MacBook Pro 2011-2013 Warranty Extended

By Simon, 15 March, 2016

A couple of weeks ago my 2011 MacBook Pro died. Well, not quite died, but the video stopped working which amounts to the same thing. Both the screen and external monitors exhibited severe monochromatic lines and ghosting of said lines. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't even art. It was infuriating as it was outside of the AppleCare warranty, plus this had happened once before and had been repaired.

So after the obligatory swear words, I started looking on the web to see if this was a problem for anyone else. To my surprise, I found that Apple was offering a repair program to extend coverage on the 15-inch and 17-inch models manufactured in 2011. They are also offering extended coverage on 15-inch Retina models manufactured from Mid 2012 to Early 2013.

Apple has determined that a small percentage of MacBook Pro systems may exhibit distorted video, no video, or unexpected system restarts. These MacBook Pro systems were sold between February 2011 and December 2013.

Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider will repair affected MacBook Pro systems, free of charge. See below for details on affected models and service options.

More information can be found here:

https://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro-videoissues/

Unfortunately, it appears it took a petition on change.org as well as a class action lawsuit for Apple to listen to customers and address the problem.

So I took my MacBook Pro into the local Apple Store and showed to the staff at the Genius Bar. Several knowledgeable nods, and a couple of "yep, it's a 2011, it won't be a problem" later, and the laptop was off to Texas for repair. Apparently, they no longer do these repairs in-house.

A few days later they called me, on a Sunday actually, to say the MacBook Pro was repaired, returned, and waiting to be picked up. When I got to the Apple Store, I was surprised to find out that not only had Apple replaced the logic board as expected, but they had replaced the optical (DVD) drive and the battery as well. That wasn't all, they gave me 4GB of new RAM to keep the machine running, and returned the 16GB of third-party RAM that was installed as it had tested bad (which I've just had exchanged under that manufacturer's limited lifetime warranty). So now I pretty much have a brand new 2011 MacBook Pro. They even cleaned up the inside and blew out the dust.

The bottom line is that I'm pretty much blown away, as all I was expecting was the logic board to be replaced. Thanks Apple. You did good.