Apple products cause strong reactions and, often, stories involving them tend to get a little bit more traction than others when it comes to Internet virality.
This story might illustrate why as Business Insider reports that a Macbook Pro repair could have cost some $USD 10,000 to fix a screen until someone figured out it was the brightness setting on the Touch Bar. Apparently the brightness setting on this photographer’s Macbook Pro was turned all the way down – resulting in a black screen – and no one could figure out why it didn’t light up after rebooting etc.
Photographer Greg Benz, to his credit, tried everything in the book, including some obscure things like resetting the PRAM on the laptop. Nothing worked. As Apple laptop owners know, the keyboard brightness setting mirrors that of the monitor and thus nothing was coming to life when Benz tried to make the computer work.
He then took his $USD 7,000 Macbook Pro in for repairs because of the screen issue and waited two weeks while Apple did everything from replacing cables to replacing the computer’s logic board – twice! Apple apparently threw their hands up and just gave him a comparable unit to replace his other computer. As he points out in his blog post, replacing a Macbook Pro logic board and the rest would have been about $USD 10K.
As Business Insider points out, really this is a story about the design of the Macbook Pro more than anything else but the eye-popping repair numbers are enough to give most of us pause.
The latest Macbook Pro brightness buttons are in a touch-sensitive strip, replacing the physical buttons that the keyboard had for years.
Sometimes the solution is the simplest option, we guess.
Do you own one of the latest Macbook Pro’s? What do you think of this story? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
1 Comment
My father owns a newer Macbook and had this exact issue! I’m going to contact him and ask if he paid for the repair. If he did, he definiely needs to get his money back. It’s frustrating that so many “geniuses” couldn’t figure this one out.