Apple Admits to Hardware Quality Problems with iPhone X, MacBook Pro

https://www.thurrott.com/apple/191172/apple-admits-to-hardware-quality-problems-with-iphone-x-macbook-pro

by walterbell • 8 years ago

243 236 8 years ago

thurrott.com

geauxvirtual2• 8 years ago

Now if they would just admit the Intel modem in the iPhone Xs is garbage.

bsaul• 8 years ago

i’m curious : what kind of things are you doing with your phone to determine that the modem is garbage ??

johnnyb9• 8 years ago

Not the op, but in NYC walking in and out of the subways is annoying... takes the phone sometimes a minute to re-connect to the cell network. In prior phones w/Qualcomm modems the experience was much faster.

geauxvirtual2• 8 years ago

Signal not as strong as previous iPhone 6. Drops to 4G more often in town when this never happened with my iPhone 6.

Since iOS 12.1 update, wireless will just stop sending/receiving data while still showing connection. I will now sporadically lose all cellular signal, until I turn airplane mode on/off, then back to 3 bars.

I've only seen 4 bars on this phone once, at the AT&T store when they gave me a new sim card. Promptly went back to 3 bars when I left the store.

r00fus2• 8 years ago

I have an iPhone 7 with an intel internals. While I did have some minor coverage issues compared to my old 6, it's pretty rock solid otherwise.

ch4ck• 8 years ago

7 is even worse than 6? That must suck, because 6 was one of the worst performers in the market.

breatheoften• 8 years ago

Seriously!! I have to reboot my iPhone Xs about once a week because it completely fails to search for WiFi successfully ... the system preferences page for connecting to WiFi network just sits at an empty list of networks forever (and sometimes hangs the ui...)

Rebooting the device seems to recover but I hate this.

aunty_helen• 8 years ago

I've just had the keyboard recall done on my 2017 mbp after the J key started failing/duplicating when being pressed.

The whole process, although annoying, was painless. The tech gave me the option of them trying to fix it by blowing dust out or just replacing the entire keyboard. I elected for the later given that it's a design fault. The repair took 1 1/2 days which I had done when I was out of town.

Since they glue everything together, getting a new J key also meant a new keyboard, touch bar, finger print reader, speakers, battery and touch pad. Which if there was no recall I can imagine would be a costly exercise. Hopefully after the recent recalls Apple engineers will be looking at making easier to service components.

nkkollaw4• 8 years ago

Half-way through your comment, I though you were going to say it was actually a positive thing that Apple keyboards aren't good enough to type on them...

wlesieutre2• 8 years ago

It's still a ton of labor to take the whole thing apart, but the new MacBook Air changed to using removable adhesive tabs. I suspect this is why.

2018 MacBook Air Teardown Confirms Improving Repairability With Adhesive Pull-Tabs Under Battery and Speakers

https://www.macrumors.com/2018/11/08/2018-macbook-air-ifixit...

Amusingly, the 13" MacBook Pro non-touchbar where they have defective SSDs are the only ones that have removable SSDs. The touchbar versions are soldered. I wonder if that's a happy coincidence that they're repairable, or if the reason for these defects is that Apple's engineers screwed up the socket since they have basically no experience with those across the rest of the product line anymore.

nkkollaw4• 8 years ago

Mmm... I wonder if they improved repairability because they expect things to keep breaking...

xoa• 8 years ago

Since they glue everything together, getting a new J key also meant a new keyboard, touch bar, finger print reader, speakers, battery and touch pad. Which if there was no recall I can imagine would be a costly exercise.

I think this most illustrates not so much that components should be easier to service in and of themselves but rather that it should be Apple's problem universally, not just for a recall. On a product at this level standard legally required warranty should be more like 4-5 years. Apple (or anyone else) can themselves make the economic call on whether costlier repairs are offset by increased revenue due to feature advantages or other QA boosts, but they shouldn't be able to externalize the cost onto their customers and reap any rewards beyond egregious circumstances. The sticker price should include a reasonable expectation of fitness for purpose over a lifespan in line with the price at no extra cost.

