I don't own $1000 worth of computers all added together.
I'm always surprised when people use laptops for professional work as I've always had great honkin' company-supplied desktop machines. Generally, if something breaks (which is super rare) the main cost is the time to rebuild an environment.
Those machines are getting old, and I've been considering upgrading my server and using a VDI solution instead. Or maybe it's time to switch to a more mobile option...
You may be triggering some hardware failure vector given the frequent pressurization/depressurization associated with travel (particularly if you don't check in the laptop?).
Also, cargo holds on typical sized passenger airplanes are pressurized too.
Thule's Gauntlet cases are great but in your case, maybe a Pelican laptop box could work too.
I always use a soft case when I put it in my backpack for extra protection. Heat might be an issue though, especially if the laptop is hot and goes into my backpack directly.
Maybe I should consider a Pelican case now that my APP has expired... and maybe install some fans as well...
I'd found MANY times that simply closing one of the more recent MacBooks (2019?) would not actually put it to sleep. I would close it, put it in my bag, then... hours later, find it was overly hot, still running, perhaps with 10% battery left. 2008 MB, 2012 MBP, 2015 MBP - never ever had this problem. I'm sure I overheated my 2019 MBP far more often than it was designed for.
We all knew that you'd never just suspend or sleep a PC laptop and put it in your bag. It would always wake up, or not go completely to sleep, and you'd end up with a toasted laptop.
Meanwhile, every single Mac brought in had no trouble sleeping. They never overheated in a bag. The Mac owners never powered them off, always just shut the lid and put them in the bag. I'd never seen one overheat in a bag. Tons of Macs would come across the service desk, and never one overheated. Nobody ever shut them down to transport them either. They would reliably suspend / sleep every time you shut the lid.
Lately though, and I don't even work in a repair shop, I see Macs overheating in in other people's bags. I hear the fans soaring on them constantly. Mine doesn't suspend / resume properly either. They really aren't built as well as they used to be, IMO. I don't trust it to just sleep properly when I shut the lid, so it always gets powered off before it gets put away in a bag.
I can't say that's behind all the events, but thinking back on it more, I know that was a repeating scenario.
Scared the shit out of me, every time.
I own an XPS and had in-home service. I called dell and we agreed my keyboard needs to be replaced. A few days later a guy shows up at my door and replaces the keyboard. I never had to go anywhere. Obviously, the mileage might vary if you travel outside of the us.
But......again....that many repairs are downright scary.
There is also one anecdotal fact I want to add about apple. I have been told that apple is so amazing because they build hardware/software. I was tired of samsung bloat and only 2 years of OS updates. So, I switched.......I am having many weird bugs with the apple watch not syncing properly. Safari freezing on some sites, and some of these issues are quite widespread.
I just hate people who drink the koolaid, there is a similar problem when it comes to seeking opinion about cars. Some people just become part of the cult and will go above and beyond to justify buying a certain product.
I miss the old days of online nerds before "marketing" teams realized they can really advertise through social media and now you can't even tell what is real.
A few days?! Is this not a major problem for you? The author is right - a great thing about Apple is I can pop into a store in many cities around the world and just get things sorted. In some random city in another country with a conference the next day? No problem.
YMMV
On the other hand, Intel once replaced a CPU for me (out of warranty) for free (they shipped it from Singapore to India). It was an old CPU (5+ years) and I never thought they would respond to my complain about it.
When one of my Western Digital HDD conked out under warranty, Western Digital asked me if I wanted the replacement drive shipped from the US (as I had purchased it there, and they had a newer model which they offered) or from India (where I was at that time, and had the same model in stock).
And ElementaryOS has been coming along fairly well, so I'm hopeful than in ~5 years they'll have something I can fully switch over to for my work computer. Right now, I just use it for my gaming/media pc.
The most glaring example I can think of is that the Mac Pro isn't built seemingly for anyone. For $6000 you can build a VFX workstation with an overpriced(!) top-of-the-line threadripper and RTX 3090 and 1TB Samsung SSD which performs more than 4 times faster than their $13,000 highest-end CPU configuration. So what has ended up happening? A lot of studios are simply buying high-end PC prebuilts or the studios are building their own systems now for desktop-side compute.
