Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

I was just quoted by a Local Apple Certified repair center (I live in Puerto Rico, no Apple stores here....) $1500 (!!!!!!!!!!!) to replace the Logic Board on a Late-2011 15" MBP, which cost around $1800 brand-new, in December 2011.

They said they checked with Apple to see if any active recall programs applied to the machine, and no suprise there, there are none. Needless to say, I'm not happy with the way this has turned out.

Called the Apple Sr. Advisor and left him a voicemail.

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dene22 wrote:

 

I'm suspicious because the symptoms don't suggest a SSD failure (screen freezes, black bars on the screen, getting stuck on grey screen on reboot).

You are correct to be suspicious.

Also, if you look up what an SSD drive costs... Gangsters to ask 600 quid for that.

You can test very easy if it's the SSD (or HDD?) by trying to boot from USB or CD/DVD.

E.g. a linux live usb distro.

If it still doesn't boot...

Let them show you it does work booting from usb to prove it might be the HD (or SSD).

I also had this issue and I had the logic board replaced for free. After speaking with different representatives, specially a Customer Relations representative, I was told to get my computer checked by an iShop (Mayaguez) technician. He verified it and checked all diagnostics. All were good but you could see the issue with the video card. After speaking with the customer relations representative she told me she wanted to speak with the technician and he verified that the computer was in excellent shape and was not dropped or anything. She then spoke to me and i explained that the technician quoted around $1700 for the repair and that I could not believe it because I bought this computer believing in Apple "quality" and that I was a student who spent a lot of his savings to buy this computer. Also told her I had many apple products and that i was a loyal customer. After this they offered me to have it repaired for free, including labor. Received my computer after three days and since then (December) I have had no problems with the computer. I would advise you talk to them politely and show them your frustration with this issue. Llorale un poco para que te coja pena :P. Espero que puedas solucionar este problema de la computadora. Suerte!

Well, the repair paper said it replaced my 16GByte 3rd party RAM for the original 4Gbyte Apple RAM.....Says the "Symptom" was "Memory caused no Boot"...

Well, I put the 16Gbyte chips back in an it booted right up, and I rebooted again and ran the Option-D diag test, AND ENABLED THE EXTENDED Memory test which took 4 hours....And I am re-installing OSX as I type and so far its 60 percent and no problem....

Guess what...NO ERROR...Not One for any RAM related problems....

Thanks Apple for giving me two RAM chips I didnt need for a Laptop that NEVER gave one single memory error, never had a problem booting, with exception to the defective AMD 6750M you sold me....OH, I forgot...thank you for NOT giving me any documentation to prove the things you say/claim.....

I'm afraid as 'by the book' they will say the 2011 supports 8gb max ram even though it's fine with 16gb.

My pair of 8gb crucial sticks arrived today, my original factory pair of 2's will go in the packaging and stashed away with the original 750gb hard drive (I use a m500 960gb SSD) in case it ever has to go back to Apple.  I would like to accurately describe my opinion of this policy however I would run foul of the moderating on this forum!

Moral, however daft and silly of the story is : keep your original bits!

Seems to me if you buy Apple, you buy a "Golden Cage" .

Very expensive but not allowed to change anything.

If something goes wrong, it's allways your or the added/changed hardware's fault.

Where their logic boards, HDDs, memory etc are only OEM parts.

Made in the same factories as the ones for regular computers/laptops.

Only has another sticker on it.

I understand that for a laptop, for the most part components are not able to be changed out.  For the most part, the only swappable components with my limited understanding is the RAM and the HDD.

What I don't agree with is how they are testing for hardware faults, especially for this particular issue the majority of us have experienced.  If they determine that it's not the factory RAM or HDD, at the very minimum they should run the standard hardware tests to see if the components are faulty.  If they determine that those components are not faulty, swap them out (for testing purposes) and put in the factory ones to try and further isolate the true root cause of the issue.

Same problem, a week ago, my computer 2011 early macbook pro 15'' got blue black and write screen. sometime I cannot restart my computer. waiting for apple reply!

Wasn't that was was swapped on his?

The memory?

Diagnosed as giving the error as it "wasn't original" ?

In fact, agree with you. Especially on how they test hardware faults.

A simple diagnose program doesn't allways tell.

For gpu and other heat related tests you need to do stress testing.

Not run a simple test that just reads out some data.

Really start doubting the "technical" qualities of the "Apple Genius".

Apart from some exceptions of course.

