MacBook Pro Teardown Reveals 'Quality Concerns'

Ive been saying this for a while now, but, i fear Apple is going to slowly start lowering their quality standards in order to maximize their profits.

This instance isnt one that they would benefit from, however they may start cutting corners with lower grade components in order to make more money off of each unit sold.

Also, I think they are going to flood the market with too many products.

Apple quality slipping?

Wow, overpriced, overhyped hardware that has quality issues. Never saw that coming.

Frag, you realize that Apple has some of the largest cash reserves of any company on the planet, and yet like you said they are starting to skimp on the components to make more money. They also don't have their products produced by a company here in the US or somewhere else where the workers are treated better, and I don't want to hear about it being too expensive, with the prices Apple charges they can more than afford doing so.

It's funny that so many Apple fans rip on Microsoft for being greedy and corporate, Apple is no better if not worse.

I am sure they use Asian kids for labor..

My sinister hatred for all of Apple left me really happily enjoying reading this article!!

Such a satisfying article for someone like myself who can't stand Apple

For me I think that mistakes happen, you can bet if Apple sent iFixit the unit there wouldn't have been these issues. However since they acquired one from the general pool it makes this a little disturbing (though all the haters would probably start cheering when failures start to show up a lot more in the coming months if what the previous posters are correct). Still I'm thinking that the stress Apple is putting on Foxconn for new iEverything is starting to show.

I love it when you show somebody a $600 laptop with Ubuntu on it and they're amazed that it's just as fast as their $1600 MacBook. Seriously, this POS only costs $1800 because of the brand. Apple= extortion.

Here is my take on paying for pretty vs. performance:

You pay for performance on a laptop

You pay for pretty on your date

I think your getting more than how much they give you: more thermal paste, unlocking the ZIF socket, heck, the more the better! (sarcasm)

That sir, is not thermal paste. Well, not the kind you're used to seeing, anyway. Some Foxconn worker got a little too excited over being able to be a part of the new MBP.

Why am I not surprised?

Why would they put that much thermal paste anyway, it costs more and it negatively affects cooling. Plus if it has some metal base to it the board could short circuit down the road. They are getting lazy in that aspect.
That said I am impressed with how well designed the interior of the MBP is. Everything is fit in such a tight and organized manner that no other manufacturer seems to be able to replicate. ipad vs Xoom is another example, the ipad is much better designed inside allowing for a battery that takes up a larger percentage of the inside, thus allowing for the exceptional battery endurance.

It's all apples fault. They've become so over-bloated and power hungry. I've never really cared for Macs, but ever since the iPad, Apple has slowly gone down hill. At least when it comes to windows you can avoid the crappy oems. But in Apple's case they are THE oem for macs. If they put out a crappy product, the consumer is just supposed to eat it, or even choke on it.

... or choose not to replicate due to not wanting to burn their customers' laps. Have you ever tried to use a Macbook Pro on your lap? They get insanely hot on top and bottom to the point of being unusable unless you wear an oven mit and asbestos pants.

Well unfortunately, mine overheated just as stated..i was running 2 programs..utorrent for mac and safari surfing...I was using 15 inch 2.3 GHZ model..when it froze on me...keyboard..mouse froze and I couldnt do anything but reboot..interesting note..the fans kicked in immediately after the freeze...and then i felt the bottom of the unit and it felt burning hot....not good....means that some will overheat...I decided i am going to wait until..they fix this problem and returned machine to apple for full refund....I was appalled and this article now makes sense as to what happened to me.....

Yes, actually, I use it on my lap all the time; in fact, it's on my lap all day during classes. And so do many of my classmates. I'll go ahead and ask the campus medical center how many lap burns they have seen from Macbook Pros.

Perhaps you should actually use a Macbook Pro before making ridiculous comments like these.

I think it's pretty clear that the reduced battery life is down to Apple using a new measuring system.
They also reduced the battery life estimate for the basic MacBook even though the hardware is exactly the same as before.
(7-8hour battery life is pretty realistic for web surfing at low-medium brightness)

Apple should really be careful when cutting costs. A few cents saved on manufacturing and quality control could be enough to kill Apple's reputation of delivering high quality goods. Even my last gen MacBook Pro has some slight light-bleed on the lower edge of the screen. Not enough to make me return it (u only notice it slightly when the screen is black), but it's still there.
But these days even some of the really expensive Lenovo Thinkpads feel cheap...


I don't subscribe to the whole "Apple is overpriced" ranting. The newest MacBook Pro generation is a disappointment and I will no longer recommend them to friends, but u can't actually get laptops this sexy and well designed from other manufacturers for less money.

I share the same quality concerns. I've owned 3 Macbook Pros, and each of them I've torn apart the day after the standard warranty expired to reapply the thermal paste. All three of them had too much thermal paste applied. One had SO much thermal paste I'm surprised that my laptop never overheated.

