Two bad USB ports

Please post the results here, ipeel. Hopefully we can make the lives of people who have this problem in the future a little easier.

Short story - my apple care plan completely covered the cost of replacing the logic board in order to get new usb ports.

The genius bar guy agreed within 2 minutes that the port needed to be replaced. I had my air back in 3 days and all is well...

I bought a macbook air last week which is my first mac. Suddenly i realized that the right side usb port is not working.

I am going to the apple sevice centre today. I think i have a missing usb pin.

Lets see what they tell me.

Macbook Air (small) less than a year old.

I got a new usb key - I had already used an identical one fine - it was a bit stiff to insert but I did not push crazy hard or anything trying to get it in. Eventually I realized the pins of the usb were crushed in in both the ports. Great service at the apple store in santa monica - brought it in saturday and it was ready thursday. Fortunatley it was covered under the base 1 year warrany because otherwise it would have been around $800 to repair. Somthing is wrong with the usb ports for them to break so easily on a new machine with very light use. I have never seen a broken usb port ever even on ancient pcs with lots of use.

Based on what I have read in various forums (for both recent PC laptops as well as Apple), it seems that the USB ports themselves are not always being manufactured correctly.

A great deal of people (using all brands of PCs) are seeing far more failures due to bent pins.... way too many to be blamed on fat fingers ;-)

This is probably due to a single back-end parts maker not doing enough QA or (worse) it could be a wider issue (with several suppliers) in the never ending drive to squeeze the profits out of every part by lowering the metal content.

The problem is that these USB ports (even the poorly made) can work fine many, many times before a single pin gets snagged and bent/broken, which means a more thorough QA inspection/test cycle is needed to flush out the culprit(s)...

In any case, it is good to hear that Apple made the fix quickly and with no fuss for you. I would imagine they are already aware of the component issue and are taking (or have taken) appropriate steps to make sure future Mac(book)s are not impacted. (Just a guess since they (Apple) seem to be very stringent about the quality standards enforcement overall).

This discussion and all of you posters helped me a lot.

Same story: my brand-new MacBook Air 13" mid-2011 worked perfectly until one day I inserted a standard USB stick and it bent one pin in the USB port. Too much in a hurry and relying on my mac everyday, I had to go on and use the other USB port. A few months later, a pin in the second USB port was bent again with a simple USB stick. End of the world!

I went to my favorite local Apple retailer and after back-office communication with Apple engineers, they said it was not covered by AppleCare. They asked me about a 1000 USD to change the logic I/O board (for the left USB port) and the motherboard. I had to call AppleCare Europe hotline, insist that I know how to use a USB stick and ask for the customer service supervisor. After a few calls and emails with pictures of the bent pin (how would you do that intentionally? a fork? a letter opener?), I even sent this thread of bad luck posters like you guys. It took me a few weeks, but they finally agreed to have it repaired, free of charge.

Conclusions: insist, show this forum discussion, insist again that you didn't give the USB stick to your gorilla, and it should work. By the way, it works also for people in Europe, even though they first said that procedures in AppleCare Europe are different.

Same story too.

I purchased a PetiteKey from LaCie and it broke my left USB port of my mid-2011 11" MacBook Air.

This USB stick has one open side, leaving the contacts open. When you push it in the USB port, it's not aligned with the body of the computer. It makes an angle, and it's loosed.

The computer gave me a message, telling some accessory was draining too much power and it was turning off the power supply for USB ports.

Looking closely, the left pin of the USB port was bended.

Just before I had some SD card reader connected and I could download images without any problem.

So I am sure it is the PetiteKey which damaged the port.

Even if my MacBook Air was under warranty I had to go in an Apple affiliated center to have the I/O board replaced : Invoice : a bit more than 100 Euros.

I have contacted LaCie, telling them there was a mechanical incompatibility of their USB stick with the MacBook Air. But of course they only made the proposition to replace the PetiteKey...

Even if it this stick works fine on my MacPro, I will never plug it again on a MacBook Air.

Then whose fault ? Apple ? LaCie ?

Be careful if your ever use a PetiteKey with a MacBook Air !

13" MacBook Air 2013--the very same problem!

What's going on?

Even after an Apple replacement, the new USB port is still tight--in fact, so tight, that some USB connectors won't go in! They work fine on the port on the other side of the MBA and other Macs, but not in the replacement port.

And the ones that do work on the replacement port have to slid in ever so gently! (These include i-device USB cables, so it affects Apple-branded USB connectors, too.)

I haven't read all of the comments here so maybe it's already been said but both my USB ports weren't working anymore aswell and it turned out to be a software problem.

I made a person from apple support call me and he made me reinstall the operating system and after that they were working fine again. I hope it stays that way.

Ive owned 3 macbook AIR, ....the newest 2013 Air has MUCH IMPROVED USB 5-finger contact slot design than the older AND last model macbook Air.

Before inserting a PNY (notoriously TIGHT and junky USB fit) you could easily bury one or more USB contact fingers in the port....

NOW its nearly impossible to do so; though still possible. Inserting a USB connector upside down or a tight/bad fitting one is a recipe for disaster.

Glad to hear that it's a better design, although I wonder if "nearly impossible to do so" isn't a tad optimistic as many are having the problem!

Shouldn't it be designed so that *nothing* can catch on the fingers and move them permanently out of place?

I really do not want to have send the brand new MBA back into Apple for yet another time. The left port, the replacement port, is noticeably tighter, grabbing onto USB connectors, even brand new, Apple ones.

I had the same issue with both USB ports on a late 2011 MBA. Out of warranty, and it will cost $280 to get the boards replaced. I thought that the purachase of 2 MBA, 3 iPads and 4 iPhones might have led to Apple taking care of a manufacturing defect, but that was not the case.

On top of the MBA, my iPhone 4s lost the WiFi/BT chip do to the overheting issue caused by the iOS7 upgrades. I don't mind paying a premium for superior products, but I've been hit with 2 instances in the past month of manufacturing defects that have affected multiple users. I expected Apple to step up and acknowledge the issue AND stand behind their products. Very disappointed, and the result is that Apple will no longer be my default purchase.

This happened to me as well: The left port had a bent pin, and the fan is making an annoying click/humming sound. The port was fixed, despite it not being under the realm of manufacturer error and covered under my insurance plan.

However, the fan is now even louder. They ran a diagnostics check and said there was nothing wrong with the fan. The store is too loud from ambient music, and so I was unable to prove that it was making this noise. Any advice to get this fixed?

** update

An Apple employee ran another type of diagnostic test covering the rpm of the fan and other physical aspects of my Macbook Air 13" (Mid 2012). This too passed, despite the clicking/humming noise still being present. I politely pushed the issue and asked that they listen to the fan in a quiter environment. They did so and offered to replace the fan, free of charge (it was still under Apple Care Warranty).

I bought a Macbook Air early this year (January 2014). Everything working fine out of the box. However, after 2 weeks, I have a problem to insert USB devices at the left USB port. It seems that something stuck in it. I checked it, and found that the upper pin bent.

Sent the Macbook Air to Apple Service Centre, they told me this problem happened because I abused the USB port. Funny to realise that I've been using computers with USB ports since 1996, this is the first time I encounter this kind of problem.

Regardless, they take my Macbook Air and fixed it under warranty.

However, today (6th October 2014), the same USB port bend again. Same issue. I strongly believe that this is not user abuse, but the problem with Macbook Air design.