For that price you get 256 GB and some AMD $150 equivalent graphics card, which is worse than what you'd get off some random laptop today.
The problem I and a lot of other firms have is the value you're getting for it. It's utter garbage, and has been all over the press for years now, so it's not exactly news.
When big studios and little firms alike are complaining and asking, "Who exactly is this for?" It's clear they don't care about mass professional market consumption. And I'm talking about businesses that are going to spend over $6000 per desktop-compute unit.
The organizations that I have seen are the only relevant customers are the ones who have deep Apple-centric workflows, and they're not buying a lot of the hardware. They might have under 10 units in the office at most.
If the prices were more inline with what the rest of the hardware market looked like, I'd provide Mac Pros to each staff member because it would be a no-brainer.
Just saying the target market is the kind of people who can just drop 10k+ and not care. 6k isn't realistically in the same price category.
It does, doesn't it?
My company has thousands of Macbooks. I've never heard of anything remotely similar.
My current laptop is a 2016 model. No repairs needed, ever. Only now the battery is complaining. Not even the butterfly keyboard gave me any issues. It's likely the only repair it will ever need is the battery. Or maybe not even that, it's overdue for a replacement due to age. But works just fine.
I also have a 2015 model. Also fine. Dropped it in concrete. A small dent. Totally fine.
Unless quality has significantly degraded, this sounds like a bad unit/batch.
A few years ago, I bought an XPS because I wanted a PC and it was underwhelming considering I treated it with a lot of extra care. I experienced various bugs running simple games. The fans would go into overdrive despite keeping the drivers up-to-date, raising the laptop to give good airflow, and no graphic intensive program running.
Ultimately, I think it's a bit of a luck of the draw. I don't doubt there are people who have horrible experiences with any brand.
I would never use a machine with a swollen battery, much less fly with one.
Yeah, true. When I was new to HN, I had a minor altercation with some mod here because I posted a reply to a particular comment that the poster seemed to be doing paid marketing / shilling for Apple. My comment was deleted and I was reminded that as per HN community rules, I cannot accuse anyone of such things. Annoyed, I replied to the mod that it seemed obvious that the post was paid social media marketing. Someone (I don't remember if it was the mod or another fellow member of HN) pointed out that if the same logic was applied to my critical and negative posts about Apple, someone could make an argument that too was paid social media marketing by Apple's competitors. I was honestly stumped for a moment because negative campaigns are a fact too (e.g. politicians do a lot of negative campaigning through social media; the Chinese are aggressively known to do such kind of negative campaigning by posting negative reviews of their competitors product on Amazon).
That said, it does happen on HN too. It would be unreasonable to expect otherwise - the kind of high net worth / IT influential crowd that comes to HN is the very market that Apple (and others) target.
But I hope I'll get at least 5 years more out of it. Although buying a new cool M2 MBP sounds tempting I feel for me there is no particular reason to do so. If I can run an editor, Chrome, some Docker containers and the laptop works well, I feel work-wise I'm pretty much set.
Certainly the OS updates will stop at some point which conveniently will then phase out my MBP. Oh well.
I think Apple has learned some lessons, they fixed the keyboards, they added a physical Touch ID button, and it seems like the divisive Touch Bar is probably going to fade away, or at least be optional.
I think OSX could use an update that focuses on power users and the finder, but other than that I am pretty happy with the current state of the Mac.
My only complaint is non-upgradable RAM - if it had upgradable RAM, I'd keep using mine well into the future.
This is the most expensive Mac I've owned in like 18y of using the things, even before I count the fact that only one of those battery replacements happened before the extended warranty ran out, and estimate the cost of several unplanned vacations.
My next machine will probably be a 2022 Air; I had a succession of Intel Airs that gave me very little trouble before this battery-devouring Pro. I'm hoping their solidity has survived the transition to Apple silicon.