Sharlin• 8 years ago

Would probably take a week or two here and necessitate shipping to another country...

btown• 8 years ago

Does anyone know if the new 2018 MBPs are having keyboard failures, or did their "quieter keys" update fix the issues? It's very hard to find information on whether people have experienced problems since this summer - which might be a good thing! But anything definitive?

zacwest• 8 years ago

They do have hardware failures. I bought a new 13" and started having issues about 2 months in with repeating and dropped keys. Apple store did a straight exchange given how new it was, thankfully.

mitchty• 8 years ago

I bought the 2018 mbp on day 1, so far zero issues with the keyboard.

Not definitive by any means but its all I can offer up to go on. YMMV but thats true of all hardware.

Marsymars• 8 years ago

It's tough to get good data from anecdotes.

Anecdotally, my first-gen butterfly MB keyboard has been flawless, while I've had half the function keys fail on my fancy mechanical keyboard. (Though they failed due to a issue with the underlying mylar strip, and Kinesis was happy to sell me an out-of-warranty replacement part.)

aheckler• 8 years ago

My 2018 MBP is having keyboard issues for sure. Some keys, mostly those in the top row of letters, are sometimes not entered or are entered twice.

I too have looked around online for reports of 2018 MBP owners seeing this same thing, but haven't found a lot.

(Also, my WiFi reception seems noticeably worse than my late 2016 MBP, but I'm not sure if that's hardware or some misconfiguration I haven't found.)

EDIT: Your username... Are you from Bloomington or is that a coincidence? :)

706f6f70• 8 years ago

Yes, the 2018 MBPs with "fixed" keyboards still fail. Slightly less than pre-"fix", but still exponentially more than pre-2016 MBPs. If you get one, you really want to have an external keyboard around because it will fail at the worst possible moment.

bnolsen• 8 years ago

No they won't. Apple made specific choices NOT to do what the whole industry had already been doing: making repairable systems.

mbreese• 8 years ago

The whole industry has been moving towards smaller, lighter, machines for a while. You don't get smaller and lighter without sacrificing repairability. Screws add weight and size, whereas glue is just as good at holding components in place and adds no extra thickness.

I'm sure there is an inflection point in terms of thickness where you have to switch from screws to glue. And I'm sure there are some laptops that straddle that line and are quite repairable. But it's not correct to say that Apple moving counter to the rest of the industry with respect to repairability.

More consumers have decided to value light and thin over repairable and upgradable.

intopieces• 8 years ago

The keyboard problem doesn’t make the whole computer unusable, as is claimed by the article. It makes the keyboard unusable -- that is, a person can still connect a USB keyboard.

ajross• 8 years ago

It's a laptop. I mean, yeah, this is technically true, but...

otachack• 8 years ago

It's a laptop, it'll make the whole usage of it obsolete in important tasks for people they heavily depend on typing.

mrsteveman1• 8 years ago

Seems a bit like saying a broken steering wheel doesn't make the whole car unusable, you just have to find some other way to steer.

It's a laptop, if the keyboard routinely doesn't work properly, then it becomes a slightly more portable desktop.

whymauri2• 8 years ago

"A broken driver's wheel doesn't make a whole car unusable, it just makes the driver's wheel unusable."

Sounds kinda silly.

otterley3• 8 years ago

You can plug an external keyboard into a laptop to get by until you're able to get the built-in keyboard fixed. I'm not sure you can so easily bypass a car's steering column.

pessimizer• 8 years ago

It's part of a pattern of sloppy reporting. A recent article of theirs claimed that a design defect made an entire car unusable, when the only thing it rendered unusable was the brake pedal. The laptop could still be used as an awkward flashlight, or a low-power space heater.

drusepth2• 8 years ago

I went through two MBPs with this issue. Yes, you can technically just keep mashing keys over and over until they stick and/or delete the 2+ instances of the character each time it finally types, or you could technically hook up an external keyboard for the laptop, but... both "solutions" are pretty much showstoppers for a laptop. The issue did make my computer unusable and I was unable to work on it.

