Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

Some more thoughts on the matter.  I believe that Apple has strategically located warehouses where products and parts are stored, so that they can be expected to arrive at most, say, one work day after they are ordered.  Under those circumstances it is not worth the effort to try to predict when and where something will be needed.  Not every Apple Store or ASP has the space to store what might be needed elsewhere.  I don't know, but I wonder whether this might not be true of the technicians at Apple Stores also?  I could imagine (speculation, I know) that a technician rotates among several Apple Stores in order to minimize the time that he/she sits around with nothing to do.  So it might be that a part that the Liverpool store must order happens to be available at the Manchester store, but the technician who must install and test it is the same person and won't be up from London until next week.

Last week my MBP (15-inch, Early 2011, MC721TH/A) died from one minute to the other. I was doing some photo editing in Photoshop when suddenly the screen went black. After a reboot the Apple logo showed up with some horizontal lines and after that only a white screen. Nothing helped, the machine was simply unusable. I was already prepared because during the past few months I read many reports from users with the same or other symptoms. But the repair program was new to me, so the next day I went to my nearest Apple Authorised Service Provider. A short diagnostic test verified that my MBP was eligible for this program and they told me that the repair will take 7-10 days.

I will post back here when the machine is repaired or if there are any other news.

Maybe I should add that I live in Thailand.

Tomorrow will be a week from the day I got my repaired MBP 2011, everything seems to be working fine.

I got repaired just outside London, in Thurrock (Lakeside Apple Store). I took my MBP on friday and got it back on the next Thursday,

Free of charge under the apple program.

If anything happens I'll let you know!

But so far so good!

We are indeed fortunate and I certainly appreciate the time and effort of those who were at the forefront of these problem - my intention was not to disregard that but rather to find out how long others are being told it will take compared to how long it actually takes and whether a 'new board' is actually being used. Apologies if it came across otherwise, it had been a long and frustrating day.

That sounds encouraging - I will post back once mine has been repaired.

No, it didn't come across otherwise.  But I apologize for giving the wrong impression.

About the board:  It seems from reports in this thread that Apple is using what it is calling a revised board, which can include components that had been used in other machines.  One person discovered that the GPU on his new board was manufactured in 2014.

Denise S wrote:

 

We are indeed fortunate and I certainly appreciate the time and effort of those who were at the forefront of these problem - my intention was not to disregard that but rather to find out how long others are being told it will take compared to how long it actually takes and whether a 'new board' is actually being used. Apologies if it came across otherwise, it had been a long and frustrating day.

Denise,

There are a lot of artfully vague statements floating around about the nature of the replacement mother boards.  There are some "he said she said" statements that have been repeated enough times to take on the air of fact.  The source of the "new" mother boards is via some one repeating what an Apple tech is purported  to have said when a machine was repaired.  So far no one has quoted an Apple document with that information.

So far I have not found a single report of a part number or revision number change.  No company, in the modern era, would make a product change without a means of tracking it.

Your mileage may vary.  To me it appears there may have been some kind of process change in the repair cycle and no one can identify which mother boards are the result of that process change.  Hence we are starting to see repeat failures of the Warranty Extension repairs.  I have a feeling repair success is localized by regions of the world.

That bears out what the genius at Liverpool said - he assured me the board would not be replaced with another the same but instead was a completely new board that had been designed with a different GPU specifically for the affected machines and to address this issue, which was why they were on special order.

I'll report back once I get the MBP back

Richard Liu wrote:

 

Some more thoughts on the matter.  I believe that Apple has strategically located warehouses where products and parts are stored, so that they can be expected to arrive at most, say, one work day after they are ordered.

 

There is a little electronics parts company in a remote NW corner of Minnesota that if you order at just the right time you will get same day delivery in most of North America, next day service most of the world.  The definition of strategically located has been changed.

No, the definition of strategically located has not been changed.  Speed of delivery is not the only factor in determining a warehousing strategy.  Other considerations include customs clearance, transportation networks, and so on.  Europe is not the United States, and Apple can hardly be compared to a little electronics parts company in a remote NW corner of Minnesota.

In the event that you are referring to me:

• Since I discovered this thread it has grown by more than forty pages.  People who have joined the discussion even more recently than I are asking questions that either have been answered already, or require summarizing what several persons have posted.  I try to maintain an overview because I am interested in whether the repairs performed under the repair extension program really do fix the problem.  I admit that I have not been tabulating who has reported what, and my memory is not infallible, so by all means feel free to post your data.
• Everyone who has had his/her machine repaired has the same question about the motherboard and has, of necessity, to be satisfied with the answer he/she received from the person or organization that serviced the machine.  And those are the answers that people have been posting and I have been summarizing.  I was told that my machine had received a "revised" (German:  "überarbeitet") board.  As we all know, a "newly manufactured" board could conceivably be no different than the original, and some people have reported used components on their revised boards.  This is all the information that "we" (not the regal but the collective we) have received from employees of Apple or Apple ASPs.  We have heard nothing from Tim.  If you have more concrete information, please feel free to post it.
• I am sure that you are right.  If Apple has revised something, it will have a new part number.  So how to reconcile the reports of revised motherboards with the lack of reports of new part numbers?  Do you think it might have something to do with most people's disinclination to open their machines both before and after repair in order to compare things that they do not understand anyway?  Rdbrwn is the only exception that I can recall.  He opened up his repaired machine, removed the heat sink, scraped off the thermal paste (which he had to reapply afterwards) from the GPU and CPU, and found some numbers that led him to conclude that one -- I forget which one, but I think it was the GPU -- was manufactured in 2014.  Is it a new part?  He did not say.
• Yes, there have been reports of the video issues recurring after a machine was repaired under the program.  You attribute this to some machines receiving old, unrevised boards.  I see another possible explanation.  Any revisions would have to be based on an analysis of the boards that had failed up to the time the decision was made to produce a revised board.  We know, however, that some posters did not experience the video issues until after the program went into effect.  Could it be that there are other causes of the problems that were not taken into account.  One would need to do a serious study of the data on repair program.  Otherwise, even a certain percentage of the revised boards can be expected to fail.

