That may be the reason. I live in the Netherlands and I have had consistent terrible experience with Apple store repair service.
> It took three weeks, but in the end I basically had a new laptop, except the screen.
For professional use, that is just unacceptable. If you rely on your computer for income, you can't wait that long.
That is the reason why any Apple product will never be 'pro'. Regardless of how nice the hardware is, if it breaks I need a repair or replacement device immediately. IFAIK Apple does not offer such service (unless you have >50 devices).
Other brands (HP, Dell, Lenovo) offer on-site same day repair service. They send someone to your location and if they can't fix it on site, they'll give you a replacement/loaner. For me, that service is well worth the cost. If only Apple would offer that.
Three weeks ago my Macbook Pro's keyboard (with the butterfly design) became completely unusable after 6 months of being mostly unusable.
Not only did the authorized service provider (Apple doesn't have its own presence where I live) take more than a week to get it replaced, they refused to do it under warranty because there were some scratch marks on the side of the laptop.
They told me to contact Apple Support if I wanted to dispute that.
After spending 6 days haggling with Apple Support and being bounced from agent to agent, I was finally told that they cannot replace under the existing Apple Care warranty because of the scratches on the side.
I then asked them to give me, in writing, a note explaining that they were denying me service under warranty for the keyboard issue.
That seems to have done the trick. Two days later she called back and said they re-reviewed my case and were going to fix it under warranty.
I spent almost 2 weeks without the laptop while fighting with Apple over a pre-existing design flaw in a laptop that had extended Apple Care.
This may be an unpopular opinion, and I don't mean to sound dismissive or suggest that waiting 3 weeks is normal, but I do think it is incredibly unprofessional to rely on a single device like that for work. If it's truly an indispensable part of your job, you should have a backup--that goes for anything, not just computers. It could be a 10-year-old hand-me-down or a cheapo Chromebook, but you should have a backup plan.
> Other brands (HP, Dell, Lenovo) offer on-site same day repair service. They send someone to your location and if they can't fix it on site, they'll give you a replacement/loaner. For me, that service is well worth the cost. If only Apple would offer that.
When I was first getting started as a programmer, I made most of my income by doing tech support, rather than actual programming. A large percentage of the cases were people hiring me to deal with the likes of HP, Dell, and Lenovo because their "on-site same day repair services" were absolute garbage about 50% of the time. You could get a laptop with a DoA hard drive, but they'd refuse to replace it unless it failed their specific check, which was always inadequate. It was normal to argue with them for 6+ hours about it. You could put a fresh drive in to demonstrate that the issue was gone, but they'd still refuse to do anything. It wouldn't matter if it BSODed consistently with a fresh installation on their drive but not on the drive I was using for testing, or if the SMART results were the worst I'd ever seen--no test fail, no replacement.
> IFAIK Apple does not offer such service (unless you have >50 devices).
It varies widely depending on location. If you go to a large, busy Apple store, they tend to have a lot more parts on-hand; it doesn't need to be in Silicon Valley as long as it's big. If they need to order parts, they'll give you the option to hold onto your device until the parts arrive. I've gotten apologies when a repair took longer than 24 hours. I tend to prefer the Microsoft store method, though: when I've had issues with Surface-series devices, they've never attempted to repair it there; they just hand me a new one. It's hard to beat that. (I guess Apple's approach is better if you need to recover your data, but I never save anything valuable on a single device.)
I have a service contract on my car, if it breaks the dealer will supply me with a loaner while my car is being repaired. I don't want to buy a second car just because my primary car may or may not break.
The same goes for my laptop. I always pay for a service contract so I don't have to buy an extra laptop that I may never need. I don't like over-consuming.
I guess my frustration is that I bought a $3000 'pro' grade laptop, and paid an additional ~$300 for the 'care' package and still got the same service level as their consumer customers get. I would have happily paid even more to get a solid service contract, but Apple just doesn't offer that (at least not in my country).
1. A backup laptop is cheaper than a backup car.
2. You don't need your car for work; you can take Uber/Lyft or a taxi if need be.
3. If you do need your car for work, you've accepted loss of your car of extended periods of time as a risk and have probably gotten insurance for that. I hope.
