M1 MacBook Users Say Their Screens Are Cracking for “No Apparent Reason” | Hacker News Reader

M1 MacBook Users Say Their Screens Are Cracking for “No Apparent Reason”

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46 pointsuptown73 comments

This quote from the article is counter-productive,

> I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that some of these “reports” are from users who shut their MacBook screen onto a keyboard with a bunch of Doritos crumbs stuck in it.

> And if you, too, had a Doritos-related MacBook Pro screen incident, it’s worth driving that sucker right to the Apple Store and saying — with a straight face — that it happened for “no apparent reason”. Good luck.

Does anyone remember when keyboard failures started to happen for "No Apparent Reason", and everyone said the same thing?

Well, it turns out that was a faulty design. One that hadn't been extensively tested in the wild. That could very well be the case here, and further investigation is warranted.

The following is speculation, but if Apple has been using a new pre-stressed glass design, then it's well within the realm of possibility for some of the screens to fail spontaneously. It happens frequently enough in the construction industry, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_glass_breakage

Modern materials are complex and display counter-intuitive failure modes.

Indeed, it's unnecessarily derogatory, especially considering Apple's history of questionable design choices to pursue thinness.

It is apple though? Don't consumers prefer lighter and thinner devices that do what heavier and thicker ones do?

It's Apple. iPhones, for example, are unusable and slippery without a case, after which they're as thick as high-end Androids with Kevlar backs that can be used without a case.

If my iPhone had good grip surface I wouldn't use a case, and the thinness would actually make a difference in my experience.

That is your opinion. They’re not unusable or slippery for me. I’ve never had a case on any of them, never dropped or cracked one, and get a lot of enjoyment out of the thin and sleek form factor. Your problem can be solved with a case. A thick phone has no solution to make it thinner.

If you've ever done hardware tech support you'll find most of the time the user who says they didn't do anything actually did do something. And I encountered this when doing internal support, where the end user didn't even bear cost or blame for breaking equipment.

Right, but if this happens at a rate of X per 1000 customers for a number of years, and then suddenly starts to occur at a rate of 3X per 1000 customers, I think it's fair to look for causes apart from just normal human behavior.

I've kept laptops tightly packed, with a lot of force coming down on the lid, for hours at a time, and I've had no screen cracking. I've had a lot of marks from the keyboard on the screen, but no cracks.

In the times before we had a kid, I'd go motorcycle touring in the summer. I'd keep my laptop in a plastic rubble sack (for waterproofing), sitting on top of a wooden cutting board (for rigidity), with my clothes on top in separate bags, all packed into a gym bag. The gym bag would then be strapped to the passenger seat of my motorbike with 100kg luggage straps done up tightly enough to ensure the whole package is rigid with respect to the rest of the bike, with no risk of movement on the road. Without the wooden cutting board, there would be a bending force between the passenger seat and the luggage straps that I'd expect to do damage.

I did this mostly with a 2012 MacBook Air. Eventually the plastic hinge between screen and body developed a visible crack, but everything still worked (and still does).

It might be that the screen is cracking due to something between screen and keyboard. But it might also be that the M1 design makes cracking more likely.

This is the worst. Back in my help desk days, was working at a construction company, so we expected a lot of damage and failures from being on jobsites, no big deal.

Laptop came in with a non-functional keyboard and some other odd, flaky behaviors. The user was adamant it hadn't gotten wet, dropped, or otherwise damaged.

I was young and naive, so I believed him. Started the usual software diagnostics, driver updates, etc. After all of that fails, finally pull the keyboard out to replace it (back when you could do that) and discover.... coffee stains!

Which is not to say a screen should crack from a dorito, it absolutely should not.

Indeed. I would suggest replacing the link with https://9to5mac.com/2021/07/30/m1-macbook-screen-cracks/ which has much more neutral tone despite being published on an unapologetically fanboyish website.

Also-- is the implication that it's not a design flaw if the screen can be cracked by a corn chip crumb?

I'm not aware of any screen that can withstand a cheese explosion.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CzknRy2XAAA_nD0?format=jpg&name=...

I understand now-- Four Cheese may as well be a drillbit.

