"with people having apparently similar but in reality completely unrelated problems"
Not sure what he was reading - this is a known problem with at least many early 2011 MBP - I had one (still do - it's in the closet). Apple is refusing to acknowledge this as a problem, and will offer to replace the motherboard (or something like that) for ... $300 and approximately 5 business days.
From what I've read, whatever they replace doesn't actually do the trick; by many accounts, even when you drop it off for repair, they've claimed to not be able to reproduce the problem. Hint: use the external video chip, or force a use of it.
FWIW, if you're in the triangle area, sixrig.com gives really good service, and got me a new refurb laptop the day after xmas at 9pm at night.
Wow: “The problem might be on the GPU” Said the “Genius”. That’s exactly what I was hoping to hear (he didn’t mentioned this until I pushed them this far.) So I replied, “You all knew exactly what’s going on here and you intentionally kept this from the customers, right?” Right this moment, the “Genius” has left.
They wouldn't run any advanced diagnostics on mine because I had 'too much ram' in it - model was rated for 8gb but I had 16gb. Not necessarily unreasonable, but... it worked fine for 2 years with that ram in it, and the problem was obviously video related. well, nothing's that obvious, but... they didn't offer to just unscrew the back, remove the extra ram, and run more tests - they seemed to want to not handle my issue at the store. "5 business days" without my business computer is a bit too much, and now I realize I need a fallback strategy. :/
There's a lot of variability these stories in terms of how you're treated by a Genius when you take your computer in. When I took my problematic 2011 MBP in, they pretty quickly determined that it was a motherboard issue and replaced it.
Two months after my motherboard was replaced the video glitches started appearing again.
Coincidentally (or not?) it happens that I use Coda every day, and Coda forced Macs (inadvertently, apparently -- Panic used Apple's guidelines on how to implement this "gracefully", but Apple's flag was buggy) to use the discrete card all the time.
Interestingly enough, once Panic disabled the 'use discrete gpu' flag in Coda, my screen glitch problems basically went away on my new motherboard.
Graphics switching on dual-GPU Macs used to require you to log out when you changed the GPU. They never quite got the automatic switching right but it's much better on the current generation. I very rarely see random red-and-white checkerboard patterns flash on the screen.
I have an early 2011 MBP and last year the same thing as OP happened. Ended up bringing it to Apple and did their repair depot option for $300. At least they extend the warranty for 90 days.
Not looking forward to this happening again, though. Especially since last time it came back with a couple of scratches on the bottom case that weren't there when it was sent out. I guess we'll see.
I experienced the exact same problems with my early 2011 MBP, and the blue screen of death was fixed with a motherboard replacement. The failing graphics card also seem to have done damage to my Apple Thunderbolt Display, but that is incredibly hard to prove so I do not know if Apple will fix that for free.
I must say that this is a bit disappointing for a $3500 piece of hardware. There should be recall procedures for electronics like this as well to protect customers from faulty production.
It's not that they "hold their value", which implies they'd sell for something similar to the original purchase price, and that's crazy. Rather it's that their value drops considerably more slowly than the average computer. A 3-year-old Mac is still worth only a fraction of the original purchase price, but a typical computer is worth only a fraction of that fraction.
The benefit of Macs is that they're high-end unix workstations optimized for usability. As far as I know Apple is the only company still making anything by that description.
I do not find Macs to be very "usable", and previous-gen ThinkPads outranked them in everything but the shiny-showing-off-at-starbucks metric. However, in the last generations, Lenovo has nerfed the ThinkPads (new ones don't even have a middle mouse area - no more buttons, either).
They've also even put the logo upside down so that you can show it off at cafes.
Is there a Thinkpad model you would recommend for day-to-day use (mainly Java programming and LaTeX writing), that is light enough to be carried around daily?
Ihe UX of OSX is not that of a high end unix workstation. High end unix workstations do not need homebrew. High end unix workstations do not provide the miserable, second class Xwindows experience that is found on OSX.
So I used "high end unix workstations" for years and years and years and OSX isn't perfect, but jesus christ I'd take its UI over just about any of the UIs from its competitors.
(and remember trying to compile anything on sunos and only having suncc? fuck that, imo, I'll deal with xcode)
The X Windows experience on my MacBook Pro is great! I get a OS that does pretty much everything my ThinkPad with Linux did, plus:
* wifi works out of the box and reconnects practically instantly out of sleep [1]
* sleep works without me spending two weeks recompiling Gentoo with different kernel options and finally discovering some boot flag that worked until Ubuntu broke it in one of their updates
* I don't need to edit my XF86Config file (maybe not necessary any more)
* no hassle of getting a compositing window manager working (hopefully compiz/emerald works better now than in 2008), figuring out how to disable gdm/kdm because the window manager options with the distribution are always terrible so I just start from .xinitrc because figuring out how to get gdm/kdm/xdm to run what I want seems to change every time I have to look.
* no more poor battery life
* filtering through low quality apps (KDE: crash-happy and UgLy), GNOME: pretty but light on the features); still scarred over X-CD-Roast...
* AirDrop!
* no arcane errors about sound because Ubuntu suddenly decided that I needed Jack (or maybe it was the other one), when ALSA was working just fine
* oh, yeah, whenever I need to run an XWindows program it integrates seamlessly into my other programs. So much so that I tend to forget to use Ctrl for the keyboard shortcuts instead of that Apple command key with the weird symbol on it. It even seems to cut and paste from the rest of the system reasonably well.
Yeah, I'm totally loving the XWindows experience on MacOS X!
[1] I switched to Ubuntu because wifi and sleep just worked, and then they just didn't work after some updates
* wifi works out of the box and reconnects practically instantly out of sleep [1]
You had a thinkpad with less than stellar wireless support? I have never experienced any hardware problems with my many thinkpads (close to a decade now).
