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Comment by TacticalCoder | Hacker News Reader

So last week I was quoted, by Apple, 680 EUR to fix the cracked screen of my 1000 EUR MacBook Air M1. I'm giving them the finger but, to add insult to injury, I still need to pay 50 EUR to get the computer back.

It's sad because I was satisfied by my two previous MacBook Air (non retina / non M1) and I was satisfied by my Mac Mini.

But now the Apple love story at home is done. Now recommending Chromebooks to the 65 years+ around us (where we used to recommend Apple).

In case there's any class action lawsuit in Europe over this new M1 bend-gate I'll be sure to join and donate to the cause.

Typing this from my MIL-SPEC LG Gram, which is an actual proper, sturdy and lighter than any Mac laptop.

This comment is what you reap for screwing people over.

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I will never buy another Apple product without AppleCare+. It seems like with these ridiculous repair costs that's exactly what Apple was going for and it worked. If you had AppleCare+ ($199 for 3 years), it would have cost $99 to fix. The funny thing is that in my country (Czechia) you cannot even officially buy it and have to jump through some hoops to get it. Fortunately, once you do have it, it's accepted everywhere including authorized repair shops regardless of your country.

Unfortunately AC+ is not available in many regions. :(

Jacking up repair prices to force you into a subscription sounds like an extortion racket to me :/

AppleCare is insurance. There's a bit of a wrinkle in that it's insurance from a company who can do the repairs as well, but at the end of the day, it's insurance.

At work, we looked across the body of devices we had and tracked the AppleCare incidents (times when insurance "paid off") and concluded that it wasn't worth buying across the fleet. (This is aligned with the general principle of "don't insure against losses you can afford".)

If you can't reasonably afford the loss, insurance can make sense and you should consider AppleCare. If you can (or if you can self-insure across a large install base), you probably shouldn't.

Or if you know that you (or someone like your kid) is more likely to treat your gear more roughly than average. But, yes, in general extended warranties aren't a great deal.

Or if you know that you will probably have issues with your computer sooner than later even though you're not rough with it.

I did initially not buy it with my current laptop. Something broke during the standard warranty. Got the motherboard replaced... With a faulty one. So they replaced it again.

Got a feeling that buying extended warranty would be a good idea. And indeed, 3 months past the standard warranty end, it refused to boot at all. And once again, got replaced with a (less) faulty motherboard (some faulty USB ports).

I'd have preferred not being given broken motherboards by the warranty service, but since I have no ultimate proofs, had I not bought it, I would most likely have been refused service.

Well, repairs are usually warrantied themselves.

There's probably a better case to be made for laptops and phones you use outside the house than there is with other things. Sure, a TV can die young. However, as the parent said, if you can afford to self-insure you'll probably come out ahead on average.

> Well, repairs are usually warrantied themselves.

I don't know if this holds when the issue occurs more than one year after the repair, and has, at first sight, has nothing to do with it (Won't get into the details as it's not that interesting. The most important part being that the company's logs did not acknowledge a potentially-related issue reported while the servicing technician was still there).

> if you can afford to self-insure you'll probably come out ahead on average.

Yes. But if two parts of my TV broke in its first year and it needed to be serviced a second time just after because the replacement parts sent the first time randomly shut down with the company refusing to acknowledge it because "Yeah, the first technician said this, but the second time a technician came, it was not having issues" or missing logs, my guess is that buying the extended warranty at that point would probably cost less on average for that TV as I would not put any trust in it surviving long without needing another repair.

> If you can't reasonably afford the loss, insurance can make sense and you should consider AppleCare. If you can (or if you can self-insure across a large install base), you probably shouldn't.

You should also check to make sure you aren't already covered by an existing policy. My home insurance covers accidental damage with only a £100 excess, so AppleCare isn't so useful for me (although I've yet to test it!).

note that this often counts as a claim against your home insurance as well, which can result in higher rates. Generally speaking equipment riders are generally not worth it except for during a larger event (home burns down, etc) because of this - they get you on premiums if you don't make a claim (generally it ends up zeroing out after a couple years) and they get you on premium increases if you do make a claim.

It's insurance, on average the underwriter is still coming out ahead, that's the premise of the industry.

Insurance companies only need to (and only do) come out ahead in aggregate, not on any specific individual.

Generally the point of underwriting is to look at the specific individual and write a policy that accounts for their own particulars. Otherwise nobody would take any policy in any case where they would come out behind, so the insurance pool would be 100% 'adverse selection'. Insurance companies need to come out ahead on every policy, on average, that's how they're written.

A practical example of this, my insurance company told me to cut down a tree they thought was too close to my house for example (and I agree, it was a pine which tend to blow down, and it was too close), or else it would have affected my rates, and if you have particular high-risk breeds of dogs (dog attacks are covered by insurance) you will pay more as well.

In this case - if you keep making claims against your homeowner's for accidental damage to contents, even via a separate high-value-property rider, that is going to be accounted for the next time your renewals come around. And the next underwriter will be able to see those claims as well, those claims data are shared.

I had a high-value-property policy on a laptop (through USAA) and made a claim, they actually tried to come through to my parent's homeowners' insurance as well (which my parents didn't like and they backed them down lol). USAA is great in general, great about paying up when the bill comes due but, insurance is insurance.

So if you want to be nitpicky - no, they do come out ahead on any specific policy, on average - that is the point of diligence in underwriting, to account for those individual-specific factors. Even if you are "riskier than average", they will eventually account for that too. What is true that once written, they either win or they don't - and some policies they will lose. But the expected net value is biased to the house, on every single policy, given the best information they have.

