Apple ignores cracked Macbooks

Nick Farrell
05 August 2009

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SLEEK PASTEL gadget maker Apple has decided to stick its fingers in its ears and go la-la-la over a widespread problem of cracked Macbooks.

The problem has been moaned about on various forums for a while now, but Apple has ignored the complaints or just deleted them.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, which seems to have just woken up to the problem down under, the fault occurs in the range of Macbook laptops with plastic cases that have been on the market for several years and are still being offered for sale by Apple.

It usually takes a few months for cracks and hairline stress fractures appear in the plastic chassis, particularly around the palm rest, hinges, input/output ports, back corners and air vents.

In case Apple says that all this is a minor and rare problem, there are shedloads of pictures posted in Flickr showing how grim it all is.

Now it seems that a US law firm, Seeger Weiss, is investigating the issue with a view towards filing a class action lawsuit and is calling on affected customers to come forward.

Apple says that the problem has nothing to do with the cheap, shonky, plastic that it uses in its expensive machines. Instead it blames Apple fanboys who were a little rough with their toys.

One of the big Apple fanboy community sites seems to be having a bit of a crisis about the problem, however. Anthony Agius of MacTalk.com.au admitted that it was certainly a design fault. He added that he had not seen a Macbook that was used regularly that had not developed some sort of issue.

"Personally, I think it's one of Apple's worst quality products. No other Apple product in recent history has been quite so shoddy," he said.

Now that's shocking language coming from an Apple fanboy. In their universe Apple products are perfect and if something goes wrong Apple replaces it.

With Apple gear being so expensive, it does seem a bit strange that their casings appear to be cheaper than something found in a cheap Chinese laptop that sells for a quarter of the price.

Richard Olsen actually slit his wrist on one of the cracks that appeared in his white Macbook. He didn't do it out of despair at the state of Apple's build quality, it was just a splinter of plastic.

Fortunately Apple told him that he had caused the problem himself and therefore it was not covered by warranty. So that's all right then. µ