The MacBook Pro that I had with me for the last two and a half years is gone. There was just one part that kept failing on my MacBook Pro. Ironically, that part is the one Apple calls the Super Drive.

Anyone who has faced hardware issues probably knows when hardware starts exhibiting signs of death. With Apple’s amazing Super Drive, you realize that this doesn’t happen. It didn’t happen for the first drive, nor for the second one. It doesn’t die painfully over an extended period of time. It just dies when it feels like and it dies instantly.

Having done a lot of research on the web before going in for a replacement part, I noticed that the Super Drive failing was a very common problem.

Replacement Event 1 - June 2008
The first problem with my SuperDrive was that it wasn’t capable of writing to CDs. It would read CDs and DVDs just fine and it would event write to DVDs but when I tried to write to CDs, it was a totally different story. Any blank CD that I popped in would be popped back out within seconds. It seemed as though my drive didn’t think the CD that I wished to write to deserved admission into it. So after a couple of calls, I walked to my local AppleCare Service Provider and turned my unit in. They said the repair would take 3-7 days. I got a call the next day saying my unit was ready with a new Super Drive. When I went to collect my unit, I started it up to do a routine check anyone would do before signing on a sheet which stated that the service was satisfactory and the unit being returned was in full working order. On the Apple boot screen, I started seeing several greyish dead pixels on the boot up screen. They noticed it too and immediately offered to replace it, but I was clueless as to how and why this happened. It took another day, but I got my computer and it didn’t hit me that hard because I still got it well within the regular repair time frame.

Replacement Event 2 - September 2009
I went to have my drive checked the second time because now, it had stopped reading dual-layer DVDs such as the one I had Snow Leopard on. So, they apologized and since I was giving my unit to them on a Sunday it took them till Tuesday to acquire parts and replace the drive.

Replacement Event 3 - December 2009
I was a little upset, because I had already had a second replacement and this was the third optical drive that was failing. This time, not expecting anything out of it, I escalated my case to Customer Relations to express how unhappy I was with this issue. They heard me, didn’t say anything for some time. Then they said they needed time to investigate and analyze all the data they had about the repairs after which they would call me back to tell me what I should do. I got a call in 2 hours, from Ireland, from someone who handled cases such as mine. He did the usual bit of apologizing and went on to say that since my warranty would expire within the next six months, and this has been a recurring problem, Apple would replace my unit with the most current MacBook Pro. I asked them how they would handle the replacement, and they said Apple would collect it from my house, and have a replacement unit shipped from Singapore. I was warned that I might have to pay whatever customs duty that might be involved in these exchanges. With the government of India charging 33% of the cost as customs duty on imported electronics, I was in no state to accept their offer like this. So my case was then transferred to Apple Singapore, and I was assured that I wouldn’t have to pay anything: “Customs are usually charged in other countries but they’re only small amounts like a couple of dollars or so but since India has a different system we negotiate the exchange directly with the customs office in India. My colleague who spoke to you earlier doesn’t handle cases from India.”

So now that I could see the customs issue more clearly, I proceeded with the replacement in the first week of January. It took Apple a week to send me the new computer and subsequently process a prorated refund ending my AppleCare insurance contract with them. Since I got a discount on my AppleCare through the third party reseller I bought it from, the money I got back made it seem almost like a free warranty extension.

My final conversation with Apple about this case was just a short one in which they thanked me for sending them an email acknowledging the delivery of the unit they had shipped.

The new Mac
The only impressions I have about this unibody MacBook Pro is that it feels solid and has the best trackpad I’ve ever used. More impressions later or maybe never(just to be clear). Everything does work as it should, but what are the chances of my new computer failing in the first few months? I have had a couple of HPs fail and I know they were a big headache to handle. But I should curse myself for comparing my computer with ones made by HP since it doesn’t sell computers…but commodities.

AppleCare
The decision to extend my warranty insurance was not incorrect. If I hadn’t done that, the money I would have had to shell out to perform the repairs myself would have turned to be quite a big sum. Thanks to Prateek for convincing me to buy the protection plan.

I know I’ll extend the warranty of this machine too because I’m not going to change how I treat my computer nor am I going to stop expecting it to deliver. AppleCare is just the best peace of mind you can buy. If you look around, you get good deals too!

UPDATE:

Why does Apple replace defective units rather than let it go to the bin to make more money from the people throwing them away?
I could take the angle everybody takes and say it’s all about customer satisfaction. But that is no reasonable explanation. Of course, every consumer has rights but the warranty doesn’t explicitly mention that replacements will be served at all times. So my only intelligent guess would be that Apple, being a company which cares about product quality, cares to replace units after the defective unit is returned because it has ulterior motives. The ulterior(but not necessarily bad) motive here might be that they are able to identify the defect and the reason it was uncovered. Obviously a lot of the problems they hear about are new and must be rectified to at least improve future production. By taking possession of the defective unit, Apple has a lot to gain even by analyzing its state. With every new revision, they rectify some of the shortcomings of the machines that shipped in their previous generations. And what better way of identifying these problems than by locating the actual machines that have problems. These problems may be very important because they may be generic for the entire class of computers.

With other manufacturers, manufacturing is not so much a matter of design or development as it is a process for their survival. What they did in the past is gone and a fresh slate is what they use to make a new computer. Supporting old hardware is an expensive routine, and those who sell cheap computers find it easier just to skip the task completely. They do offer in-warranty support but making a product grow over a period of time is something their business doesn’t require or doesn’t seem to have required till now.

That still doesn’t make sense. Why should Apple care?
Apple is a company which does both the hardware and software. The integration is great but they have the additional work of handling every problem the user faces. Not like PC manufacturer and PC desktop OS maker that they start blaming each other stating some idiotic case of incompatibility. They shouldn’t be in the market if they didn’t work. Apple cannot survive if this happened. Every little nuance is as important for their software as it is for their hardware, the combination of which is Apple.