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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2015, @02:35AM
I'd avoid getting into a hissy fit just because this is Apple. Product quality has gone down across the board. The only problem with Apple is that you pay a higher price for the same crap electronics that they shove into all the laptops. I'm a somewhat happy customer of Apple, but I was hit by the GPU overheating issue. While I like OS X, I'm not against using Linux.
Has anyone had a better experience with Dell, Lenovo, or some other manufacturer? I'd like to hear recommendations on what laptop to buy next.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mhajicek on Monday July 13 2015, @03:13AM
Funny. I've never bought an Apple product in all my forty years, and I never seem to have problems like this.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Monday July 13 2015, @08:40AM
I doubt that's anything to do with not buying Apple products. From the article, 2013 models are worst affected and there are 2,500 cases reported. Apple sold 16.3million Macs in 2013 [macworld.com] - that's a "failure" rate of 0.015%. TFA holds the clue to what's going on - "Phi Chong, a software engineer, told the BBC he has had to replace his screen twice in the last two years .... One Macbook repair specialist indicated that this was not a common problem." What stupid thing are these people doing to their laptops that no-one else does? Steam cleaning them? Using them in saunas? Wiping them down with caustic soda?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday July 13 2015, @11:40AM
Don't all products come from the same factory in China from the same corporation, and some get an apple case and sticker and some get a (fill in the blank) sticker?
It would be like if some kids toy like an inflatable pool leaked but the PR was it only leaked if you bought it at Walgreens. Yeah right whatever same thing sold as walmart, target, cvs, whatever but you're only talking one marketing badge despite it being a commodity sold under a zillion badges.
So ... where's the HP reports or whatever?
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Monday July 13 2015, @04:48PM
Don't all products come from the same factory in China from the same corporation, and some get an apple case and sticker and some get a (fill in the blank) sticker?
1) Obviously Macbooks are not available from Dell with dell sticker. So no.
2) Even if you argue the screen component itself is all from one LG factory or something; and should be failing in all laptops... depends on whether the screen is failing because its inherently flawed. Or if its failing in reaction to the unique environment of being inside a macbook. For example, a screen that is being damaged by the heat from a cpu that runs hot, won't fail in a noisier laptop that has better cooling, or one that simply has better insulation between screen and cpu, or one that only ships with low power cpus that can't get as hot, or one that ships with a bios that better regulates the cpu so it doesn't get as hot, etc, etc... leading to it fail only in on particular manufacturer/model product.
So ... where's the HP reports or whatever?
A fair question. But the abscense of reports about HP don't necessarily add up to biased reporting. (Although it might.)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 13 2015, @03:48AM
The cheapest with a proper CPU. A linux with LXDE will do wonders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Monday July 13 2015, @05:15AM
I bought a MacBook Pro about 6 months ago (I spent weeks trying to find a non-Apple laptop with the same build quality in the price range) and haven't regretted it yet. I have linux/windows installed on it and it gets the job done. I'd have a thinkpad right now if they weren't pure ass anymore.
Maybe it's because it's the 2014 model and Apple quietly got their act together, but I don't have shit all over my screen. My screen still looks as good as it did when I got it. I'm kind of a slob about things, but I have enough sense to know that when I start projectile vomiting, I point my head in the opposite direction, or something. Seriously, Apple users, keep your goddamned Starbucks crepe stained fingers off your goddamned screens. It works for the rest of us quite nicely.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 3, Informative) by wantkitteh on Monday July 13 2015, @09:10AM
It bears repeating because so few people actually remember the GPU issue as it really went down, but that was a problem with Nvidia's manufacturing process. HP and Dell also did repair/replace programs for affected system - it wasn't an Apple-specific fault, yet that's how people remember it.