Side note: I dropped from 110+ WPM to ~20 WPM because I had three keys with this issue and had to spent 5+ seconds every time I tried any of those keys. The worst part is sometimes it wouldn't register the key and sometimes it would register it on the first try but type the character several times repeatedly. It was literally hell.

nsgf• 8 years ago

There is a simpler solution by installing Karabiner-Elements and mapping problematic keys to vk_none. This effectively disables the keys. You can do this for every key available in the built-in keyboard. Then just use an external keyboard.

tqkxzugoaupvwqr4• 8 years ago

Product idea: Key debouncer, a program that listens to key presses and corrects input. If a character was repeated within x milliseconds, it reduces the input to a single instances of the character. Ideally it debounces the input before any key events are passed on to other programs.

2RTZZSro3• 8 years ago

This comment is fascinating. Apple is a marketing company first and a technology company second. They market their products as truly premium and many of their users are so taken by Apple's propaganda they refuse to believe Apple could ever be at fault for anything. They make excuse after excuse for why their Macs, iPads, iPhones don't work and they never relate it back to Apple.

Louis Rossmann, a highly-respected Apple repairman in Manhattan, NYC, explains the problems with the cult of Apple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hYHwkIuEMo

danmg• 8 years ago

iiii ageee -- set frm myyyy macbokpo

nkkollaw4• 8 years ago

Oh, it took them 2 years (and God only knows how many laptops with related frustration).

Better late than never, I guess.

slededit• 8 years ago

Longer than that. The random battery shutdowns started with the iPhone 7.

vikingcaffiene• 8 years ago

I’ve invested heavily in the Apple ecosystem so it pains me to see these issues. It looks like my best bet is the Mac Mini and hook up higher quality externals. That or I’ll just hope my 2013 MBP lasts long enough for a viable replacement option to appear.

roymurdock• 8 years ago

same boat. holding onto my SE and 2012 mbp until something better, higher quality in the right form factor comes out of apple

no1youknowz• 8 years ago

Same here. I have a mid-2012 MBPr. The keyboard is utterly fantastic.

I'm hoping sanity kicks in by 2020 and there is a better keyboard. But I am not holding my breath, I'm sure they'll double down and have version 4 of the butterfly keyboard.

dmolony• 8 years ago

The 2013 MBP is a great machine, except for the delaminating screen issue. I'm on my third screen in five years.

virgilp• 8 years ago

I had a 2015MBP at work, upgraded it now... oh man, does the new one suck. I mean, the touchbar is such a spectacularly bad idea, I'm honestly surprised they kept it for so long. I thought my concerns were overblown, but as it turns out, they weren't - the touchbar really is that bad. I'm thinking of going back to my old computer for 3 more years, and giving this back to IT.

microtonal2• 8 years ago

I’ve invested heavily in the Apple ecosystem so it pains me to see these issues.

Same here. I have a MacBook Pro 2016 with AppleCare, that I want to sell before the AppleCare runs out (with some margin) and definitely before the extended keyboard warranty deadline is in sight. I am worried that, since these generations are plagued by keyboard problems, the prices will drop quickly.

I used to buy a new MacBook every 1.5 to 2 years. However, I honestly do not know which model I would buy. I do not want a model with a touch bar (I don't like the touch bar and it is slightly expensive). The MacBook Pro escape wasn't refreshed, it still has the keyboard without the silicon membranes. And the new Air uses much less powerful CPUs. Even if I would go for the Pro with touch bar or Air, I would still be worried that the butterfly keyboard problems are not solved, just postponed.

I agree that the Mac Mini looks like the only reasonable machine, performance-wise and quality-wise. Of course, it's not that handy on the go ;).

jbnorth• 8 years ago

About time Apple recognized this issue with the iPhone X. We’ve been replacing iPhone X displays nonstop for months due to this issue and the troubleshooting process to have Apple cover it has been a huge pain.

czardoz4• 8 years ago

It feels like Apple is caught in the classic "innovator's dilemma" described in Christensen's book. Constantly being pushed to higher margin products by competition which is focused on the low end market. The problem is, at some point, the "low-end" products become good enough, causing a sudden loss of sales.

The way out is to come up with entirely new products, which Apple has done remarkably well before. I think it's high time they do so again.