They should simply meditate on how Apple knows best and come to enjoy the feng shui of the crack, reflecting on its dorito crumb nature as a metaphor for the impermanence and fundamental cheesiness of us all.

In fact, if anything they should really have to pay more money for the opportunity to receive this enlightenment.

Even if it was a dorito crumb, shouldn't a screen be able to withstand that? Now if was like a marble or ball bearing or a pen or something sure but closing the lid on a CRUMB should not break a screen. People eat near their computers all the time, take them to cafes etc.

I mean considering how much abuse thinkpads have stood up to for years, it's kinda embarrassing how much Apple screws things up.

I mean I'm glad I hold their stock because they have a brainwashed fanbase that excuses these design flaws (e.g. the "you're holding it wrong" thing with a long-ago iPhone), but dog help me if I had to spend my own cash on one...

"users who shut their MacBook screen onto a keyboard with a bunch of Doritos crumbs stuck in it"

Wow, they're that fragile?

"Modern materials are complex and display counter-intuitive failure modes" == "We're using really cheap materials, and it will surprise you how fragile and breakable they are"

That little plastic slide cover people like to cover the camera with can crack the screen.

It's not that they're fragile. But in an effort to make a thin, and light device. The space tolerance between the screen and keyboard is very tight when closed.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211148 >If your work environment requires a camera cover at all times > >If your work environment requires you to cover the camera on your Mac notebook, follow >these guidelines to avoid damaging the display: > > Make sure the camera cover is not thicker than an average piece of printer paper >(0.1mm). > Avoid using a camera cover that leaves adhesive residue. > If you install a camera cover that is thicker than 0.1mm, remove the camera cover >before closing your computer.

I understand that it's "precision engineering"; and, that the result is a fragile product (they are not mutually exclusive concepts).

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fragile

I think you're also describing something that is "easily broken or destroyed".

Maybe Apple's superior precision engineering results in a product that is too fragile for their Dorito-eating users. Maybe they could apply that engineering to make devices with better durability.

Everyone knows you don't eat or drink around a computer. /s

But in all seriously, is this regular use? If I'm driving a Lamborghini, and I misshift, grind gears, and break a synchronizer is it my fault or lamborgini's for having crappy gears.

I have an old Apple Cinema Display downstairs in my workout room. I was disassembling a squat rack and stupidly let one of the tall pieces fall down, right into the monitor. Granted, the collision was ultimately between the hard plastic top and the monitor glass but the only "damage" was a streak of plastic I scraped off.

The whole point of using glass and aluminium was strength and rigidity. Guess it was all fashion, no function in the end.

IBM/Lenovo and Apple are the manufacturers I've had the best luck with -- despite the crappy keyboard on my 2015 15-MBP was failing and replaced and issues on my 2019 MBA. They are the only laptops that still feel mechanically good after 3-5 years, no creaky, failed or sloppy hinges, sloppy lids and parts falling off. Actually, my Google Pixelbook is also still decent after all this time.

I still have a 13-year old 24" iMac from 2008 that is working fine and used to let kids watch some Netflix, I only jsut retired it because streaming sites dropped support for the OS and browsers.

I have a 2010 Macbook Air on its original (but limping) battery that I used to use for serial comms and electronics stuff, still working fine. Besides the failing GPU, my old 2009 and 2011 iMacs run well (and some amazing folks figured out how to replace the MXM which I did, baking also worked).

My Samsung, even Microsoft Surface Pros, were pretty creaky and sloppy after about 3 years.

> Does anyone remember when keyboard failures started to happen for "No Apparent Reason", and everyone said the same thing?

Don't forget the screen failures (stagelight) for 'no apparent reason' as well due to the absurd decision to permanently attach a too-short cable to the LCD panel, which also made a $5 repair a $500 repair.

> I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that some of these “reports” are from users who shut their MacBook screen onto a keyboard with a bunch of Doritos crumbs stuck in it.

imagine your Apple screen breaks and then some tech journalist calls you fat and gross for no reason ??

A few years ago, my iPad suddenly developed a crack in the glass all on its own. It was just sitting there on the table, I heard a quiet "crack" sound, and there it was: a small crack all across one corner of the display.