In economic terms: perhaps there is some alpha that you as an individual can extract with your precise knowledge vs an unaware underwriter - but over time as you exploit that, the alpha will decrease to zero, because it will show up in your claim data. Just like any other market, alpha decreases to zero.

The house always wins in insurance, on average. You're not special, you aren't going to beat the house in the long term. Insurance is a "smoothing" tool, it lets you break a $5k lump expense out into $50/mo payments, it's not free money.

> Insurance is a "smoothing" tool, it lets you break a $5k lump expense out into $50/mo payments, it's not free money.

This is called a loan. Insurance "smooths" across the population, because not everybody breaks their laptop.

Of course you pay more after renewal when you make a claim (because you've shown yourself to be at risk for breaking laptops), but if you are able to make an insurance claim for something you generally do better in the long run making that claim than not - that's the entire point of insurance, nobody would get it if it was a net negative when you had to use it.

> but if you are able to make an insurance claim for something you generally do better in the long run making that claim than not

nobody has ever disputed that, but if you read my comment again, you'll see that I was discussing expected value of writing/taking a policy.

> that's the entire point of insurance, nobody would get it if it was a net negative when you had to use it.

in fact, on the topic I was discussing - everyone takes insurance policies even when they expect it to have negative net expected value - which all homeowners insurance policies are underwritten to have. Yes, if you make a claim you come out ahead, but on average you are expected to come out behind.

The fact that you also remembered some other thing that also works by the same method, is not particularly interesting or insightful. See:

> This is called a loan

Yes, indeed, loans also have neutral or negative expected return, so do lotteries, and that doesn't mean that insurance doesn't too. A is a member of S doesn't mean that the cardinality of S is 1.

You're trying to be cute and contrarian, in the finest HN spirit (it's also not cute or funny when anyone else does it, fyi) but you're going off on irrelevant tangents. Please, you're not furthering the discourse here, you're just being tangential and contrarian.

Please re-read the rules, it is very explicit that you need to take the most generous interpretation of a comment, and the reason that rule exists is because it's tiresome dealing with this contrarian nitpicking mindset. It's pretty clear that this statement does not imply in any way that you shouldn't make a claim if you have an event, only that taking a rider generally has a net-negative expected value - as does all insurance. Your entire comment chain here is the least-generous interpretation and should not have been posted.

> Generally speaking equipment riders are generally not worth it except for during a larger event (home burns down, etc) because of this - they get you on premiums if you don't make a claim (generally it ends up zeroing out after a couple years) and they get you on premium increases if you do make a claim.

I do think your original text was clear enough that I was able to figure out what you meant, but it would have been a lot clearer if it explicitly mentioned spreading a lump-sum expense across multiple people rather than only mentioning spreading a lump-sum expense over a multiple time periods.

By only mentioning the time-series of payments, it took me more than a single read to understand and I could easily see someone genuinely misunderstanding your point.

I actually don't know what you mean by that, but, the "insurance industry comes out ahead on average" is true both of individual policies and on average, which is why his response is kinda irrelevant. If you're a high-claim buyer that will get passed along to you in your premiums (which is what I specifically said in the first paragraph). They don't just write "here's the average policy, we'll do this for all situations" because then they would be hit by adverse selection. All homeowners/etc are underwritten against a specific property and person.

Of course any particular policy may end up being a win or a loss for the insurer - but - the policy is written so the insurer wins on average, and that's also true of any particular rider or supplemental coverage. The expected value of all particular policies and all particular supplementals/riders is, from the insurer's data, negative for the buyer, otherwise they won't write it.

I did not address it in that comment in particular, but in the specific case of when you already have an accidental damage rider or it's generally included in your policy, whether you should take it... the answer is probably yes, but, you should also expect it to impact your rates down the road, especially if you do it more than once. You'll have to weigh that, and sometimes it's not worth it unless it's part of a larger claim. Yeah, sometimes you do win on a particular insurance policy but... the insurer can still win on the backside too, with higher premiums in the long term. And even if you pick up and move insurers, the next insurer will see that claim too and it will affect the quotes you get. Again, not a money fountain, it's just risk smoothing.

What I was more going for was, in general the net expected value is negative so you shouldn't take the rider, because it will come back in your rates if you actually need to use it. The rider premium isn't the total cost here, there's additional long-term costs if you end up being a claims pest. Homeowners is not designed for every time you drop your laptop, and if you use it in that way you'll end up with substantially higher premiums in the long term to account for it.

I’m specifically responding to your explanation of insurance here, to which another poster said “that’s a loan” [and you objected]

> Insurance is a "smoothing" tool, it lets you break a $5k lump expense out into $50/mo payments, it's not free money.

If you believe insurance is only spreading payments for losses over time, you don’t have a grasp of how it works. If you believe insurance is spreading payments for losses over multiple policyholders, you know how it works but didn’t express yourself very clearly and then objected when someone read your words and got misdirected by them.

> the "insurance industry comes out ahead on average" is true both of individual policies and on average

What would the former mean as distinct from the latter?

> nobody has ever disputed that, but if you read my comment again, you'll see that I was discussing expected value of writing/taking a policy.

Your original post strongly implies that making a claim against the policy is net negative: "they get you on premium increases if you do make a claim". I am disputing that implication.