I think the drive to create high margin products is making Apple gravitate towards pushing out technologies that differentiate them from the rest, such as the touch bar, or these keyboards. But it may not actually be better.

scarface748• 8 years ago

People have been saying that for at least 7 years - that Samsung would take over and kill Apple’s margins.

He has been consistently wrong about the iPhone

https://stratechery.com/2013/clayton-christensen-got-wrong/

He doesn’t have the greatest track record when it comes to the iPhone.

https://jeremy.linuxquestions.org/2007/06/28/clayton-christe...

It looks like another case of “No Wireless. Less Space Than the Nomad. Lame”.

czardoz4• 8 years ago

Seven years is not that big of a timeline IMO. These changes happen over a couple or more decades. IBM is still around, but it's not really a leader anymore, is it?

I'm pretty sure there will be a sizable market for Apple products. It's just that they might lose the edge after some time.

Apocryphon• 8 years ago

Okay, forget about Apple's sales and market position- the average consumer doesn't care about that. The question should be, will Apple innovate and improve as it has in the past in a way that benefits customers? And will it do so in a way that doesn't just serve the higher-end market?

vondur• 8 years ago

Apple doesn’t really compete on the low end, low margin side. Lower end laptops and phones have been “good enough” for a while. Yet Apple still sales tons of products.

czardoz4• 8 years ago

If you look at the last earnings report from Apple, they've now stopped reporting the number of iPhones sold. Yeah, the revenue would be growing (because they keep jacking up the prices), but I'm pretty sure the reason they made this change is that they're no longer selling that many.

deelowe• 8 years ago

They should move into other consumer goods. TVs, cars, home appliances, home automation

So many things out there that I think apples ux centric design could really improve.

makecheck• 8 years ago

The weird thing is that there are lots of new things that Apple is in a unique position to make, that people would pay for, and these things aren’t made. Apple could make tons of money.

For example, they should make iOS devices true companions of Macs, to the point where you can simply use iPhone/iPad as a direct input. (Why they went the 1D “Touch Bar” route is beyond me; it makes much more sense to simply assume people already have great 2D touch screens and find a way to bridge to those.) Then laptops wouldn’t have compromises in multiple areas.

Even on the software side. They make money on the App Store but they could make way more money by giving consumers reasons to actually try things, i.e. “try before you buy”, paid upgrades, etc. They have created a software environment where things feel more likely to be scams than useful, which is nuts.

r00fus2• 8 years ago

Great news that Apple is finally admitting what's been common knowledge and the butt of many jokes in the Mac community.

Armed with this knowledge I'm going to wait till my company gets decent stock of the 2018 MB Airs then report my reproducible but not urgent issue on my current 2017 MBP.

msie• 8 years ago

Is there some semi-official reason why they are (intentionally?) making them less repairable?

virmundi• 8 years ago

I wish I had the link. A few years back the argument was they could make things slimmer with integrated components. Apple wanted everything to be slim. That was their differentiation.

btilly2• 8 years ago

Huh. My iPhone X failed that way a week and a half ago.

They can't repair it until "Find My iPhone" is turned off." Do you know how much fun it was to turn it off while my phone was sporadic in what it responded to?

stevewodil3• 8 years ago

I thought if you logged into iCloud and deleted the phone from your account it was the same. Do you know if that's true?

2_listerine_pls2• 8 years ago

It may ask you to use your phone to log in or may take hours to log in.

sumedh3• 8 years ago

They can't repair it until "Find My iPhone" is turned off."

Why not?

btilly2• 8 years ago

Security feature to brick a phone that someone is trying to break into.

andy_ppp5• 8 years ago

I've had my iPhone X replaced once after the screen went mental - a bright green line randomly appeared on one side of the screen - now the replacement drops > 50% of all calls :-(

On the MacBook Pro front I've had the sticking keys issue on the left command, C, B, G and 3 keys - so took it in finally after being tortured by this for months - 1 week later and I called them to see what was going on and they said that the whole top piece needed to be replaced, but when taking out the motherboard they have snapped the thing in two.

Making these machines difficult to repair doesn't just effect end users it seems.

