kingshum98 wrote:
As I’ve said before, I haven’t given up on Apple, but honestly, I’ve gone way beyond what a normal customer should ever have to do. I installed diagnostic software, sent panic logs and data to Apple engineers, and tried everything possible to help them identify the issue.
Some issues do require the user to do a lot of things to help isolate & reproduce the issue. Especially if the issue cannot be produced on demand for a tech. In fact, I've seen numerous cases where the user's home environment is either causing the problem or at least triggering the problem (home power, connected devices, etc.).
As a tech, the hardest part for me is to actually figure out exactly what the user may be encountering. That involves trying to translate their description of the issue into what may be occurring & trying to figure out ways to reproduce the issue....sometimes I'm happy just to find any issue & hoping it is related the issue the user has reported. Years ago I actually wrote a script so the user could run it at home while using their laptop so I could try to identify the source of their WiFi issue which I could not reproduce in the shop.
Keep in mind Apple realizes people are not really testing a clean pristine installation of macOS because the user wants/needs to keep working, but installing anything else actually complicates confirming a hardware or software issue. So when Apple is unable to find anything unusual, they will give up & assume it is some sort of issue with third party software or a custom configuration.....many times that will be true too.
Big shoutout to Majella from Apple Cork in Ireland – she was amazing. She connected my device to hers, walked me through using Apple’s internal tool Capture Data 9.11.0, and forwarded all the info to a senior engineer for analysis. She even called me today with the results: the display has a hardware fault.
Thanks for the follow up to confirm what I suspected was the cause. It is really nice to know since I have only seen this issue reported on the Apple forum, but not on any of my organization's M-series Macs that I am aware.
What’s frustrating is that the diagnostic tool used in Apple Stores (you know, the one that always gives green checkmarks?) couldn’t detect it at all. Ridiculous.
Yeah, the Apple service diagnostics have drastically decreased in quality over the years. Back in the PPC days Apple did have some good diagnostics, but even then they would not detect most issues....best case was the diagnostic would freeze during a multiple loop test over 24 hours which would help us narrow down the issue.
Unfortunately the diagnostics today for the M-series Macs are a complete joke. They mostly just check for the presence of certain components. Most of their diagnostics complete in about a minute or two, with the longest ones running maybe 5, possibly 10 minutes. Certainly no looping of tests for hours. In Apple's defense, there really isn't a whole lot they can do to check for Display Assembly issues although Display sleeping/waking or disconnecting display & reconnecting may be good to add to the diagnostic. Unfortunately all my older diagnostic utilities & tools no longer work for an M-series Mac so I am left with very little to help discover & isolate issues these days. It will be years, if ever, before such utilities will become available.
Diagnostics are generally worthless unless they find some issue.
The real issue here is that Apple’s product quality seems to have dropped. It feels like it's all about the numbers and profit now, not the user experience. It honestly reminds me of that Boeing 737 Max documentary – when a company cares more about looking good on paper than how their customers feel.
Apple has made some great advances and has really gone backwards in other areas. Apple certainly cares more about new & fancy features even if they are broken or incomplete. I think most companies now rush things out the door hoping a software and/or firmware patch can be made to fix things later. And only fixing major items and neglecting/overlooking anything less.
Back to the positive: Majella has been incredible. She’s followed up with me several times, stayed on top of my case, and asked me to go to an Apple Store to request a display replacement, as recommended by the senior engineer.
Apple does have some very good people. Sometimes they are blocked by internal politics & rules though.
But honestly? This has left me so disappointed. I’ve given Apple enough chances. After this experience, I don’t think I’ll be buying another Mac again.
Windows PCs are not much better. Windows itself is a nightmare since they now force updates on everyone and the hardware is a mixed mess with very few actual good systems. Each new Windows update seems to break something new & unusual. I'm still using a 2008 era Dell laptop because I cannot stand the newer systems (especially the Trackpads) and completely avoid Windows.