2016 Pros eat batteries, and while Apple acknowledged this enough to pay for one battery replacement, they’ve still hit me for an annoyingly large amount of repair cost, plus downtime, plus the annoyance of work lost due to unexpected shutdowns before I say “oh god it’s doing this again” and start getting insanely aggressive about saving.
I think all computers with Li-Ion batteries should have user accessible charging limits, like Tuxedo and Thinkpads have.
For now we have to help ourselves with software, i use BatteryBot Pro from f-droid on my Android devices.
(edit) formatting
That said, looking at the keyboard condition makes me think it was in some pretty harsh conditions. My 2012 17" keys still look almost new.
I've only had a single experience where I had to repair my Mac in ~8 laptops, which was my Apple M1 aAr that died from plugging in a third party USB-C adapter (multiple reports of this happening).
Username = yagendreng@gmail.com
Password = Alexiag123#
I recently had a MacBook that wouldn't start. I'm decent with computer repair and have a modest background in it, but let the safety screws dissuade me from opening it.
I brought it to a repair store where they said it had water damage, which was what I anticipated. I'm guessing they saw that the humidity dots had been triggered, which were probably due to my laptop being in humid conditions at some point beforehand, as I think the water just barely got into a port via condensation from a nearby object.
They called back saying that the water damage repair would come to $850 level, as they observed "significant corrosion" inside the chassis. That's maybe just under a third of what the machine costs retail, but there's not really another option at this point.
Then I got it back, with all of my data in place, which struck me as odd - anything of value is soldered onto the mainboard. If there were "significant corrosion", everything would have been trashed, and the repair probably would have been much more expensive. They definitely weren't going to migrate data from the old mainboard to a new one for free, as that's a whole other racket that's enabled through these monolithically architectured machines.
At the end of the day, I felt kind of ripped off and knew that if something like this were to happen again, I had no other recourse other than to give it a shot on my own. Given how clumsy I tend to be, that'll probably happen sooner rather than later, so I kind of see my machine as a liability at this point.
I think I'm going to give the Framework laptop a shot, though I'll miss MacOS.
PS: Had a really good time repairing a friend's 2012 MBP recently, though. With a replacement SSD, new battery, and another stick of ram, it feels like a capable machine without too much time or money sunk into it.
They don’t build ‘em like they used to.
They all lag when I type. I hit a key, and it takes a while before it shows up on screen. The effect is at its worst in Safari, but it shows up most everywhere else as well.
Sometimes, I'll type a few letters or even words before they start showing up. Doesn't matter if I wipe the machine and reinstall, and Apple has never been able to resolve it for any of their machines I've owned.
I do type faster than average, but I don't think it is humanly possible to type fast enough to make a proper computer lag. This has never been an issue on any of my concurrently owned Windows/Linux machines. Only on Mac, and on every single Mac.
My CapsLock key (mapped to Esc because I am a Doom Emacs User) gets really slow over days. Like in ~4 seconds to register. A reboot fixed the delay. But it degrades again.
Happened twice. Thankfully, after the last reboot, it seems to be holding.
Last year MBP running Big Sur.
Resetting my bluetooth module and factory resetting all connected bluetooth peripherals helps usually. But it's a pain.
Did you see it happening on really "simple" applications like Terminal? What's crazy to me is how you saw it happening on a fresh OS install... had you installed any other software? Or any kind of customization to settings, locale, stuff like that? Curious how that could be happening!
Once one app starts lagging, they all lag. Terminal, TextEdit, Safari, Notes, IntelliJ, everything.
I'm well north of 130wpm, but I don't think that matters for the issues that my Macs have had to deal with, as I used to be well below 130wpm and still experienced such issues.
Everytime i tried to run their IDE's on mac os i gave up because the abysmal typing/scroll performance.
I think textmate broke my brain back in the day, can't stand any editor that can't run at 60fps. (unless it's vim/nano on ssh)
There have been zero reports of widespread lagging which clearly indicates that there is some problem with your setup. IntelliJ is the likely candidate especially if you are doing Scala or Kotlin development.
If my Macs couldn't keep up with my typing, I'd have kicked them to the curb a LONG LONG LONG time ago.