Still, I'm glad that Apple are still the sort of company that replace the whole machine in these situations. I'm sure there are bean counters who will be thinking making it harder to get things fixed is the solution though.

stevewodil3• 8 years ago

Wait so did they give you a new machine? Or are they continuing to fix the same one

andy_ppp5• 8 years ago

Haha! The display was also behaving strangely so they gave me a completely rebuilt machine. i.e. none of the parts were the originals.

Oh and I should have said originally I'd already dropped something on the screen which shattered and they did charge me the £700+ for repairs at a previous date.

It does make me question how long this machine will last and if I should sell it while it's pristine before anything bad happens to it...

ardy42• 8 years ago

but when taking out the motherboard they have snapped the thing in two.

Don't MacBooks have the SSD soldered onto the motherboard now, so motherboard damage == total data loss?

Edit: yep: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/11/touch-bar-mbp-teardo...

If you're going to make something almost totally unrepairable, you'd better make it almost totally reliable as well.

andy_ppp5• 8 years ago

You have to backup the thing before giving it to Apple and I format the thing too.

LeoPanthera• 8 years ago

The same exact thing happened to my MacBook. Stuck keys - damaged while being repaired. It came back with a blank disk.

But it also came back in like-new condition, so I don't really mind.

userbinator• 8 years ago

What's worse is the fact that they encrypt everything by default so you can't just desolder, dump, and flash the data onto a new board.

They say it improves security, but certainly it's possible to have FDE which can be copied onto a new disk --- you're just doing a bit-exact copy of the ciphertext.

thinkingkong2• 8 years ago

Actually it doesn't need to be totally reliable. It just needs to fail at a rate which ensures the cost to apple to replace + refurb is less than the repair + the cost of building a 'repairable' device.

The market demands thinner laptops with amazing battery life. The market - in general - isn't demanding a more serviceable macbook.

meko• 8 years ago

A true shame as I was considering a macbook for my next laptop. System76 lookin' like a snack rn

gtyras2mrs2• 8 years ago

The bright green line seems to be the usual OLED fault. Usually because of some minor shock.

MKBHD's Pixel 3 also had a similar issue.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/9r0hsh/mkbhd_im_no...

andy_ppp5• 8 years ago

It happened while I was using the phone with no impact. Just freaked out in realtime for no reason. At first I thought it was the sun or something casting a green light onto the screen.

int_19h3• 8 years ago

"... the screen bends under itself at the bottom edge of the phone before meeting up with necessary chips, in order to reduce the size of the bottom bezel. This 180 degree display bend is very fragile ..."

That's just great - yet again, practicality is sacrificed for the sake of pointless flashy design.

magnetic• 8 years ago

On the MacBook Pro front I've had the sticking keys issue on the left command, C, B, G and 3 keys - so took it in finally after being tortured by this for months - 1 week later and I called them to see what was going on and they said that the whole top piece needed to be replaced, but when taking out the motherboard they have snapped the thing in two.

Is this on the 2018 MBP?

andy_ppp5• 8 years ago

Mine was late 2016...

dba7dba• 8 years ago

It is possible because customers pay for it. It sure as heck is not coming out of the profit for the shareholders...

maaaats3• 8 years ago

Still, I'm glad that Apple are still the sort of company that replace the whole machine in these situations

Huh, in Norway there are multiple cases of them refusing to follow the law when it comes to repairs. Norway has good consumer protection laws, better than the guarantee most companies provide, and Apple is known for not honoring this.

bunnycorn6• 8 years ago

Apple is known for not honoring this.

Because one costumer decided he wanted to have his laptop repaired instead of the Apple's usual practice of giving a refurbished device?

That's not what most people want. I would rather have a refurb that is better wear and tear state than my device, and has a new battery, than have my previous device repaired.

I have no affection for pieces of plastic and aluminum.

2muchcoffeeman2• 8 years ago

Apple repairs is weirdly inconsistent. I’ve heard horror stories.