> Yes, indeed, loans also have neutral or negative expected return, so do lotteries, and that doesn't mean that insurance doesn't too. A is a member of S doesn't mean that the cardinality of S is 1.

The point is that you said that insurance "lets you break a $5k lump expense out into $50/mo payments", this is not true. That is what a loan does. There is a meaningful difference. Insurance allows you to pay to guard against risk by spreading payments out over multiple people, not spread out a large payment over a period of time.

> You're trying to be cute and contrarian, in the finest HN spirit (it's also not cute or funny when anyone else does it, fyi) but you're going off on irrelevant tangents. Please, you're not furthering the discourse here, you're just being tangential and contrarian.

Please read the HN guidelines before commenting, in particular this section:

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

You can find a link to the guidelines at the bottom of the page, or here's a direct link: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Again, the comment I made:

This in no way implies that you should not make a claim if you have a covered event. It simply says that the expected value of any given policy or clause within a policy is net-negative - because that's how insurance operates.

You took that comment and cleaved off the bits you didn't like, until you had a sufficiently narrow statement that you could come up with some contrarian bullshit to look pithy on HN.

Again, have you finally accepted that just because loans also operate in this way, that it doesn't mean insurance can't too?

> Please read the HN guidelines before commenting, in particular this section:

Haha, this from the person who didn't even read the "please follow the most generous interpretation" clause?

Your entire comment chain has sprung from a least-generous interpretation of the rules, which is explicitly against the HN rules. Don't cite rules to me while you're breaking them yourself. And again, you should read the rules about not being snarky or making shallow dismissals.

You wanted to make a cute contrarian comeback post and you made a very in-generous reading of the comment in order to do it, and then if I point that out I'm the bad guy. Again, a very HN phenomenon - too much coddling here. You broke the rules trying to look cool on a social-media site and when called out you tried to rules-lawyer to make yourself look like the good guy.

Take it up with @dang if you want, I don't really care. But I'm not going to be scolded by the wrongdoer for pointing out that someone is cleaving apart substantive comments to make little gotchas. It's a real problem on this site, as is the hiding behind rules-lawyering when people call it out.

Your reply is a low-value comment that doesn't belong on this site and it's gone downhill from there on both sides. This is why we have a rule about that, your comments set the downhill direction here.

If you have a fleet of devices you are probably big enough to insure the fleet via a traditional insurance company.

That insurance company is also going to [intend to] make a profit on that policy. Self-insuring lets you keep that profit (in exchange for fading the variance yourself).

(You also get the additional benefit of not having to deal with an insurance company over a claim. :) )

That wrinkle is important though - since their repair services could be more marked up when purchased directly Thant the insurance is. Looks like that isn’t the case for Apple at least for your fleet but there is no reason in general that a membership / HMO style insurance service will be more expensive than paying out of pocket.

So $200 x 3, + $100? It's 20 dollars more to get Apple's insurance than to just get it replaced!

Brutal!

I’m pretty sure it $200 for the entire 3 year period..

I buy Apple products, I like them, but I'm not going to buy AppleCare.

I expect Apple (or the resellers since there is no Apple Store in Slovakia) to deal with anything that is supposed to be covered by warranty. Both of our countries have strong consumer-protection laws.

AppleCare is basically insurance, and I would much rather take a 10% chance of having to pay $900 than a 100% chance of having to pay $100. Insurance makes sense for stuff you can't afford to replace, such as a house, not for consumer electronics.

That is, unless Apple sells AppleCare at a loss, but I somehow doubt that.

What happens when a Chromebook or your MIL-SPEC LG laptop breaks? The possibility to even get a repair done in a matter of days was what kept me with Apple so far. When you have to rely on a device being available (or suffer economic losses as a consequence) I don't really see any alternatives right now to Apple. Worst case is you could buy a new device and restore your backup. In the past, the only comparable service was IBM's on site technician service where they'd send out somebody in a van full of replacement parts to repair your ThinkPad on site.

When my Mac had to be repaired in December 2021 it took 3 weeks (Battery, Touchbar and Keyboard). I ended up buying a second computer so I could keep working.

Plenty of other big PC manufacturers have decent repair programs. Often you can even do the repairs yourself (as Apple is finally allowing again).

I just booted up my HP ZBook after replacing the keyboard. Plenty of videos about how to DIY [1]. Granted, pulling it out is not as simple as in the video (I'm not doing it every day, not every other year) and the laptop weights 3 kg but I'm not buying something that I can't service myself for basic stuff like replacing keyboard and expanding or replacing RAM and disks. I had a HP technician come to my home to replace the screen (a bad wire in the right hinge). It was included in the extended warranty, something between 100 and 200 Euro, 3 years.

I'm about to buy another spare keyboard for when it will wear out again. It's 62.99 Euro.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWrh6IIq57o

I have Keychron K1 and one of the keys failed (I carry around the world as a digital nomad). I took it to a hacker space in Sofia and unsoldered a working less important key and switched it for the broken 'T' key.

Repairable hardware is vital.

Not GP, but I did similar. It was a non-issue because I could buy multiple Chromebooks for the price of the one macbook, and because they're fully cloud synced there was no backup/transfer of anything required.

Once while traveling a kid stomped on the chromebook while it was on the ground. I was able to drive to the nearest walmart and buy a new one for $150*. Within 10 minutes of signing in it had restored everything and was ready to go.

* I normally spend a little more to get a chromebook with higher specs, and I recommend everyone do that. The point here was that I was in a pinch but was able to get out of it quickly and cheaply. I suggest absolute minimum of 4GB of RAM (8GB preferred).