Btw, happens in PC world to. But at least they're not called "Genius".

Forum Moderators,

Please advise as to why particular comments have been removed as I do not believe they have been in any violation of the terms/conditions of this forum.

These suggestions would not be brought up if Apple would take the initiative to provide customer service and provide responses to the questions being asked here in this forum.

A recent interview with Apple's Jony Ive referred to the time and attention to detail spent to make sure Apple produces quality products.  You have here now 250+ pages in this thread with Apple customers who have experiences that are quite opposite to what Apple advertises--perhaps it is time to back the quality of your products and support the same customers who are now quite disillusioned but who also once believed in the quality of Apple products.

If Apple purchased some hardware from a vendor and experienced widespread issues, I have no doubt that Apple would also pursue and make demands from the vendor.  There should be no double-standards here.

I agree with both of you. However the 'experts' who test your equipment lookup your serial number and if anything is different from the spec sheet they have in front of them they have guidelines to point the finger of blame at non standard parts instead of what is obviously the problem (broken GPU) staring them right in the face.

They may have had a valid point to enforce this policy in the PowerPC era, but to carry it on after they switched to Intel's CPU and barring a brief time with Nvidia, Intel PC chipsets, in essence a x86 PC in Mac clothing is maddening to say the least - you can imagine what I think!

Hence why advise anyone with a Mac who upgrades their memory and hard drive to keep the factory fit parts and if you have to take it in to Apple for service to retrofit your original parts first.  Saves you the owner less hassle, unwarranted and unjustified blame and also additional cost.

Advice for newbies.

OK guys, for those who have recently come across this issue and are going through this process with Apple I'm going to give some advice which will hoperfully be of some help.

Apple are not going to resolve this issue, waiting for a recall is an exercise in futility in my humble opinion.

However you should go through all of the steps of vsiting the "genius" bar.

Only replace the logicboard if you are under warranty/applecare/or can get it done under EU consumer laws. If your country has strong consumer laws no matter what Apple say, they are legally bound to replace the defect, especially for something such as this which is essestially poor manufacturing/design flaw.

If you cannot get the logic board replaced for free, do not give Apple one more penny of your hard earned money. Firstky because you are essestially having to pay the company that you bought the flawed product from, more money to fix it, and secondly because logic board replacement isnt really a fix as such.

The "fix" is actaully to d some research and get the discreet graphics card reballed or re-soldered if you like by a reputable repair centre. It will cost you 1/3 - 1/4 of the cost of a new logic board, will come with a 3 month warranty and will be a better long term fix then another poorly constructed logc board.

I paid £119.00 for a clean up and a leaded solder of my discrete gpu. Apple wanted to charge me £416.00 for a new logic board with no explantation of what the issue was with the laptop. I got them to reverse the repair.

My Mac is now running at full capacity again thanks to the T-Fix repair centre in London.

Hope this is of some help and best of luck to all of you.

#whatwouldstevejobsdo

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GavMackem wrote:

 

Hence why advise anyone with a Mac who upgrades their memory and hard drive to keep the factory fit parts and if you have to take it in to Apple for service to retrofit your original parts first.  Saves you the owner less hassle, unwarranted and unjustified blame and also additional cost.

It's definitely worth keeping your original parts (hard drive, memory, etc.).  Any non-OEM parts get more scrutiny during diagnostics, and if they remove them, you may not get them back.  I was warned when my MBP went to the depot that sometimes they refuse service on Macs with third-party parts (even if those parts are user-serviceable).  And the best part?  Your serial number has a "permanent record" that's updated every time Apple does anything with your unit... and they make note of any modifications to the system.  So the last time I went in (for logic board #4), they made a big deal about "last time you were here, you had a solid state drive, and we'll be looking for user-caused damage."  So it's better to stick your original parts back inside, and avoid the suspicion and potential diversion from the real cause of the problems. 

I totally agree saramwrap, and after spending on and off over the last week reading these nearly 4,000 posts I can totally sympathise with you especially.  Fortunately I have an excellent local Apple repair agent, on first name terms with most of their engineers and they are quite flexible knowing that I have brought clients kit into them to look at.  Allegedly some may possibly agree with my opinion of optimising the cooling system for these 2011 models by being far more liberal applying Apple's compound and polishing the plate. On the Mac's they own themselves they use AS-5 which sums it up really.

But others are not as fortunate as I - so stick your old bits in to save the Apple inquisition blame game people.