But my own experience has always been good. Myself and a friend have had devices replaced within the warranty period free of charge even though it was clearly our faults.

tqkxzugoaupvwqr4• 8 years ago

On the MacBook Pro [2016] front I've had the sticking keys issue on the left command, C, B, G and 3 keys

I so want to buy the MacBook Air 2018 but am afraid the 3rd generation keys only delay the known problems until I’m out of warranty. I have to wait and see if there is a wave of defects in a year or two to judge its reliability. Why did Apple have to sacrifice reliability for thinness…

dethac2• 8 years ago

Thinness drives sales. Sacrificing reliability drives sales. It's not only Apple: look at Microsoft, for example.

abathur• 8 years ago

Similar position. May keep using my 2013 and replace the battery when it gets feeble enough.

All I really want the new MBA for is the 16gb ram, but they bundled it with multiple new tradeoffs.

cududa• 8 years ago

Woah I thought it was just me. Same green lines, and the replacement has terrible reception

r_singh• 8 years ago

I buy high config apple devices regularly, and they're quite expensive here in India with import duty, rupee depreciation and ppp in mind.

If my products went bad like, I'd be genuinely too disappointed. Luckily I've always had damaged / out of warranty products replaced by apple by being a little persistent.

abledon• 8 years ago

I went into an apple store and tried the new MacBook Pro — keyboard had keys that didn’t work LOL. The Best demo I’ve ever had, really showcased the true issues I read about on these threads !

bitwize• 8 years ago

I was issued a 2016 MBP at work. (I do not purchase Apple hardware for my own use.) Within a few days, the TAB key was stuck.

pintxo• 8 years ago

I gues your company mandates spaces over tabs.

2RTZZSro3• 8 years ago

Louis Rossmann, a highly respected and well-known unauthorized Apple repairman in Manhattan, NYC, explains the problems with Apple product engineering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8

theonemind2• 8 years ago

I've seen this one. The video in the link above has the name "The horrible truth about Apple's repeated engineering failures." Rossmann's dislike of Apple comes through, but he gives verifiable facts and, in my opinion, makes a really convincing case that Apple engineers hardware with poor reliability, falling short of matching industry quality and engineering standards (while, of course, charging more.)

As for my own thoughts on how they do this, they really create a premium look and feel, which sells products. Less visible aspects take time to come to light, and you have the opportunity to put some spin on it and obfuscate numbers. Obviously, it works amazingly well in practice.

When people say "you can't judge a book by its cover", I think having an ugly cover with good insides comes to mind first (perhaps because books have much more meat than the cover.) On the flip-side, you can have a great cover on bad insides.

In that video, Rossmann details some substandard first-party Apple refurbishing for issues, and how they time and place recalls, extended warranties, etc. for minimum impact to Apple at consumer expense. The facts, without Apple spin, laid out plainly, really show a manipulative, anti-consumer company with a completely contrary facade, in my opinion.

bunnycorn6• 8 years ago

Rossmann's dislike of Apple comes through, but he gives verifiable facts

No, he doesn't.

He is a liar.

bunnycorn6• 8 years ago

Louis Rossmann, a highly respected

No, he is an Apple hater and constant liar.

Also, he is an ignorant fool that pretends he knows anything about Apple.

He also instructs his audience to go to Apple-related communities to fill everything with Apple hating posts.

If you see his videos's comments, they are full of people hating on Apple.

Louis Rossman is an hate machine, that says that Apple puts chips on their computers just to break them after 3 years, "that's when AppleCare runs out, he says".

Louis Rossman, takes advantage of the lawless country that the United States is, and his friends at YouTube profit from that (he makes about $300K/year from his Apple-batting videos).

herf2• 8 years ago

With the Time Capsule being discontinued, how does the average MacBook user make a backup? Remembering to plug into USB doesn't seem very reliable.

gnicholas2• 8 years ago

I think you can plug a drive into an Airport over USB, though I'm not sure if this setup fully replicates TC functionality.

herf2• 8 years ago

Yes there is samba support in the latest version too. This is not a solution for "every Macbook customer" though.

mlacks• 8 years ago

Most of my time on the computer takes place in the Browser, Office 365, and a few messaging apps. Everything else is in either one drive or iCloud. While I understand that not everyone feels comfortable with their stuff on 'the cloud', I have grown to appreciate the mobility this gives me as far as 'is my stuff backed up'

CharlesW• 8 years ago

With the Time Capsule being discontinued, how does the average MacBook user make a backup?

