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Comment by 1letterunixname | Hacker News Reader

Apple devices aren't engineered to last; they're engineered to be manufactured, sell new, and sometimes sell expensive repairs by them.

Also, NVIDIA cards in eGPUs and Thunderbolt (arm64) aren't supported.

The best solution is either don't use Apple, or have a machine under warranty and very good backups.

Complaints aside, the Anker 777 dock does 5K-8K DP over USB-C, 1 GbE, 100w charging, 4 USB-A and more and works with m1 and m2 MBPs. Add a quality magnetic USB-C connector, and it's "MagSafe" docking to a monitor, power, and accessories with one cable. I'm in the camp of 1 giant 49" monitor, with occasional AirPlay to a nearby Apple TV 4K on an 85" TV.

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I have had many Apple devices since the 2nd gen iPod, and they have all lasted a very long time compared to my other devices. All my laptops back to my 15” PowerBook is still working. They have fixed a faulty GPU on a 4 year old laptop for free, even though I had opened the laptop and changed thermal paste. (Known manufacturing issue with that GPU, but still impressive)

They have made mistakes. Like the battery in my current 2015 MBP is too hard to replace. And I avoided upgrading for a long time due to the known issues with the keyboards. But it seems like they generally correct when making mistakes like that.

I do agree that SSDs shouldn’t be soldered on though. Hopefully it’s one of the mistakes they’ll eventually fix. I kind of understand the motivation.. you can make it impossible to effectively steal a device, or access its contents. The device becomes very simple and robust in some ways. But they could come up with a good compromise.

Like, sure, keep the concept of not having an SSD controller on the drive, and firmware on the SSD. But sell replacement SSDs with the firmware and a recover OS preloaded. One that lets you provision the new drive with the SOC through your iCloud account. Depending on the on-chip storage and whether it’s fuse/EPROM-based or flash, the number of possible drive replacements might be limited. But that’s an OK compromise.

> They have fixed a faulty GPU on a 4 year old laptop for free

I have to laugh at this.

Apple had a well known strategy of denying that obvious problems with their devices were not actually problems with their devices until 5-10 years later when no one would be using those devices anymore, at which point they would announce a recall, which involved a tedious process of proving it's the right device, and shipping it to Apple for days or taking it to an Apple Store for repairs.

In the meanwhile they would deny that it was ever a problem. The good thing was that a lot of Apple Geniuses were absolutely decent people and would probably give you a repair for free although they were supposed to try to get you to pay for the repairs.

I mean, just consider how long Apple denied the following, highly public recall worthy issues (and then extrapolate that to how they would behave with something that was less publicized and had a failure rate of about 10% as opposed to the much higher failure rates exhibited in these situations):

1. You're holding it wrong, iPhone 4. 2. No, your battery is not degraded...you're just imagining that your battery life is low 3. We fixed the degraded battery....no your phone hasn't slowed down...you're just imagining it. 4. Butterfly keyboards.

Yeah, but equivalently priced hardware is just as good if not better. I put as much money in a PC build as I would have in a Mac Pro, and I got a 1000w PSU replaced for free because it had 7-year warranty. So, it is not something special about Apple. If you are willing to put the price you will get pretty good hardware. If anything, you are more likely to be left hanging the short stick with Apple because they are unwilling to warrant their stuff for a long time no matter what price you buy it. Not without reason, because realistically, most of their hardware post 2015 really is not any good.

> Apple devices aren't engineered to last

This doesn't match either my experience, the experience of others I know or the good resale value Apple devices continue to have.

All of my apple devices have lasted multiple (4+) years. The only time an apple device hasn’t is because I broke it.

I suppose the interesting question is whether this is true of the newest devices or not. My wife's MacBook Pro lasted 11 years. It finally died this year. Can I expect the MacBook Pro that's replacing it to last 11 years too? Only time will tell. Hope so.

Some of us remember our 2008 MacBook pros GPUs dying and apple refusing to fix it. Their electronics have, however never let me down.

Didn’t they end up recalling those and changing the main boards for free (of course, those replacements were also having the same issues as the original boards). AFAICT they still refuse to touch a nVidia GPU over this. It is not a common occurrence.

It was a 2008 laptop and they decided it was a real problem by 2014 or so, so 'yeah' after 6 years and wet know what happened after. My iPod was replaced within an hour when it broke.

That's just wrong - Apple devices are much more hearty than the competition (Lenovo as a possible exception).

>Apple devices aren't engineered to last; they're engineered to be manufactured, sell new, and sometimes sell expensive repairs by them.

I guess you should say include "Modern" Apple Mac. Macbook Post 2015 are pretty bad compare to older MacBook. Those who are EE or interested in Hardware should watch a few of Louis Rossmann video.

But then because the rest of the industry are so poor in reliability they still get to say they are once of the most reliable notebook. May be apart from Lenovo.

>Apple devices aren't engineered to last; they're engineered to be manufactured, sell new, and sometimes sell expensive repairs by them.

I have a 2007 iPod nano that I still use pretty regularly. It still works, and I can load new music to it from my Mac.

I would say it was engineered to last.

If you're an Apple engineer then thanks for your forward thinking. Please keep it up, people do appreciate it, even if you don't hear it that often.

Can you explain why Apple devices in general maintain a higher percentage of their resale value for longer than their competitors’ counterparts?

only laptop I know carved from a single piece of aluminum. not the only reason but for sure that one is a good one. No other laptop feels as solid and I don't understand why nobody else does it.

Milling a case from a block must be far more expensive that folding a few sheets, right?

I haven't had any of the recent MBPs, but my 2020 HP EliteBook's main body looks similar to my 2013 retina mbp, which already had the "unibody" construction. If also feels quite solid when I hold it by one corner while open. The lid does feel somewhat flimsier, though, especially the hinge.

I have a Dell that looks the part when it’s sitting on a desk, but is actually quite flimsy (the underside is actually plastic, and the hinge does not look strong at all, the screen shifts colour when a slight pressure is applied on the lid). And it is a middle of the road Latitude, not a €1000 MacBook Air.

This particular HP is full metal. I was able to confirm it when using a random belkin charger with no ground: I got the familiar "vibrating" feeling in my fingers when moving them along the case.

This specific model is a 840/845 G8 (I have both, they're the same, one Intel and the other AMD). I haven't seen the current G10, but I've seen the supposedly higher-end 1040 G10 and, like the Dell, it looks the part, but it's clearly all plastic. Complete with creaking noises if you look at it wrong. And the one I'm talking about was brand new, maybe 5 hours old.

> the screen shifts colour when a slight pressure is applied on the lid

Heh. Must be nice to have a screen whose color is consistent if you leave it alone. My HP changes colors if I shift my head. No, these are not cheap 2003 models. Yes, they cost as much as a similar MBP.

One (but certainly not the only) reason is that Apple rarely discounts their products and even if they do it’s not by that much.

It’s not that hard to find a high-end/$2000+ PC laptop for 40% or so off 1-2 years after its release, not so much a macbook. Apple is still selling refurbished M1 airs for $849.00 from 2020 ($999 was the price on introduction)

I've got a 14 year old imac that says otherwise

> Apple devices aren't engineered to last

This is just patently false.

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