Richard Liu wrote:

 

No, the definition of strategically located has not been changed.  Speed of delivery is not the only factor in determining a warehousing strategy.  Other considerations include customs clearance, transportation networks, and so on.  Europe is not the United States, and Apple can hardly be compared to a little electronics parts company in a remote NW corner of Minnesota.

Do you never sleep?

I wrote that about 3am central time.

When I read your comment about strategically locate warehouses I got the pricture of someone with toy soldiers war gaming Napoleon.  That is when I remembered the company that got started by mistake and now has 4 full cargo planes a day leaving to make deliveries around the world.

Your right.  If Apple is to pull this off it won't only be because of the genius of where their warehouses are located, or how stream line the delivery system is, Apple will also need to create a streamline repair and test system that can match or exceed the performance of the original production system because when turn around time to ship to and from, plus disassembly, assembly and test time are subtracted from customer expectation time there are only seconds for many critical tasks.

For Apple the problem compounds its self because as company size increases, reaction time, the time needed to make a change tends to increase as well.  Look at how long it took for Apple to acknowledge this well known and documented graphics processor problem.  Many, including myself, found small, third party repair shops who accomplished a long term stable repair months ahead of Apple, often at a fraction of Apple's advertised repair charge.

Richard Liu wrote:

 

In the event that you are referring to me:

• Since I discovered this thread it has grown by more than forty pages.  People who have joined the discussion even more recently than I are asking questions that either have been answered already, or require summarizing what several persons have posted.  I try to maintain an overview because I am interested in whether the repairs performed under the repair extension program really do fix the problem.  I admit that I have not been tabulating who has reported what, and my memory is not infallible, so by all means feel free to post your data.
• Everyone who has had his/her machine repaired has the same question about the motherboard and has, of necessity, to be satisfied with the answer he/she received from the person or organization that serviced the machine.  And those are the answers that people have been posting and I have been summarizing.  I was told that my machine had received a "revised" (German:  "überarbeitet") board.  As we all know, a "newly manufactured" board could conceivably be no different than the original, and some people have reported used components on their revised boards.  This is all the information that "we" (not the regal but the collective we) have received from employees of Apple or Apple ASPs.  We have heard nothing from Tim.  If you have more concrete information, please feel free to post it.
• I am sure that you are right.  If Apple has revised something, it will have a new part number.  So how to reconcile the reports of revised motherboards with the lack of reports of new part numbers?  Do you think it might have something to do with most people's disinclination to open their machines both before and after repair in order to compare things that they do not understand anyway?  Rdbrwn is the only exception that I can recall.  He opened up his repaired machine, removed the heat sink, scraped off the thermal paste (which he had to reapply afterwards) from the GPU and CPU, and found some numbers that led him to conclude that one -- I forget which one, but I think it was the GPU -- was manufactured in 2014.  Is it a new part?  He did not say.
• Yes, there have been reports of the video issues recurring after a machine was repaired under the program.  You attribute this to some machines receiving old, unrevised boards.  I see another possible explanation.  Any revisions would have to be based on an analysis of the boards that had failed up to the time the decision was made to produce a revised board.  We know, however, that some posters did not experience the video issues until after the program went into effect.  Could it be that there are other causes of the problems that were not taken into account.  One would need to do a serious study of the data on repair program.  Otherwise, even a certain percentage of the revised boards can be expected to fail.

Your name or comments never came to mind.

Surprised to get a call at lunchtime today from the Liverpool Apple Store advising my replacement logic board had arrived and they were ready to do the repair! I explained the MBP was now in Manchester awaiting repair - they said "no worries, we'll just cancel our order and return the board".  So much for the controlled supply and 5-7 days expected delivery.

Do you never sleep?

 

I wrote that about 3am central time.

Well, well ... look who's calling the kettle black!  I posted my response to you at 1:17 pm CEST (Central European Summer Time).

When I read your comment about strategically locate warehouses I got the pricture of someone with toy soldiers war gaming Napoleon.

I used to work in the Operations Research Department of a Swiss international chemical company based in Basel, Switzerland, Europe.  Computer simulations to determine where to build warehouses to serve customers throughout Europe, how to stack palettes in automated warehouses, how to schedule production according to demand forecasts in multi-product facilities, etc. were the bread and butter of our work.  The considerations that must be taken into account are not industry-specific.

Regarding your remarks about Apple's quality control and quality assurance, I do not agree, but I do not wish to debate the issue in this thread.  Denise S's question was whether 5 - 7 days to order and install the new board was reasonable, and whether it would likely fix the problem.  I tried to explain how that might be possible and summarized my experience and others' regarding the board.

As for repairs by third parties, that is still an option for anyone who is willing to pay for it; the repair extension program is free.  The experience with third party repairs was also mixed, if I recall correctly.  One person asked in this thread whether he should take his machine to Apple after a third party had made the problem worse.  I don't recall the details, but anyone interested can certainly find the posting on a page between 820 and 862.