My theory is that the Intel macs generate too much heat for the chassis to handle (I'm currently on a 16" 2019), especially when being used by IntelliJ in projects with many files, having additional dev stuff running in the background, and with an external monitor connected.
Additionally, I perceive more lag on the Mac itself than on the external monitor, so I think there is a component that is due to the slow speed of the Macbook Pro display.
No, seriously, what’s the secret?
Back when I got my first Mac (2012) I was plateaued at 80-100 wpm. From there, it was an accumulation of intentional practice for fun and enjoyment.
You are, of course, wrong. Cursory googling will show average typing speed to be about half the figure I noted. I've never worked with anyone who typed as quickly as I can, and I've been working quite a while.
But hey, at least you got to drop a dig in about adverbs, so you've got that going for you.
I'm rolling
90 WPM is ok, certainly above average. But please don't take it personally, I was just scrolling through the comments and saw what I thought was a typo, and if not, thought I'd share my perspective. 120WPM can be considered "fast".
If 90 WPM is "very, very fast" then what about those at 120 or 150?
It's incredibly frustrating, and just one more thing to add to the pile of annoyances that I have with Apple products lately.
I used to have this on my work computer, and through some debugging tools that are not available publically or on macOS, I was able to track it down to my shell spawning a git process very frequently; until you mentioned this I suspected that this was the case on my MBP as well.
Could it be that this is just generally true? I don't remember this on my 2014 MBP, just my new 2019 16" MBP. Supposedly the latter is a more powerful machine.
It's gotten so bad that I frequently consider wiping my computer and seeing whether it'll be fixed with a new environment.
But I do think the problem is fairly recent as in the last 4- 5 years after certain macOS update.
It works when you have little to no CPU usage, but even at 20-40% CPU typing speed lag start to show.
I know exactly what damaged my battery so that now it recommends battery service: Overheating using An external monitor and chrome tabs. The thermal management at higher cpu of this 3 year old MacBook Pro is bad but browsers are needlessly resource intensive.
After about six months of ignoring how hot it was getting the battery notice started. A while later it would shut off at around 40% battery. But I still put off replacing the battery and magically after an OS update it no longer shuts off at 40%, and goes all the way down as it should. I assume the update included some throttling if the battery isn’t providing adequate current.
tldr: My Mac has battery issues and I know the exact cause. There string of defects you’ve had seem statistically unlikely as pure random ones while not impossible. There may be something causing them.
- iBook - hard drive failure
- White plastic Macbooks - only issue is case cracking
- Late 2011? Macbook Pro - Dedicated GPU failure around the time macOS support ended, a widespread issue at the time
- Retina Macbook Pro - No issues
- M1 Macbook Air - No issues
Keyboard issues are really common with that generation of Mac Laptops, and the screen issue is something I've heard of.
All those issues together, though...that's a load of lemons.
I've bought maybe a dozen macs in the last 15 years (for myself and the family) and while some have lasted many years without issues, some have died on me on the second or third year.
Because the initial investment is so high you're practically forced to add extra Apple Care to protect it because there's a 20-30% chance you will have problems during those first years.
And don't get me started on design issues and recalls which take years. When my 2011 MBP died because of Radeongate it took Apple 2 years to start a recall and replace the GPU. The honest thing to do would have been to take the machine and offer 60% of its value in credit towards a new Mac. Instead, Apple replaced the GPU on a machine that was already a couple of gens behind and I couldn't sell without practically giving it away because (rightfully) nobody wanted the 15'' 2011 models. That MBP was probably the worst investment of my life.
A lot of add on warranties don't cover much more than this anyway, which makes them much harder to justify here.
On the other hand I bought a refurb projector from BenQ and it was straight up junk. The focusing mechanism breaks easily. It's quite clear this is a design flaw, I assume a gear that's weak plastic that should be something more durable instead. I've sent it back twice now to have it fixed, paying shipping each time under their terms. The last time I got it back it died with just 15 hours of use. It's clear they knew this thing was a straight up lemon and just used their refurb program to dump the product. It certainly means I'll never touch another BenQ product so long as I live.
