SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Thousands of Apple Macbook owners are campaigning for action over reported issues with the laptop's retina screen. They are reporting "horrific stains" spreading across screens, in the forms of spots and patches.
...
A website called "Staingate" has been set up by a group unhappy with Apple's response.Some of them say they have been told they will have to pay $800 (£519) for repair work, the Staingate website states.
A Facebook group formed by people experiencing problems with their Macbook screens has 1,752 members, and Staingate claims to have been contacted by more than 2,500 people so far. US legal firm Whitfield Bryson & Mason has contacted the Facebook group offering to investigate.
Its 2013 models seem to be worst affected, but there are online forums discussing the problem dating back to 2009.
People do pay a premium for Apple hardware, perceiving them as higher-end. Take a look at the images of screen damage—is their anger justified?
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Funny) by danomac on Sunday July 12 2015, @11:15PM
Apple eventually relented and repaired all the overheating GPUs (I believe) after lots of complaining. I was recently repairing a Macbook Pro (about 1-2 years old) that was starting to show signs of running hot. Maybe instead of obsessing over thinness they could engineer proper cooling for their Macs?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday July 12 2015, @11:40PM
This was with the first-gen early 2006 MacBook Pro - MacBookPro1,1 with a 32 bit Core Duo on a 64-Bit Core 2 Duo.
The dealer told me they would replace it for free if I gave him my torched MagSafe. I kept it for use as evidence then paid $80.00 for the replacement. I had to wait about a week for it to be ordered from the distributor as I lived in The Great White North at the time.
I filed a bug with Radar [apple.com] in which I advised Apple to recall, redesign and replace all the MagSafes before they got someone killed. I also pointed out that if they were unconcerned with taking human lives they for sure would be concerned about lawsuits.
Apple's response?
They supplied a link to a page that explains Apple's policy regarding unsolicited product ideas. They don't accept them. I see the point of it if I told them to rename the "Trash Can" to "Bit Bucket", then I might claim a share of increased product sales.
A few years later after a huge public outcry - I expect a lawsuit but I was not following the issue - Apple did indeed recall, redesign and replace all the magsafe.
The Early 2013 MacBook Pro I have now (MacBook10,1) failed to power back on after I closed then reopened the lid. It was just barely out of AppleCare coverage.
I am never, ever going to purchase an Apple product again as long as I live.
There are many other reasons, I will go into them later, but mostly it has to do with the way Apple has always screwed the third-party developers that give people reasons to purchase Apple products.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by danomac on Sunday July 12 2015, @11:47PM
(Score: 5, Informative) by wantkitteh on Monday July 13 2015, @08:56AM
That wasn't Apple specific, it was an Nvidia manufacturing screw-up. [cnet.com] Dell and HP also offered out-of-warranty replacements/repairs for affected systems, along with BIOS updates to enable GPU fans all the time and run them faster and louder, notably reducing the battery life.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Monday July 13 2015, @12:02AM
page that explains Apple's policy regarding unsolicited product ideas
That they specifically have a "Fuck you, we don't care about your ideas" page speaks volumes about the company as a whole, I think. Perhaps it's just patent lawyer-proofing, but it does seem quite in-line with their corporate attitude.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Monday July 13 2015, @08:59AM
Yeah, because Dell, HP, Lenovo et al just lurve listening to customers and running with their ideas. Biased much? Don't worry, it's not just you, the Apple Reality Distortion field appears to extend to anything written about Apple anywhere.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @12:47PM
There is no reality distortion field. Apple acts like it's a first rate hardware makers (and it pretty much is) but they treat their customers like they are a cut-rate vendor. They charge big bucks for premium hardware but they don't provide premium customer care. "Sorry about that manufacturing defect in your $2000 macbook. Pay us a third of its value and we will fix our fuck up". At that point they are no different than Acer or some other cut-rate notebook vendor who have no real obligation to help customers who bought their crap hardware to save a few hundred bucks.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday July 13 2015, @07:06PM
You know who *did* listen to exactly this kind of feedback? RadioShack. Two or three years ago I had a RS battery holder that melted, shorted out, and threw out a big plume of smoke before I got the thing all disconnected. It'd been in my bin a few years by that point, but I tossed a note onto the RadioShack Facebook page anyway since I didn't see any obvious damage to the thing before it caught fire. Didn't expect them to do much, but within a day or two they're asking for my email, asking where and when I bought it, if I still have the receipt, and if I can bring it to a nearby store for them to mail back to corporate...all over what was probably a $2 hunk of plastic. Hell, they cared more than I did!
