Impact at the edge of screen created microscopic crack. Thermal change caused the crack to spread. It happens all the time with vehicle windshields.
Let's say, for argument's sake, the OP has their desk in front of a window. At night, temperatures go down, and in the morning, sunlight provided enough thermal change fast enough to cause a small crack, which expanded with stress. I'm not saying that is what happened, just that thermal stress can explain a lot.
Voices can already be heard that Apple's product can't even handle sunlight. But it isn't sunlight, it is the delta-T over delta-t the change in temperature over time. Taking a device in thermal equilibrium of an air conditioned environment outside into a hot car will crack the glass with no impact event. Happened to me. I was holding an iPad in my hands in front of me, and I saw the glass crack, and I knew immediately what I did wrong. The change in temperature was too extreme and too fast.
Perhaps Apple should have done so, knowing their users might expose their laptops to sunlight...
The $1000+ device should be able to handle going outside
You do not understand thermal shock. Remove your windshield and bring it inside. Lower your thermostat to 63° and let your windshield equalize at that temperature overnight. When the outside temperature reaches 90° the next day, rush your windshield outside.
Conversely, wait until winter and your windshield is left overnight in 35° temperatures. Boil a large pot of water, and dump the boiling water on your windshield.
It is not at all surprising that for 150K miles, your car's windshield has never experienced thermal shock.
Your winter water idea shows you might almost understand water conducts better than air. So it's just proof you don't read well. And either way, it's 1000x more extreme than what an laptop screen experiences.
What is required is a sudden change in temperature. For something as thick a car windshield, you'll need a near instantaneous 40° temperature change. If your car windshield was blazing at 150°F and you tossed a bucket full of cold, equalized ice water on it, it's going to shatter.
But you have some good ideas, and I welcome new Apple laptops with quarter inch thick glass displays.
Your counterexample means even less, since my numbers are based on measuring something useful.
Besides which: what kind of case do you think you're making by pointing out that actual design/manufacture problems with Apple products show up in Apple forums?
How else would it be?
I find it a bit laughable that they can "verify it under a microscope". The glass is present under tension, and a weak point releasing that tension could very well cause local divoting at the origin of the crack as the pressure is released towards that point and microsharding occurs.
It most certainly has, but might not have been publicised. I remember some noise about iPhones screens failing in more or less exactly the same way ~10 years ago. These things are bound to happen regularly, but we don’t hear about it. Ion-exchange strengthened glass is resistant to microcracks, but even so fracture happens.
> The corners of my 2012 are noticeably deformed from impacts and the screen is fine
Glass is an interesting material. It can bend and deform in the right conditions, and shatter in others. Your experience would show that the screen is actually well designed (my 2015 MBP had also a deformed corner after having fallen open from a table; I was actually pleasantly surprised that the hinge survived).
This happened to my brother’s brand new Tesla. Tiny impact on the edge extended all the way across after a week in Tucson. Very sad, especially because the service was difficult (had to return to SoCal for repair). The next week around Tucson I looked for and spotted over a dozen Teslas with similar crack extensions.
It’s probably safer for it to be flimsy. If it shatters it will become chunks and not shards. The Air screen is big enough to make killer shards...
The rest of the windows are tempered glass, also to prevent shards.
Relevant video about this design: https://youtu.be/aAsUG-jbLlM?t=131
Computer screen glass is also usually laminated (though here the goal is to fuse the glass very closely to the LCD panel so there's no unsightly "air gap")
It really impressed my young self at the time.
I thought so too. That’s when I started noticing Teslas around town with cracked windshields, heheh.
Correct. There was no authorized repair available in Tucson. The mobile windshield repair service declined to touch it. There was a possible repair in Phoenix (130 miles) but it wasn’t certain.
Correct re Southern California. He drove it back though. The rest of the family went back in a separate vehicle.
It's all great when nothing is wrong, but things eventually go wrong and you regret ever owning one. - Signed, a Tesla Owner who has been dealing with a very minor damage because some idiot couldn't take their eyes off of their phone in a 25mph zone.
Easy solution for windshields which avoids full replacement is to go and have somebody inject epoxy(? some sort of agent) into the crack which will prevent it from spreading larger