Apple's MacBook Hinge Affair: Something's In The Air

A follow-up to last Thursday’s writeup…

Of late, the dominant recurring mantra in my life seems to be:

It doesn’t end up being nearly as hard, or taking nearly as long, as you feared it would…

Friday afternoon was a perfect example. Having perused numerous Internet-based complaints regarding Apple customer service personnel refusing to repair defective MacBook Air bezel hinges, I admittedly walked into the Reno, NV store girded for a fight.

I explained to the Genius Bar representative how I’d heard a loud ‘pop’ when opening the system display the prior morning (predated by several days’ worth of an increasing degree of both bezel position ’slop’ and creaky movement, which I wasn’t able to deal with since I was halfway around the world and in daily morning-to-night meetings at the time), showed him the broken hinge…and happily encountered absolutely no push-back to my under-warranty repair appeal.

To the degree that Apple has been refusing to honor valid repair requests, I can understand the economic underpinnings to the denials, no matter that I still disagree with the company’s stance. As it turns out, I’ll be getting an entire replacement display assembly, since the hinge design doesn’t allow for standalone repair. This particular Apple Store doesn’t have the part in stock, so I was quoted a 3-5 day (including the weekend) turnaround time.

When assessing the prevalence of a tech problem using Internet-sourced data points, I always try to keep in mind that folks who aren’t having issues are unlikely to post success stories. The spectrum of documented situations that I encounter is therefore unnaturally slanted in a pessimistic direction. I also need to keep in mind that unfortunately some folks might lie about how their systems’ hinges got damaged, claiming a manufacturer’s defect (for example) when in fact a fall from a table or a satchel is to blame, and acting in a defiant manner when cosmetic evidence refutes the fabrication.

With that said, something seems to be up with the MacBook Air hinge design. As always, I was careful not to identify myself as a ‘press guy’ to the Genius Bar staff, because I didn’t want to receive any atypical treatment. Both my representative and his co-worker, with whom he conferred on several occasions as he entered my work order, indicated that this was the first time they’d actually seen a failing hinge. But they implied that they’d heard of the issue through internal communiqués, specifically that the company had officially acknowledged the issue and directed Apple Store personnel to accept repairs on a no-questions-asked basis as long as there was no evidence of a confounding root cause (such as the aforementioned poor user handling).

This isn’t an official recall, mind you…as my Genius Bar contact pointed out, unlike exploding batteries and the like, a busted hinge has no reasonable possibility of causing user harm. Instead, the company seems to be handling this issue much as it did with the recent admission of hairline crack flaws in plastic MacBooks. As such, my representative also implied, in a roundabout way, that Apple was accepting systems for repair even if they were out of warranty (to within a reasonable timeframe). Considering that the first-generation MacBook Air cost $1799 or more (with SSD and other options) at its introduction just 1.5 years ago, I’d certainly hope so!