I can only assume it was some kind of temperature, pressure issue of some kind? I brought it to the Apple Store, told my story, got the weird looks, but they determined it wasn't fall damage nor me dropping something onto the iPad, so they shrugged their shoulders and replaced it.

After that, I would not be so fast to accuse these people of closing their cases on Doritos.

Glass is weird. Improperly annealed glass can spontaneously break due to little more than atmospheric oxygen and water. Its breaking stress is a function of time, but on a human timescale: seconds to days!

Check out the lower figure on page 9: https://glassproperties.com/references/MechPropHandouts.pdf

A sliding glass door in the foyer of an office I worked in once just spontaneously turned itself into a pile of glass granules one day. I'm led to believe it's not a particularly infrequent occurrence.

I'll never get a glass top table after a friend's coffee table did the same. Yeah it was likely chipped or damaged or abused by years of coasters and glasses and controllers and books dropped on it, but one day we were minding our own business in the kitchen when we heard an unholy crash, come to find the tabletop in shards on the living room floor.

there's a YouTube video of someone making uranium glass that had this exact issue come up. Very interesting to see in practice

I think it was mostly during the cooling when the internal stresses are relaxing. NileRed - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGw6fXprV9U

You were looking at it wrong. ;)

I've been enjoying X1 Carbons for nine years now. In fact I've still got my first one, from 2012, which works great as my personal one - even though I've gotten two new ones from works since.

I love the matte displays. They're not as shiny, but in the real world reflections from lights are simply diffused. Oh and they'll likely not shatter either.

Milspec ratings may be marketing speech but they've really been tested for dust and water integression - keyboard actually has a design to channel water spills away from the most fragile bits.

I've never tested it, fortunately, but it's still good to know _some_ manufacturers design for other things than getting their customers to replace their products ASAP as the warranty runs out, also (on top of the worst possible motherboard layouts) by making it as hard as humanly possible to repair third party.

Rossman did a pretty good video on how Apple put the 52v LCD powerline just next to the 1.8v CPU one; that's next level genius right there. Story link https://www.rossmanngroup.com/how-do-i-fix-a-black-screen-on...

X1 Carbon still has pretty terrible battery life compared to say an M-1 Mac. I used to be a thinkpad fan having had T450s personally and then a X1-Carbon/X1-Extreme for work. While the T450s experience was mostly good the latter experience convinced me to not get another thinkpad as my next laptop because:

1. The X-1 Carbon light as it was had terrible battery life of a few hours. 2. The X-1 Extreme fans are like jet engines and often on even when I'm not actively doing anything and my account is locked.

Got the cheapest base M-1 Mac and it is dead silent, has great battery life and amazing performance. Plus the price is killer too.

I'll grant that the battery life isn't terrific on the Carbon. Also the M1 CPU was a masterstroke of engineering by Apple.

(Having said that my new Nano is working a lot better than the previous Gen6 - seeing 7 hours remaining on 50%, with very light use, and definitely a whole lot better than the OG which has a 6 year old battery - got a refreshed after 3y, it was never great, and now says thank you after an hour or so).

I really don't like the Mac OS, but that's just a personal preference - and can appreciate the above points separately. I know thousands of Mac users feel the same way about Windows; I'm just set in my Win10/WSL2 patterns now. :)

Heat a long, half filled milk glass in the microwave. Take it out and then pourfrozen-cold milk from the freezer. Watch your glass slicing near cleanly in half by itself and making a mess in the kitchen table and the floor.

The full title is: "M1 MacBook Users Say Their Screens Are Cracking for “No Apparent Reason” LOL"

Seriously? LOL! What is journalism becoming? I really hope this style doesn't catch on and the author starts to write like a professional again.

"Container ship Evergiven gets stuck in the Suez Canal. LMAO!"

Thing is most press runs on ads and the art that IBM perfected and apple copied is pulling ads from negative publications. So if a story absolutely needs to be published and you still want to keep ads, you have to come up with a way.

I think this is a low-quality article. At the same time, different styles of writing, including those that some may see as "unprofessional" because it mimics how people actually write to one another, can actually at times be MORE interesting to me personally.

