Comment by jen20
6 days ago
> a few days later i had a new one
This really sums up the reason I stuck with MacBook hardware even during the dark days of the end of the Intel era: I can have a new MacBook in basically any moderately developed city in the world inside an hour, and in fact did so twice when something catastrophic happened on work trips. Waiting a few days to fix something or get some custom-order-only laptop would not have been an option.
Well even if my Framework would explode it wouldnt be THAT big of a deal to me, i would just move over to my ps5 or steamdeck for the time and since i dont really go outside i would have to wait for the shipment anyway. Only scenario where it would be troubling is if it happened during the rare weeks where i am not home due to being a bit away in school but even then i dont think i would just buy an entirely new laptop and instead just write on paper for the 3-4 remaining days.
So for me fixing a keyboard i spilled cola on fast, cheap and without sending the device away is far far far more important than replacing an entire laptop when it disintegrates into dust.
This indicates effectively trivial use instead of seeing a laptop as a business tool.
"Write on paper" when you're on a consulting site for a client is not an option - much less when you bill by the hour.
I've actually had the situation where someone spilled a drink in my Mac and I was due to give a conference talk three hours later - that was actually recoverable because I could buy a new laptop with approximately the same configuration immediately, and didn't ruin the week.
That level of service is far from universal - Apple don't do onsite repairs at all in the UK, let alone inside 1 hour. It's all random third parties with crappy return-it-to-the-shop as a fallback.
I'm not even talking about onsite repairs, just about getting a new laptop to use.
I have indeed had my laptop repaired very quickly in the UK though (I still order them with British keyboards as 30 years of muscle memory does not go away). The Apple Store in Bath just took care of it.