My Day at the Apple Store

deafbykhorns

Well, weekend was good except my Macbook Pro died....nothing, nobody home.
Against my better judgement, my wife convinced me to take it to the Apple Store.
After waiting an hour (after appointment time), I finally got one of the "geniuses" to help me. After the usual troubleshooting he informed me my laptop was dead, no $hit sherlock. After asking several questions about possible costs, he finally said it could be the logic board. In case you didn't know, that would be a motherboard in Apple talk. Costs, about $1200, thanks but no thanks.
Went home after this and started googling for a motherboard (aka logic board). Cost for boards are about $500. Did some more googling and found a guy in California that has flat rate repairs for $450. I thought, this can't be a logic board replacement but some kind of component failure. Well, I decided to tear the laptop apart, I figured if I can repair an amplifier I have a pretty good shot at finding a bad part.
20 minutes later I had this thing in a hundred pieces. Checked for the usual obvious signs to no avail. Powered up the board and checked some voltages, battery good, check, charging voltage good, check. Put my hand over the motherboard, ouch, just got burned! Thought it was the chip at first, but turns out it was a SMD capacitor. Pulled out the soldering station and removed the SMD. Didn't have another SMD so I soldered in a electrolytic to test. Reinstalled battery, pushed button and the dang thing came on.
Hallelujah!
After researching the part, it was a 6v 68uf Tantalum SMD cap that was on a 12volt circuit!!!! Doesn't surprise me since the motherboard said "made in china for Apple".
Ordered the right cap from Mouser today along with two more caps to replace the charging circuit (under rated caps as well).
There seems to be a lot of logic boards on Ebay, hmmm....
Time, 3 hours, $15 in parts, what a racket!!

I guess I will be modding my laptop later on this week when parts arrive.

AsSiMiLaTeD

I'm curious which year and model you have?

Moose68Bash

I'm curious about whether you purchased Applecare for the laptop, and if you did, whether the term of the coverage had expired.

I've purchased a lot of Apple products for myself and my family members. I always purchase Applecare, and I've used it a lot. In at least two instances I've had MacBook Pros die in the last 6 months of the contract and have received new, "latest and greatest" replacements -- complete with a new Applecare contract.

While failures are annoying, I've found Apple's service to be better than any others I've experienced int he electronics industry, including HP, Toshiba and Dell.

AsSiMiLaTeD

That's been my experience as well, why I was curious about the year and model...

mhardy6647

Tantalums, as I am sure the OP knows, are notoriously failure prone.

westmassguy

mhardy6647 wrote: »

Tantalums, as I am sure the OP knows, are notoriously failure prone.

Very true, they do like to explode, however just about any type of cap is unlikely to survive very long at twice it's rated voltage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpC6XGHyS88

deafbykhorns

The laptop is a late 2010 model with about 200hrs on it. This was my first Apple product so I was not sold on AppleCare. Really not a believer in extended warranties and have had bad experiences in the past(I now know AppleCare is better). I know tantalums short most the time when they fail but these SMDs are fairly robust and the voltages are low enough which is probably why this cap lasted this long. Most tantalums I've replaced on amplifiers in the past had much higher working voltages. I'm really impressed with the battery life since most laptop batteries would of been toast after 3 yrs. Just wondering if this was a simple production mistake or by design?

westmassguy

200 hours isn't a lot for a laptop. If it were just the one cap, I'd say it was an isolated incident, but you found two others. Doesn't speak well for Apple's QC over a foreign supplier. Unfortunately, as with many other things, production lines rarely stop just because they ran out of the correct part.

mantis

I have a 2008 Macbook Pro still going strong. I replaced the Battery and the Hard Drive not due to failure but to prevent failure.
The battery was wearing out as it only lasted about an hour off the charger.

We have 3 other Mac's in the house all working great. All older models. We are all due for some fresh new models.

AsSiMiLaTeD

We may get new models announced today at WWDC, I hope the rumors of a cheaper line of products are wrong though.

deafbykhorns

westmassguy wrote: »

200 hours isn't a lot for a laptop. If it were just the one cap, I'd say it was an isolated incident, but you found two others. Doesn't speak well for Apple's QC over a foreign supplier. Unfortunately, as with many other things, production lines rarely stop just because they ran out of the correct part.

Bingo!

mantis

AsSiMiLaTeD wrote: »

We may get new models announced today at WWDC, I hope the rumors of a cheaper line of products are wrong though.