My issue is with the substance, not the style. On substance, the entire argument here is "well they're probably lying because SOMETHING has to explain it."

I get if you want to stick to traditional news articles. For me, I like seeing writers express themselves. I just prefer they bring more reporting to the process than this writer did.

I'm perfectly fine with a more casual tone but I think plenty of authors are conflating conversational writing with being "hip" by peppering the text with internet lingo. There are also bloggers and substackers who utilize one-line asides to great effect. But maybe I'm just a cranky old man and this is what the audience likes nowadays.

"LOL" goes back to the 80s. I'm not sure you can call it somebody trying to be hip. Almost certainly it's just a term they use like millions of others.

Kinda related ....

It alarms me the number of people I see just slam their laptops shut. I get they're supposed to be tough but Jesus. Some people really slam those screens that you can hear it from another office with the door shut.

Anyways, I'm surprised this kind of thing doesn't happen more often.

Also, isn't the real kicker that these laptops only support one external display?

> It alarms me the number of people I see just slam their laptops shut.

You can thank Hollywood movies for teaching people how to slam shut your laptop's lid (without saving your work or quitting apps, ever!)

I'm serious. Every time it happens in a movie, which happens every single time when someone is supposed to end some work and close the laptop lid, - I want to ask: dear producers, directors and actors, do you do this in real life? Honest?

Huh. I had this happen to my M1 within a month of buying it. I was totally mystified as I woke up in the morning and it had been sitting on some thick carpet over night and suddenly there was a crack in it. I took it in and they said I must have caused the damage. I still haven't repaired it for months, as it was quite expensive and I was just assigned a new work laptop and was strapped for cash.

I've had plenty of Macbooks before that have taken a lot of abuse, but this was just bizarre.

Glass typically will crack because of three reasons: applied force, sudden impact, or quick changes in temperature.

How the crack appears also matters. This includes if there is glass damage, or only the LCD panel inside the display; if there’s a visible impact point; and if it’s a single hairline crack, or multiple cracks.

Epoxy which bonds front glass to the display can often warp, or stress the glass upon slightest imperfection during application.

Simple bonding gel has no such problem, but it is very rarely used by big brands these days because it makes screen replacement much easier, and cheaper.

This is true. A screen that cracks for no reason, will usually only have a hairline crack or crack under the LCD (which apple will fix under warranty). I have seen it and it's barely noticeable.

We have deployed over 100 of the M1's in our ORG so my sample size is small, but of those 100's I have yet to repair a screen of an M1 that mysteriously cracked. We do apple care repairs on-site. With that said, I have seen most cracked screens come from shutting something (usually a writing utensil )in between the keyboard and screen. But's it's not our place to assume how it was cracked. Only that it is and it looks as if something hit it. Obviously, this is a simple explanation, but a screen that cracks on it's own won't look like it was smashed with a hammer.

I find this farfetched given that the chassis design is effectively unchanged from the previous Intel models and this issue doesn’t appear to have existed before.

FWIW I had a non-M1 Macbook screen crack due to overheating recently, not sure if that is related.

I had quickly unplugged the Macbook from an external display and immediately put it into a backpack. Due to some OS condition it didn't go into sleep in time.

Unlikely to be related. M1 laptops don't have heating issues. I say that typing on a laptop that doesn't have a fan and still stays cool.

Yes they throttle themselves, and will shut down before burning a hole in your bag. If it's shutting down due to overheating it's possibly a bad thermal sensor. I've usually only seen this on systems that have had Liquid damage or a device that was previously repaired.

It's not really "issues", but under heavy workloads the SoC will absolutely stay above 90 °C for extended periods of time, which, especially in clamshell mode, can cause the bottom part of the screen to heat up a lot.

M1 macbook air owner here, it absolutely heats up when working hard, especially at the top of the keyboard.

It doesn't catch fire or anything, but it's hot enough to be unpleasant to touch, I don't doubt it's hot enough to cause some expansion in the screen (especially if closed).