Don't get me wrong, I love my Macbook Pros. Great laptops, great design, and good software. but Apple needs to get their act together and start doing some quality checks at the assembly plants.

Although I should note that I've seen similar assembly issues with Dell and HP laptops. Come to think of it, the only laptop that I haven't found any glaring issues was Lenovo's/IBM's Thinkpad line.

What you see is just PC being put together. There is nothing special about Apple Laptops and Desktops. It is just PC with their useles OS.

I'm glad that Apple reduced their battery life claims as the owners can now stop going on about the silly battery life times that were less than 'honest' in the first place. Now all thats left is 'the build quality is so good' excuse for purchase.

Then again, I'm glad apple lied, as the oems are now making that bit more effort in upping battery life. New Elitebooks = 32 hours battery life.

P.s. Dear Toms, LET ME post using Opera.

It's not just Apple who was making unrealistic claims about the battery life; my friend owns an Elitebook (less than 6 months old) and he struggles to get through the day on a single charge with the brightness set to lowest and doing minimally intensive things such as checking email, browsing the web, or word processing. I have no idea how manufacturers such as HP can claim 32 hours of battery life; I can maybe see it happening if they turn off the screen completely, turn off the wireless, set low power mode to the USB ports, and just idle at the desktop. Hardly an accurate measure of battery life IMO.

YOu imply that the person who does that knows anything about computers and about how much it costs, and does not want to hurt the bastards who keep him/her 12h/day 6days/week on minimum wage.

not surprising at all. If you have ever worked on a pc/laptop production line (i have) you will know most of the people are monkeys (i am not a monkey though). We used to get paid per machine we built, so you do it as fast as possible and sometimes cut corners. I have also built Alienware PC's/laptops back before they got bought by dell, and i have to say they were in fact very strict on who they let touch them, quality control was near perfect.

God I hate that term. Such an Apple n00b term.

Actually, it is possible to burn your lap with a MacBook Pro. I did exactly this with my MBP once when I was gaming on it whilst watching TV at the same time. They can get very hot when maxxing out the CPU and the dedicated GPU (not so much on the lower end models without dedicated GPU). It wasn't a bad burn but left a sore red mark on my leg (through jeans) for a day or two.

However, this is true for *all* high power laptops. My old Dell laptop got so hot that the paint started to flake off on it's underside. This is why no laptop manufacturer ever calls a laptop a 'laptop'. In fact, they all specifically mention in the user manuals *not* to use them on your lap. Look at any manufacturer's adverts/website etc and they will call their laptops 'notebooks'.

Back on topic though, it looks like there are some QC issues with the new laptops alas. In terms of the battery life, Apple announced along with the new MacBook Air release that they were going to start moving more realistic battery life tests which is the main reason for the quoted drop in battery life. My two and a half year old MacBook Pro can still get a good 4 hours with simple internet use which isn't bad considering it was capable of 5 hours when the battery was new. If anything, these new battery lifetimes could even be on the more conservative side.

Sounds like it is a respectable upgrade, but the new processor will lower the battery life. The thunderbolt port is a good addition but won't have devices for it for awhile. All in all they made a decent upgrade.



http://besttechtoday.blogspot.com/

ummmmmm would anyone care to actually check what temprature difference there is between this thermal paste applied and what you would call "properly applied" - sometimes it is actually better to over-apply then to do it "perfectly" - the hsf is covering both igp/chipset and processor - if one is taller then the other and the hsf isnt exactly right for size it will leave a gap making the excess thermal paste bridge the gap as its supposed to, second - with enough pressure the excess is pushed to the sides and whats needed will stay on the actual die/centre giving it what it needs.

I dont really see from an engineering point of view that is wrong here.

99% of reference nvidia based cards also look like this.

oh and btw otherwise yes i hate apple everything, cant stand them, and if you ask me the thermalpaste is nothing, the cooling IS on the other hand INSUFFICENT not because of thermalpaste but raw surface area to dissipate such a large ammount of heat with such a small cooler.

If you buy Apple then you are an idiot.

@apache_lives, from an engineering point of view there are two serious errors with that.

1) Thermal paste is never as good of a conductor of heat as heatsinks are. Thus an overly thick layer of paste will lead to components running hotter than speced, which due to tendency of resistance within components increasing as they warm can lead towards improper function of said components as well as unanticipated changes in size due to thermal expansion. If the heatsink isn't fitting properly, then this is a failure of the heatsink, and should be fixed there, not by adding more paste.

2) Things which are good thermal conductors have a nasty habit of also being good electrical conductors. Thus often times the best thermal pastes (arctic silver anyone?) are electrically conductive, and if it gets on your motherboard, it can short the entire thing out leading to burned out components, and sometimes in severe cases, fire.

in other words, too much thermal paste is always a bad thing, and sometimes even worse then not having enough.