Q: 2011 MacBook Pro and Discrete Graphics Card

for email, chack my name

got it, thanks

will send you a mail tomorrow

I've browsed through a few of the comments in this thread and have come to the understanding that Apple has cut corners or something to that extent in the production of the 2011 MBP. This has something to do with the GPU solder failing and resulting in a "dGPU failure". I hope that my AMD 6490M also gets covered in this issue of 2011 MBP failures in case there is a recall or something.

jadavvk wrote:

 

I've browsed through a few of the comments in this thread and have come to the understanding that Apple has cut corners or something to that extent in the production of the 2011 MBP. This has something to do with the GPU solder failing and resulting in a "dGPU failure". I hope that my AMD 6490M also gets covered in this issue of 2011 MBP failures in case there is a recall or something.

This is not a case of Apple cutting corners. It's a design flaw that did not become evident until later in the life-cycle of the product. It is possible there was an hardware engineer somewhere at Apple muttering that they were exceeding the thermal envelope permitted by the chassis and heat sink, but it's also possible that the board fab plant just used a slightly tweaked heat profile when assembling the boards. Regardless, thermal stress causes the boards to flex and the solder balls to come unglued or snap off the board. Once those joints are broken, signal integrity is gone and digital signal errors cause all sorts of problems when the CPU tries to talk to the GPU.

The MBP is a high-quality product. They don't cut corners anywhere. You should be able to see and appreciate this in the tear-down videos and images.

That said, this problem is becoming as common as Microsoft's RROD that plagued the 360 and destroyed all four of mine. I suspect every AMD equipped, 15" MBP from 2011 is going to die in this manner, just a matter of time. Meanwhile, my 13" MB from 2007 is still ticking along despite a dying fan and my kid's every effort to over-heat it.

This is a flaw in the design and manufacturing process, nothing more. The question is will Apple step up and help these machines get another 3-4 years of life as secondary computers, or wait for it to go away? I've already purchased a 2014 MBP, but sure would like to get another few years of life out of the 2011 model.

Unable to send you an email. Could you let me know how to reach you please?

Thanks,

Giftson

Sorry to say l disagree with you. Apple's common law duty is to ensure that it's agents, namely the manufacturers and producers of the machines components are responsible to produce those assigned and contracted components to said standards As per contract. When Foxconn or NVIDIA fail to uphold the contractual standards of production, then Apple as principal is liable. It's as simple as that! Apple has failed to maintain good production standards, there have been a string of human resources problems with their outsourced factories in the Far East. having said that, the same rule applies in most civil law jurisdictions. It is not the case of caveat emptor, it is the case of caveat venditor, and the burden of responsibility and proof have been inverted. Granted l am not an engineer, but l do know enough about production and automation methods in case law to specify that apple could have tapped into the manufacturing processes in these factories to check if their quakity standards are being upheld. it is simply a question of integrating their digital manufacturing system

I have had the same problem.

MacBook Pro Late 2011 - 15", completely toasted after 2 years of PRO use.

I payed CAD$650 for replace a logic board at Apple Genius. After 9 days the same problem!

Now I have a second refurbished logic board (not even in a good condition) inside my Mac....let's see how long it lasts

Hi D3us,

Could let me know how I could get in touch with you or someone else. I see you are located at Belgium, I'm located in India and therefore I don't know how I'm going to get this done atm, but Id figure out a way. Could you let me know how to get in touch with you? so that we would be able to take this topic off from here and get this done.

Thanks a bunch.

Giftson

Does anyone of you guys do international repairs (with re-shipping to Switzerland, to be precise)?

Wheel-Idiot-No.1 wrote:

 

Sorry to say l disagree with you. Apple's common law duty is to ensure that it's agents, namely the manufacturers and producers of the machines components are responsible to produce those assigned and contracted components to said standards As per contract. When Foxconn or NVIDIA fail to uphold the contractual standards of production, then Apple as principal is liable. It's as simple as that! Apple has failed to maintain good production standards, there have been a string of human resources problems with their outsourced factories in the Far East. having said that, the same rule applies in most civil law jurisdictions. It is not the case of caveat emptor, it is the case of caveat venditor, and the burden of responsibility and proof have been inverted. Granted l am not an engineer, but l do know enough about production and automation methods in case law to specify that apple could have tapped into the manufacturing processes in these factories to check if their quakity standards are being upheld. it is simply a question of integrating their digital manufacturing system

Not an engineer? so I'll assume that you are lawyer come here to instruct us in this 'common-law'

So, tell us about the terms of Apple's contracts with vendors, we would love it if you shared your knowledge with us. (there is some knowledge to share I hope)

Yes, an interesting question if not somewhat arrogant...

Firstly this is a casual conversation. I am in no way instructing you or any other member of this forum about the "law". I am merely pointing out legal issues that are important in the case of the faulty logic board situation(s) - this could include existing or future situations. All l am explaining here is Apple's duty to its consumers is not one dimensional - it is not merely related to the consumer contract or the SLA etcetera. It is, as l understand your "question" a question about thinking about the problem of faulty product liability in a multi-dimensional way.

The consumer contract tends to contain exclusion clauses, which will limit damages.

