Does apple offer loaner Macbook while repairing?

trusharvicky wrote:

Thanks for the valuable advice. I will take a back up.

also want to know wether they provide loaner service for MacBook or not.

Nothing official. However, I’ve heard that customers with severe problems have gotten complete replacements. Or they can’t repair it properly and offer a full replacement. You could ask for that. I’ve never heard of a loaner program though.

If it’s really important, you could clone your drive and then see if you could rent one from a rental service near you. It would have to be the same model though, and you would operate your entire environment from an external drive rather than from the rental’s internal drive.

This is an example:

http://www.goldengatecomputing.com/macbook-pro-rental.html

jeffhall2 wrote:

No (i was told by Apple.) Whatever you back-up to the icloud can be downloaded onto PC's as well as Macs. I had a similar problem and rather than blow another £1K on a substitute Mac i used a cheap PC which enabled me to finish time sensitive work while i was waiting for repairs. Not an ideal solution i admit but i could see no alternative. Most if not all Apple files can run/open on windows.

The biggest issue would be specialty software. I suggested perhaps renting an exact model running on an external bootable clone. That might allow the same software to be run.

trusharvicky wrote:

I will give the MacBook to service centre on Tuesday. I have talked to Apple senior advisor, as per them there is no scheme like loner MacBook so they can not give.

The closest thing they have is “Express replacement” with the iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch. If they had a similar scene for notebooks, theoretically everything can be backed up to Time Machine and/or a clone and then one could transfer all that to a new machine. I would think they would likely reserve that right even for notebooks, as they warn anyone bringing one in for service to back it up.

Legal - Express Replacement Service (ERS) - Apple

A loaner could theoretically be operated off of a bootable clone of your current drive.

So you are backing up everything before you send it in? That would be highly advised.

No (i was told by Apple.) Whatever you back-up to the icloud can be downloaded onto PC's as well as Macs. I had a similar problem and rather than blow another £1K on a substitute Mac i used a cheap PC which enabled me to finish time sensitive work while i was waiting for repairs. Not an ideal solution i admit but i could see no alternative. Most if not all Apple files can run/open on windows.

I am truly sympathetic as, had this happened before the trouble started you could have returned it for exchange.

As far as the time is concerned I was thinking more about how long it would take you to set up a loan machine to meet your work needs. Have you tried to talk to the repair centre manager?

Not as far as I have ever heard of. To be practical, how much work time would be taken up in setting up a Mac for your work.

Hope it works out for you this time,

Good luck.

seventy one wrote:

I am truly sympathetic as, had this happened before the trouble started you could have returned it for exchange.

As far as the time is concerned I was thinking more about how long it would take you to set up a loan machine to meet your work needs. Have you tried to talk to the repair centre manager?

I'm thinking it might be workable with a bootable clone on a fast external drive. Not quite as fast, but possibly acceptable. But to my knowledge Apple doesn't provide a loaner. I suppose it's not like a car loaner because it most people would restore a backup to the machine and then Apple would then have to wipe it once returned.