I'm also having a weird issue related to the screen on a M1 Macbook Pro. Every other month, the screen randomly turns blank. The backlight still works, and every time the laptop opens it flickers for a couple of seconds with a bit of the image visible, so it seems that the screen itself is still working.

After a few days, it randomly works again after a reboot. But never immediately. I suspect something with the GPU, as a Shadertoy visit once triggered it.

The issue is irreparable. Once it gets into repair, and I've lost my laptop for a few weeks, it will randomly work again after a few days and they'll say there's nothing wrong.

I haven't stress tested an M1 yet, but you can try this. With nothing else running. Load up the CPU with YES outputting to /dev/null. This should bring CPU usage to 100%. Then open several games of chess, make it CPU vs CPU and make them full screen. See if you experience the same issue.

$yes > /dev/null & yes > /dev/null & yes > /dev/null & yes > /dev/null & yes > /dev/null & yes > /dev/null & yes > /dev/null & yes > /dev/null & yes > /dev/null &

cat /dev/zero > /dev/null

Is /dev/zero to bypass the FS?

It spikes up the CPU like crazy.

I remember having a similar issue with my HTC One M9. My first one randomly had the camera cover glass crack for seemingly no reason. It had a leather folio case around it at all times, and spent most of its time in my jeans pocket. Lots of other owners reported the same problem.

https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/cracked-glass-camera-cove...

Same here but with Samsung S4. I just woke up, grab my phone and feel it by fingertip

Now that I think about it, I had a Nexus 5x with the same problem. Luckily the crack was off to the side and didn't seem to block the image sensor at all.

I had a small chunk of glass pop out of the bottom of my 2017 MacBook Pro. Was just sitting there, it was getting hot, fans running, and just pop. They would t replace it.

It's been a long time since macbooks had quality. I think 2016 or around there?

How about M1 MacBook users are complaining en masse about insane mouse jitter/lag [0]. It really drives you slightly insane when it happens a couple of times per hour.

[0]: https://www.google.com/search?q=macbook+m1+mouse+lag

Sounds like the good old usb 3 interference. Tons of people experience it and it's frustrating because there is no real fix.

And before someone rushes to say "Apple bad", this affects everyone, even Raspberry Pi (although in HDMI): https://hackaday.com/2019/11/28/raspberry-pi-4-hdmi-is-jammi.... The problem is in the cable not having enough shielding (since the modern standards like USB 3 series and HDMI 2 series actually operate at GHz frequencies, and WiFi et al. operates at the same frequencies, effectively turning the cable into a broadcasting antenna). The only wire standards which mandate shielding at all are twisted-pair wiring (used in Ethernet) and coaxial cables.

Yeah my friend with his new 16 core AMD build no expense spared, had to use a usb extension cord to his logitech mouse receiver to get it far enough away from the board.

Or, as I have observed with too many (4+) bluetooth accessories connected and being used, my mouse being one of them.

In a premium product like a MacBook, I'd expect Apple to replace any fault like this no questions asked. And if it happens again, replace it again. And if it happens again, offer a full refund.

It doesn't really matter if these cracks are caused by issues in apples glass-making process or caused by users shutting them on bits of rice. In either case, the machine isn't suitable for its usecase. And on a premium product, I would expect the manufacturer to make it right.

Correct.

Why should any manufacturer replace a product that you eat around the computer and crack the screen with hard as rock crumbs?

I'm sure apple knows what the screen looks like when it cracks on it's own. Apple would replace it if it's a single hairline crack. They will not replace it if it looks like you shut anything in between the keyboard and screen. Why would they?

https://www.engadget.com/2017-09-04-apple-leaked-warranty-re...

Because on a premium product I expect it to be sufficiently robust to withstand common minor abuse like being dropped from a table, crumbs dropped on it, drinks spilt, etc.

That gives apple an incentive to make their product survive those things, which leads to both a better product and less damaged returns.

Slightly off topic. My iphone screen cracks every year. Case no case. It just happens. I used to have a flip phone - left it in the snow for a week after I dropped it 30ft off a ski slope. No broken screen. After finding it, it turned on and even had power. These cracking screens are by design.

Even if this is a risk.. the fanless macbook air M1 is a gamechanger

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