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Comment by rogerhoward | Hacker News Reader

After months of suffering with this, with an out warranty 15" MBP 2016 that was relegated to desk duty with an external keyboard, I heard about this program. I made an Apple Store appointment for the next day (a Tuesday); they checked it, warned me it could be a week or more because of a holiday that week. Thursday morning I had a call that it was ready. Total cost: $0 (according to the invoice the parts were over $800, including a mainboard replacement to fix a loose USB-C port). It was a basically new machine when I got it back.

I'm still sore over this kbd design, but its otherwise been a good laptop and their no-questions-asked handling of it was great.

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I had a similar experience. Struggled with several keys either "not pressing" or "double pressing". After a while I took it in, they gave me an estimate of 5 days for repair, and called me after 4. No charge, no fee, no questions. Once I got used to the butterfly keys I didn't mind the low travel distance, and now that my keyboard is in proper working order, I have no issues with it. Still wish there was an escape key though...

You can set caps lock as escape key in System Preferences since one of the last OS versions. For me this works even better than the original escape key position since it’s on the home row.

I don't know if it's possible with third party software (I use a hardware programmable keyboard running QMK), but I map it to tap for escape, hold for ctrl. If you use vim keybindings for your editor it's glorious.

That’s what I’ve been doing too! I’m an Emacs user, and this setup has been glorious. I actually use an external keyboard, and I still use this setup.

I’ve been using Karabiner to remap: https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/index.html

Yes Karabiner is great for that. I do the same thing except I have it act as Hyper when pressed in conjunction with another key. That's how all my shortcuts are triggered.

This is what I do for my work computer but it makes memory muscle when switching machines super annoying. Give us back real keys on the top row. And if Apple really wants to be trendy with dynamic keys then make the top row physical buttons that are each their own displays so we truly get a usable, yet capably dynamic, top row. That would be innovation and not stifle those who rely on those physical keys to work proficiently.

No questions asked after years of denying there was even a problem.

The reliability of these products was sacrificed before a golden idol of Jony Ive on the altar of Thin. I find it interesting that this program is announced more or less at the same time he announced his formal retirement from Apple.

He did many fine designs for the company, but like any superstar, at some point they can do no wrong and it becomes impossible to criticize them within an organization.

This program has existed for over a year.

The year for which, according to WSJ, Mr Ive has "probably" not done any work for Apple.

... felt the need to quote "probably" because otherwise it will be missed in speed reading.

This was my experience. My battery was having issues and indicating service was needed, but they refused to only replace the top case since they claimed there was a "logic board failure" that caused my A and S keys to skip and repeat. It took hours of escalations and phone support to finally convince them to replace the affected parts, and of course we now know (and I always suspected) that it was never the logic board in the first place. Not sure where they came up with that conclusion originally.

Apple's repair service, and the Apple Store in general, have gotten much better in the last six months or so.

Two weeks ago I brought my Apple Watch in for an out-of-warranty repair on a Thursday night. I was told it would take 10 business days. It was ready the following Tuesday.

Their laptop service has always been top notch. Years ago I took in a White iBook for a case change (free because it was a known defect) and the guy told me that the HD that came with the laptop (Seagate) had a high failure rate and they would swap it for free but he noticed I already upgraded my HD. "Do you want the HD anyway and you can place it on a external case?". Hell yes!

You think so? I remember back in university, Apple would overnight ship my laptop to fix it. The last time I went to Apple, they wouldn’t even replace my faulty charger without me complaining to the manager.

My daughter was in the Apple store the other day with a faulty charger. (It wasn't the problem she went to ask about.) They wouldn't even speak to her about the problem she wanted to talk about until they went and got a new charger for her. They said it was just better to get that out of the way first. So her experience was excellent.

How is everyone's Apple store experience so radically different?

Different stores are different.

Different people are different.

My experience with Apple hardware repairs has been top-notch, but your mileage may vary.

I reckon it's at least in part down to how busy the particular store is. The one near me is always absolutely rammed and to be honest the service there isn't exactly great.

It's also down to how potentially dangerous something can be. Depending on what actually fails, a charger could electrocute you, and it's cheap to both make and replace ("here's a new one"). A butterfly keyboard won't kill you and it's hell to replace.

A wall charger is exceedingly unlikely to electrocute you.

Far more likely to burn your house to the ground. Which will still get lawyers and executives to pay attention.

I think you're being downvoted because you missed this part:

in the last six months or so

>have gotten much better in the last six months or so

Are you sure it is 6 months and not 6 weeks, as in after Angela Ahrendts left.

