Hacker News Reader

Comment by 28304283409234 | Hacker News Reader

I'm on my 3rd(!) company supplied macbook in almost 2 years. Macbook Pro, 16'', 32GB. First Macbook: screen broke in the middle. Second Macbook: screen broke and MacOS is complaining that there's something wrong with the SSD. Third macbook I just received and can't tell what will break. But break it will.

I only move them around the house, never on the road. When I move them, I place them in a Thule Gauntlet. I really take care of these babies as I find it wasteful not to.

So that is my anecdata on the 'stability' and 'care' of Apple.

My experience differs from yours. Both are wrong and true. You could just be unlucky, and so can I. No need to completely write off Dell or Lenovo over that though.

View on HN

As an equally useless anecdote, I've probably owned ~10 mac laptops in my life and I've never had an issue. I literally have never used a laptop sleeve or anything I just throw it in a bag and go. Literally one of the most indestructible things I've ever owned.

You're extremely lucky. Or maybe you change your laptops before Apple acknowledges the very real problems they have.

So many of their laptops have had issues necessitating recalls, but because they were able to delay those recalls until 5+ years after those devices were released (even if complaints started way earlier), they get away with it.

I've already had 2 Apple laptops where I took in a 4-5 year old device, and basically had them replace/refresh it for free. One was the gen 1 or gen 2 Macbook which had a ridiculous discoloration issue on the case palm rests, combined with the case peeling apart, and the other a Macbook Pro (2011?2012?) that had a graphics card issue.

The Core 2 Duo 17" MacBookPro is the most expensive and worst machine I ever owned.

The 13" MBP M1 has been the best, apart from the wretched touchbar.

Ironically, you can buy the 14-inch M1 MBP with no touchbar... and you can buy the M1 Air with no touchbar... it's only the 13-inch MBP with that god awful invention. I'm sticking with the M1 Air for now specifically for that reason.

I think there was also a period post 2015 MBP up until the new M1s now that the laptops were pretty bad and had a lot of points of failure. The current ones seem like a return to a more robust workhorse to me. I was lucky and and had a 2013 model that lasted me up until I replaced with an M1 recently.

On the personal front my 2012 MBP still works. An old 2004 PPC MacMini is still going strong though it runs OpenBSD rather than the last version of Mac OS X it supported.

My experience with Macs as work and personal laptops has been very good.

How come you have owned 10, do you replace them regularly when they aren’t broken?

Not the person you responded to, but it's not actually that odd - I've owned ~6 just due to career changes and company machines. There's totally valid reasons in our industry to change gear like that.

If we're doing anecdotes. I was hit by a car with my laptop and it has a 1/4 inch dent in the corner of the case. The screen on the bottom right is somewhat off color but it's been running fine for last 7 years. I've swapped out SSDs too for more room.

Another anecdote, writing this on a mid 2014 MBP that gets regular use. No issues.

Maybe I'm unlucky too. I have a work MacBook and a Lenovo ThinkPad manufactured the same year. The ThinkPad has aged extremely well and I'm really happy with it. The MacBook on the other hand struggles badly with tasks the ThinkPad does without a sweat. The battery life is also far worse on the MacBook. The MacBook has needed repairs whereas the ThinkPad has not. I'm sure both would have been fine brand new but it's interesting to see how they've aged over the years. It used to be that Apple hardware aged well, but I don't think that's the case anymore especially with their Intel hardware. YMMV as parent has pointed out.

Since you seem to have broken 2 screens: you are aware Apple is discouraging placing webcam covers on your MacBook screens? Since the screens are flat, those things can put a lot of pressure on a MacBook screen to the point they crack.

I have a personal 2013 MacBook that has been left running in a box in the desert for a week straight and filled with dust, had sesame oil poured into the fans, dropped, hit, scratched and heavily dented, but still works beautifully. Then the butterfly keyboard ones were issued at work and it immediately become unusable because of dust, randomly double hitting e or the spacebar or failing to register hits to some keys. YMMV, 1 apple computer sadly != another apple computer anymore

There have definitely been some noteworthy problems with Apple's laptops in recent years...but I'm honestly not sure what it is you're doing to them to break screens on multiple machines in a row. You're the first person I've ever heard with that specific complaint, which suggests it may be something unusual about your usage pattern that's causing it.

Note that this isn't saying "you're being abusive to the computers": I can imagine daily-use patterns that are genuinely the best you can do that would result in much higher physical stress to a laptop than your typical office work. It's just saying that maybe, for your particular use case, you might need something more rugged than a stock MacBook of whatever type without a case on.

Yeah, maybe he's holding it wrong?

I am on my thirst company supplied laptop. Thinkpad for 2 years. MacBook Pro for the next 5 and another MacBook Pro now on its third year. The next one will probably be a M1 based MacBook pro - though this one is working fine and I dont feel like going in to work just to replace it

Here is some more anecdata: have had the same Macbook for 6 years with absolutely no issues, stellar reliability and battery life. Same at work. Only recently switched after 5 years at work because we had some new employee turnover and it made sense for me to get a slightly nicer machine for a new project.

If that’s an Intel one you’re getting, I can understand it. However the M1 ones are a completely different computer. I am shocked at how good they are.

I've had a M1 Macbook pro (13-inch) display shatter on me within 10 months of purchase for no reason. The cost of repair is $800 which being around 80% of the cost of the laptop, was untenable. Since then it has been gathering dust in the storage closet for the past five months.

Looking online, it seems like there was a quality issue with their displays for the first few batches of production.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/apple-facing-m1-macbook-cracked-s...

It is a shame. I did enjoy using the laptop very much.

Why did you not have insurance?

99% of the time I’ve seen this sort of stuff happen it’s because there was a screen protector or someone shut some crap in the lid.

Why should you need insurance on something that should be covered under the manufacturer warranty?

The manufacturer doesn’t know you didn’t leave half your rice lunch in the lid when you closed it.

I am confident that I treat my laptops very well. According to the article linked above, this issue has been occurring during normal use.

if only they could support 3 external monitors

M1 Max can. Needs more video (and therefore memory) bandwidth to do that.

I’m on the same 2018 I got in 2018.

Every Dell or Lenovo I had before that was cracked, missing plastic bits, feet and screws after 4 years.

Last Lenovo had battery issues from the start. 2018 MacBook still lasts a day.

But my dual Xeon Dell Precision desktop from 2017 is still a beast, never had issues.

It’s a gradient in the aggregate but my personal experience says it’s just fine to write off any laptop that isn’t a Mac. The plastic housing alone makes me think they take a “Gillette razor” approach to portables; who cares if it cracks apart, just replace it! which I have a hard time looking passed given the industrial waste shitshow we already have.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com