Every so often we come across a machine that destroys everything that’s plugged into it. One such machine made a few trips in for service over the past month and Apple replaced most every component in their Houston, TX repair facility.
This customer reports that the computer fried eight iPods (which Apple replaced free of charge each time) and several USB external hard drives. The main logic board is the component with all the USB ports on the right side of the machine, and since iPods had also been fried while plugged into the left side, the left input/output board (which contains two USB ports, sound-in, sound-out, and the MagSafe port) was suspect as well. Both were replaced to no avail during one trip to Texas. The second trip to the repair facility saw the bottom case, a second logic board, and a few interconnection cables, and the problem still persisted.
The second major issue with the machine is an inability to stream music to an AirPort Express without frequent dropouts. For this problem, the AirPort Card and display module were replaced, as the display module contains the AirPort antenna (along with the screen itself, the microphone, the iSight camera). This problem was resolved on the first trip in.
There were several other outstanding issues not resolved at the Apple facility, and the computer had seen several other repairs over the years, all covered by AppleCare. In the end, Apple reached out to our mutual customer and offered to replace the 17” laptop from 2007 with a brand new current-generation machine. Apple will capture this machine for engineers to carefully examine, and any relevant findings will be shared with the engineering and design teams at Apple.
Apple is the only company I know of that actually reaches out to customers in situations like this. It’s a truly extraordinary benefit of having AppleCare.