Exactly this. It's easy to call out Apple but I'm yet to have an experience with other brands where I don't have to ship my product somewhere and wait for weeks on end to see if anything can even be done. Samsung is the biggest offender from my perspective. Everything they make has broken on me. Phones, entertainment devices, and most recently appliances that don't even last 6 months. The good news is when the appliances broke, they sent dish network to my house who also had no clue why it was broken and left.

Thankfully New Jersey (I'm in California) consumer fraud laws kicked in and I was able to get a full refund for my refrigerator.

https://www.nj.gov/oag/newsreleases09/20090804-Samsung-Ameri...

Depending on the countries traveled to, Apple stuff can make a lot of sense for traveling because they have stores all over the place. If something happens to the MacBook I bought in the US while I’m abroad in Tokyo it’s no problem, I can drop by the store in Shibuya or Ginza and get it repaired, probably same day in many cases.

Phones: I gave my Samsungs and Sonys to shops close to home and got them back after a couple of days.

Laptops: I either pay for HP's next business day support (they come to my home) or, for old unsupported models, I replace parts myself. As I wrote in another commend, I replaced this keyboard less than half an hour ago.

> What happens when a Chromebook (...) breaks?

You throw it away (or better, sell for $20 "for parts only" on craiglist/ebay), then buy a new one. They are 3-5 times cheaper than a regular laptop, and aren't all that much more prone to breakage. And all the important stuff is in the cloud anyway. "Backup" and "restore" aren't even distinct operations there.

Don't expect to run Adobe Premiere on one of those, but hey, you get what you pay for.

That makes sense and is a viable model to handle breakages. Still kind of funny to see this in a discussion about the "right to repair" though.

The big 3 laptop vendors (Dell, HP and Lenovo) all offer a next business day warranty, usually worldwide. To have an engineer show up at my home and business and repair the computer in a matter of hours is a much better experience than having to trek to an Apple store, make an appointment and be told that the entire unit has to be replaced.

How much is that warranty going to cost? I seem to remember Dell's being $300 for 2 years.

Nothing at all the first year as it's included in the price for XPS machines.

This is the most bizarre and foreign concept for Apple zealots.

https://www.apple.com/support/products/

It's free for the first year.

Did you actually even read this thread? This is about NBD warranty, not any warranty.

I am an Apple ecosystem user myself, but previously used Dells, Lenovos and HPs, and never without NBD warranty, so I laugh at all these reactions, too haha. Apple warranty is not bad, but in 8 years of using their products, they definitely deteriorated both in timing, willingness and quality of the repairs. And the frequency increased, too. I pretty much serviced each of my recent (~3 years) MacBooks and iPhones. Personal experience, but still, I used to praise them, no longer do.

Apple laptops come with a 2 year warranty by default. I've taken advantage of that probably ~10 times over the last decade. Not sure what you are implying.

[1] says 1 year, but this will vary widely by country anyway.

https://www.apple.com/legal/warranty/products/mac-english.ht...

I've seen this sentiment quite a few times on this thread. Pretty tiresome to see the same braindead comments over and over again.

I've bought Dells, Macs, Lenovos, System76s, whatever. I found (find?) it hard to believe that anyone offers on-site support for a reasonable price.

Looks like that's true for some machines, they've got a $50-$100 discount across the board for some machines like the XPS 15, which makes the first year free. Without that, it's normally (for each year of the warranty):

So really pretty good for 2 years. I guess they are slightly more worried about it making it to year 4, though.

1. https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/serviceselection/xn9520cto03...

HPs is about £50 for 3 year NBD

That's pretty good.

I guess it's only available if you have purchased the laptop in the US or some specific parts of the EU originally, isn't it? At least, I cannot see any way to purchase it or even extend the warranty for my laptop.

I highly doubt such service is provided in Malta or Cyprus, for example, considering Lenovo only has a single authorized service center per each island, IIRC.

I'm living in Cyprus; had a Lenovo technician come here from Nicosia (~150 miles return) to fix my left-side USB ports of my ThinkPad T590 about six weeks ago.

In the past, I've had come Lenovo to remote parts of Switzerland and Germany, as well.

> remote parts of Switzerland and Germany

There is no such thing. These are some of the most densely populated countries in the middle of the most densely populated regions of the world.

> What happens when a Chromebook or your MIL-SPEC LG laptop breaks?

Chromebook: if in warranty fix, if out of warranty, buy two more Chromebooks for the price of one M1 Macbook Air screen.

LG Gram: LG has a pretty good repair network. My team (5) has been using LG Gram 17" laptops running Ubuntu for about a year, and one person managed to chip the paint (it's anodized black on a metal body), but that was about it. They've been surprisingly sturdy despite weighing a few ounces more than a 13" macbook air. Also, battery life is on par with the M1 air I carry for occasionally dealing with App Store issues.

> Chromebook: if in warranty fix, if out of warranty, buy two more Chromebooks for the price of one M1 Macbook Air screen.

That’s incredibly wasteful.

Is it wasteful though? Chomebooks generally can be repaired for cheap with a little time investment. Sell the broken one on ebay "for parts" and someone will repair it and continue to use it.

OTOH Apple's are notoriously unrepairable, or way too expensive to repair (case in point; this entire thread). They become trash when they break.

If you are telling me you are relying on LG notebooks just not breaking - I don't believe you. Everything breaks.