I made the mistake of paying the $800+ for the bottom clamshell replacement needed to fix the keyboard one week before they announced this program.

I believe you can claim it back?

Apple is usually cool with this kind of stuff. Contact them.

The Apple Support page says

> If you believe your Mac notebook was affected by this issue, and you paid to have your keyboard repaired, you can contact Apple about a refund.

I'd say you have a good chance to get your money back.

Apple is usually very good with this sort of stuff.

My wife bought a MacBook two months before OS X came out, so she had OS 9. When OS X came out, Apple sent free copies to everyone who bought a computer in the last 90 days.

Or they could just announce their product schedule that they know months/years in advance so the customer could make an informed choice.

No credit for fixing the problem they deliberately create.

I guess you've never heard of the Osborne Effect

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect

Presumably it was more of a PowerBook than a MacBook, since OSX came out in 2001ish and MacBooks didn't exist till they switched to Intel in 2006.

Sorry..

You're right; I remembered it wrong. It was an iBook. 10GB hard drive and a built-in DVD-ROM. I wish I hadn't sold it years later.

So you go to a very specific store that is only available in a the big cities to repair your laptop ordered via Internet? Isn't their an on-site service for Apple? I.e. the repairer comes to your office or home? I find it hard to believe you pay so much money only to get a service of this kind and waste hours traveling to some special Apple store.

Also, what happens in countries like Poland, where Apple products are sold officially through Apple certified resellers(iSpot etc) but there are no official Apple Stores in the entire country?

There will be Apple Authorized Service Providers in Poland, although nowadays Apple makes it hard to search for somebody else.

https://locate.apple.com

According to the link, one of your options is to “Mail in your device to the Apple Repair Center.”

Apple really is good about taking care of problems. It's easy to complain about the price, but when my Samsung screen stopped working, I had to buy a new phone. When my iPhone screen started glitching, I got it fixed for free in less than two hours. Things like that make paying the "Apple premium" a little more palatable.

We had a similar experience with my wife’s iPhone 5s, which she has held onto for ages because she loves the small size.

The screen developed a glitch where a few rows of pixels were inverted. We went to the Apple store to see if the screen could be fixed, and they found and gave her an identical new unit for no charge. “This way you’re also getting a fresh battery and everything will last longer.” They hooked up the old phone to the new phone and has everything copied over, we were out in less than an hour with “her phone” made brand new for free.

This was after the 5s was no longer on sale in the US. Maybe we just got lucky and they had some leftover inventory, I don’t know.

Whatever the reason, I felt that was impressively good customer service.

I’ve had consistently good experiences with the Apple store support across 3 countries (over two continents) and it’s the main reason I still buy apple products, specifically iPhones, despite them going down a path I don’t like for the last 4 years.

Apple of 2015 was, really, at the top of the game, I wish I had bought a 2015 retina MacBook when it was new. :(

Unless your product is affected by an issue they decided to never recognize, which in that case you can merrily go fuck yourself because Apple won't lift a finger. Happened to me with an old iMac that developed dust smudges inside the LCD panel due to faulty sealing of the screen.

I owned an Apple Watch for about 2 months before the screen separated from the watch body. The front-line service rep didn’t know what to do about it and took it into the back to show a store manager, who decided it was impact damage and thus not covered by warranty; a fix would have cost something like 70% of the list price for the watch.

Instead of the repair, I bought a $20 Timex that’s served me faithfully ever since.

FWIW, I had the watch face separating issue as well. I had mine replaced at Best Buy (well, not actually replaced there, but they were who I dealt with). You should call back and see if you can get yours replaced. It was a well known flaw.

Too late now; it was over a year ago and in another country; Didn’t bother keeping the dead watch when I moved. I also had enough time with it to discover that I, personally, didn’t get much value out of the “smart” features.

This happened during a hurricane evacuation and I went to an Apple store several states away while waiting for the airport at home to reopen so I could find out if there had been any damage (fortunately not). Of all the people I dealt with during that experience, Apple’s employees were uniquely unsympathetic to my situation, and I decided I didn’t want anything to do with them ever again.

The proximate cause was probably an impact as I treated it like the sports watch it was advertised to be. The separation wasn’t a failure of the glue, but a crack that traveled around the weak part of the glass where it is curved downwards to meet the bezel. There was a tiny nick that was the nucleus of the fracture that could have been caused by anything (in my case, probably some clay on a tennis ball).

The biggest issue for me was that I didn’t want to have to baby something that fragile, especially when it’s supposed to be a fitness object. And the completely professional, but uncaring and robotic, way their representatives handled the situation.

Great, but if it's like my 2016 MBP, it will stop working properly again in 2 months.

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