In my case, Carbon Copy Cloner plus Time Machine backups to a local NAS.[1]

[1] https://www.qnap.com/en-us/how-to/tutorial/article/time-mach...

chrisweekly• 8 years ago

External USB3 1TB SSD, Carbon Copy Cloner to maintain bootable clones.

(Edit: dunno that I represent the "average" user, but this simple setup has served me well for years.)

tlrobinson• 8 years ago

There’s nothing particularly special about the Time Capsule. Time Machine works with almost any consumer NAS.

microtonal2• 8 years ago

I use Arq [1]. Works with cloud storage and NASes.

https://www.arqbackup.com/

duskwuff• 8 years ago

Remembering to plug into USB doesn't seem very reliable.

If it's been ~14+ days since your last backup, the computer will start displaying daily notifications reminding you to plug in the backup drive.

tqkxzugoaupvwqr4• 8 years ago

If they buy an iCloud storage plan, iCloud will be their “backup”. If the device fails, their data lives on. Get a new device and all their data is “restored”. Of course it’s a sync service, not a backup service, so you can’t role back. For the average user though I guess this doesn’t matter.

(macOS takes local snapshots if unused disk space permits. So you could revert back some files if the change is recent.)

tyfon• 8 years ago

While probably not for the average user, my father is using a mac pro and mbp quite heavily for photo and video, and he's using a synology nas with time machine enabled. It's been working for a few years now without problems.

wasdfff2• 8 years ago

What’s wrong with having a cable at your desk? Just plug it in when you get home and eject when you leave.

vmasto• 8 years ago

A NAS setup or Backblaze. Personally I use both for redundancy.

writepub• 8 years ago

A year after iPhone X went on sale, they admit to a problem? And 1 more year before their performance throttling kills the usability if this model

What if they delayed admission to reduce repair costs, and minimize brand damage? I don't trust them to be transparent, I hope regulators are watching this pattern.

codetrotter• 8 years ago

Some issues might take a while to show up I guess.

jplayer01• 8 years ago

I'm waiting for the EU to finally pass regulations that require a certain level of repairability for electronics. Modern iPhones are almost impossible to take apart and I don't understand how that's okay from any point of view other than profitability. It's such a massive waste of resources on one-use devices.

zepto2• 8 years ago

They last far longer than Android devices, and in part this is due to their construction. They are both refurbished and resold and finally also now almost completely recycled by Apple.

There is no ‘massive waste of resources’ and they are not one-use, and from an environmental perspective they are far lower impact than their ‘repairable’ alternatives, which in practice are rarely actually repaired.

Any legislation that mandates repairability would be a catastrophic environmental disaster.

hrktb• 8 years ago

I thnk parent is including laptops.

Those last far longer, are rarely resold, and would need to be more repairable in general.

cfitz2• 8 years ago

I've had my latest gen MBP (retina with touch bar, top spec'd) replaced twice, and on the latest replacement, the whole keyboard assembly - with whatever was attached to it - also replaced.

(Yes, I fully regret selling my previous gen MBP.)

Like another person on here said, these replacements & repairs hurt both the customer and the company.

I don't understand why Apple makes these drastic changes on major products without thorough, repeated, and lengthy QA processes.

What's happened?

majestik2• 8 years ago

Supplier error, QA error

rz2k• 8 years ago

It seems like their goal is accomplishing something difficult that can only be done economically by a large manufacturer operating at immense scale. It is a reasonable strategy to effectively create barriers to entry from competitors, and preserve the ability to earn relatively large profit margins.

There have been articles on Hacker News where people talked about it being extremely difficult for a hardware startup to do something as simple as achieving a uniform color to plastic components, or packaging their products in white cardboard like Apple.