Here's the inverse argument: it's absolutely ridiculous I have to pay 20-30% extra for my Macbook even though I don't care about the mandatory 3-year warranty. They should let me opt out for a discount!
Well, they do.
> you're practically forced to add extra Apple Care
Are you really pro-freedom (see argument above), or just anti-Apple?
You sound pretty confident, but just think about this: do you really know more about how Apple should be run than all of their executives combined, or is there a false assumption here?
I find it even more ridiculous that big items like fridges, ovens, and washing machines are also often only guaranteed one year. I think a ten year minimum would be reasonable for white goods.
Of course, legislators know this and that's why it won't happen unless it becomes much more economically feasible than it is today.
It might increase costs more for cheap and shoddy vendors, which is kind of the point — you want to rule out making cheap crap that breaks as a point of competition — but again I’d be surprised if the increase was anything like as big as that.
That said - its just ridiculous how much Apple charges for individual a-la-carte repairs. Or rather lack thereof - they’d just say replace the entire motherboard or display.
What I'm saying is, Macs should include 3 years of warranty at current prices. If Macs had the reliability of iPads and iPhones it would make more sense to not get the extended warranty.
They do. People who don't have problems don't complain so you have to be careful basing your impression on what people feel motivated to mention.
It was probably worse than 30% for the 2016 MBP models considering the keyboard issues though.
Government should mandate that, as in does in other countries.
But many american consumers don't believe in government rules about consumer protection, lest some of this "innovation" we've witnessed is discouraged...
Now, it only covers defects, but that’s what most warranties do.
I absolutely love the consumer guarantees act we have here, and the protection it gives.
Edit: NZ has 15% sales tax and this is missing from the above equation. It accounts for most the difference.
Considering all these other costs, I reckon a 20% markup is great value for a 3-year warranty.
Like others though, I really all Apple products globally should come with a 3-year warranty - you pay over the odds for Apple hardware, and should get high-quality, reliable kit in return.
In New Zealand you are getting a 3 year warranty and getting something guaranteed in return - and the extra price appears minimal once tax differences are included.
How is that vast majority of price increase?
I certainly have missed that.
In the EU, where a longer guarantee is mandaded, state tax aside, the prices aren't that different. MacBook Air $999 US (849 €) vs 1129 € France. Of that 188 € is the state tax (VAT), which means the price difference as far as Apple pockets is 1129-188 - 849 = $92 or $108 dollars.
So that $999 would be say $1109, a 11% increase, hardly 20-30%.
(And that's not even counting the higher cost of business in Europe aside the VAT, which also factors in that 1129-188 price).
Those extra margin could have been repurposed to Service Revenue, getting Apple Care+ by default. ( May be having one accidental damage instead of two ). Just like how the Mac is putting money into services revenue for MacOS, iCloud, Map and Siris.
The consequence of that is instead of a possible lower cost Mac lineup with M1, you now have the same cost but longer warranty. Apple now also has an incentive to make the Mac last longer to minimise any AppleCare cost they get within three years.
The purchase price is lower without a warranty, but the actual incurred risk cost is higher.
Absent a warranty, that's not only a risk shift from the manufacturer to the consumer, but a real cost shift, as steps which might increase reliability are not taken and the consequences of those decisions (made by the manufaucturer) accrue to the purchaser.
There is also the incidnece cost and the cost of liquidity or credit required to front a repair bill in the hundreds or thousands of dollars. Given that much of the US cannot meet an unexpected $400 expense in a month, this is a significant consideration. MacBook owners may represent a more affluent portion of the population, but a $10k repair bill over four years remains significant. That's a constant $208/mo reliability tax on that particular unit, for this owner.
Note that in this case, Apple did eat the cost as the repairs were covered under the AppleCare Protection Plan.
AFAIK It's mostly cheaper due to lower sales tax (aka VAT/GST which is ~10% vs 18-27% in Europe) and no China import duty. Finally being local currency helps somewhat because of currency stability I'd guess.