> If you are telling me you are relying on LG notebooks just not breaking

LG has a first class repair network, so if they do break... same as any other global PC manufacturer. Also, standard procedure is to buy at least one machine and put it on the shelf so if one fails... we have an replacement.

> Everything breaks.

Yep.

Do you have any non-Apple experience?

Dell, HP or Lenovo would send a technician to your office (or home office). For simple repairs (e.g. battery), they can also send the replacement part and you can swap it yourself -- two of my colleagues chose this during Covid lockdown, and changed the batteries in their work laptops.

And "a matter of days" is a low bar. These companies offer next-business-day on-site support.

Here's an example for a Dell Chromebook, although I'm not familiar with buying individually from a reseller:

> Keep your 2-in-1 laptop protected with the 1-Year Mail-In to 3-Year Next Business Day Warranty Upgrade for Chromebooks from Dell. Providing 3 years of coverage, this manufacturer warranty upgrade features next business day onsite hardware support following remote diagnosis. Plus, get technical support via phone or online during business hours and self-service case management and parts dispatch. $63.50.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1692748-REG/dell_848_...

What happens if you are abroad? I don't have recent experiences but in the mid-2000s, IBM refused to repair my Thinkpad T42 that I bought in Germany when I was living in the US. Apple on the other hand doesn't care if you bring an Indonesia bought MacBook into a store in Sweden.

If you move permanently, I think you need to tell them.

I don't think they support devices during holiday/business trips, but I could be wrong. (I don't handle the laptop/desktop support myself, only the servers, and they rarely move.)

https://i.dell.com/sites/csdocuments/Legal_Docs/en/us/prosup...

If you want fast repairs, then Apple – contrary to your beliefs – is a terrible option. For example, Dell includes next business day on-site service for all XPS laptops. They also offer up to 2-hour 24/7 on-site service plans if you so desire. So if you really do care about your hardware being available, you do the opposite of what you just said: Choose something other than Apple.

Was this the case where the screen cracks on its own? You seem to [edit, reworded] be much more angry about it than I'd be if I'd damaged the computer myself.

If I had damaged a small part of something I'd bought, I would be angry if the quote for fixing it would be nearly the price of the whole item new.

If you buy a car, hit a kurb and destroy a wheel, wouldn't you be annoyed if it was only the manufacturer that could fix it, and they would charge you 70% of the price of a full car?

Why assume something that is a “small” part necessarily would result in a repair price that is less than x% of purchase price?

There are myriad factors that affect repair place, especially for something as technologically advanced as the newest laptops. Labor prices, design of the laptop, parts supplies, etc.

Of course, the ability for only one entity to source and supply those will tilt the scales towards a higher price, but that is unrelated to the “small”-ness of the damage.

The only thing broken on the Mac was the glass display, which I guarantee you does not cost more than $100 to replace wholesale, even with labor. However, Apple doesn't offer this repair for you. Instead, they sell you an entire topcase to replace the entire top half of your computer, even if your aluminum case, display, hinge, backlight, microphone and webcam are all fine. Your only option is replacing everything, at which point, I think OP has reason to be mad. Apple simply doesn't invest money in making their devices more repairable, they make too much money off selling replacements for it to be lucrative. That's fine, and their decision to make, but there's a real human/UX cost that comes with making fragile hardware.

No that’s ridiculous. These retina displays go for $400 on eBay (for a used one) and labor isn’t going to be less than $100 on top of that.

Parts? Manufacturing? Shipping? Labour? Storage? Distribution? There's more to a part than the cost. Now whether or not what they're charging is over the top, then I doubt you'll find much disagreement; however, the GP doesn't say how the damage happened. I don't know of a single vendor that will cover accidental damages on a screen, and no-one is responsible other than the party that caused the damage. Also, late 2020 MBA (M1) goes for $465, with ~$30 for the parts, ~$15 for shipping.

Edited words...

> Why assume something is a “small” part necessarily would result in a repair price that is less than x% of purchase price?

It's not a mere assumption. There do exist people who do many repairs better than Apple for hundreds of dollars less, in the US.

That is not related to the quoted statement.

As a hypothetical, suppose the camera glass or lens was made with materials or a technique that caused it to be 90% of a phone’s cost to produce. Then replacing this item would cost >90% of the phone’s price, even though it is “small”.

Or you have a huge transport ship that has an issue with a propeller or a small part of the ship on the bottom, but it needs a dry dock to repair, and there are only a couple dry docks in the world that can handle it. Then the price could be a very high percentage of original price due to the extreme supply and demand curves involved.

Repair costs are not a simple a function of the “size” of the damage.

> As a hypothetical, suppose the camera glass or lens was made with materials or a technique that caused it to be 90% of a phone’s cost to produce. Then replacing this item would cost >90% of the phone’s price, even though it is “small”.

When I say there are people who do the repair for much cheaper I mean including the price they pay for the part, not merely their labor. Your hypothetical is not the case here.

I addressed that with this portion of the original comment :

>Of course, the ability for only one entity to source and supply those will tilt the scales towards a higher price

I don't get how that addresses anything. Maybe they're "tilted" toward a "higher" price, but until you put actual numbers on these (are we talking $10 higher or $1000 higher?) it doesn't say anything. I'm saying that, for a wide variety of common repairs, it is a fact that you can literally get the exact same repair done for the exact same issue (parts, labor, everything being the same) for far less (literally hundreds) than Apple does it for you. And I'm talking about profitable businesses here, not charities. There's no need to give hypothetical academic rebuttals on economics when the facts are clear on the ground.

