Apple Says 2011 MacBook Pro No Longer Eligible For 'Video Issues' Repair Program

yes, yes it did. these machines are going on 7 years old. If any of my customers have one that still works, I'm sure to tell them about the ticking time bomb in the GPU. After letting them vent some verbal frustrations i remind them that the car they pulled up in is less than 3 years old and they traded up from one that was hardly 5 years old at the time of the trade.

"what do you mean you don't service a 2006 MacBook pro any more?" ......."here have a chrome book, it'll be an upgrade"

I'm not sure what your role is, but if you work at Apple or an Authorised Dealership, you are awful at your job.

FYI
This problem is also happening on PC laptops.

I have a bunch of HP elitebook 8560s at work that are failing with the Radeon GPU in them, and have been failing for a while.

HP extended 3 yr warranty is well and truly up, HP haven't done anything to offer extended warranty.

All the vendors use the same GPUs and all will have similar issues when there is a GPU fault.


Apple did far more for their customers than any PC vendor here, so your decision to not buy a macbook (if based on this failure) is flawed...

The reason it is so prevalent on the MBP is because all the 15s had the AMD GPU in them. The HPs in question could have been ordered with integrated only, Nvidia, or AMD; only the AMD ones in this case are failing.

Nvidia had problems a couple of years earlier - similar problem, Apple did a similar extended repair program. Don't believe any of the PC vendors did.

Apple did nothing until they were sued.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/01/15/2011-macbook-pro-graphics-class-action-suit-expands-accuses-apple-of-concealing-defects

Did they ever really fix the issue? Last I recall they were just replacing the logic boards with no real fix, meaning all these machines are doomed to die the same death they did last time.

Did they ever really fix the issue? Last I recall they were just replacing the logic boards with no real fix, meaning all these machines are doomed to die the same death they did last time.

They were replacing them with identical logic boards, nothing changed on them. I am on my fourth(?) logic board, last one I had replaced back in December before the program ended. Crossing my fingers this one lasts until I get motivated to upgrade.

I'm not sure what your role is, but if you work at Apple or an Authorised Dealership, you are awful at your job.

Yeah I hear the Apple store sells a lot of chrome books.

I have this problem. It is intermittent. I have decided not to follow up on it. However, I have also set decided not to buy another MacBook Pro.

I have a 2011 MacBook pro and hasn't gave me no issues since I got it. The only thing I've done to it is upgraded to solid state drive and the ram. Runs like a champ!

Did they ever really fix the issue? Last I recall they were just replacing the logic boards with no real fix, meaning all these machines are doomed to die the same death they did last time.

I had my third repair just before Christmas, so I doubt theyve actually repaired the issue properly. But at least they've kept this program running for as long as they did.

yes, yes it did. these machines are going on 7 years old. If any of my customers have one that still works, I'm sure to tell them about the ticking time bomb in the GPU. After letting them vent some verbal frustrations i remind them that the car they pulled up in is less than 3 years old and they traded up from one that was hardly 5 years old at the time of the trade.

"what do you mean you don't service a 2006 MacBook pro any more?" ......."here have a chrome book, it'll be an upgrade"

You know that intels yearly upgrades now arent as dramatic as they were back in the core2 days or earlier. A 2011 MBP with an SSD and 16GB of RAM is still as much a workhorse today as it was back then. Considering its upgradability and some good old useful (to me) ports like ethernet, I actually prefer it over the 2016 offerings. But it sure is a ticking timb bomb like you said.

After Apple refused to replace the graphics card on my 2011 macbook pro for a second time (second issue happened 30 days after the Dec. 31, 2016, deadline), I decided to try the reflow process with a hot air gun and replacing thermal paste. It worked for about 6 months. Did it again and it is still going strong. Definitely best to replace, but this did bring mine back to life. [MEDIA=youtube]amUuEMH7KMA[/MEDIA]

I don't actually agree that they should have been liable for anything beyond the warranty period (and I'm one of the affected users). This is what warranties are for - and the failure was in a third party component.

The failure is in Apple's woeful thermal dissipation. A problem it has had because of its pursuit of thinner, lighter and quieter before the technology was really there to meet its specific design limitations.

AMD and nVidia published the specs for their specific GPU parts. It was up to Apple to incorporate those in a design that would not lead to such thermal loads that solder joints would perish as swiftly as they did.

Third parties have no control over Apple's inadequate ventilation designs in its notebooks nor for the fact that Apple throttles the internal fans via its own firmware for the sake of quietness at the expense of reliability.

You might want to consider why OSX fan utility applications exist, even going back to PowerBook days, if users were in any way convinced that Apple knew what it was doing.
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This is not the case in Europe as there is protection for consumers upto 6 years(?) I learnt this from an apple employee based in Ireland who's job it is to train the Euro Apple Stores about their obligations. This worked for me. Now the 6 years period has come to end.

Six years is specific to England and Wales. Possibly also N. Ireland. However it is dependant upon a reasonable estimation of the useful expected life of a purchase. For buildings, this can exceed six years. For computers, you are doing well over two years. With stuff like this YMMV.