But I guess that's why they went bankrupt and Apple's income rivals that of some nations -- it's a lot cheaper to tell people to go screw themselves...
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @12:28AM
People like to point at MS as a scummy company (they can be). MS learned from the true masters of being bastards, Apple. MS was just better at it. Lost the best programming job I ever had because they decided to cut out the 3rd party hardware.
I am never, ever going to purchase an Apple product again as long as I live.
I came to that conclusion in 1997.
They systematically take your value. The value proposition on making apple applications is awful unless you get a home run. Think about this for every dollar you earn you give to Apple at 30%. Then you owe uncle sam ~30% and your overhead out of the remainder. So your profit is maybe 5-10 cents on the dollar if your lucky.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday July 13 2015, @01:18AM
Thanks a lot for your totally unbiased opinion. If it makes you feel any better, Apple has nowhere else to go but down from here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @02:19PM
I can not see the value prop on developing for Apple anymore. They now give the tools away at least. But they now take even *more* money on the backend. Instead of it taking 20k or so to setup a dev, it now costs pretty much hardware. But they then want to take it all on the backend with their store which you pretty much have to use to make anything. They have over and over screwed their 3rd party hardware guys and in turn the software guys. They have done so since the early 80s. MS is just as bad. But at least I have a chance of making some cash off clueless enterprise. Linux is where it is at these days though. They may have their glorious in the open fights but it is usually OK and there is a chance to make a living. Android is a wasteland of 'fremium'.
Two things I have learned over the years. Do not work for companies whose main product is hardware and do not work on anything with Apple.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday July 13 2015, @09:24PM
>The value proposition on making apple applications is awful unless you get a home run. Think about this for every dollar you earn you give to Apple at 30%. Then you owe uncle sam ~30% and your overhead out of the remainder. So your profit is maybe 5-10 cents on the dollar if your lucky.
What overhead? You may have up-front capital costs for the development, but by the time your app is in the store, there's not much ongoing expense (aka overhead) associated with it - Apple is the one with overhead (though probably only pennies per sale, if that). Unless you're making subscription-based software or something riddled with paid DLC - in which case %$#@! you.
As for taxes, if you're paying 30% tax on your app income, then clearly you already have at least a moderate hit on your hands, or you're a hobbyist whose has a substantial independent source of income. You have to be making more than $91k to hit the 28% incremental tax bracket in the US, $189k to make it into the next, 33%, incremental bracket - and that's an *incremental* tax bracket - you only pay that rate on the income made over the threshold amount, so to pay 30% on total income you probably have to be pushing a half-million dollars (not going to actually bother doing the math - it's simple but tedious.) And, even if you manage to get a 30% effective tax rate, that's still 49% of the sale price going into your pocket. (30% of 70% = 21% of the sticker price, to hit 30% of sticker price you'd need to hit a tax rate of 42%, and the top US tax rate is only 39.5% on income over $413k)
Besides, it's not like you can duck taxes by selling elsewhere, your only legal options are not making any money in the first place or employing a shady accountant.
I agree that Apple is... generous... in taking their cut, especially considering how little they actually contribute beyond a captive customer base. But then that's nothing new - most retailers traditionally angled for a 100% markup on the products they sold. AKA they took a 50% cut of the sale price. As did everyone else in the supply chain. Of course that was brick-and-mortar stores where rent, inventory management, etc. all imposed significant overhead, and before the internet amped up the mail-order competition. Not sure what a "typical" markup for physical goods is these days. But hell, I've heard that it's not uncommon for retailers to actually charge the product manufacturers for the privilege of having their goods on their shelves, how's *that* for messed up?
And hey, if we compare them to other traditional "virtual goods" publishers such as movie or music labels, Apple looks positively benevolent - after all they do actually pay you a percentage of your sales, while "Hollywood accounting"is notorious for "losing" money even on major blockbusters to avoid paying royalties, and it's not uncommon for music stars to actually end up deeply in debt to the labels they've enriched.
TLDR: Yes, Apple sucks. But so does pretty much everyone in the retail and publishing business. That doesn't excuse their behavior, but it at least makes it a little more understandable. Nobody wants to be the sucker who's only getting rich from other people's work when the competition is getting *obscenely* rich by totally shafting their golden geese.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by wantkitteh on Monday July 13 2015, @02:07AM
The two real issues at play here: 1) laptop design is by far the most complicated of all the devices we use on day-to-day basis. 2) People like to hate Apple.