Welcome to the Western world then. Where time of a human is typically the most expensive component. I guess...

The display on a laptop is almost certainly not a small part. When I got the display replaced on a 2015 MacBook under warranty (Apple extended because of screen mottling due to a manufacturing defect), they replaced the entire display assembly, i.e. top half of the laptop case and all.

In general, I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect the manufacturer to make parts available more granularly than they do to their own repair centers.

But what if you had to replace the RAM, what would that cost? The CPU? Fix the keyboard? I think the total sum if you add the various components up it would be 10x a new machine, excluding the actual labor costs. And when there are others wanting to do it cheaper, but are being blocked by Apple, this doesn't sit right with me.

Not a very good analogy--a wheel, even a nice one, is like 1% of the value of a new car. That display is probably single most expensive component in the whole machine.

And if you bent the frame of the car and broke the suspension and did some damage to the sensors on your suspension? In the US it would cost a fortune and it wouldn’t shock me if it costs 70% of the value of the car.

The outrage is justified if the screen cracked due to a manufacturing defect. Otherwise, get over it and be careful with your stuff if you can’t afford the repair.

And before you send something off, ask questions. The shipping costs I’m sure would have been disclosed.

> Otherwise, get over it and be careful with your stuff if you can’t afford the repair.

I don't know if you're an engineer, but if you are you probably don't take the same approach to errors in your software. Being careful is only part of the solution to reducing risk. Another is adopting practices and patterns that are less error-prone. And another is to reduce the impact of errors when they do happen.

With a software service, we might have redundancy, and a watchdog or orchestration system that restarts any instances that crash. With a laptop, we might purchase accidental damage insurance, or just decide to buy a brand that is cheaper to repair.

When humans are involved, "be more careful" is rarely a successful strategy on its own.

I mean, the screen is a major part of that initial 1000 EUR cost. Could easily be half. No way you can get a MacBook Air M1 for much less that 1000 EUR used, those things keep their price for years and years. And how much were you willing to part with? Is that 100-200 (or even 300) EUR difference really worth the near-aneurysm you're having?

I am like this too. I will flip my lid over something like this, but about half the time upon further reflection I will come to the conclusion that I was being irrational, and simply upset at how much things objectively cost or how long things take, or whatever.

You seriously believe that a screen replacement (even after including labor) costs 70% of the price of the laptop? And that OP is irrational for thinking otherwise?

A replacement costs $600 at iFixit: https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Mac/MacBook-Pro-14-Inch-2021-A2...

That seems like a pretty normal price for recent MacBook screens: https://www.ifixit.com/Parts/MacBook_Pro_13%22/Screens

iFixit has to get those screens by salvaging them off of MacBooks. The cost to Apple to produce the screen is almost certainly closer to $100-$200.

>The cost to Apple to produce the screen is almost certainly closer to $100-$200.

Where are you getting this number from? Why not $50, or $300?

https://medium.com/macoclock/is-apple-fleecing-you-a682c851a...

Seems plausible, yes.

The screens arrive at the factory by boat, in an optimally-packed container. Replacement screens are individually packaged and delivered in low volume by courier.

Apple must first examine the laptop, which isn't free, then put in the replacement, and do acceptance testing, because they warranty repairs, and even if they didn't, not repairing something and claiming it's a repair is bad press.

Maybe they make profit as well who knows, but it's easy for me to believe that the assembly-line price of a screen triples by the time a repair is installed and the user gets the laptop back.

Starting to look like some of the M1 Airs got a bad batch of screen glass, which is a separate matter. If so, here's my prediction: Apple will do the same thing they did for the butterfly keyboards and eat the replacement cost, and people will be complaining about it ten years later.

Unlike the butterfly fiasco, I'm not betting on this being a design flaw, it's either the law of large numbers or a badly-tempered batch of glass.

None of that is relevant to the cost to replace an uninsured screen which broke under user-error conditions.

Everyone here is capable of looking up shipping prices from China or similar even for the volume of 1 screen, and seeing it doesn't cost hundreds of dollars.

Similarly, the average pay of Genius Bar employees and Apple repair techs is semi-public knowledge that can be found on the internet.

Nobody is believing that it costs Apple $400-500 in additional expenses _per screen_ to repair MacBooks.

> but it's easy for me to believe that the assembly-line price of a screen triples by the time a repair is installed and the user gets the laptop back.

Like it or not, in a lovely city called Shenzhen, it costs you $200 to get your macbook pro's screen replaced in a regular roadside repair shop just next building to your fancy apple shop.

As a low skill job, you get to master the procedure by watching online video tutorials, interestingly, that is also a viable business in Shenzhen, they have such "online schools" to get people trained for such jobs and some of their videos are free -

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLCQRIZLWDzzzhgKwSWBoRg/vid...

No doubt, feel free to find a service in Shenzhen you can ship your Mac to and employ them. It's not even implausible if you speak fluent Chinese, there are uh. Limits to your ability to recover if you make a bad choice, but it might work out.

And locals can import those screens right? Little bit of markup. Anyway let me know what the actual price is where you are, from someone who will actually do it, and isn't Apple, all of this is legal and the service is available. That will give us a point of comparison.

So many people commenting on OP's post essentially gaslighting them for not wanting to pay $1000 for a screen repair, as if we dont live in a universe where replacing screens on every other product is 1/3 that cost.

Alibaba.com: $167 for generic replacement. Considering Apple's buying power it would cost less than that.

