MacBook Quality Issues?

[MacBookHades]

Anyone else questioning the quality of the Intel MacBooks? I manage a few thousand Macs of all flavors, including 600 first gen MacBooks.

To date, after 18 months, here are our warranty rates:

Discrete MacBooks returned for warranty: 220 (37%)
MacBooks with more than 1 warranty repair: 96 (17%)
Battery Warranty Claims: 84 (14%)

We are quickly approaching almost 400 total warranty claims. Needless to say, this has cost my company an incredible amount of money in labor costs. Our techs do the initial diagnosis and transport the warranty computers to the local Apple warranty shop.

The most prevalent issue is the discoloration of the case, but we have had to replace the case several times, so Apple apparently has not fixed the manufacturing defect with the white cases. We have also had many logic boards, hard drives and CD drives fail.

In the old days, you had to finally decide to throw out the Mac's after 8-10 years because they just would not die. Now, they are dying constantly.

Anyone else with large installations seeing this trend?

 

[krye]

I wonder if the people at your job paid for the laptops, if you'd see the issues go down. It's the same at my job. The people here treat their computers/laptops like crap, because they never paid for it. If it breaks they'll be given a new one. They treat their own stuff like gold. It's human nature. So I don't think it is an indication if Apple build quality, it's just that people don't care of their stuff.

 

[sparkygalore]

Yup, big difference. Not only has my battery died for the second time, but my case is cracking around the edges and my OS is sluggish... all after only 2 years. Sometimes I'm tempted to go back to my titanium powerbook from 2002, which still runs like a champ.

 

[nick9191]

As already they didn't pay for them, they will treat them like crap. At my college I've seen the PE Staff take their laptops out onto the muddy field, wasn't a mac though or I would have hit them

 

[krye]

As already they didn't pay for them, they will treat them like crap. At my college I've seen the PE Staff take their laptops out onto the muddy field, wasn't a mac though or I would have hit them

So true. People for the most part just don't treat other people's stuff as if it were their own. Especially, if something is theirs and they haven't paid for it. (rental cars anyone?) I treat everyone's stuff as if it were my own, maybe even better.

I take care of my stuff. I like to keep all my stuff looking new. My wife thinks I have OCD because I can't stand so much as a finger print on my CD or DVD collection. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've lent someone a book, DVD, CD, or something and it has not been returned to me in the same shape.

So back to the original issue, I don't think it's all about an Apple built quality thing. Sure, is anything really "made the way they used to" anymore? Probably not, but in general, as a societal thing, people in general don't take care of stuff like they used to. We live in a disposable society and some people, not all, have no respect for other people's belongings.

 

[superted666]

Falls in line with my experience too except on a smaller scale.

The macbook is a big seller for apple and from what it looks like Apple has cut corners in testing and production for this model.

I still love my macbook but its my third under warranty.. in contrast previous ibooks and imacs have never been for repair over the last 7 years....

One step forward another step back.

 

[MacBookHades]

Huh?

I am not exactly sure how the topic was changed to users abusing the MacBooks. The warranty numbers are exactly that....repairs that Apple covered under the extended warranty we purchased with each MacBook.

This has nothing to do with user abuse. We have had 4 of the original 600 damaged due to user neglect. Blaming the user is an easy answer.

This reminds about what Apple said when we started to notice the discoloration...."Wash your hands". Needless to say I was not impressed. They eventually admitted there was a problem with the cases. Since then, we have had some that are on their second or third case, so the problem obviously has not been fixed.

Oh well, I knew there would be some that defended Apple without regard to my facts. But, I am glad a few of you have also noticed. That was all I was lookings for...confirmation that this is a systemic quality issue with MacBooks.

 

[pastrychef]

More than half a dozen very close friends of mine have MacBooks or MacBook Pros. I'm personally on my second one. As far as I know, none have required warranty service except for my first one which had a faulty inverter board. I know because I'm always the first one they call with any Mac problem.

 

[AlexanderTgreat]

More than half a dozen very close friends of mine have MacBooks or MacBook Pros. I'm personally on my second one. As far as I know, none have required warranty service except for my first one which had a faulty inverter board. I know because I'm always the first one they call with any Mac problem.

I'm on my 2nd macbook in just over a year and 2 months. I treat my things very well and certainly no worse than I did my ibook G4 which has remained problem free to this day despite it's age.

