Repairing/replacing faulty MacBook Pros

Question

I've never had so much buyer's remorse after purchasing an Apple product. I can deal with the reflectiveness of the glass screen (I knew about that when I got it, afterall), but every time I see the light leaks and theater striping, or play Quake 4 and see refresh artifacts, or sit my MBP down next to my perfectly-good-but-useless-to-me 22" Viewsonic display because the Mini DisplayPort doesn't work right, I ask myself why I spent $2,500 on this machine.
Please post your repair/replacement experiences here. Is Apple actually fixing the problems, or just replacing laptops with identical machines that suffer from the same issues? If the latter is the case, what are you planning to do about it? I'm actually considering returning mine for a full refund and getting a desktop machine and an Asus-style netbook.

Answer 1

I ordered my MBP on November 5th, with all the upgrades and options. i struggled with lockups and black screen freezes for a couple of weeks or something before deciding it was a hardware issue and calling AppleCare. They took a week or so to decide what was going on, and when apparently no engineers could explain the problem they just replaced my machine. The second machine arrived the first week of December. It was cured of the lockups and graphics freezes (black screen of death) but the fabric inside the optical drive was not attached properly and the drive itself did not spin up to speed. They replaced it. I just received my 2nd replacement, making it my third since November 5th, and this one appears functional and great in every area except the screen. The screen has the light leaking, which is so bad that it distorts colors on the left side of the screen. This really stands out because the previous two units, for their other flaws, had beautiful screens that were lighted evenly and there was just nothing to complain about in that department.
Apple doesn't appear to be able to ship me a quality computer. I have been an Apple customer since the late 70's. Their computers were always perfect, never had any notable flaws in craftsmanship or function, and while they did break down like any machine or electronics it wasn't for a good many years. What's going on now I don't understand. I don't understand why I gave them all the money they asked for and while they do keep replacing, they can't seem to ship me one that doesn't have a deal-killing flaw.
I'm generally not really picky. Each one of these MBPs has had what I might call minor imperfections that I would never return the computer over, or file a report about. I have not made issue of any of these smaller things. But a non-useable optical drive, a freezing system with non-functional 9600GT chip, those are not something you can live with. That's the functionality being paid top dollar for and it needs to work. And now, to get a screen that is this junky looking.. Leaking light is one thing, but this leaks so bad that black pixels are changed to white or purple along the left side, and the so-dubbed "stage lights" bleeding through create a lot of color distortion on the bottom of the screen. It was the first thing I noticed when I turn the computer on because it is so pronounced.
The crashing of the first computer from the lockups that required forced power downs and boot ups destroyed a year's worth of photos and videos. I even had duplicate copies of each photo/video from my camera and the system managed to corrupt all of them irreparably.
I can't believe I have been saving and waiting years for this, and this is the experience I get.