However, extrapolating from a legal principal, and objectively looking at Apple's chain of production, you may see that there are multiple quality control problems in the way Apple has outsourced its production. This way, Apple is far more liable / culpable for faulty manufacturing than a straight forward charged attack that merely concentrates on Apple's failure to implement good quality and supply a sub-par product. Most other Apple products are well made, l am a "fan" of sorts. The legal principal is there, but it is not easy to attack a multi-national.

As you are from Ireland, you can forget it, we in Europe can't bring class action suites readily, and would face many many administrative and procedural stubbing blocks - especially in many civil law jurisdictions. Although class action suites are becoming more common they are still quite rare in Europe, especially before the European Court of Justice.

We would have to subpoena all the various contracts with subcontractors and documents related to its multi-national manufacturing operations - these tend to amount in the 100,000's - and it would take a team of lawyers and technical specialists about 9-12 months just to prepare a case ( a lot can happen in the mean time and the case may fall through). I do not have time for that. That is just one challenge. You would need a massive team, l would say about 30 to 40 assistants and another 12 specialist lawyers and 20 engineers and maybe 5-7 managers. With the tiny amount of damages civil jurisdictions pay out for product liability cases, that means that all these workers would have to work pro-bono. Lawyers don't work pro-bono, they want $.

Also you may face problems in the process of acquiring the documentation - multinationals are very good at trying to hide themselves behind stacks and stacks of papers. As Apple has (strong) links to the US establishment, you are likely to face other US governmental restrictions and road blocks in analysing Apple's production practices. The US economic system is inherently political, and multi-nationals are able to protect themselves through political connections and lobbying to avoid liability abroad. I don't want to sound anti-Western, but the US is not such a good democracy or a transparent system of Government it claims itself to be. The US government has protected multi-nationals for many years, by making sure they can't be sued. Also the US government engages in large scale covert targeting of groups that have issues with multi-nationals - as was the case with Central Asian banana republics when they tried to bring cases in the 1990s.

In that context, Apple's human resource problems at its sub-contractors and off-shored production facilities may be a more efficious approach; - in that Chinese courts may be far more willing to provide documentation and cases against Apple's sub-contractors, which Apple can't really protect itself against, as many Civil law jurisdictions' unlike the US, are not so prone to powerful lobby groups. Also it would avoid a direct confrontation with Apple. This is all legal stuff. My advise would not be to sue, if you aren't happy go elsewhere. My 2008 Macbook is still wizzing along just fine, so its not all of their products.

The best solution of Apple is to better integrate its off shored plants with the right set of KPI's or metrics to measure quality production and that Apple management must establish high quality control criteria through-out the company. However the key thing for Apple is to integrate into all their subcontractors production lines - sensors and systems that measure product manufacturing quality and the maintenance of standards. You have built to order Computer Integrated Manufacturing stations which cost less than 40,000 EUR to test a circuit board and collate all the info of that product down to the milli-ampere. Bad sold has generally different electrical properties and it would have been easy to see that there was something wrong with a batch of products this way - we have the internet, this would have been brought to Apple's management team's immediate attention. Apple like many multi-nationals does not maintain good quality standards in its production, because there is a tendency to outsource the productions and problems elsewhere. The

I hope you get the jist of what l am getting at.

<Edited By Host>

I hope you get the jist of what l am getting at.

Not really.

Apple has legal obligations to its shareholders and to the laws of the countries it operates in (primarily health and safety laws plus whatever consumer 'fitness for purpose' laws that have been enacted in that country). Beyond that it has little to no legal obligation to a consumer beyond what is stated in the sale terms and conditions plus whatever may be established in a court of law.

Please show me what laws or precedents we are talking about?

Macbook Pro early 2011, AMD 6750M, 8gb Ram here as well.
Problem started a week ago, coincidence or not just 4-5 days after doing a fresh install to Mavericks. First time the screen froze, the second time I got one full screen of blue with vertical lines, then various off centre image, distortions, freezes. I'm lucky enough to be able to use gfxCardStatus forcing it to use the Integrated card, but I used an external monitor until now which is of massive importance in my work. I expect it to crash for good any moment now so I'm backing up everything but I can't afford a 500$ logic board replacement that keeps me from working for days. I see lots of people have the same issues and it's obvious we, the users, couldn't have messed up the system to this point so hardware fault is on Apple's hands. 3 years of usage is not enough for a +2000$ pro notebook and I will give up buying or promoting their stuff if they don't make amends.
Also, I suspect my graphics card has issues since I bought the Macbook but after taking it to service while still in warranty they couldn't find a fault for it. It's framey in games that should't take that much processing power to run. I couldn't even play Starcraft2 or WoW on low quality. It lagged precisely every 2 seconds in games or video intensive clips or apps.

As you are from Ireland, you can forget it,

Ireland?

England and the USA are where my homes are, Ireland is a nice place to visit.

now I must admit, I'm impressed Csound1, my post been removed, somewhat violating the TOU.

while there was not insult in my post, wish I could be told what part was judged as inappropriate and by who beside yourself.

but that is beyond the subject of this thread anyway.

may I ask, if not inappropriate, how and why you know so much about legal obligations and Apple sale terms and conditions?

and while it won't probably happen, what would you do if tomorrow your 2011 mbp failed just like ours, reball or pay Apple to replace your logic board?