About 3 months after buying my fist macbook the topcase developed it's legendary crack on the right side and it was replaced under apple care. Not a month later my hard drive failed which was also replaced under apple care. Needless to say I was starting to get pretty wild by this time as I had done with out my computer twice already for problems that shouldn't have happened. I was promised at the apple store however, that the top case issue was only a problem on the early macbooks and the issue had been resolved.... well 2-3 months after that guess what happened? Yes you got it my topcase cracked again in exactly the same spot so back to apple it went again and got yet another top case replacement. I was extremely angry at this point and was very close to selling the computer on ebay but after looking around at other laptop options I didn't think that there was a clearly superior alternative so I decided to stick it out with the macbook a while longer. Then came the next problem which probably was the most annoying one of the bunch. After a while of being on wireless the connection would keep switching on and off.. from full strength to nothing like someone was flicking a switch back and forth. Naturally i first assumed that the airport was responsible but after testing it with a number of other computers including my old ibook I found that they all worked perfectly on it. After looking through the forums for a while I noticed that other people were having similar issues and it was suggested that this may be a software update issue so I reinstalled tiger with out doing any of the updates this time... the problem continued. Livid I finally went out and bought Leopard hoping that it would solve my problems but to no avail and if anything it made things worse.

It was at that point that I decided that it had to go and I sold it on ebay. Unfortunately I still hadn't found and suitable replacement for the macbook at this time and with the release of the latest version of the macbook I decided to give it one more shot. Anyway so far I've had my new macbook for about 3 weeks and no problems to report so far. The real test will be after it reaches about the 4-6 month period when problems start to show up.

 

[DannySmurf]

This has nothing to do with user abuse. We have had 4 of the original 600 damaged due to user neglect. Blaming the user is an easy answer.

I don't think anyone's defending Apple here.

"Abuse" can take many forms, some of them very subtle, and many of them either not intentional, or simply a result of ignoring so-called best practices. For example, you say you have 84 battery claims. Okay. I plug and unplug my work laptop frequently, with no particular regard for how much of a discharge it's gotten or whether it's fully charged when I unplug it, etc. I know perfectly well that this is not good for the battery (I get about 45 minutes out of it now, which is significantly less than when it was issued).

Do I care? Not really. I usually don't use it off AC for more than 20 minutes at a time, so the actual life doesn't concern me, and it's not mine, so ultimately I don't care whether it never holds a decent charge again. Would I act that way with my own laptop? Not a chance.

My company COULD very well make a battery warranty claim against the company they bought the computer from. But the fact that the battery sucks so hard is at least partly (probably more than partly) my own fault, for not treating it properly.

 

[pastrychef]

I'm on my 2nd macbook in just over a year and 2 months. I treat my things very well and certainly no worse than I did my ibook G4 which has remained problem free to this day despite it's age.

About 3 months after buying my fist macbook the topcase developed it's legendary crack on the right side and it was replaced under apple care. Not a month later my hard drive failed which was also replaced under apple care. Needless to say I was starting to get pretty wild by this time as I had done with out my computer twice already for problems that shouldn't have happened. I was promised at the apple store however, that the top case issue was only a problem on the early macbooks and the issue had been resolved.... well 2-3 months after that guess what happened? Yes you got it my topcase cracked again in exactly the same spot so back to apple it went again and got yet another top case replacement. I was extremely angry at this point and was very close to selling the computer on ebay but after looking around at other laptop options I didn't think that there was a clearly superior alternative so I decided to stick it out with the macbook a while longer. Then came the next problem which probably was the most annoying one of the bunch. After a while of being on wireless the connection would keep switching on and off.. from full strength to nothing like someone was flicking a switch back and forth. Naturally i first assumed that the airport was responsible but after testing it with a number of other computers including my old ibook I found that they all worked perfectly on it. After looking through the forums for a while I noticed that other people were having similar issues and it was suggested that this may be a software update issue so I reinstalled tiger with out doing any of the updates this time... the problem continued. Livid I finally went out and bought Leopard hoping that it would solve my problems but to no avail and if anything it made things worse.

It was at that point that I decided that it had to go and I sold it on ebay. Unfortunately I still hadn't found and suitable replacement for the macbook at this time and with the release of the latest version of the macbook I decided to give it one more shot. Anyway so far I've had my new macbook for about 3 weeks and no problems to report so far. The real test will be after it reaches about the 4-6 month period when problems start to show up.

Wow! You've really had a string of bad luck... While I've read about the top case cracking and wireless connectiviy issues, I've never personally experienced it. I really don't know what to tell you...

As for the hard drive, blame that on the hard drive manufacturers.