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/New-Laptop-Apple-Scre...

How many nits? Does it support the P3 colorspace? Does it support TrueTone?

How do you know if it is even a remotely comparable screen qualitatively?

Yes the well known “touch screen” that MacBook Airs are well known for. Displays might be able to be had cheaper (in fact straight from the manufacturer they surely are) but I’m not sure I would trust buying from a vendor that doesn’t even know what they’re selling

>generic replacement

Could they be dead-pixel factory rejects that aren't even like-for-like? "Touchscreen" seems suspect.

Well.. well.. well, another source quotes even lower - $52 for 13" display.

Is Apple Fleecing you?

https://medium.com/macoclock/is-apple-fleecing-you-a682c851a...

>I mean, the screen is a major part of that initial 1000 EUR cost. Could easily be half.

The macbook air m1 here is 1100 euros, the mac mini is 800 euros.

So the keyboard, trackpad, battery, screen and form factor are worth 300 euro according to Apple. So that LCD screen they put there even though has a high res, is definitely not worth half the price of the laptop.

> the screen is a major part of that initial 1000 EUR cost

No, LCD screens are pretty affordable these days. You can buy yourself a portable external display with a 4k samsung panel for about $200-250 depending on where are you. Such portable displays have extra batteries included, so extra $ costs included.

We're not talking generally about LCD screens. We're talking about an original part to a specific laptop.

Hmm, that's strange. I guess out of warranty? Even still, I just walked in 3 days before the 3 years ran out and got them to replace the screen that only had some standard permanent keyboard imprints on it. Though it is a shame that the likelihood of encountering this does make applecare necessary.

Macbook air M1 was released in November 2020,all electronical goods in Europe have a 2years warranty, so unless the person bought it on a Grey market/2nd hand, it's strange. I believe most credit cards are also offering extended warranty (Switzerland, 3y and 5y with a debit card).

Europeans generally knows their rights on warranty and warranty period.

Good points. I think if my 2019 MBP has a problem in the next year, I'll try and use the Mastercard extension

I had a macbook pro that was involved in the recall for that series for catching fire.

The machine caught fire in my bed. I woke up to it burning and melting.

I took it to apple SF... they had the machine for nearly 2 months while they "investigated" -- then they returned it to me and said that at one point in the machines life, the moisture sensor had been triggered.

Apple "offered" me an opportunity to buy a replacement at full price. even though the machine was under recall for battery fires. I had a battery fire. But because they claimed the moisture sensor had been hit - they wouldnt honor the recall and didnt replace my machine.

Fuck that.

> This comment is what you reap for screwing people over.

Have you attempted to get it repaired by a third party? What do they quote? Is it possible that the part + labor is worth around $680? It does sound like an absurd price, but I would expect the display to be a relatively expensive part (a replacement is $600 at iFixit[0]) to replace depending on the extent of the damage. It might also be labor intensive considering how unrepairable Apple products are.

> I still need to pay 50 EUR to get the computer back.

Presumably this is for shipping? $50 is expensive sure (unless you're talking expedited shipping), but I suspect you'd be mad even if this was a more reasonable price.

---

It sounds like you're just being vindictive because you feel slighted by a company. If you actually want a solution it seems that tomorrow you can buy the part yourself and replace it.

[0]: https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Mac/MacBook-Pro-14-Inch-2021-A2...

iFixit gets those screens by salvaging them from existing MacBooks, hence the price.

Similar screens from other manufacturers can be found for retail at $100-$200, and Apple pays less given they manufacture in bulk.

So unless you think the labor is worth $400-$500...

> It might also be labor intensive considering how unrepairable Apple products are.

Even if two thirds of the price of the laptop is a reasonable reflection of the cost of repair, poor repairability is a choice Apple made. It seems fair to criticise the cost, and to factor it in to future buying decisions.

There are no shortages of alternatives to Apple. Apple doesn't hold a monopoly on anything. They're also a known quantity -- they value form over function, are very expensive, and very hard to repair. You know what you're getting.

This doesn't mean we shouldn't ask for Apple to do better, or try to get changes made. But, I do think it's completely ridiculous to rage about repair-ability like the parent did.

Poor repairability is not usually an obvious cost when buying a laptop. And many people don't buy laptops frequently. Sharing stories like this helps people make buying decisions that are right for them, making the market work better. As you say there are plenty of alternatives, although computing platforms can be sticky (by design).

What would obviously be even better than anecdotes is some statistical data on the likelihood of failure, average cost & convenience of repairs etc. I don't know if such a thing exists - in its absence we have to make do with anecdotes.

I guess that I'm expecting everyone to know Apple's reputation, but that's definitely not the case, especially outside of tech circles; I would expect someone on this site to not be surprised with repairability & Apple.

I think sharing stories is fine, but the poster seemed to be going much further than that by seemingly trying to get revenge on Apple, which is a strange thing to do.

Statistical ownership data would be awesome. Like a graph saying that if you expect the device to last x years you should expect y costs in repairs. That could even be a selling point for tech protection plans like Apple Care.

That one is for a MacBook Pro. GP probably wants one for an Air[0] instead.

[0]: https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Mac/MacBook-Air-13-Inch-A2337-L...

Ah I thought I picked the M1 Air because I wanted to be generous, but it looks like I was wrong.

