Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

Call the Apple store and ask.

joric10,

Greetings from Firenze!  According to Italian law you are correct in that you have a 2 year warranty.  But this has been a big dispute with Apple and the Italian government.  That is why AppleCare is not sold here except you have to order it and it comes from Ireland.  Call AppleCare and if you are near and you purchased it from an AppleStore then I would go there.  Benedizione!!!

joric10 wrote:

 

Hi,

 

I bought my Macbook Pro late 2011(2,2. 4Gb ,AMD 6750, 512MB) from Italy one year and eight month ago. If I correctly understood about  the italy warranty , It is possible to repair my mac(change MB) with warranty (2 years). Is it correct?

 

Sorry for my english.

 

Thanks

carl wolf wrote:

 

Call the Apple store and ask.

 

You do have 2 years warranty in Europe.

Doesn't matter what Aplle or the store says.

If Aplle doesn't fix it under warranty, store has to fix it free of charge and reclaim from Apple.

It's European law, don't take no for answer.

http://gigaom.com/2012/07/02/italy-not-letting-apple-off-the-hook-for-illegal-wa rranty-policy/

http://www.techcentral.ie/eu-law-forces-apple-two-year-warranty/

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/mac/eu-law-forces-apple-highlight-two-year-warran ty-3348755/

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/apple/apple-claims-italian-court-misinterpreted-l aw-2-year-warranty-3367900/

Good luck.

Hi

Thanks for your answer. My cousin bought macbook from abc.it (VIA VENEZIA 49 PADOVA) Apple Premium Reseller. He asked the AppleCare about this problem, and they want to bring the macbook. I will send the macbook to him, because I don't live in Italy. 

Thanks

what would be really interesting and relevant is to know how many machines have already broke vs how many been sold.

I have no idea how many units apple sold and it's pretty hard to count how many people had/are having this logic board failure but from a logic business view of things, it probably needs to reach a certain percentage to be considered a 'serious' problem for apple and officially announce a recall as they did in the past.

and to let people pay for endless repairs compared to the cost of a recall of all the machines is a no brainer option for apple, even with mad profits they make each quarter, every year.

to sum it up, what are our options here ?

no problem so far, cross fingers it won't happen, ever

shows signs of failure but still can use it and work, cross fingers but know for sure it will happen (my case)

totally down with warranty so you get it fixed no charge but will probably, eventually break again

totally down w/o warranty so you pay the (highly and variable) apple price and will probably, eventually break again

totally down w/o warranty and you go the indy route hoping they'll do a better job at a less cost.

did I miss any? I don't count those who can buy a new unit or just go with the PC world, no point in that.

we are about to celebrate the 1st anniversary of abelliveau's post in a few days, that's sad, really sad.

do we need to get Wozniak to the cause or what ??

From what i've read, there is another option akamyself... And it looks like it works at a modest price range.

Get a GPU reballing service if it's still possible or replace it if its completly broken.

yes, I understood that, actually I implicitly included that solution in the independent route, either for the all logic board or just the GPU.

which is, or seems to be, the best way to go since it's cheaper and if correctly done, might won't break before long (at least not as fast as the apple way).

but thanks for pointing it out and being more specific.

Although Apple care in Japan fixed my logic board last December, same problem occurred again in a mouth while using Adobe Illustrator and Safari to see Youtube together. I hope I still have 90 days warranty.

Probably, only way to continue using early 2011 is let machine to show problem with hard effort in every 90 days, and call apple care repeatedly.

Just got a quote for $800 for a new 2.5ghz i7 board and $200 for service. I first went to the Apple Store but they said they most likely can't work on it because I upgraded the stock drive to an aftermarket OWC SSD drive. I don't have the stock drive anymore so I can't take it back.

Sounds outrages to spend $1000 for a fix that "might" work. I'd rather spend a little more and get a new machine although it might be slower as I maxed out the heck of my 2011.

Reballing option might be what I'll have to settle with if I can find a place.

Interesting ervic. That quote was from apple?

For whatever reason, I have the same SSD upgrade along with an OWC dvd drive caddy and the standard drive in that slot. Mine still cost the normal $300-/+ via apple repair. Should get it back today so I'm not sure how well the repair will hold up. As far as I know, they didn't remove or replace my drives.

Apple Genius said it would most likely be a waste of time as they would send it in but would get sent back because it was modified. I also had the optical drive replaced with a second SSD drive. They said it could be the drive causing the problem even though they booted off of the network and still saw the graphic problem. Since I no longer have the OEM drive from 2 years ago, there wasn't much I can do with the Apple "Genius".

The quote was from a repair shop. The Apple Genius suggested I go to a repair shop instead of an Apple store as they would have more freedom to do repairs on modified equipment.

Some Genius Bars seem to balk at non-standard hardware, others don't even blink at it.  The manager during my most recent Genius Bar visit  told me that the depot often rejects machines with dual drives (after noting from their records that mine had previously had a secondary SSD), so they tend to recommend the pricier in-store repairs for machines with modifications. 

Since they're always looking for something easy to blame problems on, an obviously user-replaced drive is an easy target.  The OEM optical drives are available from various retailers for pretty low prices, which is one option if you wish to pursue an Apple repair.  I'd offer you mine, but it's back in place after I put everything back to factory standard last fall for my depot repair. 

ervic wrote:

 

The quote was from a repair shop. The Apple Genius suggested I go to a repair shop instead of an Apple store as they would have more freedom to do repairs on modified equipment.

Would probably also be a much cheaper, better, longer lasting repair.

Fixed some macbooks pro and laptops a few years ago that are still running without problems untill now.

Unfortunately the repair shop I got an estimate for was twice what I expected from Apple. They would only do a logic board swap, not a reballing of the GPU.

Look for small repair shops doing reballs.

Don't go for the high tech, iso, apple or whatever cirtified high price ones.

The only they often are better at is charging "cirtified" (higher) prices.

What area you live?