Apple Hardware Tax Strikes Again
I’ve always known that Apple’s monopoly on the hardware side of things accounted for the higher price of Mac computers when compared to Windows. Today I got a real glimpse into what that actually means long-term.
If you follow me on Twitter, you know that earlier in the week, the display on my Macbook Pro went dead. As it turns out this was a known issue with Nvidia faulty display adapters, and therefore I was due a new logic board at no charge, in order to fix my problem. When I went in this after noon to pick up my laptop, the Genius was kind enough to point out on my paperwork how much the repair would have cost had it not been a faulty adapter.
The cost to have the logic board replaced, and nothing else done to the laptop at all, was over $1200. I chuckled when he showed it to me and said, I wouldn’t have paid that, I could buy a whole new Windows laptop cheaper. Gee, it’s no wonder you need Applecare for all of your Apple products, you can’t afford to get anything repaired, and you can’t really repair it yourself. (Where would one get a logic board for a Macbook? Exactly, you can’t exactly run into your local computer show and pick one up.)
Seems to me that $1200 is a lot to replace one part, even something as important as a logic board. As I said, I wouldn’t, I’d replace the laptop before I sunk that much in to a repair. Given the choice between paying for Applecare forever, or running the risk of this type of repair bill, my next purchase might just be to opt out of Apple. I like my Macbook, and love having a Mac to learn on, and give me some variety in my work, but that isn’t worth this kind of risk. Not when you consider that I could easily buy a Windows laptop for much less, and fix just about anything in it myself.
