I have onen mid 2010 MacBook Pro (Purchased in late 2010) that is on its third logic board since May 2013 (and a failed optical drive), and two other that are each on their second logic boards. Though all have been replaced under AppleCare, it is clear that Apple has a quality control problem.
The logic board on the machine I use first failed in May 2013. It had all the classic symptoms of the graphics card issue. I took it to an Apple authorized facility rather than the Genius Bar.
I hate the "Genius Bar" because I feel that the people at the Genius Bar are either incredibly uninformed or are outright liars. When the "Genius" at the "Genius Bar" says that he has no idea what I'm talking about when I mention an issue raised by thousands of Apple users on hundreds of forums, only to hear from the "genius" that he has never heard of the issue, "It requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from" literally saying out loud to anyone in the range of my voice: "these aren't the droids you're looking for" (my apologies to anyone offended by my conflating "Moby Dick" and "Star Wars").
But I digress.
So, I took my MacBook Pro to the authorized repair facility and was told that it failed the logic board test and that the logic board would be replaced at no charge under AppleCare. The logic board, however, had to be ordered from Apple but would be there the following day. The following day I was told that Apple had informed the repair facility that the part was on backorder and would take another three days to arrive. Four days later, I was told that the part was still on backorder and should be there by the end of the week.
The part finally arrived and my Macbook was repaired. I expressed specific concern that the replacement would be an identical logic board that would similarly fail. I was assured, however, that the logic boards were thoroughly tested and that if the defect were present in the replacement part, it would be noted in the testing phase and not used in the repair.
The machine worked flawlessly for another 3 whole months, until August 1 of 2013 (fortunately, my AppleCare does not expire until August 26 of 2013, though it cannot be extended), when the logic board failed again. I returned to my local authorized Apple repair facility and was told that the logic board needed to be replaced, that I was still under AppleCare, that there would be no charge, but that I would have to wait for Apple to ship a new logic board. This time the logic board came the next day and was promptly installed. Unfortunately, when the technician ran the tests on this newly installed logic board, it also failed. As result, my trusty Apple repair facility telephone me and let me know that they had ordered another logic board to replace the newly installed board and that my MacBook Pro would be ready following Monday.
Indeed my MacBook Pro was ready the following Monday, and it has operated flawlessly for a full 19 days, from August 1, 2013 to August 20, 2013, giving me the kind of confidence one would expect when paying top dollar for a machine with Apple's reputation for quality in the final days running up to expiration of my AppleCare.
On a closely related note, I did find it interesting when I switched my company from PCs to Apple, that for each Apple purchase, I essentially had to pay 10% of the purchase price for a three-year warranty (AppleCare) from a company who boasts of its quality control and charges a premium price for hardware that is incredibly expensive to repair, in part, based on it's now obvious undeserved reputation for quality control.
It occured to me then, as now, that I never purchased such a warranty from Dell, for example, and never had an issue with hardware on any machines other than our MacBook Pros. The only reason we switched to Apple was because of the abysmal Windows operating system. I am firmly against purchasing extended warranties on all products other than Apple because, in general, the cost of the product over its useful life renders the cost of the warranty un-economical. However, because of the extraordinarily high cost of repair on Apple products, and the fact that Apple was new to us, we did purchase apple care on all our MacBook Pros and we are grateful that we did so. We are however questioning whether or not to replace our Apple computers or to return to PCs (which, for us, have been remarkably solid in terms of hardware, but which require us to consider the almost unthinkable return to Windows) when we replace machines next January.
For my company, MacBooks have become much like Italian sports cars: Fun to drive, but expensive to buy, tempermental and expensive to repair; and you have to have another, non-Apple, machine if you actually need a reliable computer for every day work while your MacBook is in the shop.
While my little tirade may not have added to the discussion, it did give me the catharsis I needed at the moment, but I hope no Apple fans were harmed as a result.
