{"id":627,"date":"2009-05-21T14:16:08","date_gmt":"2009-05-21T18:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/wordpress\/?p=627"},"modified":"2011-12-17T12:30:41","modified_gmt":"2011-12-17T16:30:41","slug":"mac-air-hinge-problem-reasonably-good-outcome-aka-mac-air-hinge-whinge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/2009\/05\/mac-air-hinge-problem-reasonably-good-outcome-aka-mac-air-hinge-whinge\/","title":{"rendered":"Mac Air Hinge Problem – Reasonably Good Outcome (aka Mac Air Hinge-Whinge)"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>I have a Macintosh Air (first revision) that I purchased the day they were announced. I loved the unit – my only complaint was that the disk was a bit small. But the rest of it was so nice – it has been by my side constantly from the time I purchased it.
\nAbout a 2 weeks ago, it developed the dreaded “Dying Hinge Problem” – so I started to search the Internet and found that Apple is categorically refusing to repair these problems claiming that it is “abuse” and as such not covered under AppleCare. There are many vitriolic blog posts and a cool YouTube video where a guy stabs his Air with a knife (really) to kill it and then switches to an IBM ThinkPad.
\nI have been traveling since the problem appeared so I really could not deal with the problem until I got back. Whenever I was a bit bored I would Google more and kept coming to the same conclusion – I was screwed. Not only was I screwed – but I was going to have to have a bunch of really frustrating conversations with Apple as I tried to get the defect repaired – I kept running these imagined conversations over and over in my head in the Ann Arbor Apple store – and over and over I lost the conversation after much frustration and wasted time where I was mean to the employee and then went to the manager and shouted at the manager. I imagined making a fuss in the store to embarrass them into fixing their defect for free and failing to get my Air fixed – instead I just looked like a fool.
\nNow let me just say that this is a defect – the box was not dropped – I did not use my MacBook to shovel snow or remove roof shingles. Often my laptops get dropped once (and survive) but this one never was dropped. I have had 4 Apple Laptops over the past six years (and loved them all). Every single laptop ended up with a dead hinge except one. The mean time to hinge wear is 3-5 years – it just happens. It is *so* consistent that the only reasonable assumption is that the failure is engineered in to make sure that laptops don’t last forever – forcing us to upgrade. The only mistake in the first generation Mac Airs is that it gives up a year *before* AppleCare expires and not a year *after* AppleCare expires. A slight engineering mistake – best solved by simply telling everyone that if it failed before the designed-in 3.5 year failure period – then it *must* be abuse! So Sayeth Apple and we must obey!
\nBack to my story. I got back from England yesterday and was ready to start my battle with Apple – I decided to start online so I went to Apple Support online and typed in my serial number. And then I received the wonderful news<\/b> that my laptop was not covered under warranty!
\nThis made perfect sense – I had not purchased AppleCare when I bought the box (the $1799 edition) and thought to myself – “What might go wrong with this box that Apple would agree to fix?” Now that Apple insists on their service centers fixing things it is easier to simply characterize anything as abuse if they don’t want to fix it.
\nSo when I calculated the things that Apple would fix and multiplied it by the probability that one of those (very few things) would go wrong and multiplied it by $1800 – I simply decided to keep my $250 and apply it to my next computer.
\nDamn – I was right – I am a genius! I am now sitting on a broken Mac Air with a defect that the Apple Borg would declare as abuse and waste *hours* of my time arguing about after which I would invariably lose anyways.
\nNot only did I save money with this decision – I saved time and peace of mind – an all around win! I do need a new laptop now because the Hinge problem (a defect) will just get worse – so I need to put this Mac Air into light duty.
\nOf course because of my wisdom, I keep my $250 and apply it to my next Apple purchase. I still love Apples and still will buy an Air as a replacement – the Rev 2 systems are faster with a larger hard drive anyways and I might just get a 13″ Aluminum MacBook anyways – a little more weight and a DVD and the ability to plug in audio cables without going insane and $400 cheaper and a larger hard drive and and and… Hmmm.
\nSo here is my general recommendation to folks – keep buying Apples – if you get mad at Apple when they choose never to fix things and blame you – don’t switch to PC – just buy your laptops differently from Apple: (a) Buy the bottom of the line that you can tolerate – don’t buy that super-duper system and (b) don’t buy AppleCare! Perhaps if enough of us do that – they will get the picture.
\nThis way you upgrade almost twice as often for the same price. Also those broken hinge computers make good servers or even desktop systems – you just need to stop hauling them around and opening and closing them. They last for *years* with the broken hinge.
\nP.S. The only computer of the four Mac laptops I have purchased that has *not* developed the hinge problem was the MacBook pro that was only 1 year old when I switched to the Air. Since then it mostly sits on a desk as my desktop.
\nP.P.S. The sad thing here is that this *is* a defect – it is exacerbated the more you use the system – lots of travel lots of security checks – working in airplanes – working in airports – working on a bus – make a laptop’s life rough. In a sense because the Air is so wonderful – we use the living crap out of them. It is sad that Apple can’t put a little more engineering into these boxes (hinges in particular) to support heavy use to insure these systems do last at least 3 years under heavy use conditions.
\nP.P.S. I am amazed at how solid my first-generation iPhone is. Prior to having the iPhone Generation-1 I had a series of Treo’s that never made it past 10 months before it looked like they had been through a war (I travel a lot). The iPhone gen-1 is over two years and there is almost no wear at all – very impressive engineering. Perhaps Apple should just make their next generation of laptops “hinge-free” and have a slide-out keyboard or on screen keyboard (or both!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a Macintosh Air (first revision) that I purchased the day they were announced. I loved the unit – my only complaint was that the disk was a bit small. But the rest of it was so nice – it has been by my side constantly from the time I purchased it. About a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2746,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627\/revisions\/2746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}