I've worked as a Mac support engineer for 6 years now across several companies with literally thousands of Mac laptops between them. I've seen a grand total of two original design Magsafe connectors that frayed (both the same guy), one 2011 Macbook Pro with an overheating graphics card, two iBooks with failed power distribution boards and two 2008 (IIRC) iMacs with faulty capacitors. All those "widespread" issues that are unique to Apple simply aren't widespread, they're merely high-profile. Why? Apple make laptops just like all the other PC laptop manufacturers, but they get held to a double-standard by both the laptop press and their customers.
Apple products have pretty much the same reliability and design issue record as any other manufacturer in that price/quality bracket, yet when they do have problems they stick out in our memories because no-one else makes Macs and we practically expect PC laptops to have issues. You remember Acer recalling 22,000 laptops earlier this year because they started bursting into flames? That was only months ago and few people remember it now, yet Nvidia sell a bunch of overheating graphics chipsets to a whole load of manufacturers seven years ago and everyone remembers it as "that Apple GPU issue". What about Sony recalling half a million spontaneously combustible laptops from around the world in 2010? Anyone remember that? HP recalling 6million power cables last year not jogging any memories? Of course not.
I have an Acer ultraportable with screen damage - not enough clearance between the panel and the keyboard when the lid's shut - well, there is, but not when it gets stuffed into my bag with my books and headphones and water bottle and wallet and keys and power bank and lunch and everything else, pressing on it, deforming the case and jiggling it about juuuust enough for the edges of the keys around the centre to scrape on the screen. Don't hear anyone moaning about that, least of all me (because I know I'm mistreating it), but hey - don't seem to remember hearing about anyone putting together a headline-grabbing, head-turning, tech-gossip class-action lawsuit about that 'major' design issue...
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @10:02AM
Oh yeah and I have an HP and when I hit it with hammer sparks fly all over!
... so apple is not to be blamed for their faulty hardware!
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday July 13 2015, @07:07PM
Poor argument. The issue here is that thousands of people are reporting a defect in manufacturing and Apple is ignoring their plea for a recall and warranty repairs. Your anecdotes of Acer, Sony and HP recalls backs up nothing because they admitted they sold defective equipment and covered repairs/replacement on their dime. They didn't ask the customer to pay for repairs or replacement.
And your Acer story isn't typical so it's pointless to list. You admitted you are beating it up. Most people I know have dedicated laptop bags or briefcases and don't carry 10 tons of books (what is this, grade school?). Should pressure on the lid cause it to buckle? No, but then again, its an Acer. So no surprise that you can't abuse a three hundred something dollar piece of crap like a higher quality system.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Monday July 13 2015, @08:52PM
You misunderstand - I'm not citing those incidents as examples of company practice or product quality, only as examples of bias against Apple in the press, media and people's expectations. My Acer story is entirely relevant - it's arguable that the keyboard touching the screen shows that chassis flex wasn't taking into account when the unit was designed, but I'm aware I'm pushing it rather further than I ought to be so I'm not going barking mad over it. No-one's figured out what's causing the current Apple screen issues, but I'd bet money that it's to do with the Macbook Pro's in question being regularly moved between extremes of temperature it wasn't designed to handle: [apple.com]
Operating temperature: 10° to 35° C (50° to 95° F)
Storage temperature: –25° to 45° C (–13° to 113° F)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RedBear on Monday July 13 2015, @02:18AM
I can totally understand the feeling, but I have noticed that if one were to lifetime-boycott every brand of electronics maker that screws over customers or produces a very bad product, one will soon be boycotting every known brand. Pick any five-star rated product on Amazon and filter for one-star reviews. Doesn't matter what product it is, or what brand. You'll find plenty of horror stories of repeated device failure and horrible service within those one-star reviews.
Apple's behavior toward customers with repeated major hardware issues is always disturbing (and embarrassing if one happens to like Apple's products) but they are hardly the only company to behave this way. The real problem that allows all companies to behave so badly toward customers is a lack of effective consumer protection laws. Problems like this that any jury of reasonable people would agree are obviously caused by some manufacturing defect should be required to be repaired or replaced in a reasonable amount of time for no cost during the reasonable lifetime of the device. There should be no limit on how many times it is replaced if the replacements are also faulty (lots of companies pull that BS, replacing a faulty product with the same faulty product that just fails again). If it were easier to get relief under the law then we could get not just Apple but every other manufacturer to start behaving as if the customer and quality control really mattered. If you can't manufacture something with sufficient quality that you can afford to give out free replacements for failures, don't manufacture it. Simple concept.
