I have been feeling under the weather for the last couple of weeks and I got myself an RT-PCR test for COVID last week, which came out negative. The process to book the test was quite frustrating though the sample collection from my home was done smoothly by a private lab (the swab collection was not comfortable at all). The test report mentions that getting a negative report does not mean that I do not have an infection, so I am not much better off in that aspect than earlier.
While I was sick, I was working from a couch and dropped my Mac from the couch on the floor below. Given the low height, I did not expect anything unusual to happen. Yet, there were these big fat lines of dead pixels on the side and bottom of the LCD panel. I contacted Apple Support and pleaded that since this was my fourth Mac in the last 7 years if there was a way they could make an exception for one-time coverage under warranty. Which they did not. My laptop is 5 months old. Apparently, Apple has only last month launched AppleCare+ in India and so I asked if there was a way I could pay for AppleCare+ now since it was not even available when I got my laptop (INR 35000 or around USD 470) and then go ahead and pay the one-time fee of around INR 9000 or USD 120, which they declined. I tried contacting a ‘Senior Advisor’ who said that based on the images I shared with her, the display might be covered under guarantee but since Apple service centers in India operate on a franchise model, it all depends on the franchise. A trip to one of the service centers (iCare, ironic name) refused to cover this under warranty. The cost for display replacement was quoted as INR 60,000+. The plus could be anything I was told can only be disclosed when I submit my device. Okay.
Do not get me wrong. Apple creates beautiful products, both hardware, and software. But since I am unhappy and based on the stories online of Apple generosities for their loyal customers, I was kind of hoping to get this favor once. I guess it just does not happen for people in some countries. (In fact, while chatting with an Apple support Advisor online, it looked like he said a Senior Advisor might allow this damage to be covered under warranty until he discovered my place of residence. Huh!)
By now almost everyone knows that India is one of the most expensive countries to buy an Apple product in. On top of that, Apple does not have its own service centers in India. Most of the time, this makes servicing an Apple product a hassle with rude staff, damages to the device (happened to a battery connector of a Mac once which I only saw later), and pathetic service overall. Apple was not even selling the AppleCare+ program in India till last month, which gives you accidental damage protection for your device on payment of a small repair free instead of the full display or parts cost.
The high cost of out of warranty repairs and lack of repair options means that once a device stops working and is out of AppleCare, the cost of repair exceeds the cost of the product, making the device useless. The soldered everything concept makes using parts of the device impossible.
The Apple Silicon-based devices will make these problems only worse. Now that the laptops would have an integrated SoC with all the components, it would behave like an iPhone repair. The Apple M1 chip page is full of impressive 2X-10X performance gains vague charts. Just this week, there was an issue where non-App store apps were simply not starting for some users. With a tighter integration with the Apple chips, it might be possible for Apple to restrict the running of unsigned binaries as on the iPhone.
Sigh! If only there was a better option.