I am the proud owner of a Macbook Air, and aside from all the flack I get for being a Macbook Air owner, it does everything I ever expected from it upon purchase.
Everything except not break that is
About two months ago I, as per standard notebook operating procedure, raised the screen of my MBA when without warning I heard a rather unpleasant cracking noise. That didn’t sound healthy, I thought to myself. Lo and behold, the right-hinge attaching the screen to the rest of the machine was now broken. There was a little piece of plastic on my desk that wasn’t there a second before and something that I could only invent as a storm of fury poured through my entire being.
If you know anything about hinges, they exist for a reason. The newly broken hinge forced the weight of the monitor onto the unfortunate, suddenly lonely left hinge. Overcompensation like this can only lead to further trouble, so I was forced to prop up the right side with whatever I could MacGyver at the time. This sucks, I realized, as I picked up the pieces and slowly went through the steps of making things right.
Fortunately for me, my story has a happy ending
After bringing the MBA into the Apple Store for a technician (aka. Genius) to take a look, I was told that it would be replaced under warranty. I was told that cosmetic damage of this sort isn’t typically covered, but since the rest of the laptop body was in perfect condition, an exception could be made. Hurrah!
Unfortunately for others, they were not so lucky…
… the cost to repair the damage has been quoted at anywhere from $450 to $800!”
After browsing the web for the same thing, I found a good amount of people with the same problem. However, many of these people couldn’t convince their Genius that the screen wasn’t dropped or opened too far back so they had to pay for the repair out of their own pocket.
You figure a little hinge couldn’t cost more than the price of a bag of gold fish right? Wrong! The cost to repair the damage has been quoted at anywhere from $450 to $800! This is because the entire screen needs to be replaced instead just the hinge.
It is a bit worrisome to me that you can either be charged upwards of $800 for what now appears to be an obvious design flaw OR have everything covered under warranty, all depending on the mood of the Genius you randomly approach.
Also of note, this seems to be happening at an alarmingly increasing rate. Most of the complaints have happened within the last month or two. It’s as if, presumably unbeknownst to the machine’s creator, the hinge can only handle a years month of regular use before the break occurs.
I’m not looking forward to being warranty free at the end of this year and have the same thing happen again.
I contacted The Consumerist about the problem and they’re looking into it.
For now, here are some relevant links I found on the subject:
- Minspace Blog (see comments)
- Scoopz Blog (excellent photo gallery)
- Apple Forum
- On Flickr - 1, 2, 3
- On YouTube - 1, 2, 3 (this happened to mine before the break. Possibly related)
This blog is simply a description of what I see around me in the world today. Using whatever relevant knowledge I have acquired throughout my life time, my intention is to continue writing articles that are interesting to me, with opinions and biases that are absolutely my own. 
Glad to hear you got your broken hinge covered free of charge under warranty, like your article says there are some who have not been quite so lucky and been landed with huge repair bills.
Thanks for the link at the end of your article (it links to my old iWeb site though, I’ve put the link to the MBA hinge article as my link on this comment).
Much as I love my Macbook Air I must admit it does seem to have had some quality control issues. I rejected my first unit after strange marks started appearing on the trackpad/palmrest area (http://blog.scoopz.com/2008/03/02/macbook-air-faulty-screen-damages-trackpad/). I’ve also had an issue with a faulty battery causing the date and time to be reset whenever the laptop battery ran low (http://blog.scoopz.com/2009/01/09/macbook-air-loses-time-when-battery-runs-flat/) and then finally my hinge snapped.
However, even with all these QC issues, whenever it’s been in for repair I have to resort to using my 15″ Macbook Pro as “portable” unit. After a year of using an MBAir you really do appreciate just how small and light it is but at the same time, reverting back to my MB Pro makes me realise just how underpowered the MB Air can be sometimes.
Now I’ve got a brand new screen, hinge, battery, etc in the MB Air I think my plan is to sell both the Air and Pro and buy the new slightly more powerful Air instead. The only thing stopping me at present is the rumor of a 15″ MB Air that may be announce in a few months, but this could just be the good old Apple-rumor-mill at its best.
Great blog btw, loving the Wordpress theme you’ve got.
Scoopz (Neil Cooper)
Great reading, thank you