4. If you're a big company for which cars are an integral part of your business, you have backups.
I don't take my car to dealers to get it repaired. The ones around here do a terrible job, and when I take it back, it's not unusual for the mechanics to sabotage various components (e.g., deliberately point both headlights as far down as they'll go). I'd rather forego the loaner and take my car to a reputable independent mechanic.
Additionally, the dealers around here usually don't offer a loaner anyway without an extra fee, except under certain circumstances (e.g., the repair takes longer than they expected because they broke my windshield and had to order a replacement--yes, that happened).
There's a difference between backups and failover.
It's unprofessional to not have backups, yes.
Expecting every working person to own 2 expensive laptops 'just in case' a faulty keyboard design requires 1 week of downtime? Makes no sense.
A cheap Chromebook or 10 year laptop is almost certainly not going to be usable as a replacement so it will have to be a larger investment than that.
I can do everything I need to do from that Chromebook, and I have a very hard time seeing how others couldn't do the same. I can use Chrome Remote Desktop to connect to my desktop or a cloud-based workstation as long as I have an internet connection--and my two phones have two distinct carriers, so that's rarely an issue.
Really down on my luck? I've got a few Raspberry Pis on which I can use vim. They're slow, but they work.
But if you're a professional and depend on one being available at all times, it's part of the cost of doing business.
What if your machine was not faulty and repairable, but stolen, broken because you've dropped it, etc? There would be no warranty/repair at play there, and no replacement unit.
So, a professional should always account for a backup machine as a, well, backup as part of the cost of doing business.
If they can't afford a second machine, they can ask themselves if they can afford weeks without a machine and customers waiting for work to be completed, more...
I think the point you're missing is that it needn't be a requirement of doing business, unless you insist on using Apple products. And, even if I have a full closet of old computers (I do) that doesn't mean I find it enjoyable to switch back to old hardware for a week or more, when the alternative is somebody coming to me within a day to fix it on site. If I enjoyed using that old hardware, I probably wouldn't have the new hardware would I? Surely any typical Apple user prefers using their brand new $2000 computer over their old computer that would struggle to get a tenth of that on ebay.
I don't think I'm missing any point.
Comparably spec'ed laptops from PC vendors are of similar price. And even a desktop tower-style PC soon goes to more than $2K with good enough components (if you're a video or audio pro, for example -- a sysadmin could get away with a $300 PC barely able to run SSH). At best you save the Apple premium (let's say 20%), but there's still a cost for a second unit, and you should consider it part of the cost of doing business.
>And, even if I have a full closet of old computers (I do) that doesn't mean I find it enjoyable to switch back to old hardware for a week or more, when the alternative is somebody coming to me within a day to fix it on site
Who said anything about "old hardware"? Your backup should just as well be a twin machine to your main driver, that you buy in pairs as backup.
This all is common (and obvious) practice for businesses -- who buy spare PCs, or lease their equipment and can have new ones on demand. It should also be common practice for an individual developer/designer/pro computer user working in an one-man-shop.
But let's pretend good support contracts don't exist because if it's not Apple it must not be real... If I'm going to pay the full price for duplicate hardware, I may as well wait until the day it breaks then walk into an Apple store and buy whatever they have in stock at the moment. I'll be walking down to the Apple store to get the broken one fixed anyway, won't I? And on the off chance that the computer never breaks I've just saved myself $2k that I can use to buy a bunch of cocaine and throw a party to celebrate reliable consumer hardware. That sounds like a lot more fun than owning twinned computers, no? You're invited.
If I lost my laptop, then yes, I would bite the bullet and buy a new one.
If I need some trivial issue to be fixed by replacing part of the panel, I shouldn't have to go buy a new one to use for one week.
Has HN forgotten that some folks don't have the resources we do (now).
When I first got in the game, I had only one machine for like three years. I was super happy Dell came onsite to swap the laptop main board (c2001). I couldn't afford a second box and for sure couldn't afford a three week delay.
Apple, with all that cash, should be able to deliver a similar experience.
