Comment by cosmic_cheese
15 days ago
FWIW, I’ve been toting around the 16” M-series models since they launched and recently picked up a 13” Air and have yet to see this occur. Haven’t heard reports of it from coworkers or friends either. Not saying it doesn’t happen, but I suspect there’s a particular action or pattern of behavior that makes it more likely, such as placing it under heavy objects or packing it in tightly with books or something like that.
Yes, it's not a fatality.
For context, that's what I'm talking about with the kind of patterns when it happens: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254769961?sortBy=rank
> packing it in tightly with books
Which is basically equivalent to "putting it in a backpack" to me. I brought my last one in a lot of places, putting it with an iPad in the laptop compartment, the iPad was fine, the MacBook screen wasn't. For comparison I have an Asus X13 now, same use case (the iPad became a Surface Pro) for the same one year+ period now, and the screen is still perfect.
It’s worth fixing for sure, but between that and PCB flexing, to me the latter is by far the worse of the two. A lot of users will never encounter the first, but in a laptop with a flexy chassis practically everyone will end up flexing their mainboard unless the laptop is permanently desk-bound.
I'd put the spotlight on the repair prices to fix a MacBook screen: a full replacement will cost more that half the machine price, and basically the same as a motherboard replacement for low-middle range models.
It's akin to asking if you prefer to lose your right or left arm.
Apple would get out of that issue altogether if they gave up on the ultrathin screen. Again, the iPad doesn't have this issue for instance.