Fixing the Dreaded iBook Backlight?

Aliencow inquires: "I've recently bought an iBook, and it started having the very common backlight problem. Basically, there are two types of things that can cause the problem: either the screen hinges pinching the cables, which is pretty easy to fix if you're not scared of opening things up; or it could be the logic board, which is what happened in my case. I've heard of someone being able to fix it by doing a bypass operation on the board, soldering a wire before the break and soldering it directly on the backlight connector. Aside from that, however I haven't been able to find much about how to fix that particular problem. Have any of you iBook-owning Slashdot readers had to repair your iBook like this? Any hints? If my repair is successful I'll surely snap a bunch of pictures and make a website, as this is a problem that affects a lot of iBook owners."

Apple's Support

[phlyingpenguin]

That sucks pretty badly. I had a bad fan, and then the oh so common the logic board (As seen on blackcider), and then I had the logic board problem. Even though I was thoroughly disgusted with Apple for selling me such a worthless piece of garbage that it never worked for 3 weeks straight, I must say that every time I used the warranty, it came back within two days. As in I ship it Monday, it's with apple Tuesday, and it's back Wednesday. That kind of service is incredible seeing as how they must be swamped with repairs given the record of known issues. That iBook is gone, I had it for six months (The end of the warranty) and dropped it off on eBay (It was working at the time of sale) for a Dell which hasn't had an issue to date.

Quality hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats all I have been hearing for years. Now that Apple is becoming more "cool" and mainstream though, all I hear about anymore are the problems. Have things changed, or were the apple zealots just fooling us?

Very common problem.

[Jeremy Erwin]

I've owned three Apple laptops-- A powerbook 140, an Powerbook 1400, and an iBook 500. They've all had problems with the backlight or scan lines turning on or off. It's probably not specific to Apple, though.

The guy a few posts up re quality of Apple stuff

[spence calder]

I bought a bunch of Apple hardware when 10.1 was released and it seemed to be pretty good quality. I am still using it all regularly. BUT I have noticed a general trend with their new products; quality control seems to be slipping. My new iPod has crash the system several times, and my girlfriend's iMac seems to be cheaper than previous models. This all might not be true for everyone but it is something that I noticed with the products around me.

Re:Quality hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

That article is rather old and probably refers to the previous model (the toilet seat iBooks, they were ugly but very solid). I believe the current iBooks are made either by Compal or Quanta.

2 days out of warranty

[e1en0r]

My iBook has the same problem. I got it for a Christmas / birthday present in 2002 and the backlight started dying in December 2003. I bought AppleCare from the website on Dec. 13 but they wouldn't accept it as apparently my iBook was purchased on Dec. 11 and was therefore 2 days out of warranty. Even though it wasn't registered until Dec. 25 they wouldn't make any exceptions.

My specific problem is when I open up the screen and turned the iBook on the backlight would flicker and I'd have to put a little pressure on the back of the screen to push it forwards a little bit for it to work. I had to hold it like that for a while and then it usually took 10 minutes or so until I found a position where it would stay on. Oddly enough though, after it's been on for a while I can move the screen any way that I want and it'll stay on.

So my solution was to set it up as a music server, connect it up to some good speakers, leave it open on my desk and buy a PowerBook. I'm a little pissed, but on the bright side I guess I now have a 12" PowerBook and a sweet little web based interface to iTunes that I wrote last week. On the downside my employer hasn't paid me for 6+ weeks so perhaps the PowerBook wasn't the best idea.

Badly engineered

[GrahamCox]

The problem with the iBook hinge is bad engineering, not low cost. Doing it properly would not cost any more, in fact it would probably cost less because the wires wouldn't need to be crushed into such a weird assembly. Have you noticed how swish and stylish the hinge looks though? That's the problem, they have sacrificed function for form. I wrote up my hinge problem and solution to it (i.e. full disassembly, remaking of the cable and reassembly) on my blog here. [blogdrive.com] I haven't had a problem with the video connector but I did notice in passing just how darn fragile it is - the slightest movement of the connector (at the screen end anyway) caused bad scanlines, weird colours, or complete blanking. I figured that was another fault just waiting to happen, but so far just left well enough alone. Apple should sort these issues out before they start to damage their reputation - they are stupid, easily avoided issues that would cost nothing to get right. They need an engineer there who understands reliability issues (hint: it's always the connectors, and always where there is mechanical movement. They should spend a little time building some rally cars, they'll soon learn this!)

Re:Quality hardware?

[steeviant]

A little of both. The iBook is the cheapest, lowest-margin laptop Apple has ever made, and it has had a high failure rate. On the other hand, even if the failure rate is half that of Dell, say, you'll here more about it because Apple users expect more. So the iBook does suck, quality-wise, for an Apple (I'm typing from one now), but it's still better than a PC. Also, Apple has been fixing the iBooks out of warrantee, if you ask nicely. I can't imagine Sony ever doing that.

Nice bit of Apple apologism there, but as the owner of a 667Mhz TiBook, I can safely that this has been the most unreliable computer I have ever owned, I have splotches on the screen that Apple won't fix, lost all the stoppers off the bottom and Apple won't replace them, had to have the top case replaced because of flaking paint, gone through a battery and four power supplies, had the plastic divider inside one of the USB ports snap off under normal use, and have had to be without it for a total of about 4 weeks because of a failure of the motherboard, followed by the charging system in the 'reconditioned' motherboard Apple sent out as a replacement for the original.

I'm a dyed-in-the-wool NeXTStep/OpenStep/OS X fan, but I will not buy another Apple product until I see evidence that they are taking quality control seriously.

I might not be so annoyed if not for the fact that everyone I know who has bought an Apple laptop since 2000 has experienced a failure of one sort or another. We're talking five or six people and every single one has had power supply, battery and screen problems with their laptops. These are experienced computer owners who aren't just slinging their laptops in a bag with a whole bunch of books, but taking good care of them, and storing them in specialized bags etc.

It's all very nice for you to say that the iBook is cheap by Apple standards, but my PowerBook was not cheap by any measurement, at $7000NZ all up for the TiBook and extended warranty, I'd expect something a little better than a never-ending string of problems and little in the way of support from Apple, who as good as told me to fuck off when my battery gave up the ghost after 18 months, halfway through the extended warranty period.

It's pretty clear that you've never owned a laptop made by any other company (I've had 4 PC laptops and never had these kind of problems) if you think that Apple's piss-poor quality control is defensible, especially at the premium Apple are charging for their gear.

logic boards

[i0wnzj005uck4]

I'm on my second iBook since my switch from windows, and while I love them, I'm also on my *fourth* logic board.

Generally the backlight issue is solved by repairing the connector between the screen and the board -- a lot of times, the opening and closing of the lid kind of makes the wires bend back and forth, if you're unlucky, and like a piece of plastic they can snap or grow weak. Pulling it apart yourself is ... difficult. I've done it a few times, and I don't recommend it. You can probably find the actual apple repair manuals on some sites [torrentskickass.com] (*cough*) if you want to do that yourself.

However:

I'd say a higher percentage of the time *any* problem you have on an iBook, particularly the recent ones, is due to logic board failure. The problem is that *everything* is on the logic board, and if one thing goes wrong (IE, the modem shorts out, or a chip on one side of the board gets too hot, etc) the whole thing can have a cascade failure. I've had discussions about this with trained apple repair men, and they've all hated the iBooks because of this issue (which, incidentally, is shared by the Powerbook 12", but those machines fail at a lower rate due to higher quality parts).

So despite whatever you end up doing to fix your machine, you may still need to replace the logic board anyways. If you replace the connector between screen and board and your backlight doesn't come back on, I'd recommend you looking into the logic board replacement, as having one thing go bad on it can lead your machine down a dark path.

Right there with you guys...

[superdan2k]

My iBook is currently at Apple's repair center. But my story starts much earlier. I ordered my dual-USB iBook 500 the day after Steve announced them, in March of 2001. It took until early-June to receive it. I didn't want to finance the cost of AppleCare, so I figured I would buy it later. In October, I joined the ranks of the dot-com unemployed, effectively destroying my plans to order AppleCare that month. I wasn't particularly worried, though, as I had experienced no problems.

Fast forward to late April of 2002. I'm living at home, in my parents' basement piggybacking off their T1 (no shit), paying down debt via a combination of frugal rent-free living, unemployment checks and the odd freelance gig thrown my way. I'd sold my Win(D'OH!)s machine awhile back. I started getting mild electrical shocks from the metal rings around the footpads on the iBook, and the screen was flickering like mad and wouldn't go to full brightness. I needed to wrap things up on a freelance gig, so I called Apple, still well in warranty and got them to send me a box. It gets to be June 1st or so and I send it in. They repair it and I have it back in-hand less than 48 hours later, functioning perfectly. Life is good...up to a point. A choad at the Apple Store in the Mall of America tells me that I have 30 days in which to make a warranty claim if the repairs go bad.

~45 days after the repair, I'm out of my main warranty by a long shot, and I think I'm out of the repair service warranty. Problems begin to recur. Basically, I think I'm fucked, so I kinda decide to put off repairs until I absolutely have to. I'm back at work full-time and kicking ass on my bills, so I should be able to cover it. Well, about 120 days after the repair work was done, I'm in the Apple Store, looking at the toys, and I overhear mention that service work has a 90-day coverage. When I talk to the clerk about it, he tells me it's always been 90 days, and that he's sorry the other guy was wrong, but that there's nothing he or I can do about it.

So I stewed for awhile. Fast forward to 12/30/2003. In a fit of boredom at work, I drop an email to [e-mail], explaining the above...not asking for anything. I just want him to be aware of the communications disconnect in the store and expressed disappointment in the quality of the product.

I come home on 1/5/2004 and there's a message on my answering machine from someone at Apple that wants to discuss the email I sent to Steve. I think "practical joke" and then realize that I didn't tell anyone about the email. The guy and I finally make contact with each other last Thursday. He wants to hear the story, so I go into detail about it, again, and we talk for a bit. Then he says, "Well, we want to make this right. We'll cover it outside of warranty this one time. And you'll still get the 90 days of coverage on the repair work."

My jaw literally dropped. He hooked me up with the tech group, filed a repair ticket for me, and had a box sent Airborne Express overnight to me. I talked to the tech, and he told me that the work order ticket basically covered anything wrong with the laptop, including cosmetic damage. I nearly shit. So we went over the problems, and that was that.

I shipped the iBook out this Tuesday morning (1/13/2004). I spoke with the people at Apple today and they informed me that they had replaced the entire upper shell (cosmetic damage), several parts of the power subassembly, the little rubber footpads (god, how that warms my heart), and went down a laundry list of other items. They said it might get back onto a truck tonight to come home.

This isn't the first time that Apple has come through for me, I'm sure it won't be the last, but they've cemented me as a Customer For Life.

Re:Apple should recall them

[eliza_effect]

Maybe it's because one specific bios, in one specific laptop (as far as I can tell from the parent) is the culprit. Of course, Sony has more variations in their Vaio line than you can count on all your digits, so having one faulty item, while very dissapointing I'm sure for the owners, does not disrupt every Vaio on the market. You can't point to Sony and say: "Your bios' are faulty, this is an outrage!" because it's simply not true. It's far less newsworthy to tell the truth, which is that they have a specific problem in a specific model of a specific line. Which is not at all uncommon. Not offering an end-user solution is bad practice, of course, but not uncommon.

Apple, on the other hand, stakes it's reputation on VERY few models. They have a product line that is renowned for "high concept" design and low quality solutions that tend to degrade over time: iPod Battery (though my Gen II is just fine, for the record), ALbook paint if I remember correctly, display hinges, "splotchy" PowerBook screens,cracks in The Cube, etc). Unlike sony, these things are Apple's EVERYTHING. When someone points to these problems, it's much easier to link them to a larger problem with the company itself, rather than a specific product.