Not many tasks require high end hardware
I have a 2012 Dell Inspiron sitting next to me as a server. It was a pretty good machine, though never my daily driver. Main complaint is that replacing anything (in my case the hard drive) requires removing everything out of the plastic shell, there is no drive bay door like on my similar vintage HP.
Meanwhile the next year's group got about 10 Dell inspiron laptops of the new 2013ish redesign, and I've never seen a lower quality laptop. Each and every one needed to be completely replaced at least once. Screws were just falling out of the case because the build quality was so bad.
For reference, the warranty on these laptops was so good (at about a 200-300 dollar price tag) that the Dell representatives told us the day before it expired we should throw our computers down a flight of stairs to get new ones
That is also how they keep repair costs low.
I always think they are better designed than Apple computers and today they even look nice.
They do offer this in the US. Not sure about globally. Can use it for one device, and they have loaners if a repair will take more than 24h.
https://www.apple.com/retail/business/jointventure/terms.htm...
Do you mean "immediately"? I'm having trouble understanding that word in this context.
Asked them to replace the battery on my MBP (out of warranty), got it back with non-functioning USB ports. Had to return it 3 times, every time I got it back I tested the USB ports inside the store only to demonstrate that the problem still wasn't fixed. Eventually they even tried to convince me that this was a software bug.
After 6 weeks without working USB ports I got really angry and they finally agreed to replace the broken motherboard. When I got it back my laptop worked but it had a different keyboard installed (Dutch, instead of US intl). I complained about that and they told me that I was lying (even though a had the purchase receipt with the US keyboard option).
After that I gave up and bought a Lenovo, haven't looked back since.
The service in Amsterdam may be better, but traveling to the city center of Amsterdam twice just to get my laptop repaired is not acceptable.
If you can't live without your computer, you should have a backup waiting and ready to go in case your primary fails. If you're going to lose $500/day from not doing your work, doesn't it make sense to spend $500-1000 on a backup system?
I had some lady tell me she was losing $3000/day and needed her computer fixed urgently. Her work didn't involve any intense computational work, so I pointed her to a $500 machine that would do the same work. She got so offended that she could have saved $8500 by having a backup machine, but she opted to go without her computer instead for 3 days. I put her right at the back of the queue like everybody else.
The typical cost for this to corporations (maintaining their own service desks or going via contractors dedicated to their company) is extremely high. Are you saying that HP and Dell offer this level of support to individual consumers through vendors for a nominal fee? $300 wouldn't even cover a keyboard replacement in terms of the hourly rate, so I'm not sure how you could expect to have that level of service by paying for Apple Care. A full replacement laptop would likely cost LESS than subscribing to that level of service, but might be an opportunity for a third party company if there's enough volume in it I suppose.
I can answer this for Dell (Alienware).
Yes. At a price comparable to Apple Care (Around $300 at the time, it was 5 years ago). This was for my Alienware device. The power supply died because I was dumb and had plugged the computer directly into the wall, and there was a power surge. Replacement wasn't literally the next day as I'd called in the evening after the cutoff time. But still, it was one day after that. When I got home, it was fixed. No fuss, no muss. Online support had me go through a few things before they'd send out a repair guy, but it wasn't anything unreasonable. It was the only time I needed a repair.
The price I paid covered 3 years of that level of service, the same as Apple Care.
Edit: Because I saw you ask in other locations: this was just me personally buying through Dell's website.
Right now a base warranty for an XPS includes on site repair during business hours after a remote diagnosis for one year. Getting three years of that is $160. One year of the more advanced "ProSupport" is $50 more than the base price, and three years of that is $280 more. The non-linearity between those two figures is perhaps indicative of the failure rates Dell is expecting.
I couldn't say if Dell is losing their ass with these service contracts or not, but from what I've seen it works pretty well for the consumers.
Edit: And beyond baseline reliability, the particular design of a computer can determine whether a particular failure is cheap or expensive to fix. If the Foo widget requires replacing the Bar board, that's going to be a more expensive design to fix than a computer in which the Foo widget and the Bar board aren't soldered together. This matter crops up in things like "flexgate" for Apple, where faulty cables necessitate replacing the entire screen. What could have been a very cheap repair suddenly becomes a very expensive repair. I can't claim to be familiar with the insides of a modern XPS, but I wager they tend to be cheaper to repair than modern MBPs.