Apple still has statistically equal or better quality than anybody you might compare them to. This does not absolve them of bad behavior, it's just a statement of fact to put things into context. I think lifetime boycotts should be reserved for particularly worthless companies that universally produce nothing but crap products with extremely high failure rates. Like Belkin.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday July 13 2015, @04:27AM
My most-serious gripe with Apple is that they have always screwed their developers, and in recent years they are not serving the interest of the general public.
I just got a new consulting gig, I'll be working on Linux. While I will have to buy a notebook computer, I understand I can get what I need for $250.00.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Monday July 13 2015, @08:59AM
I just got a new consulting gig, I'll be working on Linux. While I will have to buy a notebook computer, I understand I can get what I need for $250.00.
If you're working as a developer, the productivity gains from a laptop with a nice screen, a fast SSD, a decent i7, and a load of RAM make it worth spending money on a decent machine. Once you're in that price range, there's not a huge difference between Apple and the competition. If you're only spending $250 on a machine for work, then you and your employer must not value your time very highly.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @10:05AM
Depends quite alot how you work... a lot of serious work can be done on the oldest machine you can get your hands on.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Tuesday July 14 2015, @08:49AM
I agree. Just imagine what Kevin Mitnick could do with a 300 baud modem! (You get the gist of what I'm saying.)
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday July 13 2015, @11:32AM
Yet looking at it from a different perspective, in an industry with a "newness fetish" its incredibly politically incorrect to point out that the world of 2015 is not much different from the world of 2010, so a top of the line for 2010 laptop is going to be immeasurably different in productivity in 2015. Differences would show up in performance on video editing, minecraft, large DF mines, legacy FPS sequels, or just gaming in general, but outside unusual niches and gaming, nothing on an end user machines has altered productivity since 00 or so.
Also it depends on dev environment. My machines are basically emacs/sshfs/ssh terminals and nothing has happened in that environment in the last 10 or so years other than screen resolution, and I guess better font handling in emacs. So I have a '09 era desktop plugged into a really nice monitor at work. The giant multi-machine back end that I'm connecting to in another state for dev and production has, of course, changed considerably since 09. The importance of the local machine would be different if I was running an obese IDE and compiler locally.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @02:24PM
If you're only spending $250 on a machine for work, then you and your employer must not value your time very highly.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday July 14 2015, @08:06AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday July 13 2015, @05:48PM
I am self employed so I provide my own equipment.
I was quite productive on a mac IIci.
Using a low end box enables one to more readily observe performance problems in one's code. I once got a call at two in the morning from a desperate client whose sun ultrasparc server fell over the very first day he brought it online. I advised him to give his developers slow workstations, to use a load generator and a profiler.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday July 14 2015, @08:10AM
I am self employed so I provide my own equipment.
I was self employed for five years and also bought my own machines. They were a tax-deductable expense in this case and my rates reflected the fact that I was not wasting inordinate amounts of time waiting for things to compile - my clients were very happy to pay them. It only takes a couple of days of work to pay for a high-end machine that will happily last 3 years before being replaced by something much faster and relegated to being the spare.
advised him to give his developers slow workstations, to use a load generator and a profiler.
This is terrible advice. If devs are performance testing server code on their workstations, they're doing things badly wrong. They should have a test server that's set up in as close to the real configuration as possible, which runs a set of performance regression tests on each build. And they should have as fast machines as possible, so that they can push out test builds quickly and not wait for a load of changes to be finished before they realise that one in the middle caused a performance regression.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday July 15 2015, @05:16AM
... one year later.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 13 2015, @06:12AM
I have my own mental filter for reviews. I mean, everyone knows that there are people who rave a product because there's soemthing in it for them. I've sometimes felt that rants against a product are made for similar reasons. Then, there are fanboys and haters who get nothing more than a feeling of satisfaction out of reviewing things they've never seen or owned. Depending on the review, I either dismiss it, or I might decide against a purchase, but each of those reviews has to pass through those mental filters.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RedGreen on Monday July 13 2015, @02:18AM
"Maybe instead of obsessing over thinness they could engineer proper cooling for their Macs?"
Never going to happen from the Mac Pro's I have owned to the Mini still left they all run/ran hot. Apple does it on purpose they would rather it run hot than have fan noise IMHO or at least that has been my experience with them. That said the damn things just keep on going for the most part I have never had component fail earliest being a Mac Pro 3,1 which my nephew just inherited from me still ticking along all these years later even the 8800gt that is in it just keeps going, when many others (8800gt) have failed including the one I had in my PC hackintosh... That is the direction I have went in now hackintosh land best of both worlds expandability of your machine and rock solid operating system works for me anyways some other perhaps not.
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen