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Portables (Apple) Businesses Upgrades Apple Hardware

Apple Expands (Again) iBook Logic-Board Program 74

Posted by timothy from the cultivating-customers dept.
JMZorko writes "Apple has extended the repair program to widen the serial # range yet again for iBooks experiencing the dreaded, dreaded (and did I say dreaded?) video problems. It now includes serial #s up to the UV342 range (which, sadly, mine is in .. here I thought I finally got one that would stay with me for awhile, sigh)."
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Apple Expands (Again) iBook Logic-Board Program More

Apple Expands (Again) iBook Logic-Board Program

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  • grr (Score:4, Interesting)

    by boredMDer ( 640516 ) <pmohr+slashdot@boredmder.com> on Saturday June 19, 2004 @05:35PM (#9474388)
    Three times now, my Dual USB iBook has been in the shop.

    Actually it's in right now, the Apple store can ship it out monday, so I should have it by Friday (hopefully, I have them shipping it directly to my house).

    Twice now, the LCD (actually backlight) fails to light on start unless there's an external CRT connected...the second time, it was just random freezes and they replaces the logic board.

    This time I'm definitely calling up Apple and bitching at them about this...but if it fails again, they'll replace it likely for a 1 GHz G4 iBook...I think that's the lowest end iBook now. Note that mine is a refurb G3 800 (12").

    I can understand the initial failure...maybe the second, but come on, three times?

    Eh.

    Although I still love apple. Don't ask why. Luckily, I got it in February so it's all under the one year warranty.

    I know, not informative or insightful but I was bored and I had something relevant to say. Mods, mod away.
    • Could you kindly illuminate me as to how to get Apple to offer a replacement? This is the situation i'm in: I have an iBook 700 that has been sent back 4 times for this problem, and iBook 900 that has been sent back twice (including this latest one that happened the other day), and an iBook 900 that -- so far -- has not exhibited the problem (though it has the UV342xxxxxx serial #, i've no doubt that it will). Every time i've spoken with Apple tech support, they've told me that replacement just is not an
      • Well I was under the impression that after three, a sort of 'lemon law' type policy comes into effect.

        I was talkign with the guy at the Genius bar at the store in Towson (MD), asked what the replacement policy was for defective units, and that's what he told me. He said 'after this repair (mind you this is the third time it's been sent in) you can call up Apple customer service about replacement of the unit'.

        So I can /talk/ with them, not quite sure if I'll get it. I mean, seriously, replacing the logic b

        • Re:grr (Score:5, Informative)

          by Johnny Mnemonic ( 176043 ) <mdinsmore&gmail,com> on Saturday June 19, 2004 @11:48PM (#9476409) Homepage Journal

          I am an ex-Genius, so let me tell you how we handled this kind of situation:
          • There is nothing like a "lemon law" for computers. Maybe there should be, but there isn't.
          • There isn't a formal policy that I'm aware of at Apple that stipulates that they will replace machines after the third attempted fix.
          • Even if there is a formal policy, you're sure as hell not going to find it posted in a public place--that would open them to all sorts of liability when there is no legal compunction for them to do so. Even if there is a policy, to stipulate to that in public would be foolish. Much better from their perspective to be able to retain the ability to interpret the policy as they see fit.
          • Although there is no national law, you may be covered by a state law that essentially is along the lines of the product being "fit for use." Lemon law refers specifically to cars and has language that is for car purchases--but some states have consumer protection laws, or contract law, that might be relevant in a more generic manner.

          All that said, generally if a customer had worked with us through three repairs of a unit, especially of the same component, we escalated the issue and generally that customer's unit was replaced. My inclination is that the ability to secure a replacement had something to do with product refresh cycles--you're much more likely to get a better unit if the line is about to be refreshed and they want to clear inventory, for example. Otherwise, you'll get a comparable unit in specs or the lowest new model that still meets those specs and features.

          Bottomline--after three repairs you should explain your case, describe your patience and willingness to work through the issue, but that your willingness has now come to an end. Polite but firm is the order of the day--don't whinge, don't scream and shout and call people names or impune their ancestry and professionalism, but you also should resist being bullied, and if they've already tried three times, they'll ask for a fourth attempt, but if you're firm and polite you should be able to refuse that. Ask to speak to a "Customer Service" Rep, as there is a group at Apple that does this full time and is a different group than either the AppleCare agents or the Geniuses. They can facilitate this for you, but you need to ask to talk to them, ask to talk to them directly, and are very relunctant to help if you haven't given Apple three chances already. However, if you have, I think that they'll satisfy you.

          I can say that these instances were pretty freakin' rare--while certainly Macs break, we pretty much always got it fixed on the first attempt and then did our damnednest to get it done on the second. I think I can count on one hand the number of times a unit failed after three attempts, in the 18 mos that I worked as a Genius. And for those, we helped the customer with CR best we could, so if one is available they may prove to be a valuable ally. Good luck.

          • Ex? (Score:4, Funny)

            by waldoj ( 8229 ) <waldo@@@jaquith...org> on Sunday June 20, 2004 @07:16PM (#9479921) Homepage Journal
            I am an ex-Genius

            "Im glad I got a second chanse to be smart becaus I lerned a lot of things that I never even new were in this world and Im grateful that I saw it all for a little bit. I dont know why Im dumb agen or what I did wrong maybe its becaus I dint try hard enuff. But if I try and practis very hard maybe Ill get a little smarter and know what all the words are. I remember I did somthing but I dont remember what. So I guess its like I did it for all the dumb pepul like me.

            "P.P.S. Please if you get a chase put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard..."
          • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Could you kindly illuminate me as to how to get Apple to offer a replacement?

        in a word: No. Apple will go to great lengths to avoid giving you a replacement. Each replacement iBook costs quite a bit of money, and unless you are a really good Apple customer, the chances of it making economic sense for them are practically nil. The best way to get a new machine would be if it is part of a larger contract, at which point it pays for them to keep you happy.

        sorry.

    • Re:grr (Score:2, Interesting)

      by maddvibe ( 70786 )
      Mine has had the logic board replace three times already as well. So far about every 6 months it has died. I'm due for another break down in December. :P I'm getting tired of this thing breaking, but I still love it when it works. Last time I brought it in the genius said that if it happens again they'll probably replace it with a new iBook. I would love that, but now that he said that, it'll probably keep running forever. I think I'd prefer it to keep running anyway. I'm just glad that Apple fix my laptop

  • iBook woes (Score:5, Interesting)

    by isd_glory ( 787646 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @05:57PM (#9474501)
    Man, I feel lucky that I had my iBook problems well before apple "announced" the issue. My iBook failed for the fourth time around September of last year, and rather than just blindly send it in again, I got on the phone with a customer representative and bitched my way up the phone chain until I got in touch with someone who could help.

    After a bit of discussion (namely that I no longer trusted in the worry-free operation of my laptop), I got them to refund the money I paid for my then year-old iBook and use the money to purchase a new PowerBook. Of course I also had to send them a cashier's check for the difference, but I feel that the upgrade was worth it.

    Ever since the iBook repair extension was announced, it seems that Apple has changed their stance on this issue. Had my iBook died a few months later, they would have just replaced the logic board again instead of letting me come up with some other options.

  • Does the problem still exist? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by baywulf ( 214371 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @06:36PM (#9474703)
    I'd like to get an Apple notebook but an Powerbook is out of my price range. If I get a recent iBook do the problems still exist or have the manufacturing issues been resolved?
    • I have an 12" iBook G4 purchased about two months ago. Even though the serial number is in the range covered by the replacement program, I haven't had any video problems. Go ahead and get an iBook, you won't be disappointed.

    • Re:Does the problem still exist? (Score:5, Informative)

      by boredMDer ( 640516 ) <pmohr+slashdot@boredmder.com> on Saturday June 19, 2004 @07:10PM (#9474878)
      AFAIK only the G3 dual USB's were affected.

      You should be good with the current batch of G4 iBook's.

      Get one, you won't regret it...

      • Re:Does the problem still exist? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Halo1 ( 136547 ) on Sunday June 20, 2004 @06:43AM (#9477366)
        Actually, the G4 iBooks haven't been out long enough yet to know that for sure. Most G3 iBooks only started failing after about 1 year. I really do hope they got it fixed, though...

        -- Someone who has a G3 iBook with a 4th replacement logic board (because he was unlucky enough to have experienced two different kinds of logic board failures, so it has been replaced once for 1 issue and 3 times for another and they only want to talk about giving a replacement if the same issue occurs for the 4th time).

        • My G3 iBook failed four times (well, the fourth time was a botched repair) before its first year anniversary. I don't know whether that is indicative of a trend, but all the people talking about replacements and repairs indicates to me that your blanket statement "Most ... started faling after about 1 year" should be called into question.

          And yes, I did get a replacement G4 iBook which has been running fine since.

    • > If I get a recent iBook do the problems still exist or have the manufacturing issues been resolved?

      The G4 iBooks are still pretty new (less than 1 year) so nobody knows for sure. Still, I'd be surprised if they haven't solved the problems, even for the G3s. The reason is simple economics. They've commited themselves to replacing every logic board with the problems. If they haven't really solved the problems, this would cost them more money in the long run than spending any amount of resources to find
    • When the program was first expanded back in April, I posted my experence to MacSlash. I wrote at the time:


      My iBook is the Early 2003 G3 900 14 inch model with the RAM bumped up from 256 MB to 384 MB. The model # is in the UV337x range.

      According to the FAQ, one of the symptions of the logic board failure is scrambled video. This action happened to me yesterday when booting up, going past the black on white Apple logo to the desktop itself. I then rebooted and everything has been normal since then. This

  • Why sad? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Have Blue ( 616 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @07:28PM (#9475012) Homepage
    If your iBook is not actually experiencing any problems, what's there to be sad about? Since the entire line is several months old now, you should be well into the safe area of the bathtub curve.
    • ... oh, but I _have_ had these problems, 6 times now (4 with an iBook 700, 2 with the 900, and counting). I bring my iBook to work everyday (it's just very cool to have a laptop *nix box with me to test C++, Perl, bash scripts, etc. on). Many have commented about it, and i've taken every opportunity to tell them what nifty machines they are. However, every 3-4 months when it's gone for a week or so, and people ask where my little white companion is, I have to tell them, "It's being repaired." "Again?"
      • You could test C++, Perl, bash scripts, etc. on a cheap Pentium I laptop you could buy on eBay for a hundred bucks or less.

        Get one, stick Linux on it. "You won't regret it" (seems to be the meme getting tacked onto all the 'get a Mac' comments this evening)
    • What do you mean? Electronic device failure is modeled by an exponential distribution, meaning every new day you use your computer is the highest probably it's going to fail.
    • It's the unusally low "wear-out" portion of the curve that people are complaining about -- and that seems to be a year into the life. So, unless I planned on selling it before then, I'd still worry.
      • Well, I just discovered my iBook is in the range affected, so I'm going to be selling it on Ebay and replacing it with a Panasonic Toughbook 28. Freakin' indestructible, and very Linux friendly!

  • Nice to see 'out of warranty' repairs (Score:5, Interesting)

    by amichalo ( 132545 ) on Saturday June 19, 2004 @08:13PM (#9475268)
    It looks like Apple is really going out of its was to honor the quality of the product, even outside the 12 month warranty. I think this is admirable.

    But Apple is sort of in a damned if you do/don't situation. They don't have a large market share to begin with and they obviously have a defective product so if they did NOT repair them, it would probably lead to negative publicity (both for not repairing them and having a poor quality product) and they would most likely (in my opinon) lose customers.

    My Ti PowerBook (400Mhz G4) was a first gen Ti book and I love the thing but it is starting to show signs of aging (booting the computer always takes a couple trys...odd) but over all, I am very satisfied with the workmanship of this and other Apple products I own. Compared to my Dell, Gateway, and Sony consumer devices, I am happy to spend the premium for Apple's quality and service (when the quality doesn't suffice).
    • NO, it would result in a class action suit if they didn't fix them. And apple would lose that suit.
    • Seriously, has sony had anything like these problems with any of it s products? My Vaio is six years old now and running perfectly. Granted the people I know do not represent a large enoguh sample size to be statistically significant, but the only serious problems they've had are with the ibooks. Maybe it was jsut a generational one time problem, but its lead us to not recommend ibooks to our non techie friends. So far apple has lost 4 potential sales ( from our group of friends) because of it. Although, f
      • My fleet of Toshiba laptops is far older than 6 years and they work flawlessly as well. And my PowerBook 165c runs like a champ and has for longer than Apple has been selling PowerPC machines.

        I don't think Apple has anything close to the build quality they did a decade ago. Apple is a company with a very uneven quality history.

    • No, there would be a class action suit, it would take years to work out, and everyone would hate them before it was over. Then people who'd had it happen more than once would SOL.

      I have a ton of friends that have considered iBooks and ultimately decided not to get one because it was too risky. They saw me and everyone they know with an iBook constantly getting it repaired.

      This is my first Apple computer. I had major problems with every OS version I used up to 10.3.3. I had 2 power adaptors die after a few
    • If enough people complain they see class action coming. They've lost a few.

      They don't just fix it out of the goodness of their hearts.

      For example, I've got an iBook/500 dual-usb. There is no ESD protection on the ports on the side, especially FireWire. Lots of people have lost their FireWire PHY chips due to ESD, and all new iBooks have proper ESD protection on their FireWire ports.

      It's an obvious case of a design flaw leading to non-functional units, but there's no repair program for this problem.

  • Dual USB iBook fixed FOC several months ago (Score:3, Informative)

    by HSpirit ( 519997 ) on Sunday June 20, 2004 @12:01AM (#9476460)

    I had a free, out-of-warranty repair for this issue with my Dual USB iBook (G3-600 MHz, serial number beginning with UV201) several months ago.

    (It was 'only' the second time for me - the first time was during the warranty period.)

