Thunderbolt Display - Just Plain Dead

To my surprise, my 14-month old Thunderbolt Display died this weekend. On Friday, I left work as I normally do, didn't shut down as I normally don't, and went home.

I came into work on Saturday to get some work done, walked into my office, tapped the space bar to wake my machine, and nothing. Nothing at all. Just plain dead.

A few bits of info for you....

My machine - a two-month old Mac Mini i5 2.5GHz with 500GB and 16TB of RAM. I checked its status by using a nother machine to share the screen. My computer was working just fine. It was clear that only my Thunderbolt Display had died. Interestingly, the screen sharing showed that my Mini was still displaying the Thunderbolt Display's native 2560 x 1440 resolution. This proved the Display died while connected to the Mini and the Mini had not restarted.

I remotely restarted the Mini, but it rebooted in a much lower resolution 1280x1024 because of its inability to locate the display.

So I left on Satuday with both the Thunderbolt and the power cables unplugged as to allow for the display to reset itself. My intentions were to come in today, Monday, and attept to connect my MacBook Pro 15" and try the MagSafe cable to see if it was juiced or not.

So today, I got here, hooked up the MBP 15" and no luck. Again, the Thunderbolt Display remained dead. I was and am very discouraged about this. Here I am, just about 8 weeks past the 1-year warranty, only to find myself with a $1000 paperweight.

I immediately hopped online and made an appointment at the Apple Store. My hopes are for a little sympathy from whomever at the Genius Bar I work with. Maybe a simple replacement, maybe a free repair, maybe some genius advice that fixes this mysterious condition..... no such luck....

I stand on line for my 3:15pm appointment, they call my name, and within just a few minutes the guy is telling me it's out of warranty and it needs a new power supply. No breaks, no exceptions, no time for anything. Bing, bam, boom. Would I like to have the service done??? Would you? Would you? Would you?

So, of course, I'm at their mercy. I need my display. I love that display. I'm annoyed it broke in barely over a year! No surges, no problem, nothing except for a monitor that seemed like it had a timer set to die just weeks after it's 1 year birthday. Come on!

All in all, the repair is going to take 2-3 days and costs only about $107.00. But that's 107.00 more than I should have to spend. When I purcahsed this particuar Thunderbolt Display I also bought an 11" MacBook Air. My intention was to buy AppleCare just before the 1 year warranty was expired. I always get an e-mail from Apple telling me the time is near. Of course, I did not get one this time. I would have bought it, but now I'm out of luck.

So be aware people. The Thunderbolt Display is a kilelr piece of equipment. I love the ports, I love the ease of use, I love the picture quality and the resolution, but I'm appaled at the fact that it died that fast. That shouldn't happen.

My company has spent about $30,000.00 - $40,000.00 on Apple products in the last ten years. Maybe more. I have referred so many users to switch over from PCs to Macs. I'm loyal.

This product shouldn't break like this. It just shouldn't. There is way less going on in a display than most Apple products. This should last as long as the 5 LCD TVs I have in my house. My TVs don't break after a year. Neither should this.

My rant is done.