I plan on watching it live on Apple TV streaming.

krabby5

I had no idea what you were talking about...That's why they can charge $1000. f'ers.

sucks2beme

That much money for a a 4 year old motherboard?
Apple stuff is way too pricey for me.

Moose68Bash

deafbykhorns wrote: »

The laptop is a late 2010 model with about 200hrs on it. This was my first Apple product so I was not sold on AppleCare. Really not a believer in extended warranties and have had bad experiences in the past(I now know AppleCare is better). I know tantalums short most the time when they fail but these SMDs are fairly robust and the voltages are low enough which is probably why this cap lasted this long. Most tantalums I've replaced on amplifiers in the past had much higher working voltages. I'm really impressed with the battery life since most laptop batteries would of been toast after 3 yrs. Just wondering if this was a simple production mistake or by design?

I share your distrust for extended warranty plans, because I've learned over a few too many years of experience that faulty products usually fail early in their lives, if they are going to fail because of faulty components or manufacturing. However, while working for NeXT Computer -- which manufactured logic boards in Fremont, CA -- I "learned" that logic boards are assembled from so many components from different suppliers and are such complex assemblies that failure rates after normal warranty periods are higher than for other products. Companies that rely on multiple suppliers, each of which has its own QC standards and processes, cannot be certain about what they are getting. When they also depend on off-shore assemblers, as they do now, they introduce another source of potential failures.

I still believe Apple products are the best "value for money" computer products for, as Steve Jobs used to say, "mere mortals," but I always recommend purchasing AppleCare.

AsSiMiLaTeD

The pricing of Apple stuff is somewhat misunderstood, I try to clarify this when I can because I feel it's a somewhat inaccurate assessment of their pricing. This is not targeted at Keith's post or any in particular here, just an overall thought.

It's not that Apple stuff is more expensive than everything else, it's just that they just don't have a cheap line of products. So if you take an Apple product like the rMBP or their iMac and find a comparable product from Asus or Dell those prices are typically comparable as well. The issue is more that Apple doesn't make a cheap line of computers, Asus and Dell make $400 laptops and Apple does not, so to people looking in that price range Apple stuff is overpriced. For example, Asus announced a new Zenbook overnight that's going head to head with the Retina MacBook Pro, with similar materials and build quality - my guess is that when a price is announced it'll be somewhere near the price of the cMBP from Apple.

As an investor with several hundred shares and a large portion of my retirement in Apple I personally hope they DON'T come out with a line of cheaper products as I think it will devalue the brand. You'll get more sales and a short term boost I'm sure, but long term I think it floods the market with their products and eventually devalues their brand. I realize that this argument can go either way, that's just my personal opinion.

sucks2beme

Not to worry. A year after they buy beats, the stock will freefall.

AsSiMiLaTeD

I sure hope not...

tonyb

Isn't it called "built in obsolescence" ? You can find that on most any product these days.

mhardy6647

AsSiMiLaTeD wrote: »

I sure hope not...

Naaah, they'll be fine for the remainder of your lifetime, I expect.

sucks2beme

Steve Jobs is dead. The stock is at $628 a share. It may be time to diversify a bit.

mhardy6647

Steve Jobs is dead?!?

AsSiMiLaTeD

sucks2beme wrote: »

Steve Jobs is dead. The stock is at $628 a share. It may be time to diversify a bit.

Oh I'm plenty diversified, that's not an issue...

Moose68Bash

AsSiMiLaTeD wrote: »

The pricing of Apple stuff is somewhat misunderstood, I try to clarify this when I can because I feel it's a somewhat inaccurate assessment of their pricing. This is not targeted at Keith's post or any in particular here, just an overall thought.

It's not that Apple stuff is more expensive than everything else, it's just that they just don't have a cheap line of products. So if you take an Apple product like the rMBP or their iMac and find a comparable product from Asus or Dell those prices are typically comparable as well. The issue is more that Apple doesn't make a cheap line of computers, Asus and Dell make $400 laptops and Apple does not, so to people looking in that price range Apple stuff is overpriced. For example, Asus announced a new Zenbook overnight that's going head to head with the Retina MacBook Pro, with similar materials and build quality - my guess is that when a price is announced it'll be somewhere near the price of the cMBP from Apple.

To add to AsSiMiLaTeD's explanation of the apparently high price of Apple computers v. other brands, I would say there is significant value in the ease of use, the reliability and stability, and simplicity of the Apple operating system. It makes things easy for ordinary folks: installing and uninstalling new software, adding new hardware, using the file system and search functionality are very valuable to me and others. Microsoft products are simply too "squirrelly" for many of us. I'll pay more for OS X, and Apple has chosen not to sell that for installation on other hardware, even though apple has set up their hardware to allow installation of Windows operating systems.