* sleep works without me spending two weeks recompiling Gentoo with different
kernel options and finally discovering some boot flag that worked until Ubuntu
broke it in one of their updates
Installs gentoo, complains about recompiling...WTF? Personally I do not like sleeping laptops and encrypted hard drives. However I have many friends/coworkers that are less paranoid and they seem to put their thinkpads to sleep just fine.
* I don't need to edit my XF86Config file (maybe not necessary any more)
Ok, so it has been ages since you used linux on a thinkpad. I need to keep this in mind. I never have had any dificulty with x11 on my thinkpads.
* no hassle of getting a compositing window manager working (hopefully
compiz/emerald works better now than in 2008), figuring out how to disable gdm/kdm
because the window manager options with the distribution are always terrible so I
just start from .xinitrc because figuring out how to get gdm/kdm/xdm to run what I
want seems to change every time I have to look.
So you purposefully rejected the distros configuration system and are complaining about having to configure things manually? Xsession management is a breeze for Gnome on Debian (and I am assuming ubuntu). What did you have trouble starting?
* no more poor battery life
The thinkpad battery is not the best but it is pretty good. Given that it has been atleast 6 or 7 years since you used linux I think you would be surprised.
* filtering through low quality apps (KDE: crash-happy and UgLy), GNOME: pretty but
light on the features); still scarred over X-CD-Roast...
X-CD-Roast! Nice you are comparing 2014 OSX to 2001 linux user experience. This is getting silly.
* AirDrop!
How do you configure Airdrop to work with all of your other unix-like machines? I don't know how to do that with my Debian and OBSD boxes. Maybe it is an FreeBSD or NetBSD thing? Does it share with windows as easily as Samba?
* no arcane errors about sound because Ubuntu suddenly decided that I needed Jack
(or maybe it was the other one), when ALSA was working just fine
I have never been forced to install jack. But I do not do professional audio work. This is another problem you created for yourself. No operating system can save a determined user from shooting their foot off. But then again you seem to have trouble with a lot of the unix workflow so I guess I should not be surprised.
* oh, yeah, whenever I need to run an XWindows program it integrates seamlessly
into my other programs. So much so that I tend to forget to use Ctrl for the
keyboard shortcuts instead of that Apple command key with the weird symbol on
it. It even seems to cut and paste from the rest of the system reasonably well.
What Xwindows apps do you use?
> Yeah, I'm totally loving the XWindows experience on MacOS X!
I am glad I have found a happy xwindows on OSX user. Can you help me out with some things:
* Apple's website says "X11 is no longer included with OS X."[1] Do I have to be a Apple Developer to get Xwindows?
* I have had a lot of trouble getting awesome/xmonad/i3 to work in OSX. I swear it is almost as if iTunes is allergic to being a nice tile on my media workspace.
* For the life of me I can not get selected text to paste by middle clicking. How does that work?
* I use vcsh+mr+git to manage all of my config files. This way setting up a new machine is super easy. Can you tell me which directory to point vcsh for my iTunes/Pages/Safari configuration?
* The second step on a new machine is moving all my music over. I have some troubles with iTunes. Is there a special apple+option hotkey to get iTunes to play my flac/ogg files?
* Whenever I ssh into a OSX machine I always have trouble getting iTunes/Pages/Safari to honor my $DISPLAY variable. What am I missing?
Anecdotally confirming. When shopping around for the past 10 years, I've usually bought used PCs and used parts, both desktops and laptops, but after deciding to try out a Mac in early 2012, buying used just didn't seem to be worth the discount.
It doesn't seem to be so bad right now, but part of this may be due to my insistence on getting at least 4GB of RAM for a MacBook Air, which was hard to find on the used market.
Adding to the anecdotes[1], of the last 5 computers that I have owned, 0/2 of the Macs are still running, compared to 2/3 of the non-macs. Because of this, I refuse to ever purchase a used mac, the discount is not worth the risk, especially considering the fact that it's nearly impossible to repair them on your own.
[1]Random idea for a website/service: Computer reliability statistics by model/year. Could be really useful for people in the market for used machines. Not sure how/where you would get the data though. Seems like forums are overrun with anecdotes, but actual data is few and far between.
Macs are quite variable in terms of good models and bad models. This seems to apply to both laptops and desktops. Unfortunately. I also haven't heard of a website or service that has the reliability statistics you want.
You didn't mention Applecare. It is transferable and is for 3 years. So if you buy a 1 y/o machine from a hipster who wants to upgrade, you would be covered for the remaining time.
I didn't say the site was good, just the service ;)
Hadn't noticed ads before - I see one now. Might be trying to take advantage of traffic a bit, because they're primarily serving just one geographic market, but may get outside traffic? Dunno. Again, hadn't noticed before.
FWIW, I don't actually like the site - it always works slow on my mobile, and even on the desktop - some weird scripting stuff going on. That said, the personal support and attention I've had on my few transactions over the last year make up for that.
But given he's a happy customer of their hands on service and didn't even mention the site, I'm not sure the answer you'll get will be terribly relevant.
Not sure what he was reading - this is a known problem with at least many early 2011 MBP - I had one (still do - it's in the closet). Apple is refusing to acknowledge this as a problem, and will offer to replace the motherboard (or something like that) for ... $300 and approximately 5 business days.
From what I've read, whatever they replace doesn't actually do the trick; by many accounts, even when you drop it off for repair, they've claimed to not be able to reproduce the problem. Hint: use the external video chip, or force a use of it.
FWIW, if you're in the triangle area, sixrig.com gives really good service, and got me a new refurb laptop the day after xmas at 9pm at night.
Source: apple forums and http://mbp2011.com