    So it looks like FOC repairs for these models has been an internal policy within Apple for some time - but now they're making it public?

  • Apple hardware serial decoding (Score:5, Informative)

    by babbage ( 61057 ) <cdeversNO@SPAMcis.usouthal.edu> on Sunday June 20, 2004 @12:16AM (#9476513) Homepage Journal

    FYI, the opening characters in the serial codes Apple uses indicate the product class & manufacture date of the product.

    The initial letters of the serial string indicate the class of product. The letters "UV", for example, seem to be the code for iBooks, while iPods may start with "JQ" and a Powermac G5 may start with "XB". (I haven't yet figured out how often the letters are changed -- if, for example, the original iBook or the later G4 iBook had codes other than "UV" -- but whatever.)

    More interestingly, the three digits following those first two letters indicate the year and the week during which that device was manufactured. So, for example, by setting the recall range to iBooks with codes from UV117XXXXXX to UV342XXXXXX [apple.com], what they're admitting is that they had a problem from the 17th week of 2001 -- that is, the week starting Sunday, 22 Apr 2001 -- through the 42nd week of 2003 -- that is, Sunday, 12 Oct 2003. Approximately -- I'm not sure what day of the week they start counting on, or if Wednesday 1 Jan counts as being part of the 53rd week of the previous year, but again, whatever.

    So, what they're saying is that all iBooks manufactured over a 30 month range had at least the possibility of a severe manufacturing defect.

    Ouch.

  • at least it's quick and painless... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jspivack ( 674296 ) on Sunday June 20, 2004 @02:20AM (#9476908) Homepage
    I live in France, and I sent my 700MHz iBook in for logic board replacement when it exhibited the symptoms last month. I called Apple on Monday morning; UPS came by on Tuesday morning; I had the computer back in my hands Thursday afternoon. And the European repair center is in Holland!

    I do have a question, though...they reinstalled Panther (10.3.2) and gave me specific Panther CD's (again, 10.3.2) because the new logic board is apparently incompatible with anything lower. Also, the "Details" section of the repair certificate says "Diagnostic, PCBA, MLB, 700Mhz, OASIS, iBook,,A12". I interpret the first two acronyms to be Printed Circuit Board Assembly and Main Logic Board; does the A12 at the end refer to the 12" aluminum G4 PB? Is this motherboard, which only supports 10.3.2 and may be common with a PB mobo, perhaps upgraded or faster than the original? (sounds too good to be true...it probably is) Is there any way I can tell?

  • ""Apple has extended the repair program to widen the serial # range yet again for iBooks experiencing the dreaded, dreaded (and did I say dreaded?) video problems. It now includes serial #s up to the UV342 range (which, sadly, mine is in .. here I thought I finally got one that would stay with me for awhile, sigh)."

    Kinda sucks to have to RMA, but at least Apple are doing it, eh? I can't think of many personal computer manufacturers who have done such decent pseudo-recalls.

    -psy

  • Twice in the past year I've opened up my two-year old 700mhz iBook to screwy video. Each time I've closed the lid, reopened, and the problem has gone away.

    Should I try to swap out the board, or consider myself lucky and stick with it? Will Apple even regard such rare occurrences as evidence of a problem? One year left on warranty. . .

    • I'd say just backup regularly (a good idea in any case), and just watch for more frequent occurrences of the problem. I have an 800 MHz iBook which has occasionally shown the same problem, but I'm not going to be concerned about it unless the problem starts cropping up regularly.

      • I'd agree with the backing up. When my 600 MHz iBook went it would be fine after a reboot, but quickly got worse and worse so by the time I phoned Apple and went through their tests on the phone it wouldn't boot at all. Luckily before it got to this stage I got most of my data copied off it, but I could easily have lost everything if the fix hadn't gone well.

        From first symptoms of glitching video through to pretty-paperweight stage only took about a week for me. Maybe you're lucky and something else caused
    • Take a picture of it so you have somthing to show them. Take it to the Apple Store, and get them to do somthing about it.
  • I have a G3-700 iBook, which is under the policy. I bought it in September 2002, and have had no problems with the logic board (I have a bum battery, but didn't realize it until the warranty expired).

    Anyone else experiencing no problems with their iBook? What percentage of user have problems with the logic board?

    tssfulk

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • My wife has a fleet of about 12 iBooks that her research students use for developing code to execute on their clusters. Those iBooks have held up really well and her students are not gentle with them. Over the course of the last couple of years, some of them, including the one she uses and her spare/loaner, have been sent back and for the most part the exchange has been great. Apple send the box quickly, you can wait and decide when to send it back when it is convenient for you to be without your machine
  • Ironically, my iBook broke down with this problem just this week. This is the third time for me. Amazing!

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