One could argue that Apple is not accomplishing the goal of producing a premium product, but whether it is still a good strategy depends on a lot of numbers that are difficult to find. How much of the value of a MBP that is entirely replaced for the end consumer gets recycled back into the refurbished programs? 20%, 50%, 80%? What percentage of units have to be replaced? 1%, 2%, 5%, 10%? What is the margin on each unit sold? How much would fixed manufacturing costs increase if they retooled the entire line to revert to older style keyboards? How much is the damage to Apple's reputation costing them in dollar terms?

cfitz2• 8 years ago

I find your "accomplishing something difficult that can only be done economically by a large manufacturer operating at immense scale" point very interesting.

Perhaps they should focus on building a reliable premium product rather than a premium product that suffers failures due to too many gadgets (too put it simply).

As far as what is a better strategy for them moving forward on their policy re: replacement & repairs, they're probably trying to figure out what to do right now based off your mentioned hidden numbers.

I hope they do the right thing by the customer, as many of us are heavily invested in their product line, in multiple ways.

vbuwivbiu• 8 years ago

I wonder whether hardware is already so complex that reliability is impossible since devices can't even be fully understood.

Maybe we need to give up on designing (deterministic) things and have them evolve instead.

jokoon• 8 years ago

I wish I could pay 50% more for a laptop, so even if it's just less fast, 300% thicker, could still survive for 5 years without fainting.

It seems thinkpads or some other dell laptops (or other brands?) have some kind of military grade requirements so they can sustain not only punishments and mistreatments, but also not have those faulty gimmicks that are caused by fragile designs.

It's the difference between wanting a fancy sports car and a good old military vehicle. There are designs that are well thought out, and are just more reliable in the long term. I don't want shiny, performant cool object, I want things to work. Not aiming at apple in particular.

blattimwind3• 8 years ago

Panasonic (Toughbook), Dell (Latitude Rugged) and Getac all supply Milspec and milspec-ish laptops. I've owned several of these and in certain locales they're quite handy. Also, carrying just a laptop, which already has a carry handle, is lighter than carrying a 1 kg laptop in a soft briefcase. Since shock-proofed hard disk carriers are a bit bulkier than your regular 2.5" disk some of these laptops also have a good amount of stash space.

While more modern Thinkpads seem less physically robust than the old guard (Mg castings and all), even the physically low-end ones are still quite ok (e.g. the E485, which incidentally also has a Ryzen CPU).

agumonkey3• 8 years ago

Some videos show people abusing toughbooks, it's weirdly amazing what they can endure.

andrewflnr• 8 years ago

Scanning the Dell Latitude Rugged models, that's more like 3x the price than 1.5x.

koyote• 8 years ago

I bought a Lenovo T431s around 5 years ago.

It's quite slim and not very heavy and still going very strong. Since I bought it I have upgraded the following:

* New SSD

* Added extra RAM

* Upgraded the screen to full HD IPS (turns out the screen of the following year's model is an exact fit for this one)

* Bought a new power brick (funnily, this is the only thing that failed on me in the 5 years)

All components were incredibly easy to install, even a layperson could do it with no issues.

I can't see myself buying a new laptop for the foreseeable future unless this one somehow bites the dust.

st3fan• 8 years ago

My car also had an issue and I had to bring it in for a part to be replaced.

Why is it so special when this happens for a major hardware vendor like Apple? Is the expectation that hardware has no bugs? Is that realistic?

blueboo• 8 years ago

It's big news when car manufacturers do major recalls too

agumonkey3• 8 years ago

smartphone screns and batteries are main parts of the device, it's as if engine or frame failed in the first year..

agumonkey3• 8 years ago

Because smartphones are pocket computers and computers were for most of their history and market, made out of pluggable cards and devices.

Every time I use a car I can't stop rambling.. because I'm a computer kid, not a car kid.

curo• 8 years ago

Is the new Air a safe bet? I'm looking to buy before the end of the year. Does anyone know or suspect whether Apple has or has not fixed their hardware problems?

Eric_WVGG• 8 years ago

Folks aren’t complaining about the keyboards anywhere close to as much as they were a year ago.

the_clarence• 8 years ago

Are the newest macbook pro problematic?

Apple Admits to Hardware Quality Problems with iPhone X, MacBook Pro

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