I looked up my purchase, $2639 for the laptop, $311.75 for 5 years of next day onsite repair service and $169.25 for 5 years of accidental damage protection.
Previous to converting to Lenovo I had two Macbooks. The first Intel white Macbook lasted about a year and a half before dying. I didn't have apple care but when I replaced that with a Macbook Pro I got apple care. That laptop was repaired 8 times, the 9th time it needed to be repaired Apple told me it would cost $800 to replace the motherboard because I had upgraded the hard drive.
Needless to say I swore off Apple's crappy HW and purchased my first Lenovo. That x230 never needed any service. My current X1 only broke because I plugged in a 10 year old $15 off brand external cdrom that fried and pumped 12v from the power adapter into the USB port.
I once had a screen issue, I took the laptop in and they replaced the screen with no questions asked and at no charge. However it took a week and I couldn’t go a week without my computer.
The Apple store rep pointed me at their return policy on laptops, specifically no questions asked 30-day returns, and told me that while he couldn’t rent me a computer that I could buy a backup and get 100% refund if I brought it back in 30 days.
So that’s what I did: “purchased” an alternate with a credit card, used it for 8 days, brought it back when my laptop was fixed, and they refunded the charge. I was never out any money.
Psychologically, I’d like it better if they offered that more readily and with a lower deposit to put down - so I’m not trying to argue that this policy is just great and has no issues.
But, if you ever find yourself in that situation and can’t go without a computer, maybe that option will help you get by.
Apple is not so great in other parts of the world.
Usually the answer is that they can't be without it at all.
So I never recommend Apple laptops for business owners unless they have a spare... a spare "anything" will possibly suffice especially if everything they do is online.
I only tend to buy Dell business laptops: great build quality and a 3-year next business day onsite warranty are worth every penny imo: Not as flashy and fancy as the XPS stuff but they have/had quality issues (as the commenter below mentioned).
Also, I could not imagine our business having spare computers.We have 600 employees maybe now, and we need more and more computers as more users need to perform work on a computer these days.
How many of your about 600 PCs die every year? The spares you need are much less than that number, as you can buy (or recover from repair hell) new computers over the course of a few days to recover your reserves.
I tend to upgrade every five years: my current laptop (MacBook Pro) is from 2016 and I see no reason to upgrade anytime soon. My 2011 laptop (MacBook Air) is still running fine. I could even work on it still, but it would not be a pleasant experience.
Not sure if there's a precision model for the xps13.
This isn't any kind of attack on them, it's just that when I was searching for a laptop they seemed to be having some issues and even the warranty replacements had issues. Which really sucks because the XPS lineup do look enticing for me.
I could find ways to do most things. Nowadays it's a lot easier.
Musicians make music, so they have to rely on other people making tools for them, whereas toolmakers can just make better tools for themselves.
That is, if you can avoid reinventing the wheel, which we aren't great at.
They replaced your defective design motherboard(whether it was Nvidia GPU or C9560) with ... another defective design motherboard, plus some shoe rubber to prop badly soldered parts(dead serious, Apple refurb outfit glues rubber to bga chips in order to wedge them against outer case because its easier/faster/cheaper than replacing bad solder).
>in the end I basically had a new laptop
build using same factory defective parts, with life expectancy of at most couple years IF they actually replaced GPU with new one, there were plenty cases of Apple refurb motherboard dying almost instantly leading even Apple technicians to suspect foul play http://advancedreworks.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-2692.ht...
Well sure, it was a recall.
>In the process, they broke the power unit, so they replaced that and my six year old battery, both at no charge. They also replaced the top case at no charge while doing the second repair because they said they damaged it during repair.
>It took three weeks...
So... they busted up your machine while performing the repair, extending the time to 3 WEEKS. not sure how this is an endorsement of Apple's repair services.
I wonder if these out of country operations are being denied the cash required to the repairs or if they just have problems getting parts so they end up being much more stingy about replacement?
This is absolutely the case. I've been in Apple services both in US and in many other countries in Europe and Eastern Europe. The farther from US, the worse.
It took three weeks, but in the end I basically had a new laptop, except the screen.