In addition, every time (and it has been several times) over the last decade that my daughters have needed a new computer for school, I have looked at other brands (Toshiba, Sony, HP, Dell) for their use. Each time, by the time I configured the alternatives to provide what I thought they needed, the price differential virtually evaporated. Apple includes most of the "bells and whistles" needed, while others supply them as add ons for added cost.

markmarc

I've owned three Apple laptops, a G3 iBook, G4 iBook, and an early MacBook. All three are still running strong, with the oldest one now next door with the teen neighbor, the G4 as my music server, and the MacBook my daily computer. Each one was covered under AppleCare, though the only time I used it was to have a crack in the seam of the case fixed. Over the years my students have dropped, banged, and knocked them around, and they still run. I'm now looking at a new laptop and you can bet that even though I use Windows at school, I will get another MacBook.

deafbykhorns

The reason why Macbook is better is because they control the Hardware!!
Imagine trying to write code for the thousands of hardware combinations, hats off to Microsoft!

Moose68Bash

deafbykhorns wrote: »

The reason why Macbook is better is because they control the Hardware!!
Imagine trying to write code for the thousands of hardware combinations, hats off to Microsoft!

An interesting proposition: Aren't virtually all computers assembled mostly from off-the-shellf parts and components from the same set of manufacturers -- CPUs, memory modules, hard drives, graphics chip sets, etc.?

In writing code for the operating system, isn't the most important hardware factor the CPU, which has been largely the same (Intel chips) for Macs and MS-based computers for many years?

sucks2beme

The cpu is only a small part of the puzzle.
Chipsets for the motherboard, vidio, audio, etc.
are as varied as you could ever imagine.
Add to the fact the most troublesome part are all
the add-ons demanded by the many internet apps
in software you need to play ball with.
I can take a box of parts and make a pc out of it.
A box of misc Mac parts is just junk

AsSiMiLaTeD

deafbykhorns wrote: »

The reason why Macbook is better is because they control the Hardware!!
Imagine trying to write code for the thousands of hardware combinations, hats off to Microsoft!

I agree that M$ does have a more difficult job than Apple in building the software, and many times they don't get it right. It's a difficult task and I commend them for trying, but at the end of the day I just want something that works seamlessly. I don't think either approach is right or wrong, they're just two different ways of doing things and things have worked out well for both companies.

cnh

The idea that Apple products are not overpriced is a little hard to swallow. I bought my first MAC in the late '80s, easily twice what anything else was. OK, they had the mouse and a better OS plus the page white display. I worked for a Mac-based SW company for a short time to make extra money as a Grad Student in the late '80s (part time). We used to call APPLES the machine for Yuppies, it was pricey and you looked 'cool' if you had one. That kind of continues to be the Mac modus operandi.

Clones, no clones for Apple except for a VERY BRIEF period and then it was GONE! PCs, clones galore almost from day one.

Apple, "proprietary" peripherals that are made with cheap parts, break easily and are WAY expensive.

I'm not a Mac hater by any means. I've owned their products for years until the collapse that led our college to temporarily stop supporting Apple products, then went back to supporting them.

On another note. Do any of you have teenagers? All of my colleagues who have teenagers have endless stories about Macbook fails within a year or less. So APPLE care, horribly expensive but you BETTER buy it if you have kids! Or else you'll be paying as much as whatever you have costs for APPLE to repair it. lol That's because they can't use that Chinese labor on this side of the Pacific.

Then there is, of course, the history of the Chinese plants which has supposedly been addressed. Yeah, Apple with its SUPER surplus of cash employs HOW many Americans? lol You know, they invest abroad with the profit they make in the U.S. (and manufacture where labor is cheap, but that's what EVERYONE does so why single out Apple?)

But let me stop here because a lot of what I say about Apple applies, now, to most other companies as well, as they seek to compete with it. Apple stock IS overvalued but I doubt it will bust soon. I think those of you who have this are probably within 10 years or so of retirement so you're good. Twenty or more years, who knows?

I don't use Apple products anymore but my wife and daughter do so it's not like it's not a presence here.

cnh

sucks2beme

I have always maintained my own stuff. And Apple doesn't make hardware easy to do.
the non-apple stuff has a lot more software glitches, but I understand whats going on.
Apple stuff is user friendly on day to day stuff, but not so easy when things go wrong.