A letter to Steve Jobs

In a last-ditch (and probably doomed to fail) effort to get my lemon of a Macbook Pro fixed, I have sent the following email to Apple's Steve Jobs.

Dear Mr. Jobs,

My name is Mark Uhde and I have been an Apple customer for years. I am writing to you, again (in hopes this email gets to an address that will get read or responded to, as I've had luck with this address with an issue with my prior MacBook), to express my disappointment with my new 2009 MacBook Pro (ordered the day after they were announced last summer, for use in the classroom).

Within two weeks of buying the machine, I decided I needed more storage. I installed a 500GB hard drive (a Hitachi 5K500.B). Everything was okay, though the computer was sometimes glitchy. A few weeks later, I applied the firmware 1.7 update. And the nightmare began. The computer was slow, froze often, and simply did not work properly. The issues were widely reported on the Internet and for months Apple followed an official policy of denial. Additionally, I found the computer would often go to sleep randomly especially when running on battery (another widely reported issue)

While waiting for a fix of some kind, knowing that the problems were widely reported, my computer suffered an accident. I dropped it a couple feet onto a hard floor and dented one corner of the case and lid. No other damage has been notable.

When I found through the Internet that a firmware downgrade was available, I immediately went to the local Apple Authorized repair center, only to find they didn't have access to it. After calling half a dozen or so Apple stores, I learned that the ONLY way to get the firmware downgrade was to drive to one. So I waited several weeks until I would be passing through Salt Lake City, UT. A drive of over 600 miles from my house. I had them downgrade the firmware. They noted the dents on the machine and said that they hoped the firmware downgrade would solve my problem, because they probably wouldn't do anything else for me with the dents, and that he wasn't sure that he should even be doing the firmware downgrade. That attitude just horrified me. The idea that all support should cease due to minor cosmetic issues goes against the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975. Still, they did the firmware downgrade.

Guess what? It was only a partial fix. 80% better. It still didn't solve the random sleep issue or all of the drive freezes, but it made the computer usable most of the time. Again, the random sleep issue had been happening since before I dropped the computer. Further reading on the Internet revealed to me that the only real fix people had any luck with was a logic board replacement. I went back to Allied Computing in Kalispell, MT where the owner literally laughed at me and said that the dents voided the warranty completely. He agreed it was a logic board issue most likely, but said he could do nothing for me. I pointed out Magnuson-Moss and he said "that only applies to cars" which is untrue, but there was no reasoning with him. I asked him how he would feel if his car had a dent in the door - or even a damaged bumper - and the manufacturer refused to fix an unrelated engine problem. He simply said "those are Apple's rules" and his attitude was that Apple was untouchable and perfect (I'll get more into that at the closing of this letter).

Thus, I've lived with a computer that is only partially functional since almost day one a year ago. I'm trying to teach classes with this computer and use it every day for well, just about everything. And I can't afford (and shouldn't have to) to just buy a new one. Between the software driver update Apple released more recently (which got rid of 95% of the slowdowns) and switching to a Samsung hard drive the hard drive freezes are totally gone in OS X, but still occur in my boot camp Windows partition (obviously, since Apple released a driver update to mask symptoms, instead of fixing the real hardware problem that so obviously exists with these systems' logic boards), making my boot camp partition nearly unusable. Additionally, I still get the computer randomly going to sleep is OS X, a problem which has got much worse since upgrading to Snow Leopard for some reason. This is also a fairly widely reported logic board problem that clearly has nothing to do with the minor cosmetic damage the computer suffered, yet of course, I have no support from Apple or the local Apple repair center.

Anyways, I guess if you were willing to fix my computer that would be great, but at this point, I've given up all hope of *that* happening. Instead, I'm writing to you today to hopefully open someone's eyes to what Apple is doing by refusing to honor the warranty on my system. In the short term, you are saving yourself the cost of a likely logic board replacement. Great. I can see how you like saving costs on the bottom line, and I understand it.

However, does it really help your long-term bottom line to refuse to treat customers fairly and with respect? I was going to buy an iPhone for my next phone (we should be getting AT&T service here in Montana "soon"). Now, I'm going to buy an Android device instead of an iPhone to replace my Blackberry when my contract is up. I'm already making plans to replace this laptop with a Sony or Dell this summer, sell this on eBay hoping to get whatever I can out of it (I'll be honest about all the problems it has). Sure, Windows isn't perfect - but between a dual-boot of Ubuntu and Windows 7, I can live with it. And Renewed Vision's ProPresenter is being released for Windows this summer, removing the major reason why switching to Windows simply has not been a viable option for me…

In addition to my own future purchases of Apple gear, I'm the type of person seen as a "computer geek" among all my friends/family/colleagues. I used to strongly recommend Apple. Now I tell people when they ask how I like my Mac (a common question) "honestly, I hate it; and Apple support has been terrible to me. Seriously, buy anything but a Mac unless you absolutely need a program that only runs on OS X. This computer is a total lemon and has been my nightmare." Just from my own recommendations, I'd estimate you've lost thousands in sales.

Was saving the few hundred dollars it would've cost you to honor my warranty and replace the (likely) faulty logic board for a couple of widely-reported problems really worth the lost future business? I know that if I owned stock in Apple, I'd be selling it right now because a company that has made such short-sighted decisions regarding how they treat their customers simply cannot survive for long. Apple is not infallible. Windows 7 machines are increasingly capable of replacing Macs for most uses. There are some fantastic Android phones and tablets coming to market this year that, while they may not be as slick and well-supported as iPhone, are getting close. Even my iPod Touch (which I love) could easily find itself replaced by non-Apple devices being released soon…

Of course, I hope that someone will read this letter and just decide to fix the computer. That would be great. However, after all the people I've talked to in various stores, I've given up. Thank you for taking the time to read my message and listen to my concerns.

Best regards,

Mark Uhde