I got the same quote two years ago when my Macbook Pro 2015 got staingate display issue. It was a few weeks after the "4 years repair period" and they wouldnt replace it for free, even though its a known problem and their fault. I also didnt receive any email notification about 4 year repair period regarding staingate issue. If anyone is sueing in Europe about staingate issue let me know. It was sad to throw away 3000€ machine after 4 years.

This is the exact opposite of my experience. 2015 maxed out MBP bought USED off Craigslist for $500 in 2019. The machine had the stains on the screen. So I called up apple, got an associate explained the staining and “staingate” they didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. I then proceeded to as for their supervisor who knew exactly what I was talking about. After a few minutes on hold the supervisor said they would replace the screen as a one time curtesy (side note the supervisor tried to confirm the original purchase date which I didn’t have an tried to guessimate somehow that guess was only week outside the 4 year extension). Apple mailed me a box and I mailed in the MBP. MBP arrived at the repair depo and sat there for 3 days. I sweated thinking they’re going to kick it back. The next day I get a shipping confirmation that the MBP is being returned. Day or two later I received the MBP. Brand new screen, top case, keyboard, battery, they replaced everything but the logic board.

Just a recap: Bought 4 year old MBP off Craigslist for $500 within a week had almost a completely refreshed laptop for free (minus the time on the phone ~45 minutes and me constantly refreshing the repair status).

This isn’t the first time. Another time I dropped my Pixel and messed up the screen real bad. Pulled out my wife’s old iPhone 7 and used that until I decided which new phone I was going to get. About a week into using the 7 it wouldn’t detect the SIM card. Phone is out of warranty, no apple care, nothing. Book an appointment at the apple store. Show the genius my issue. They offered to provide a loaner (iPhone 6) and send it off to be repaired for free. Within a couple days I get an email that the phone is ready to be picked up. Pick up the phone and depot replaced EVERYTHING minus the metal back on the phone. New logic board, new screen, new battery. Completely refreshed iPhone 7 in 2019.

Just these two events along would make me stick with Apple. Either their customer service is top notch or I’m a really really good talker.

Ps. Still rocking the 15” MBP and the iPhone 7 sits back in a drawer until it’s needed again (I ended up getting a 2020 SE and now a 2022 SE.)

Wait wait so your MBP was 4 almost 5 years old before the staining issue showed up? That doesn’t seem right…

MIL-STD-810 isn't the same as mil-spec, and neither of them means what you think it means. You've fallen for marketing wank.

This doesn't fit my experience with apple reparation process. You usually can request a quote prior to any action, can you elaborate on the context? Was it returned to factory via a shipping company prior to any quote from the support? I know laws are much kinder to the customers in EU than in the USA, but such a difference of process sound pretty odd.

The display assembly itself is $450, so 680 EUR sounds about right to have it professionally repaired.

Also, it makes sense that it would cost that much. Most of the product is that luxury display, with an M1 hanging off it. You could probably open up the case, rip out the logic board, and pay less in repairs.

AppleCare+ is pretty fairly priced and generous with their services, and would have made your display repair substantially cheaper, most likely free unless you tell them straight up that you dropped your MacBook or punched the screen.

Apple isn't sourcing their repair parts from iFixit (which is where I assume you got that price from)

For the last 15 years I’ve always bought AppleCare and never regretted it. Always a great experience and worth every penny.

> So last week I was quoted, by Apple, 680 EUR to fix the cracked screen of my 1000 EUR MacBook Air M1.

Have you ever had a refrigerator break? A stove? Have you seen the repair costs for those? Not much difference than the above.

From 2010, "That [Home Appliance] Repair Bill Is Huge, but There Are Reasons":

* https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/your-money/household-budg...

It's cheaper to initially make something because economies of scale in low(er)-wage countries where most of our stuff is built. Repairs are 'artisans' working at high(er) wages (and sometimes parts that need to be ordered and shipped over long distances).

Someone at Foxconn can make "x" devices in an hour in their sleep because that's all they do. A repair technician has to spend an hour tearing something apart and poking around just to figure out what's wrong and only then start fixing it.

It's not all due to mass production. Modern industrial design has made it so that accidents are expensive.

If you involve yourself and in a minor automobile collision and damage one of your front headlights on your Lexus with adaptive lighting, your total repair cost for the headlight itself will exceed $1000. A new headlight will require removal the front bumper and calibration of the adaptive sensors, both of which add labor costs. It's not just headlights; if you have lane-keeping technology in your vehicle and this is achieved via a forward facing camera, then a windshield replacement exceeds $1000 as well. If you smash your rear bumper into a mailbox and need to replace the whole bumper, you need your parking sensors re-calibrated. And this is with a maintainable car make like Lexus. For the more ostentatious luxury makes, the costs will be significantly more.

You might think, I'll buy a truck then. But trucks also have windshield-integrated forward-facing cameras, backup/parking sensors, and adaptive headlights. You wouldn't save much versus the Lexus.

>It's cheaper to initially make something because economies of scale in low(er)-wage countries where most of our stuff is built. Repairs are 'artisans' working at high(er) wages

I get your point but my MacBook Pro's screen cracked a few years ago. This happened in India, they quoted $700 (around 55k rupees) for a Mac that cost $1100 (around 90k rupees)

Apple's equipment is also designed in a way to be difficult to repair.

Swapping the battery on a Dell laptop takes a few minutes for someone unfamiliar with the process -- unscrew 6 normal screws, swap the battery, replace the cover and screws.

Replacing the battery in a MacBook takes an hour for someone familiar with the process, and several hours for someone unfamiliar. It also requires special tools.

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