Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

I don't know how come this be "sporadic" since a HIGH percentage of "repaired" MacBook Pro's are still presenting this identified, unwanted, largely reproducible, "early-2011-mbp-15inch-only" problem ?

How come Apple, a huge, made in California, leading design compagny is not able to repair their own computers with fully usable components (for which they give 90 days guaranty, by the way). 4 or 5 times in a raw for some of them !

I'm pretty sure the "Apple Engineering Team" have far more skills than this.

They seems to have aknowledge one thing though :

Let's buy time by sending our costumers back and forth to our GeniusBars until they get tired of this.

Yeah Apple, no problems here.  Few "sporadic" users with some unknown, non-related gripe about a very specific set of Macbook Pros.  This is what happens about 30 minutes into using mine (i7, Radeon HD 6490M).  I've found that having my display resolution preferences open....ALL THE TIME...is useful as toggling from 1080p to 1600x900 seems to at least clear things up temporarily so I can keep working.  The top screenshot here is from my external Samsung LED, connected via DVI out from the Thunderbolt port:

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention....it takes three or four hard boots / power off actions to actually get as far as blueness above. Here's what the laptop screen itself looks like going through that exercise.

And noting here that the *only* way to successfully boot is to pick Open.  Clicking Cancel here hangs my machine 100% of the time.

Last night the GPU of my Macbook Pro 17'' Early 2011 (Antiglare screen) decided to die once more.

This was my 3rd logic board (the original one + 2 replacements).

So far I've been "lucky" and the 2 replacements died within the 90 days of warranty (the original one was out of warranty and I had to pay 496€).

What am I going to do when the GPU dies out of the warranty period?

Regards,

Álvaro.

I'm writing an email to the french IT press (macg.co, macbidouille, clubic, mac4ever, macplus, macworld, tom's hardware, les numeriques, ...) so they can back us up on this.

Get your finest keyboard keys and do the same wherever you are. Be precise, be specific, do not write on anger or rage, just facts please.

I contacted engadget.com. Let's see if they do something.

We really need to step it up as customers since Apple is giving us the deaf ear. Make noise.

Same problems here.....

While I working on my homework.

The screen down.

So I hold the power button then boot.

And this is what I saw.

After long time waited.It gave me a blank screen.

If I boot to recovery hd.Also waited,it gave me a white screen.And more and more waited to a blank screen.

I confused why you could boot success.

This shxt happened 11early.My mbp still down.

I have school till Jan.Handly to make time for go to Apple Store for solve this problem lately .

It's expectable, they are waiting to see what happens, the problem now is what should we do to make them recognize this is a massive problem on a particular model, from a particular year, and exact same issue on every case.

And the other issue, let's say we all are gonna take our computers to service, 'cause we all have a lot of savings to pay 3/4 of a new macbook pro to get it repaired, they're gonna replace logic boards with another identic to the broken one... what's the solution?

Please, if someone can tell me how to report my case to Apple, and how many more broken macbooks pro they need to count to prove they are responsible and finally they implement a replacement program, I'll be glad to do it.

(if I'm commiting some grammar mistakes, please excuse my english it's not my native language)

//

Es esperable que estén esperando a ver qué pasa, el problema ahora es, ¿qué debemos hacer para que ellos reconozcan que este es un problema masivo en un modelo en particular, a partir de un año determinado, y exactamente el mismo problema en todos los casos.

Y el otro tema, digamos que estamos todos llevamos nuestras computadoras al servicio, porque todos tenemos una gran cantidad de ahorro para pagar 3/4 de un nuevo MacBook Pro para la reparación del estropeado, van a reemplazar placas lógicas con otra idéntica al que falla ... ¿cuál es la solución?

Por favor, si alguien me puede decir cómo reportar mi caso a Apple, y cuántas más macbook pro rotas necesitan contar para demostrar que son responsables y que por fin abran un programa de reemplazo, me alegraré para hacerlo.

Hey everyone, I'm writing a letter to Apple because I think we all need to do that if we want a replacement program.  And we should all do that now, rather than later.  This isn't going to be fixed by talking on the boards... we all need to take action.

When doing research for my letter I came across the following suit:

Apple Sued Over Alleged Defects in MacBook Motherboards

Class Action Complaint

A man with a 2008 macbook pro laptop had a gpu issue and found that many others had the same problem.  They experienced the blue screen and multiple gpu replacements didn't always fix the problem.  (They also had an issue with the ports, but I don't believe any of us have experienced that.)  So he filed a class action lawsuit against Apple in August 2012.  However, I can't find any follow up so I assume he either dropped the case or apple squashed it.  Either way, there was no replacement program in the end. 

Does anyone have any know anything about this?

“The web page listing MacBook Pro Logic Board Failure has been viewed more than 100,676 times,”

Before branching here the discussion had near 700000 views 

About the 2008 issue I (also!) had a macbook pro with defective gpu from nvidia, Apple stepped up and did a 4 year extended warranty for all mac affected. I got I mine repaired and it's still working today. Not sure if it's related to the lawsuit you mention.

there's also  this, in Texas:

http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2012/08/class-action-filed-against-a pple-for-defective-macbook-logic-boards.html

here an article about the 2008 extended warrnty:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Apple-Extends-Warranty-for-MacBook-Pro-Graphics-1 13228.shtml

Hi all,

As has happened to everyone in this forum my Macbook Pro 17' died one week ago and the solution is to pay 500 pounds to replace the motherboard.... Apple customer service has told me that is an "exception" that it rarely happens...

So as kitty says on the post before, we should start doing something. Does anyone know how can we claim our customer rights? It's more than clear that we are not talking about isolated cases.

kittykatKS wrote:

 

Hey everyone, I'm writing a letter to Apple because I think we all need to do that if we want a replacement program.  And we should all do that now, rather than later.  This isn't going to be fixed by talking on the boards... we all need to take action.

What I personally find most vexing about this entire situation is that  the "solution" (re: a full replacement of the *entire* logic board) doesn't seem to actually solve the issue for a lot of people in this and other Apple forums (re: most who have gone so far as to replace their logic board have also had to replace their replacement logic board...and not all  within the 90 day warranty window! Paying once to fix a hardware problem that you did not cause is bad enough... paying twice is unimaginable)

If  replacing the logic board worked, I personally would've taken my MBP in immediately and paid the $310 flat rate to fix (with the hope that Apple would credit me back the $ at some point in the near future).

But it doesn't work, so what those of us waiting on Apple to address the issue formally supposed to do? Wait it out, pay the fee to replace, what?!

For many of us who earn our income through work done on our MBPs, not being able to use discrete graphics and/or connect to an external monitor is costing us quite a bit of money in lost productivity. But the alternative (re: not be able to work at all while Apple Geniuses replace logic board) is worse if the replacement ends up failing too. Or does Apple seriously think that it's no big deal for those of us who depend on these machines to earn a living to make numerous trips to the nearest Apple Genius Bar and/or give up days worth of work without being sure that the replacement logic board will work long term?