My machine for gaming and other hobbies is an AMD with Windows, and once this iMac dies I will probably switch to Linux for my work machine.
Before 6 months it is assumed that if a defect develops, it was there when it was delivered.
After 6 months the onus is on the person who brought it to show that the defect was there when it was delivered.
Importantly - there is no expectation in law that the item has to last 6 years.
come to australia, consumer guarantees give you a 3 year warranty. In fact my MacBook Pro gave up the ghost a few weeks after the 3 years had expired, Apple replaced the bits under warranty.
it's a shame, it would be nice to go back to a point where there was more quality/durability inherent in the product.
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Retina+D...
"MacBook Pro with Retina Display 15" Mid 2012 Repairability Score: 1 out of 10 (10 is easiest to repair)"
It's interesting to compare that machine to today's. 5.6lbs vs today's 16" at 4.3lbs. 2012 is 0.93" thick and today's is 0.64". I suppose, based on this datapoint, we can say there is something like a ~25% mechanical overhead for "repairability" then.
"MacBook Pro 15" Unibody Mid 2012 Repairability Score: 7 out of 10 (10 is easiest to repair)."
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Unibody+...
"MacBook Air 13" Mid 2012 Repairability Score: 4 out of 10 (10 is easiest to repair)."
"All the components—including RAM and SSD—are proprietary." Although I suppose there are probably 3rd party options by now.
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Mid+2012...
> it's a shame, it would be nice to go back to a point where there was more quality/durability inherent in the product. reply
Apple has always had hardware reliability issues.
The unibodies had suicidal GPUs (pretty much every dGPU model between the 2007 and 2013 had a service program at one point or another) as well as battery issues, the retinas had delaminating antiglare coating, the polycarbonate unibody macbooks had cracking issues through the entire case, …
It's possible that the pre-Intel models had less issues (that's when I switched) but I doubt it, I was always told to avoid first gens of new design like the plague (not that taking later revisions was a sure bet, but the first gens have always been full of flaws).
The hardest part is getting data off of the machine since all of the I/O options are obsolete. I had to use floppy disks last time.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28305508
Powerbook G4s (at least, the titanium one I used for about 10 years) had a keyboard you could lift off to access some of the guts. I found it quite nice.
The term comes from the automobile industry, where a "lemon" is a new car that has some kind of issue so severe that it cannot be reasonably repaired under warranty and the buyer can try to seek a refund or replacement vehicle.
Wikipedia says that the term originally comes from early 20th century slang: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_(automobile)
lemon (n.2)
"worthless thing, disappointment, booby prize," 1909, American English slang; from lemon (n.1), perhaps via a criminal slang sense of "a person who is a loser, a simpleton," perhaps an image of someone a sharper can "suck the juice out of." A pool hall hustle was called a lemon game (1908); while to hand someone a lemon was British slang (1906) for "to pass off a sub-standard article as a good one." Or it simply may be a metaphor for something which leaves a bad taste in one's mouth. Specific sense of "second-hand car in poor condition" is by 1931.
"You won't get a lemon… from Toyota of Orange." :-D
I finally upgraded to an M1 Macbook Air, which is also really nice, but the number of miles on that old axe was impressive. I still have it, and the kids use it for various school things. My only complaint is it is now at EOL for OS updates.
It appears the author doesn’t know this as they seem quite nervous about losing coverage.
In my case I got a keyboard / top cover, logic board, and battery all replaced for $400 and change, on a 6.5 year old machine well out of AppleCare. They only do this while the model is not considered obsolete, and they have more discretion to do things in your favor if your initial purchase was made directly through Apple, and if you previously had AppleCare on the device, even if it is expired.
In the US, after five years they declare your device obsolete. Or after seven years in some states in the US (edit: in cases where it is required to be that long by state law). Then after that, your only repair options are DIY or third party.
Also if there is a repair done by Apple at any time, in or out of AppleCare, that repair itself is warrantied for 90 days. And if an issue was put on the record in Apple’s support system for your device before AppleCare expired, it can still be covered even if it is brought in for repair after AppleCare expired.