[Konryan]

This is Apple's modus operandi. The same thing happened with the early 2011 MBPros, which GPUs kept failing systematically, even after costly repairs.

It took a class action lawsuit for them to start refunding repairs and provide an actual solution, but by then it was far too late.

[_Codemonkeyism]

My wife has a MacBook Air where the touch pad doesn't work, the screen has bright and darker spots and Wifi doesn't get any connection.

It made me buy a Dell XPS13 after 15y of Apple.

Then Dell proved they could do worse.

Sorry for the rant. I just hate myself for spending $3500 on garbage.

[chipperyman573]

I can't find out why everyone rants and raves about the XPS13. Everywhere you look people are more or less shouting their positive reviews for it. The one I bought (top of the line i7 with fingerprint reader, touchscreen, the works) broke. They sent me a replacement (after a lot of arguing, even though I was in warranty), and that one broke too. I called again, they sent me a third laptop and within a month it broke again!! All of these problems were internal problems with the hardware... For example, my first one had a heatsink (heat pipe? I don't remember. Something to do with heating) come loose and would constantly overheat. Anyone who's had a XPS knows that these things are fragile enough that dropping it would shatter the screen before dislodging a heat pipe.

It also had one of the most annoying touchpads I've ever used and the small bezel made me not want to use it for anything that took more than five minutes - for some reason programming especially was difficult. I'm not sure why, it just felt way more difficult to do on the 13.

I finally just bit the bullet and bought a surface laptop - I love everything about it. I'm on month three right now, no problems so far. Fingers crossed.

(I don't work for Dell or Microsoft)

[emmanuel_1234]

Hahaha. I had one of the original XPS13. When I got it delivered, 4 or 5 keys on the keyboard were broken (they were attached on 2 points, when of those broken).

I got a new keyboard delivered, spend a solid 2 hours opening the whole thing (YOU HAVE TO REMOVE THE KEYBOARD FROM THE BACK OF THE LAPTOP WTF???), put the new keyboard in, only to realize a key was broken on the new keyboard.

That was my last purchase of a Dell laptop.

[hcurtiss]

We carry both Surface laptops and XPS 13s in our company. In my experience (n=23) both are pretty reliable workhorses.

[9935c101ab17a66]

TBH, MBA trackpad failures are often caused by liquid damage, bright spots on the display are caused by pressure on the computer when it's closed, and the wifi again is an uncommon failure that can also be caused by liquid (the wifi/bluetooth chip is near the fan exhaust on the back of the top case, which can serve as an entrance for liquid). I'm not saying that all the issues you had were caused by user damage, but they may have been, and they aren't part of any larger trend with known failures.

[_Codemonkeyism]

I love how you assume by default it's the fault of my wife who you don't even know and not Apple quality control.

I feel the urge to defend my wife because you attacked her, although I don't know you and I should not care the least about personal attacks from people on the internet.

But we can't leave the internet to haters.

My wife is the most careful person I know. Her electronic devices always go into protection bags, are handled with the most care and look new after 10 years of usage.

[stcredzero]

Most everyone on this site needs to go through their purchase history and tally up the garbage/non-garbage and total up the amounts. (And if you can get through that smelling like a rose, good for you!)

[tooltalk]

That also happened to my mid-2012 rMBPro, but, upon further research, I'd discovered that Apple had similar laptop GPU problems going back as far as 2007. There were also similar class action lawsuits to address the problem earlier.

What pissed me off the most was the fact that they kept shipping MBs with similar flaws year after year and when MB users complained, their strategy was to look away and pretend that it was users' fault. I initially had to pay $300+ to replace the logic board and eventually got all of it refunded.

[rwmj]

Going back to 2003 in fact: http://macintoshhowto.com/hardware/how-do-i-get-my-broken-g4... http://johnbakersblog.co.uk/design-fault-in-apples-ibook-g4/ I had one of these laptops and Apple charged me £75 to look at it, and failed to fix it. Later the Danish Consumer Complaints Board investigated and found that there was a systematic fault in the solder joints.

[Boulth]

Couldn't agree more after watching this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8 with detailed schematics and explanations.

[mboto]

I think I started watching Louis Rossmann from a Hacker News link. He's got some really interesting videos on various issues with Apple products. Really interesting to watch.

[pier25]

> but by then it was far too late

My 2011 MBP had been collecting dust for a year when the repairs came and I had already bought a new MBP. Afterwards nobody wanted to buy the repaired 2011 MBP. I ended up gifting that machine to a junior dev on the team.

In Mexico, Apple asked for about $1200 USD to replace the logic board on the 2011 MBP, and it made no sense to me to invest that kind of money on an old computer without knowing if Apple would start a repair program later.

I've learned my lesson. Never buy an Apple product without Apple Care. It sucks but thankfully I can afford it. I'd rather pay more than suffer Windows and I can't use Linux because I use Adobe apps.

[programbreeding]

>I'd rather pay more than suffer Windows

What causes you to suffer when using Windows?

[pier25]

A number of things, but most notably the ecosystem.

Outside of Microsoft and some other big developers, there is still surprisingly a ton of win32 crap out there. Also support for scaling on hi DPI screens is a hit and miss. Even some Adobe apps have problems with scaling.

[gamblor956]

Or you could buy a business edition Windows laptop, with reliability that makes Apple laptops look like toys, and install whatever OS you want, and get the benefit of both worlds.

All you have to give up to get a reliable product is the shiny Apple logo on the back of your screen.

[lwkl]

All the manufacturers have their problems. It doesn‘t matter if you buy HP, Lenovo, Microsoft or Apple.

If you want a low maintenance device you are probably best suited with Apple or Microsoft devices since you don‘t have to worry about driver updates and bloatware.

[jschwartzi]

I haven't had any real issues with my P51. It pretty much just does what it says on the label.

I have more issues with Windows 10 "updating" my printer drivers to versions with fewer features or replacing my working graphics drivers with versions that don't have any control panels. The only reason I still use Windows is to open Word documents.

[pier25]

I've messed with hackintoshes for years on desktop. It's easy to get macOS running, getting it to 100% is much more challenging. On laptops it's even worse. Plus a hackintosh installation can die for whatever reason at the most unexpected moment.

No thanks.

Apple laptops are statistically as reliable as most other manufacturers. But Lenovo, Dell, etc, are more ugly with worse trackpad and worse screen.

Trust me I've tried everything. With all its faults, for me, macOS on Apple hardware is still the best choice.